To your point. The political discourse in the US has become so pathetically inept that the result is what we get. This discourse has mainly focused on irreconcilable differences (e.g. abortion, religion, gay mariage to name a few) making anything else (e.g. Social Security, Medicare, Healthcare, etc) go down the tube. And finger pointing is the rule. Total abdication of the mainstream media to so called free market forces and sensationalism derived from the differences above put us where we are. Who said “you have the democracy you deserve”?

This WH is not especially responsible for it – some of its members may be though. Those now have the interesting task of undoing all the neglect and negligence of past WHs and Congress. The stimulus is a monster. Our children may dearly pay for this and it is not fair. Who cares about the space program? And, lest we forget, the government used to provide what the public demanded: Easy purchasing power, regardless of consequences aka immediate gratification. The public never demanded easy access to space.

NASA should be happy to have the budget they have and even though I’d love to see it higher it might as well be much lower. I hope the Augustine Panel will come up with innovative and smart ways to go forward or NASA Exploration will have to sharpen its PowerPoint-pencils for the foreseeable future whether we like it or not.

“That’s the real story,” a senior space manager, who asked not to be named, said of NASA’s Thursday budget briefing. “It’s like that Sherlock Holmes thing, the real story is the dog that didn’t bark in the night. … If the three-plus billion dollars in the out years, if that cut stands, then there’s no moon by 2020 and maybe none at all.”

The USG is broke guys, and is surviving now by printing money Argentina circa 1999 style. Federal spending under the Obama administration is unsustainable probably just 1 year from now and Nasa, along with many other agencies, will see deep cuts regardless of the cause. I think California is a good analogy to what will happen at the federal level. Just as the powers that be in CA have known for at least a decade that their spending was far above revenues, so have the Democrats and Republicans in DC known that the baby boom retirement would put unsustainable fiscal demands upon Medicare and Social Security. Warnings have been sounded since Reagan’s era. Always, and I mean without exception, Congress has dawdled under both parties control. Now with the Obama budget bomb exploding now and years before the Medicare and SSN bombs, a true crisis is at hand.

The end result is worthy programs all across the federal budget will get butchered as soon as next year IMHO. Even if VSE had been executed perfectly, a first in aerospace, under the current conditions it would still be cut back.

The FY 2010 budget request for NASA is $957 million less than the FY 2009 budget request for NASA in 2012 and 2013. But between the stimulus and accelerated funding in the FY 2010 budget request, 2009, 2010, and 2011 are a combined $2,001 million higher. The net is a $1,044 million increase to NASA’s budget from 2009 through 2013.
And the additional funding comes earlier, which makes it more valuable. Even if there was a three billion cut to NASA in the outyears, it would probably be a rough wash with the two billion increase in the near-years, due to the time value of money.

“If its the later, then the Moon or Mars before 2030 is deader than Jimmy Duranty.”

The budget is not the problem. The problem is that Constellation’s costs have almost doubled and are continuing to rise. NASA’s own projected costs for Constellation through first lunar landing have risen from $57 billion to $92 billion. Based on past cost growth, CBO estimates that this figure will top $110 billion before it’s all over. See pages 16-17 in this recent report:

http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/100xx/doc10051/04-15-NASA.pdf

A $3 billion cut would pale in comparison to the $35-43 billion increase in Constellation costs through first lunar landing (more than a factor of ten difference). That’s crazy cost growth that busts the original VSE budget and is not sustainable. Part of the Augustine panel’s job is to get those costs back in the box.

“I’m guessing given the trillions of dollars in unfunded spending Obama wants that we’ll be lucky that its only a 3 billion cut thru 2013 and not something far, far higher. The fact that Sec. Geithner was laughed at in China when he sought to assure his Chinese audience that their dollar accounts were safe suggests we’ll be lucky to keep the cuts at 3 billion.”

I’m no fan of most of the stimulus bill, but it’s a small piece of the deficit/debt compared to what’s coming in medicare and social security. The demographics and political decisions that will drive medicare and social security costs in the next few years were put in place years and decades ago. Although it falls on the Obama Administration’s watch to fix these costs (and it’s unclear whether they can given their spending so far), this White House is actually not to blame for the primary drivers of the massive deficits projected for the coming years.

FWIW…

NASA is a favorite budgetary whipping boy, but what Griffin did with ESAS made NASA’s plight significantly worse.

~Jon

~Jon

If its the later, then the Moon or Mars before 2030 is deader than Jimmy Duranty. I’m guessing given the trillions of dollars in unfunded spending Obama wants that we’ll be lucky that its only a 3 billion cut thru 2013 and not something far, far higher. The fact that Sec. Geithner was laughed at in China when he sought to assure his Chinese audience that their dollar accounts were safe suggests we’ll be lucky to keep the cuts at 3 billion.
Moon, Mars, adios.