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What NASA programs could be vulnerable to a budget cut?

NASA has been relatively sheltered from the freeze on most discretionary spending the White House imposed in its FY2011 budget proposal: the agency got a $6-billion increase over five years in the budget proposal released in February. However, the agency might be asked to cut some future spending in a very targeted fashion, according to a memo released by the White House Tuesday.

In a memo to heads of executive departments and agencies, OMB director Peter Orszag and White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel wrote that “we must do more” to cut spending and “restore fiscal responsibility” to the country. In the memo, they ask that heads “identify the programs and subprograms that have the lowest impact on your agency’s mission and constitute at least five percent of your agency’s discretionary budget” and submit that information along with their FY2012 budget submissions to the White House in September, but as a separate exercise.

The memo makes clear that they’re not looking for agencies to simply make across-the-board cuts to achieve that five percent goal, but instead target specific low-priority programs. “To reach the five percent target, your agency should identify: (1) entire programs or subprograms; or (2) substantial cuts amounting to at least 50 percent of total spending within a program or subprogram,” the memo states. Selecting those programs, the memo notes, should be “based on their impact on your agency’s mission and relevant Presidential initiatives” and that “your agency should consider whether the program has an unclear or duplicative purpose, uncertain Federal role, completed mission, or lack of demonstrated effectiveness.”

The five-percent target is from what each agency received for FY2010 (excluding any supplemental funding); for NASA, which got approximately $18.7 billion in FY10, that means finding programs valued at $935 million or more. There’s no guarantee than any or all of those cuts would be included in the final FY12 budget proposal, but the request is raising eyebrows: as the Washington Post reported this morning, budget analysts said they couldn’t recall anything similar happening before, with agencies effectively being asked to volunteer their own programs for elimination.

In a separate budget guidance document for FY12 budget planning, the OMB directs agencies that “your overall request should not exceed a level of five percent below the discretionary total provided for your agency for FY 2012 in the FY 2011 Budget”. NASA projected a budget of $19.45 billion in FY12; the five-percent target means a cut of $972.5 million separate from the budget exercise described above. However, the memo adds that this is not necessary if “your agency has been given explicit direction to the contrary by OMB”; it’s not clear if NASA has received any such direction.

100 comments to What NASA programs could be vulnerable to a budget cut?

  • common sense

    Orion CRV is gone, it will be replaced with a variant of a commercial vehicle… Or with Soyuz/Shenzou.

  • Robert G. Oler

    This should not be to hard to do. Orion is one place to start…space station operations are another,

    Whittington’s comments about “commercial space” being dead on the other thread are goofy.

    Robert G. Oler

  • common sense

    @ Robert G. Oler wrote @ June 8th, 2010 at 5:31 pm

    People live in alternate reality. The commercial attempt is to demonstrate they can do it cheaper than NASA can. The logic ought to be that if the commercials can then NASA will no longer “build” HSF vehicles. But where is logic to some is very stange…

  • red

    Well, we’ve all been expecting something along these lines, and a similar tone for years or decades to come. It’s futile if we don’t go after non-discretionary spending as well, but it’s no surprise. I wonder how Constellation or similar mega-projects would fare under such budget conditions?

    I agree that Orion CRV does seem to stand out like a sore thumb, since it got added recently, doesn’t really fit into the budget yet even before this announcement, and looks like it might cost a lot more than expected. Soyuz can do the job, but I think U.S. commercial vehicles will have to step up, whether as part of the already-proposed commercial crew effort, a separate effort, or both. Could NASA come up with some more affordable CRV, or some more affordable variant on the Orion super-lite CRV than the one that was just estimated?

    How much of that KSC modernization are we going to need? Could we scale that back or slow it down a little bit?

    I’d probably be looking at MSL or JWST if they we’re so far along.

    I might also take a look at the new Heavy Lift account. Some of the work in this account is probably going to be useful across the board (i.e. for making both heavy lift and smaller rockets more affordable or reliable), but some of it might be too specific to heavy lift, or geared towards heavy lift that is just too, uh, heavy, to be afforded.

    Constellation Transition money – we need you now. How do we get at you? Come to us in our time of need.

    NASA might want to take a look at any work that is specific to astronauts on the surface of Mars. Most of the exploration technology work NASA is planning is applicable to multiple destinations or users, and in those cases it’s worth the cost. Efforts that are specific to astronauts on the surface of Mars, however, might be applicable too far off in the future to spend lots of money on in the 2012 budget (even though astronauts on the surface of Mars would be great, and not something I’m against). Maybe NASA will have to set its sights a bit lower for the time being – i.e. the deep space Flexible Path destinations, especially the closer ones, and the lunar surface as a long term goal.

  • CharlesHouston

    Programs will survive if they are critical to a larger goal – and if they provide a unique capability. KSC modernization – what does that support? What will be launched from KSC? There are no plans to launch anything from KSC – Atlas, Delta, Falcon – all launch from the Air Force side of the causeway. Flagship Technology – what does that support? Nothing.

    Look for both of those to be cut.

  • SpaceMan

    then NASA will no longer “build” HSF vehicles

    NASA does NOT build vehicles. They design and specify vehicles. Careless verbage but that isn’t a strange thing here. About what I would expect from junior high people which I doubt any of you are.

    “Train as you fight, fight as you train” isn’t just for those in combat so clean it up if you expect to get anywhere you want to go.

  • common sense

    I think that if we consider HSF alone anything that is close to a cost-plus contract is target by default. If HLV is procured a la COTS then it may live on. Orion CRV is dead. It was added as a “compromise” not really as a necessity. Anything scientific will come last, e.g. MSL or JWST. This WH seems to favor science over exploration. As for KSC, could the budget be split with the contractors that operate off KSC? NASA might provide discounted ops for shared cost?

  • common sense

    @ SpaceMan wrote @ June 8th, 2010 at 6:32 pm

    “NASA does NOT build vehicles. They design and specify vehicles. Careless verbage but that isn’t a strange thing here. About what I would expect from junior high people which I doubt any of you are.”

    Did you notice the ” around “build”? In any case… My statement holds.

  • Vladislaw

    SpaceMan wrote:

    >”NASA does NOT build vehicles. They design and specify vehicles. Careless verbage but that isn’t a strange thing here. About what I would expect from junior high people which I doubt any of you are.”

    He put the word “build” in quotations because he was being sarcastic about the how the American public, in general, believes NASA builds everything themselves and somehow commercial is not even in the picture.

  • GeeSpace

    I believe that it should be agrued that nearly everything in the current 2011 NASA budget (including some items that are missing) is necessary for our national security and economic growth.
    But since that concept will probably fly like a lead balloon, the following are my thoughts.
    First of all “To reach the five percent target, your agency should identify: (1) entire programs or subprograms; or (2) substantial cuts amounting to at least 50 percent of total spending within a program or subprogram” means that a program cut in half perhaps means that the total program is not useful.
    But if I had to cut, I would look at cutting the following possibilities
    1.Heliophysis funding
    2. the KSC enhancements
    3. Astrophysics fundng
    4. Earth & Climate Science funding

  • Major Tom

    “Flagship Technology – what does that support? Nothing.”

    No, it support six critical exploration technology demonstration missions, including:

    –Automated/Autonomous Rendezvous & Docking Vehicle (ARDV)
    –Solar Electric Propulsion Stage
    –CRYOGENIC Propellant STorage And Transfer (CRYOSTAT) Mission
    –Inflatable Module Mission
    –Environment Control and Life Support (ECLS)
    –Aerocapture, Entry, Descent & Landing

    There are POD presentations available on each at (scroll down):

    nasa.gov/exploration/new_space_enterprise/home/workshop_home.html

    FWIW…

  • CharlesHouston

    Major Tom (did you take your protien pill yet?) tells us that Flagship Technology supports six missions. He describes them as “critical” but we are not sure to whom they are critical.

    One mission is Automated/Autonomous Rendezvous and Docking Vehicle. What is that for?? What program does that support? And hasn’t DARPA recently done one of those?

    Next is Solar Electric Propulsion Stage – on what mission are we planning to use that?

    Similarly, members of Congress can question each of those missions (and they will) so we better have some good answers. How will we defend Inflatable Module Mission – didn’t NASA do that several years ago? Didn’t they cancel it in the days long before the obscene Federal deficit?

    I am not trying to just be a nay sayer – but in the coming budget battle you gotta wonder if any of these will survive. Now – tobacco subsidies have support. Wiring rural ski resorts for broadband – that has support. Sigh.

  • Bennett

    I believe VASMIR can be solar powered, but wouldn’t this include ion drives?

    Automated/Autonomous Rendezvous and Docking Vehicle development would be useful for fuel depot supply

    Inflatable Module Mission – I think the was canceled by CxP budget needs, and Bigelow bought exclusive patent rights. This is important for a wide variety of HSF missions, LEO/GEO or other

    For starters.

  • MrEarl

    Ahhhhhh the plot thickens.
    Orion is, unfortunately, mercifully, dead. Remember that was not a budget line item so that realty doesn’t count twords the 5% decrease.
    The KSC renovations are for the Air Force side too. These renovations are needed to attract commercial launches. Who knows, ULA may be able to get into the the commercial launch business again.
    It will be interesting to see what is considered low priority. I’m betting it won’t be anything to do with Earth sciences or Climate change.
    I’m also curious to WHO will make the decision. Thou we’ll never really know my suspicion is that the decision will come from the White House.

  • Neil H.

    What percentage of NASA’s budget has gone to MSFC for the past several years?

  • MrEarl

    MT:
    This is EXACTLY why a clear plan with a path and milestones is needed. Who really knows what is most important. Any one or all of those demonstrators can be cut because it can be argued that they are not needed right now.
    I bet that at least half of those demonstrators will cut in 2012.

  • SpaceMan

    Grow up and stop playing word games. I saw the quotes and that game is BS. It just shows how juvenile you are.

    No wonder the human race is still stuck at the bottom of this gravity well.

  • Bennett

    SpaceMan wrote @ June 8th, 2010 at 9:15 pm

    Hmmmm… Elvis?

  • Hormone Junkie

    “Train as you fight, fight as you train” isn’t just for those in combat so clean it up if you expect to get anywhere you want to go.

    Got steroids? Or do you just watch a lot of John Wayne movies?

    Grow up and stop playing word games.

    Pot Kettle Black

  • Major Tom

    CH: “Major Tom (did you take your protien pill yet?)”

    No one takes “protien” pills. Yuck.

    “He describes them as ‘critical’ but we are not sure to whom they are critical.”

    Not whom, but what. Without these kinds of capabilities, infeasibly large masses, on the order of ten ISS-equivalents, will be required just to mount one deep space mission. Such a huge mass for a single mission probably can’t be pulled off even once, and even then, a second, third, etc. mission won’t be technically or financially sustainable. You just can’t get there from here with just an HLV, even an impossibly big one.

    Slide 4 in this presentation from the NASA Chief Technologist illustrates this:

    slideshare.net/coalitionforspace/investments-in-the-future-nasas-technology-and-programs

    That chart, or charts like it, have been around ever since JSC has been doing Mars DRMs, probably longer.

    “One mission is Automated/Autonomous Rendezvous and Docking Vehicle. What is that for?? What program does that support?”

    If you’re going to fuel or refuel in-space, you need AR&D for the prox. ops. between your repeated tanker missions and your depot or transit stage.

    “And hasn’t DARPA recently done one of those?”

    Not at the scale or with the repeatability needed.

    “Next is Solar Electric Propulsion Stage – on what mission are we planning to use that?”

    Cargo sent ahead of the crew. If you can bifurcate a mission into elements that are time sensitive and those that are not, the latter can be sent ahead of the crew using very efficient, but very slow, methods of propulsion like SEP. That then reduces propellant and propulsion demands for the crewed and other time sensitive elements.

    “How will we defend Inflatable Module Mission – didn’t NASA do that several years ago?”

    No, NASA hasn’t flown a human scale inflatable module. Only Bigelow has flown inflatable modules and theirs were subscale.

    “Didn’t they cancel it in the days long before the obscene Federal deficit?”

    NASA’s ground-based TransHab work was terminated when the Bush II White House uncovered a $5 billion ISS overrun at the beginning of their term. That termination led to the founding of Bigelow Aerospace.

    “I am not trying to just be a nay sayer – but in the coming budget battle you gotta wonder if any of these will survive.”

    They will survive just like every other major White House funded change in NASA’s human space flight program has. They involve lots of jobs at NASA field centers, and the congressmen representing those states and districts have little choice in the end if they want to retain those jobs and votes. To cancel these projects without losing jobs and votes, 500+ legislators would have to develop a single, coherent, programmatic alternative to the President’s proposal. That’s never happened before, it’s not happening now, and it’s very, very unlikely to happen in the future. I’m exaggerating, but the White House could probably direct NASA to build a flying saucer, and Congress would eventually fall in line and fund it as long as the work occurred at NASA’s field centers.

    ME: “Orion is, unfortunately, mercifully, dead. Remember that was not a budget line item so that realty doesn’t count twords the 5% decrease.

    No, it’s been resurrected in reduced, CRV form. If terminated, NASA would save $4.5 billion over five or so years.

    “These renovations are needed to attract commercial launches.”

    I’m skeptical. The VAB, the crawlers, LC-39 & -40, etc. are all very oversized, inefficient, and decades old. Even if they’re renovated and upgraded, I think a commercial launcher that makes use of, and has to pay for, those assets will have a very hard time being competitive. There’s a reason SpaceX basically started with a clean sheet in terms of their ground facilities.

    “This is EXACTLY why a clear plan with a path and milestones is needed.”

    The major milestone is in 2015, when the results from most of these demonstrations will be in (and commercial crew operational or almost so) and intelligent design and development decisions with respect to HLV, transit stages, crewed elements, etc. can be made based on the results. The first exploration missions would follow circa 2020.

    “Who really knows what is most important. Any one or all of those demonstrators can be cut because it can be argued that they are not needed right now.”

    They are if you’re going to make those 2015 and 2020 milestones.

    “I bet that at least half of those demonstrators will cut in 2012.”

    Even if you dismiss the programmatics, that’s just not going to happen. For all their bluster, those congressmen won’t leave the NASA workforce unfunded, with nothing to do, and open to firing. They want those votes.

    FWIW…

  • This is going to be nasty. Looks like we are getting ready for the final step down from Saturn. IF shuttle gets shut down, Nelson, Hutchinson, and the rest of the Space Senators will have much less reason to fight for NASA funding, it’s their, and Senators like them that have kept NASA inflated all these years.

    Folks, this is going to be a blood bath, lets just hope NASA doesn’t protect their BEO program and take ALL their cuts in research. NASA was supposed to be the civilian DARPA, not Space Grayhound.

  • Doug Lassiter

    “But if I had to cut, I would look at cutting the following possibilities
    1.Heliophysis funding
    2. the KSC enhancements
    3. Astrophysics fundng
    4. Earth & Climate Science funding”

    I don’t know where you’re getting your NASA priorities, but if you look at the Space Act, which is what defines what NASA’s responsibilities are, you’d probably reassess the possibilities you list here. Well, at least the science ones …

    Now, you can have your own list, but if it doesn’t correspond to the Space Act, it doesn’t mean anything.

    In fact, what is not explicit in the Space Act as a priority for NASA is human space flight. That’s an unfortunate, but awkward fact.

  • Robert G. Oler

    There is a coming storm in monetary policy in the US. Unless we are very lucky all the spending that has been done by both the GOP and the Dems has merely just prolonged the day of massive change…and the time might be just simply running out.

    To those who argue that only “flagship” programs will make the NASA budget off limits I say BS. The flagship programs, the ones that cost 100 plus billion over the short haul are the first things that are going to go as we try and save The financial status of The Republic.

    Things that can be shown to change the economy for the better, things that create non government jobs but ones that actually pay taxes not consume them…are going to be what is left.

    Constellation is a fitting end for 50 years of more or less mindless government spending on human spaceflight it is going out with a whimper…not a roar.

    Robert G. Oler

  • Coastal Ron

    red wrote @ June 8th, 2010 at 6:08 pm

    How much of that KSC modernization are we going to need? Could we scale that back or slow it down a little bit?

    According to NASA, the KSC goals were:

    – To achieve increased operational efficiency and reduced launch costs for all Spaceport customers (Industry, NASA, Military, etc.)

    – Capitalize capabilities and infrastructure investments to create a world-leading commercial space transportation facility

    Identifying these areas to consider for modernization activities:
    • Expanding capabilities to support commercial launch providers
    • Environmental remediation
    • Enhancing payload processing capabilities
    • Supporting the modernization of the launch range capabilities

    I know the range capabilities affected the Falcon 9 launch, so I would want those to continue. The rest could probably be delayed or slowed down…

  • With no mission or intent to build anything, President Obama is setting NASA up for deep budget cuts in the near future. And any savings from such NASA budget cuts will quickly vanish into the black hole of the appallingly inefficient Medicare and Medicaid programs.

  • DCSCA

    @MarcelFWilliams- Yep. And so it goes. As predicted. If HSF is removed from NASA and no new spacecraft is in work, for all intents and purposes there’s no need for the agency. It will be an easy ‘kill’ for politicians hungry to eliminate any government agency in an era of shrinking discretionary spending budgets and the country hurtling toward bankruptcy. And the public will agree. Without a manned space program at its core, the civilian space agency will cease to be an independent agency within a decade and the remaining esoteric research and accompanying assets easily folded into other agencies conducting similar work (FAA, DoD, NOAA, etc.)

  • Coastal Ron

    Marcel F. Williams wrote @ June 9th, 2010 at 1:08 am

    With no mission or intent to build anything…

    I’m sure you’re not advocating for going back to the POR. Anyone in Congress that listened to the GAO would have been drooling to shut down Constellation, and then there would have a been a free-for-all scramble to cobble together something for all the NASA workers to work on. Chaos.

    The Obama/Bolden plan is made up of many more individual building blocks, and is more likely to survive Congressional budget cuts without destroying the agency as a whole.

    Of course I also disagree with your premise that there is “no mission or intent to build anything…“. Yes the Moon is out as the next government destination, but how about COTS/CRS, CCDev, COTS-D and the Flagship Technology Demonstrations (FTD)?

    I for one am glad to get away from single massive programs that take more than a decade to come to fruition. The public doesn’t care about what’s going on during that time. They only get excited when something new happens, and then only for the first few times. At some point, the n time we do something, it starts becoming routine, like the rest of life – and what’s the matter with that? We want space to become routine, so when a millionaire that pays to go to a space station is greeted with a yawn, not headlines.

    The challenge in these financially tight times is to identify enough worthwhile work, in the right states, so the politicians will go along with the proposed budgets, and focus their attention on bigger issues. Time will tell…

  • Coastal Ron

    DCSCA wrote @ June 9th, 2010 at 1:59 am

    If HSF is removed from NASA and no new spacecraft is in work, for all intents and purposes there’s no need for the agency.

    You have a pretty narrow view of what NASA should do – be a space taxi service.

    I think they are more than that, but none are so blind…

  • @Coastal Ron

    There’s no logical reason why we can’t return to the Moon before the end of the decade with a $18 billion a year NASA budget. Griffin decided to fund a shuttle replacement vehicle instead of focusing on building a heavy lift vehicle. That’s why it was going to take so long. And now Obama wants to delay the building of a heavy lift vehicle, repeating Griffin’s mistake.

    Not establishing a permanent base at one of the lunar poles could be one of the biggest economic mistakes of the century for the US. And simply using a light sail to grab an asteroid and bring it back to a Lagrange point for exploitation would make much more sense than the expense of heavily mass shielding a manned vehicle for a mission to an asteroid.

  • Marcel, you and Dinerman should grab coffee sometime and worry yourselves sick that the Chinese are going to steal your Moon cheese.

  • Coastal Ron

    Marcel F. Williams wrote @ June 9th, 2010 at 3:25 am

    Not establishing a permanent base at one of the lunar poles could be one of the biggest economic mistakes of the century for the US.

    Which century? It didn’t hurt us last century, and so far it hasn’t hurt us this century. What economic benefits are we missing out on? What material on the Moon are we demanding? Show me the money!!

    …no logical reason why we can’t return to the Moon before the end of the decade with a $18 billion a year NASA budget… now Obama wants to delay the building of a heavy lift vehicle, repeating Griffin’s mistake.

    There is a commercial-based plan that is out there, and it does not require HLV’s or waiting for magic technologies. ULA published a paper outlining the plan last year called “Affordable Exploration Architecture 2009” (AIAA 2009-6567). Using existing launchers and near-term evolution of existing hardware (no new main engines or new launchers), it supports a permanent presence on the Moon, with 120 day crew rotations. The launch costs to support the first two years would be $15.4B if you used Delta IV Heavy at $300M/launch (ULA’s quote for man-rated version).

    If you were serious about wanting to get back to the Moon, you should be getting behind this plan, since it keeps R&D costs to a minimum, and you can start the mission much quicker.

    However, even though I want to eventually build a sustained presence on the Moon, I don’t share your view of vast riches waiting for us to plunder – I think it’ll be a lot more work, and will only support the local lunar economy for quite a while. FWIW

  • MrEarl

    MT:
    The Eastern Range is very behind the times. It can take over 24 hours to reset the range from one launch to the next. The antiquated procedures and technology is a major reason Cape Canaveral Air Force base went from one of the most active launch sites in the ’80s to piratically zilch now. BTW, SpaceX didn’t start from scratch, they are using a renovated Titian launch facility.
    I know Orion was announced as a CRV to throw a bone at LockMart but it was never in the 2011 budget.
    Seeing what Bolden, (in my opinion the cuts will come from the WH), comes up with for cuts will be very telling about how seriously they take NASA. Personally, I don’t the WH has much use for NASA other than for R&D and Earth sciences.

  • DCSCA

    @ Coastal Ron @ June 9th, 2010 at 2:12 am

    Without a new manned spacecraft in the pipeline and a HSF program in work, there will be no need in the public’s eyes to continue funding NASA. The space agency has been equated with space exploration, not space exploitation. And any sidetrack into ‘profitability’ for the agency has been disappointing at best and disastrous at worst.

    As deficits balloon, budgets for discretionary spending shrink and distressed economic trends continue, there will be very little of NASA worth funding without the manned space program. The public won’t buy it and it will be political suicide for politicians to try to sell it. That may be unfair, but it’s reality. Without any manned spacecraft, a mission and a destination/goal, it can be rationally and justifiably disbanded, lauded for accomplishing what it was tasked to do in years past; its esoteric research and existing assets easily folded into existing agencies conducting similar research (FAA, DoD, NOAA, etc.,). And a public craving more entitlements for down-to-earth problems from a relentlessly shrinking discretionary spending pie will agree. The civilian agency will become a perceived ‘luxury’ – an extravagant discretionary expense – that a nation desperate to reduce expenses and avoid bankruptcy can do without in these times. Most of the general public, who pay the freight, equate HSF with the civilian space agency. That’s how it has ‘marketed’ itself for decades. And this is what Armstrong, Augustine and Cernan, with his famed intangibles et al, expressed in May. It’s what connected with and fueled public support. Without it, space exploration will simply fade away. And there is not a politician alive who wouldn’t crow over closing down a government agency in this era.

    Whether you like it or not, what ‘you’ think as an individual engineer doesn’t really matter – it’s the perception the general public has of the civilian space agency that does– be it broad or narrow- and the value of those ‘Cernan intangibles’ they’ve embraced. Inspiration, national pride, etc,. Remove that core raison d’etre, cultivated for half a century, and the engineers and managers at the civilian space agency cannot justify the cost of continuing as an independent agency to a cash-strapped public in these times.

  • Robert G. Oler

    Marcel F. Williams wrote @ June 9th, 2010 at 1:08 am

    With no mission or intent to build anything,..

    what you assume is that if there is a “mission” or something to build on that the “mission” has automatic political support.

    are you that politically naive?

    do you really think that a Moonbase survives massive budget cuts?

    Robert G. Oler

  • Robert G. Oler

    DCSCA wrote @ June 9th, 2010 at 11:34 am
    . Without any manned spacecraft, a mission and a destination/goal, it can be rationally and justifiably disbanded,…

    so it is your viewpoint that if there is a “manned spacecraft, a mission, and a destination goal” that there is no political pressure on the spending?

    Really?

    Robert G. Oler

  • Derrick

    Neil H. wrote @ June 8th, 2010 at 7:51 pm

    Hey I’m stopping by Huntsville on my way down to Montgomery today–any recommendations on places to eat/visit? Definitely going to see the Saturn V…

  • DCSCA

    @RobertGOler- The complete sentence reads: “Without any manned spacecraft, a mission and a destination/goal, it can be rationally and justifiably disbanded, lauded for accomplishing what it was tasked to do in years past; its esoteric research and existing assets easily folded into existing agencies conducting similar research (FAA, DoD, NOAA, etc.,).”

    Of course there are political pressures on gov’t spending. But your stated position on the value of government spending [or investment] as “mindless” for a manned spaceflight program renders your query, ‘really?’– ‘really irrelevant': “Constellation is a fitting end for 50 years of more or less mindless government spending on human spaceflight it is going out with a whimper…not a roar.” – RobertGOler @ June 8th, 2010 at 11:59 pm

  • common sense

    @MrEarl wrote @ June 9th, 2010 at 9:45 am

    “Seeing what Bolden, (in my opinion the cuts will come from the WH), comes up with for cuts will be very telling about how seriously they take NASA. Personally, I don’t the WH has much use for NASA other than for R&D and Earth sciences.”

    Hm. What is the problem here? NASA and Bolden work for the WH do they not? So NASA and Bolden will do what the WH tell them to do with some input from Bolden. I am sure they, the WH, have a set of priorities, including Earth Science, and that Bolden will most likely not try and cut what the WH deems important. Only a few NASA manaagers think it’s a good idea to go publicly against their leaders. And those will be most likely delt with as in any organization.

  • Vladislaw

    DCSCA wrote:

    “budgets for discretionary spending shrink and distressed economic trends continue, there will be very little of NASA worth funding without the manned space program. The public won’t buy it and it will be political suicide for politicians to try to sell it.”

    The NASA budget, in a over three TRILLION dollar federal budget is barely a rounding error. Astronauts are still going to be flown to the ISS, NASA is still going ahead with technology advances, and will be flying past LEO by the next decade. Anyone want to lay money on it, I will be willing to take that bet.

  • common sense

    @ DCSCA wrote @ June 9th, 2010 at 12:30 pm

    Robert is right. There has been nothing siginficant in terms of crewed vehicle buit since Shuttle, if you exclude the ISS. Yet there’s been $Bs invested, yes with a B since then. So it is nto about NASA getting out of HSF, you still don’t seem to get this. It’s about NASA getting out of “building” the vehicles (hey Spaceman do you like it better this time?). It’s about NASA procuring vehicles based on requirements. So NASA needs first to define a real mission, e.g. LEO or Moon, and then the requirements. Then they’ll make sure requirements are satisfied but will not interfere with design any more than say the DoD interfere with the F-35 design or the airlines with any Boeing. Do they participate? Of course they do! See a difference now?

  • amightywind

    Vladislaw naively speculated:

    “NASA is still going ahead with technology advances, and will be flying past LEO by the next decade. ”

    It’s just that there is no credible plan to do so. And this administration and the funds they waste will be long gone when one is established.

  • DCSCA

    @commonsense- With all due respect, no, you don’t seem to get it. You may be too close to it. The U.S. has walked away from billion dollar esoteric scientific investments before due to costs- the supercollider in Texas comes to mind. Congress had to decide between that or the ISS if memory serves, and they chose the space station and killed the collider, no doubt to the angst of many researchers and engineers. A supercollider was eventually built though- years later in Europe. NASA activities, without a HSF program, are a ‘luxury’ the country increasingly can no longer afford given the billions the United States is borrowing to finance itself and some very hard choices are going to be coming in the decade ahead. The esoteric research NASA centers conduct can easily be absorbed into other agencies. And regardless of the increased financial and human risks, this dour situation actually favors HSF commercial space operations. But not NASA. The civilian space agency has sold itself to the public with HSF — the ‘Cernan intangibles.’ That’s the base of national support- the foks who flock to the KSC Visitors Center, not the engineering community. In a way, HSF has become a sort of loss leader for the rest of the agency. Remove HSF from NASA and the public simply will not grasp value in continuing to fund esoteric engineering or scientific research projects other existing agencies may pursue. And politicians will relish breaking up a government agency in this austere era. It’s going to come down to this- do we keep funding NASA or some other entitlement that immediately meets the down-to-earth needs of the public. It’s inevitable that these kind of hard decisions are going to have to be made soon.

  • Robert G. Oler

    DCSCA wrote @ June 9th, 2010 at 12:30 pm

    @RobertGOler- The complete sentence reads: “Without any manned spacecraft, a mission and a destination/goal, it can be rationally and justifiably disbanded, lauded for accomplishing what it was tasked to do in years past; its esoteric research and existing assets easily folded into existing agencies conducting similar research (FAA, DoD, NOAA, etc.,).” ..

    two points.

    OK I’ll quote the entire sentence.

    Do you really thing that (insert entire sentence here) makes NASA immune from cuts? If the (insert entire sentence here) is irrelevant to the rest of America, if the public doesnt think that the Hundreds of billions to do that (insert entire sentence here) are worth it…do you really think that (insert entire sentence here) stops the cuts?

    I dont

    Second

    support for human spaceflight and support for Constellation are not mutually exclusive nor inclusive. one can be for a “strong military” and think that the F-22 was a waste.

    I am quite pro human spaceflight. I see no value at all in Constellation.

    Robert g. Oler

  • common sense

    @ DCSCA wrote @ June 9th, 2010 at 1:19 pm

    “Remove HSF from NASA ”

    Where did you ever see that HSF will be removed from NASA????? Where? Please give us all a reference and I will bow.

  • DCSCA

    “Constellation is a fitting end for 50 years of more or less mindless government spending on human spaceflight it is going out with a whimper…not a roar.” – RobertGOler @ June 8th, 2010 at 11:59 pm

    “I am quite pro human spaceflight.”- RoberGOler @ June 9th, 2010 at 1:28 pm

    Uh-huh.

  • Robert G. Oler

    DCSCA wrote @ June 9th, 2010 at 1:19 pm

    @commonsense- With all due respect, no, you don’t seem to get it. You may be too close to it. The U.S. has walked away from billion dollar esoteric scientific investments before due to costs- the supercollider in Texas comes to mind. Congress had to decide between that or the ISS if memory serves, and they chose the space station and killed the collider, no doubt to the angst of many researchers and engineers. A supercollider was eventually built though- years later in Europe…..

    almost none of that is correct.

    But I would make two points.

    The SCSC went under because the cost were skyrocketing and there was no real clear message about what the money bought. Where the space station and SCSC differed was that the administrations up to Clinton (which finally got it deployed) were all about what the station would do…and the SCSC people not so much.

    Second the problem is that “nationally” the rhetoric no longer works in human spaceflight, because we have this 100 billion dollar facility that was going to do this or that and it does not much of those things…and so all the people who jump up and down and say “Constellation will cure acme” …

    are not listened to all that much anymore

    Robert G. Oler

  • Robert G. Oler

    DCSCA wrote @ June 9th, 2010 at 1:33 pm

    I am sorry you limit human spaceflight to Constellation. I dont like federal programs that are over budget, under performing and have no real central purpose other then (quoting) to continue “our elite astronaut corps”

    Robert G. Oler

  • MrEarl

    Vlad:
    I’ll take your bet. Anyone who thinks we’ll get out of LEO by 2020 has not been paying attention.

    Constellation is behind schedule and over budget. No BEO before 2020.

    The first mention that Obama made about NASA as a candidate was to say he would delay the moon missions by 5 years to give the money to education. Once he realized Florida would be a key state in the primaries he changed his tune to supporting NASA. One of his key advisers for space during the campaign and transition is Lori Garver, proponent and lobbyist for private space ventures taking on many of NASA’s duties including HSF.
    Once in office, he convenes a committee to give him cover to kill the Constellation program. He fills it with earth science advocates like Sally Ride and Charles Kennel, and private space and robotic exploration advocates and like Chris Chyda, Jeff Greason and Edward Crawley. He then heads it with Norm Augustine who’s last committee on the direction for NASA called for a very similar approach to what is now being called “Flexible Path”. The only person on the committee who strongly advocated for manned exploration was Bo Bejmuk. Using this, the WH comes out with a budget that had little to no input from anyone in NASA, (judging by the reaction and how unprepared NASA top management was.) This budget increases money for private space craft development and for Earth Sciences and reduces BEO to R&D and some demonstration projects. When there is push-back even from members of his own party, he defends the budget by saying things like; the moon, been there done that.
    Now the WH is asking for a 5% cut that is about the over all increase NASA was given in the previous budget. I admit it’s speculation on my part, but I’m betting that the 5% cut comes from the BEO R&D and demonstrations.
    So there you have it. How to kill a giant government program and gut a government agency.
    I’m not saying that the president is evil incarnate, it’s just that NASA has never been a priority for him. In the present budget climate he sees NASA’s budget as a good place to get the funding for his priorities.
    What I really hope for is that the future of NASA can become a debate on the Senate committee rooms and eventually on the floor. That’s alot to hope for considering the BP crises and elections coming up.

  • I admit it’s speculation on my part, but I’m betting that the 5% cut comes from the BEO R&D and demonstrations.

    I think you’ll lose that bet.

    I’m not saying that the president is evil incarnate, it’s just that NASA has never been a priority for him.

    Of course it isn’t. But he’s not going to decide where to cut — NASA is. That was the whole point of Orszag’s memo.

  • DCSCA

    @RoberGOler- “With all due respect, no, you don’t seem to get it. You may be too close to it. The U.S. has walked away from billion dollar esoteric scientific investments before due to costs- the supercollider in Texas comes to mind. Congress had to decide between that or the ISS if memory serves, and they chose the space station and killed the collider, no doubt to the angst of many researchers and engineers. A supercollider was eventually built though- years later in Europe…..

    almost none of that is correct.”

    Hmmm. “During the design and the first construction stage, a heated debate ensued about the high cost of the [supercollider] project. In 1987, Congress was told the project could be completed for $4.4 billion, and it gained the enthusiastic support of Speaker Jim Wright of nearby Fort Worth. By 1993, the cost projection exceeded $12 billion. A recurring argument was the contrast with NASA’s contribution to the International Space Station (ISS), which was of a similar amount. Critics of the project argued that the US could not afford both of them. Congress canceled the project in 1993. Many factors contributed to the cancellation: rising cost estimates; poor management by physicists and Department of Energy officials; the end of the need to prove the supremacy of American science with the collapse of the Soviet Union; belief that many smaller scientific experiments of equal merit could be funded for the same cost; Congress’s desire to generally reduce spending; the reluctance of Texas Governor Ann Richards; and President Bill Clinton’s initial lack of support for a project begun during the administrations of Richards’s predecessor, Bill Clements, and Clinton’s predecessors, Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush. However, in 1993, Clinton tried to prevent the cancellation by asking Congress to continue “to support this important and challenging effort” through completion because “abandoning the SSC at this point would signal that the United States is compromising its position of leadership in basic science”.” -source, Wiki-SSC.

    =sigh=

  • MrEarl

    Rand:
    NASA had no input into the FY2011 budget. What makes you think the agency will have any choice into the programs that will be cut?

  • DCSCA

    @RandSimberg- “Of course it isn’t. But he’s not going to decide where to cut — NASA is. That was the whole point of Orszag’s memo.”

    Uh, no, the point of the memo (and the message behind it) is: NASA, find more projects to cut PDQ– or we’ll do it for you.

  • DCSCA

    MrEarl- Exactly- it won’t.

  • @Trent Waddington

    “Marcel, you and Dinerman should grab coffee sometime and worry yourselves sick that the Chinese are going to steal your Moon cheese.”

    Sorry Trent, but this isn’t the 14th century:-) This the 21st century.

    Unless we manage to destroy ourselves in some thermonuclear holocaust, this is going to be the century when humans finally begin to expand our civilization beyond our planet of evolutionary origin in order to enhance the survival of our species and in order to exploit extraterrestrial resources for our economic benefit.

    Those nations who invest in this future will be the big economic winners. And those that don’t will have to suffer the tragic economic consequences. The poorest nations on Earth are those who failed to invest in the future.

  • find more projects to cut PDQ– or we’ll do it for you.

    Since they will find projects to cut, that doesn’t differ in any significant way from what I said. And no one has offered any evidence that the BEO R&D will be a likely target.

  • Coastal Ron

    Any good manager knows that when their company is under pressure financially, their submitted budget may not be approved without changes. So you make a budget that reflects your goals, then you add in the “like to have” stuff, and you submit it. Along the way you’ve also kept a list of your “got to have” items in case your boss comes back and asks for a reduction in your projected budget.

    Bolden, coming from the military, likely determined his budgetary fallback plan before he submitted his budget. I could see the Orion lifeboat as a diversionary plan to say “OK, we’ll cut the Orion to give us the 5%”, even though it was not part of the original budget. If pushed further, I would imagine he’ll start delaying things like KSC environmental remediation or other future enhancements that don’t have immediate payoff or customers.

    I think the COTS/CRS, CCDev, COTS-D and Flagship Technology Demonstrations (FTD) programs will be the core space related programs that are not touched. These are the foundations for the HSF programs of the near future, and all of them have payoffs during this decade. With these, I agree with Vladislaw, and think that we’ll be flying past LEO by the next decade, or sooner.

  • John Malkin

    The reason the cost was so high for a supercollider in Texas was they were going to start from scratch. Fermilab in Illinois could have utilized existing resources to build it for much less but we had a Texan in the White House. Go figure. Another example of Americans getting the short end of a political stick and now we have nothing. Source – my memory.

  • MrEarl

    Rand, Ron, Vlad:
    WOW, You guys have really drunk the kool-aid. Bolden has no real control over the NASA budget and priorities. That is dictated to him from the WH. That was evident in the roll-out of the FY2011 budget. He’ll just be handed his cuts by OSTP and told to submit them to the OMB.

    This is not evidence but it’s a good hunch knowing the real priorities of the players involved.
    Garver and Bolden will try to stand up to the OSTP on behalf of commercial HSF. She believes in it and Bolden sees it as the only way to save some sort of HSF capability for the astronaut corps.
    Earth sciences and climate change is a priority of the administration, no cuts there.
    That leaves robotic exploration, BEO R&D and demonstrators, and the first A in NASA, Aeronautics.
    Most robotic missions are pretty far along leaving not much savings if they’re cut. Aeronautics would have to be piratically gutted to make meaningful cuts and that goes against the directive of core responsibilities. That leaves the BEO R&D and demonstrators. Some will be stretched out, others will deleted all together or more likely deferred to start some time in the future.
    So, you guys tell me why BEO R&D will not be cut.

  • common sense

    @ MrEarl wrote @ June 9th, 2010 at 2:48 pm

    “So, you guys tell me why BEO R&D will not be cut.”

    Because it is at the core of the Flex-Path plan. And it’d be difficult to tell the new NASA Chief Technologist that his mission is over. Of course it is possible but it is not probable.

    Orion CRV serves very little in the Flex-Path and it will be gone: An opportunity to get rid of the old POR entirely as they intended initially.

    We shall see.

  • Coastal Ron

    common sense wrote @ June 9th, 2010 at 2:55 pm

    Orion CRV serves very little in the Flex-Path and it will be gone: An opportunity to get rid of the old POR entirely as they intended initially.

    Agreed.

    MrEarl you might be right, but political sausage making has so many inputs, and it’s hard to know what the finished product will look like until you finish grinding everything up… ;-)

  • MrEarl

    CS:
    Tell the NASA Chief Technologist to stop by my office, I have no problem telling him Flex-Path is “delayed”.
    Orion is not a part of the FY2011budget. You can’t cut what you don’t have.

  • Robert G. Oler

    DCSCA wrote @ June 9th, 2010 at 1:54 pm

    Actually I do get it. I was alive during the SCSC debate, the space station debate indeed I wrote extensively on the topic op ed wise.

    The SCSC went under because, well what I said. Its cost were rising the results were not all that clear…and the only real comparison with the space station was its cost were rising and the results for it were not all that clear…but “it” was spread out among the several states while EVERYTHING of the SCSC was south of Dallas.

    The problem with these “flagship” programs in areas that have little or no “real payback” is that in previous times they could amass support as long as the pie was spread around. THE SCSC was not really spread all that much.

    Now even spread out projects that are spread out but ballooning in cost are having problems because OF THE SPACE STATION.

    Its built, 100 billion sunk and no one really has a clue what to do with it, and it is not doing anything really. So the next time someone comes up and says ” we have to go to the Moon to stay number 1″ well people outside the pie dont listen as well.

    I dont know anything about high energy physics, but the SCSC should have gone under for the same reason the station came within 1 vote of going under (and should have).

    No one who is for it can say one darn thing that it will actually accomplish that has any value worh the cost.

    not one

    Robert G. Oler

  • common sense

    @ MrEarl wrote @ June 9th, 2010 at 3:14 pm

    “Tell the NASA Chief Technologist to stop by my office, I have no problem telling him Flex-Path is “delayed”.”

    Are you NASA? I thought you were not. But if you are then I assume you are Charles Bolden since the CT works directly for him. If you are not NASA then…
    http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/433034main_Agency_Org_Structure_3-23-2010.pdf
    Anyway… You can do better than that can’t you?

    “Orion is not a part of the FY2011budget. You can’t cut what you don’t have.”

    Yes you can! You’ll see. And btw I thought you said the WH was in charge? Not really “NASA”? So according to this http://townhall.com/news/sci-tech/2010/04/13/obama_revives_capsule_from_canceled_moon_program Orion CRV is “de facto” in the budget, I mean was.

    And here is how the kill is going to happen:

    NASA: Mr. President I know you really liked to have Orion CRV but according to OMB we really can’t afford it, can I kill it now?
    WH: Sure can.

  • MrEarl

    CS:
    Every once in a while I have delusions of grandeur. ;-)

    I don’t see where the problem is telling the Chief Technologist that his program is cut. Bolden was told he has no control over the direction or budget of the agency he heads.
    As for Orion, I know what was said but I haven’t seen any amended budget that has a line item for the CRV. (That’s almost begging MT to dig out some obscure document that only 3 other people on the planet knows exists.)

  • common sense

    @ Robert G. Oler wrote @ June 9th, 2010 at 3:18 pm

    Re:ISS
    I think you’re too harsh with ISS. The reason it went on and it i smy opinion was political. There was a sense that it’d be better to cooperate with former USSR rocket scientists than to compete with them working say in Iran for example. Did it fulfill this goal? I am sure it did in part. It also showed the world that the worst ennemies ever could now work together. Other nations joined as well. The reason (one of?) that ISS did not deliver was when for a long time it was supposed to host 3 crews instead of 6. Apparently the regular maintenance took up to 2 and 1/2 crew to do. So what now? Hopefully there is plenty to do in microgravity. But if nothing else, ISS demonstrated the ability to build in space, therefore saving the need for an HLV for deep space mission. ISS served multiple purposes and I don’t think that it was intended to show we could do without an HLV…

    Anyway, my take on ISS.

  • MrEarl

    What I’m MOST surprised at is the fact that earlier I outlined what some here would label a conspiracy theory about “How the Obama stole NASA” and what we’re debating is whether the Orion CRV can be counted as part of the 5% cut.
    I’m really disappointed.

  • common sense

    @ MrEarl wrote @ June 9th, 2010 at 3:37 pm

    “Every once in a while I have delusions of grandeur. ”

    Don’t we all? Especially when we post here…

    “I haven’t seen any amended budget that has a line item for the CRV. ”

    I don’t think it matters at this point. I think you can only assume essentially one of two things:
    1) Flex-Path is in and therefore all that is Constellation in one form or another is a goner or
    2) POR is back and all that NASA has been trying to do for the past year is gone. If so I am sure Charles Bolde is gone with most current leadership, the others will be reinstated. Is that a likely scenario to you?

    Where does Orion-CRV fit in either 1 or 2 above? I am not saying “any” CRV, I am saying Orion CRV…

  • common sense

    @ MrEarl wrote @ June 9th, 2010 at 3:42 pm

    Come on! “How the Obama stole NASA” Why “stole”? He does not need to, he owns NASA!

  • MrEarl

    Unfortunately it seems that you are right about 1 or 2. I don’t see either as viable choices. 1 has BEO fade away into the distant future and 2 becomes the monster that are NASA with nothing to show for it until the distant future. I think Boeing was on to something with a paper on how the shuttle components can be adapted into a family of human rated LV’s.

  • DCSCA

    @RobertGOler-Uh, what you ‘said’ was, ” almost none of that is correct” and was refuted and sourced w/wiki regarding the following: “The U.S. has walked away from billion dollar esoteric scientific investments before due to costs- the supercollider in Texas comes to mind. Congress had to decide between that or the ISS if memory serves, and they chose the space station and killed the collider, no doubt to the angst of many researchers and engineers. A supercollider was eventually built though- years later in Europe…..”

    As to, “I dont know anything about high energy physics, [yet your penned OP-EDS on the project] but the SCSC should have gone under for the same reason the station came within 1 vote of going under (and should have).” – this positon follows these:

    “Constellation is a fitting end for 50 years of more or less mindless government spending on human spaceflight it is going out with a whimper…not a roar.” – RobertGOler @ June 8th, 2010 at 11:59 pm

    “I am quite pro human spaceflight.”- RoberGOler @ June 9th, 2010 at 1:28 pm

    We may agree on the ISS in current configuration; this writer believes it belongs anchored firmly to floor of the Ocean of Storms – not sailing in circles 300 miles up and two generations of aerospace engineers have been lost to it. Your position on big government techno-science projects is quite understandable as the US gov’t debt is projected to hit $20 trillion in 5 years, per NBC News this afternoon. Too bad so much of that debt has been wasted on war.

  • Coastal Ron

    Re: Orion Lifeboat

    If I wanted to be a SpaceX conspiracy theorist, I could say that the Orion lifeboat was a stalking horse that the WH & Bolden knew they could kill when the budget talks came up.

    As their backup, they would instead give SpaceX a contract for a Dragon lifeboat, which Elon testified during the Augustine Commission could be ready in 1.5 years. See the SpaceX website media section for the slides. The Dragon could be made crew-return ready with:

    – Upgraded Environmental Control to sustain crew for return trip duration
    – Crew accommodations (seats etc.) instead of cargo racks
    – Vehicle overrides and monitoring for the crew, as mandated by Human Rating Requirements (Dragon cargo vehicle is capable of fully autonomous return to Earth)
    – Docking/berthing adapter capable of rapid departure

    Far less than Orion $4.5B, don’t you think?

    Still that pesky 5% budget reduction issue exists, but since NASA is so small, maybe the Orion lifeboat cancellation will sneak by. More ingredients for the sausage…

  • DCSCA

    @MrEarl, June 9th, 2010 at 2:48 pm

    Yep. Doesn’t take much to start dismembering the civilian space agency. NACA was started in 1915 and dissolved in 1958… the relevant assets and people sorted out and rolled into a new agency- NASA. A stroke of a few pens and NASA can/will be dissolved as well with similar intent- only the assets and relevant personnel can be rolled into other existing agencies or parellel efforts in the military.

  • MrEarl

    No…. We own NASA, and SSA and the DoD and FBI, etc. Presidents and senators and congressmen ACT like they own these things but they are only elected stewards. That’s MY naivete showing.

    Earlier when I was ranting on the Prez stacking the Augustine committee against the POR, I expected some rebuttal to that.

  • common sense

    @ Coastal Ron wrote @ June 9th, 2010 at 3:55 pm

    “If I wanted to be a SpaceX conspiracy theorist, I could say that the Orion lifeboat was a stalking horse that the WH & Bolden knew they could kill when the budget talks came up.”

    It’s not conspiracy. It’s good planning.

  • common sense

    @ MrEarl wrote @ June 9th, 2010 at 4:02 pm

    “That’s MY naivete showing.”

    I understand I am guilty of that too quite more often than I should but experience is kinda making me less naive.

    “Earlier when I was ranting on the Prez stacking the Augustine committee against the POR, I expected some rebuttal to that.”

    Everyone knew that POR was on a death roll, suffice to look at the finance. The question was hot to kill it in a meaningful way? Hence Augustine. But Augustine was not destructive only, it provided a redirection to more realistic goals: Flex-Path.

  • Coastal Ron

    Re: Usefulness of ISS

    I don’t keep track of the science output of the ISS, so I don’t know what the ROI is from that standpoint.

    The value I see in the ISS is from the technology we created to build it, and the techniques we’re learning to build, modify and fix it. The challenge will be in leveraging those assets and knowledge into something we do in the future, and that’s where I see us going with “Lego” and “Flexible Path” type hardware and systems.

    In my simple version of the future, the ISS would be a construction shack for building our future spacecraft and space stations, as well as the laboratory for testing out prototype equipment for exploration and exploitation.

    The urine recycling equipment has certainly shown us that we need real-life testing of seeming simple life support systems before they are ready to be relied upon, and the ISS is a good platform to do that at.

  • common sense

    @ DCSCA wrote @ June 9th, 2010 at 3:53 pm

    “Too bad so much of that debt has been wasted on war.”

    Here we do agree.

  • Robert G. Oler

    DCSCA wrote @ June 9th, 2010 at 3:53 pm

    the op eds were on the politics of the issue, which is the purpose of this board.

    Unfortunatly so little is accomplished in the “real world” (ie the one that produces products) by all these “flagship” science efforts that the essence of them is essentially politics. I can tell you in specific terms what the wind tunnels at Tallahoma or Langley and why they are worthwhile, why the nuke people in ABQ are worth having (and I am not a nuclear physicist) the politics of those are simple. Take away the glow people at ABQ and we dont have a credible nuclear deterrent.

    Stop human spaceflight? Wow we dont have “the elite astronaut corps” (to quote the Houston Chronicle).

    when runout cost for projects (say Cassini) are “trivial” then the solid accomplishments dont have to be that much…we are a big country and do great things. When it is a 6 or 8 billion dollar effort to keep the HSF machine going then there darn sure needs to be something that one gets to point to and say “there is value”.

    The SCSC didnt pass that test.

    The “moon” is floundering because it excites a lot of people who are “romantics” about space and those who get their paycheck from it…but move into the real world. not so much

    As one lady at a breakfast club I spoke at told me “why are the NASA people so special, my company made a profit last year”

    Robert G. Oler

  • Robert G. Oler

    MrEarl wrote @ June 9th, 2010 at 4:02 pm

    Earlier when I was ranting on the Prez stacking the Augustine committee against the POR, I expected some rebuttal to that….

    not from me, that is how you kill federal programs that are floundering. You have a committee that kills the terminal. Think of it as a “death panel”

    Robert G. Oler

  • common sense

    @MrEarl wrote @ June 9th, 2010 at 3:53 pm

    “I think Boeing was on to something with a paper on how the shuttle components can be adapted into a family of human rated LV’s.”

    No unfortunatley it is not a good idea. Shuttle is the reason why Constellation is so expensive and unaffordable. Anything Shuttle-Derived is DOA. Anytime you will keep the Shuttle industrial complex alive is when you have a design that does not close. If nothing else, on cost and that is bad, very bad, very very bad bad.

  • Major Tom

    “Earlier when I was ranting on the Prez stacking the Augustine committee against the POR, I expected some rebuttal to that.”

    Well, it’s pretty ignorant to claim that former astronauts do not support human space flight. Or that heads of companies founded to enable public space flight don’t support human space flight. Or that aerospace engineering professors that have spent the bulk of their careers optimizing design techniques and architectures for human space flight do not support human space exploration. Or that the heads of non-profit organizations that carry out human exploration of the oceans do not support human exploration of space.

    FWIW…

  • MrEarl

    CS:
    I keep hearing that shuttle derived means expensive. I’m always told that it’s the army of workers that make it expensive.
    The army of workers is for the care and feeding of the orbiters. Each one has it’s own processing facility and hundreds of workers to look after it. Each one has it’s own launch team!
    SD using the ET, RS-68s and the solids don’t need that huge standing army. Only needs one launch team, takes advantage of existing facilities.
    Aries was NOT Shuttle derived no matter what sunshine Griffin was trying to blow up our a**, It was a new vehicle.

    Robert:
    So I’m not paranoid……… how disappointing.

  • MrEarl

    MT;
    I knew you wouldn’t let me down!
    You should read that paragraph again because that is not what I said.

  • common sense

    @ MrEarl wrote @ June 9th, 2010 at 4:31 pm

    ” keep hearing that shuttle derived means expensive. I’m always told that it’s the army of workers that make it expensive.”

    Dig up and you’ll find the reference by John Shannon himself about the cost without flying at around $200M/month. What can it be if not the workforce?

    “SD using the ET, RS-68s and the solids don’t need that huge standing army. Only needs one launch team, takes advantage of existing facilities.”

    Regardless of the actual component. I say this (absolute speculation yes) that if you use anything Shuttle anyone working on Shuttle will want a piece of it and will show how they have to be part of it. Maybe you can reduce the workforce (and btw that was one of the primary intent of Constellation after Shuttle terminatiion that a lot of people conveniently forgot) but not enough. The solids btw you really really don’t want in any crewed vehicle. It’s a bad idea. Dangerous stuff.

    Ares, not Aries, was the result of ESAS. It became a brand new vehicle when the requirements went crazy for Orion. Too bad. Poor planning. Too ambitious. Had they designed a 3 crew capsule… Had they stuck with EELVs… But how do you get a mega job in Alabama? You tell me.

  • Robert G. Oler

    common sense wrote @ June 9th, 2010 at 4:38 pm

    it is worse then that.

    Over on NASAspaceflight.com they have (I can find the link if you need it, excerpts of a memo (which I Have complete) from Hanley as this thing started as he was scurrying around trying to figure out a way to cut cost.

    At somepoint in the memo he asked (a paraphrase but context intact and pretty close to a quote) “lets see if expending the first stage (On Ares) is a cost saving measure…maybe we could recover a few for test, but see if expending saves money”

    the only way to take that is 1) they never looked to see if expending the first stage is cheaper (it is) and or 2) never considered doing it even though it was.

    there is nothing in Ares that has cost as a factor.

    Robert G. Oler

  • common sense

    @ Robert G. Oler wrote @ June 9th, 2010 at 5:16 pm

    I was only trying to address the Shuttle-derived “factor” not the management of Constellation which is what it is, unfortunately.

    Hypothesis though: They never looked at expending the 1st stage because they thought it can be recovered for Shuttle then why not for Ares? Simple answer: Ares is not an SRB. But what the heck about rigorous design?…

  • Coastal Ron

    Re: SDHLV

    The picture for how many $/lb for Shuttle, Ares I, Delta/Atlas and Falcon 9 cost to LEO is getting pretty clear. There is a lot of public information and testimony that can be used to estimate how much a given solution would cost.

    For SDHLV, I for one have not seen enough hard data to make an informed choice, and this is part of the reason I don’t get enthusiastic about it (that and whether there is a true need for an HLV).

    Ignoring the black hole of NASA accounting for facilities and overhead, does anyone have any hard data for how much a given piece of HLV hardware would cost? ET’s, SRB’s, RS-68’s, etc., anything that would help us get an apples-to-apples comparison going?

  • Major Tom

    “I knew you wouldn’t let me down!”

    Doing my part.

    “You should read that paragraph again because that is not what I said.”

    Yes, it is. You wrote:

    “Once in office, he convenes a committee to give him cover to kill the Constellation program. He fills it with earth science advocates like Sally Ride and Charles Kennel, and private space and robotic exploration advocates and like Chris Chyda, Jeff Greason and Edward Crawley.”

    You’re accusing the President of stacking the Augustine Committee with people who are not advocates for human space flight so he could terminate Constellation. And that’s a gross mischaracterization of these individuals. In the case of two, it’s just a plain stupid characterization — Sally Ride is a former astronaut (of course she supports human space flight, duh…) and Jeff Greason founded a company that’s building human space flight vehicles (of course he supports human space flight, too, double duh…). In the case of two others, they’ve run human exploration organizations (Charlie Kennel and Scripps) and oodles of human space exploration design, tool, and optimization studies (Ed Crawley)

    It’s a goofy leap of logic to argue that just because someone has advocated for a field of science, in addition to being an astronaut, or because someone has also worked on robotic missions, in addition to running organizations and studies dedicated to human exploration, that someone would not be a proponent of well-conceived and well-run human space flight program. Just because Mike Tyson bit off someone’s ear doesn’t mean that he doesn’t like punching people, too.

    The problem is not that these people don’t care about NASA’s human space flight program. The problem is that they do care and they saw, like so many others did, that Constellation was sending the human space flight program over a cliff. If they were opponents of NASA’s human space flight program, the best way to ensure an enormous space flight gap, put off exploration for decades, and otherwise cripple it would be to continue Constellation. Don’t blame the messenger.

    And, BTW, it’s “Chris Chyba”, not “Chyda”.

    FWIW…

  • Rhyolite

    A capable administer should be able to find 5% to cut with out affecting any core activities and high profile projects.

    The FY11 contains $3.5 Billion for “Center Management and Operations”, “Agency Management and Operations” and “Construction and Environmental Compliance and Restoration”. Overhead, in other words. Cut here first.

    Zombie Orion will, of course, go from being recently un-dead to re-dead. That may not help in budgetary terms but it will be a symbolic sacrifice.

  • Robert G. Oler

    http://blogs.orlandosentinel.com/news_space_thewritestuff/2010/06/nasa-order-may-force-shutdown-of-constellation-moon-rocket-program.html

    this is a hoot…I was reading this and hearing “This is the End” from the Doors…

    Robert G. Oler

  • red

    “Once in office, he convenes a committee to give him cover to kill the Constellation program.”

    Did he also use the CBO and GAO during Bush’s Administration for the same purpose?

    I don’t recall any complaints about the composition of the Augustine Committee until after they finished their work.

  • red

    Major Tom: “Without these kinds of capabilities, infeasibly large masses, on the order of ten ISS-equivalents, will be required just to mount one deep space mission. Such a huge mass for a single mission probably can’t be pulled off even once, and even then, a second, third, etc. mission won’t be technically or financially sustainable. You just can’t get there from here with just an HLV, even an impossibly big one.”

    I’d also add that the flagship technology demonstration missions enable a lot of other useful space activity in addition to astronaut exploration. For example, they have uses in military space, commercial space, space science, and ISS work.

  • DCSCA

    “As one lady at a breakfast club I spoke at told me “why are the NASA people so special, my company made a profit last year.”

    Hmmm. Perhaps she should have reflected on the qualitative elements of her life that morning which may very well have traced their existence in her day to ‘those special people.” But then her line of thinking falls in line with other profiteers who voiced a similiar outlook in years past: ‘What good is the moon if you can’t buy or sell it?” – Ivan Boesky, ex-Wall Street financier imprisoned for securities fraud.

  • […] NASA and other US agencies prepare to examine what programs they may have to cut in future budgets, the European Space Agency is facing a budget squeeze as well, Spaceflight Now […]

  • common sense

    @ MrEarl wrote @ June 9th, 2010 at 3:14 pm

    “Orion is not a part of the FY2011budget. You can’t cut what you don’t have.”

    Just in case you missed this… http://nasawatch.com/archives/2010/06/nasa-invokes-an.html

  • vulture4

    >>The problem is that they do care and they saw, like so many others did, that Constellation was sending the human space flight program over a cliff.

    Couldn’t have said it better myself.

    The only reason we don’t have money to keep Shuttle flying is because we have to spend billions “closing out” Constellation. That’s absurd. We have a flying, fully operational system for human spaceflight. Shuttle has capabilities beyond anything on the drawing board. We cannot operate both Shuttle and Constellation. But Shuttle and SpaceX can easily operate in parallel, with SpaceX serving as backup and supplement to Shuttle, until a new fully reusable vehicle is available to replace Shuttle.

  • Paul D.

    > The only reason we don’t have money to keep Shuttle flying is because we have to spend billions “closing out” Constellation

    I thought it was going to cost about $1 billion to close out Cx.

    This would keep shuttle flying for about 5 months.

  • […] a joint memo by then-OMB director Peter Orszag and then-White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel asked federal agencies to volunteer “lowest impact” programs to be cut to obtain a five-… in the FY2012 budget submissions. The outcome of the election makes it only more likely that there […]

  • […] then-OMB director Peter Orszag and then-White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, in a joint memo, asked agencies to propose targeted cuts in agency’s 2012 budget submissions amounting to at least five percent of its budget. As it turns out, the 2012 budget proposal for […]

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