Its stupid – but its what Obama ordered.

Oh joy.

>> Kelly Starks wrote @ July 15th, 2010 at 7:12 pm
>>“First – The same gov. incentives to bloat costs with the
>> NASA contracted launches like shuttle, will still be there
>> for Commercial crew or anything else NASA does.”

> Uh, no. The Shuttle is a government run transportation system,
> and uses contractors like USA to help run the government
> transportation system. If NASA launches a Shuttle, or doesn’t
> launch the Shuttle, USA gets paid for being there.

Uh, yeah – NASA’s Commercial Crew program staff will stay there in between flights and for several years before there are flights. They will load the costs with all the oversight costs, the KSC support costs, etc.

Little of the shuttle launch costs involved costs of launching the shuttles – they involved program overhead already starting under Obama’s proposal. They added on top of the COTS costs. This isn’t like NASA going to send folks to a Boeing launch center and by a ticket.

>> “Second – (and one of the reasons for the first point) assuming
>> it did lower NASA costs – NASA would just lose that money back
>> to the treasury, and the budget would be reduced proportionately.
>> NASA doesn’t get a bag of money. They get approval for programs.”

>== NASA’s budget total has stayed relatively flat over time, even
> with the coming and goings of major programs. Congress seems
> fine with this, so if NASA were to save money in one area (say
> transportation to LEO), then Congress would naturally redistribute
> the available funds to other NASA programs.

Never what they did before. When space station Freedom was canceled all the money went to other projects – frequently in the same districts (I remember Florida got money for a big parking structure in Miami). Actually I don’t think any agency gets to keep on their budget “savings”.
Worse, if the programs cost a lot less, there’s less political benifit to having them at all.

“First – The same gov. incentives to bloat costs with the NASA contracted launches like shuttle, will still be there for Commercial crew or anything else NASA does.”

Uh, no. The Shuttle is a government run transportation system, and uses contractors like USA to help run the government transportation system. If NASA launches a Shuttle, or doesn’t launch the Shuttle, USA gets paid for being there.

Commercial crew services would be contracted for a service. They get paid for delivering crew to their destination. If they don’t deliver, they don’t get paid. If they don’t have any customers, they don’t get paid. Do you see the difference here?

“Second – (and one of the reasons for the first point) assuming it did lower NASA costs – NASA would just lose that money back to the treasury, and the budget would be reduced proportionately. NASA doesn’t get a bag of money. They get approval for programs.”

Hmm, yes, I’m sure your way is better for the American Taxpayer – keep the costs artificially high, and don’t allow anyone to do something less expensively… NOT!

But wait, maybe there is a different possible outcome! NASA’s budget total has stayed relatively flat over time, even with the coming and goings of major programs. Congress seems fine with this, so if NASA were to save money in one area (say transportation to LEO), then Congress would naturally redistribute the available funds to other NASA programs.

If you watch the way that Congress does the NASA budget, you’ll see that they take a set amount of money today, and squish it around across the different programs, but stay within the overall budget outlines. Nothing stays the same from year to year, so if they could reduce their transportation costs to LEO by half, that money would not be deducted from their future budgets.

> While its a little early to remind some who frequently comment
> here that their zeal for OSpace was naive and simplistic, ==

Seemed more like wish fofilment. Assume for the first time Obama really is going to do what you want, not what he’s always wanted.

>== Even Obama to my surprise seems to be caving with alacrity to
> the bipartisan repudiation of Ospace coming out of the Senate.
> That’s politics though, when you can’t beat em, join em.

This is what really is confusing me. Up until now he’s railroaded though everything he’s wanted – regardless of it being political suicide for the Senate and congress — and congress rolled over. But for this one he just dropped it out, largely ignored, now its reversed by congress. Normally, this would not be surprising for a congress — but this congress..?.

> == Now when will Bolden resign? I think that is in the cards very soon.
> Obama has contradicted him this week on his silly statements about
> Islam. He couldn’t present a coherent defense of Ospace anytime he
> tried over the last 6 months. He was prone to gaffe’s before his Al-jazzera
> remarks. The man has to go. Lori Garver on deck?

You forget Bolden been a good solder and done and said whatever Obama wanted from the Al-Jereeza statement, to his supporting Obama’s destructive ideas.

Certainly few others would want the job, and Congress would not want Garver.

> The whole point of creating a commercial crew market is
> to save the government (i.e. us taxpayers) money. The commercial
> market can do the routine work for NASA at a much lower cost,
> and with this extra money, NASA can afford to do a lot more, a lot quicker.

This is of course a nonsensical statement.

First – The same gov. incentives to bloat costs with the NASA contracted launches like shuttle, will still be there for Commercial crew or anything else NASA does.

Second – (and one of the reasons for the first point) assuming it did lower NASA costs – NASA would just lose that money back to the treasury, and the budget would be reduced proportionately. NASA doesn’t get a bag of money. They get approval for programs. If the programs cost less, their budget is reduced – and the political interest in the program is reduced.

You are delusional.

Shuttle survives for another year or more. As I said it would a couple months ago.
Constellation is funded generously, true the names change but the program survives intact. As I said it would a couple months ago.

OSpace is not dead, but its on life support. So I’m wrong there.

Nobody paid any attention to your Instapundit petition either.

Constellation is officially dead. Commercial Space is funded and once the shuttle flies its final mission, NASA will turn to them for manned launches.

There will be some changes before this ends up on the President’s desk, but overall it’s better than what we had 2 years ago.