Congress, NASA, White House

NASA authorization bill (not) to be signed today

[Update: apparently the president won’t be signing the bill today; it’s not listed on his schedule for the day (although other bill signings are) and the bill is still listed under pending legislation on the White House web site.]

According to a media advisory released late yesterday by Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, President Obama is expected to sign S.3729, the NASA authorization bill, into law today. (Hutchison is planning a press conference Thursday afternoon at Space Center Houston with Reps. Pete Olson and Gene Green to discuss the bill.) The signing, of course, is expected, but it does start the clock on a number of reports and studies called for in the bill, such as one in section 403 that requires NASA to “develop and make available to the public detailed human rating processes and requirements” for commercial crew systems in 60 days, and reports due in 120 days on NASA launch support and infrastructure modernization as well as assessment of the shuttle’s retirement and planned HLV system on the nation’s solid rocket motor and liquid propulsion industrial base.

35 comments to NASA authorization bill (not) to be signed today

  • MoonDog

    Taken directly from S3729

    Were RIFs last week and earlier this week rushed in order to circumvent the intention of this section?

    SEC. 1105. WORKFORCE STABILIZATION AND CRITICAL
    SKILLS PRESERVATION.
    Prior to receipt by the Congress of the study, recommendations, and implementation strategy developed pursuant to section 1103, none of the funds authorized for use under this Act may be used to transfer the functions, missions, or activities, and associated civil service and contractor positions, from any NASA facility without authorization by the Congress to implement the proposed strategy. The Administrator shall preserve the critical skills and competencies in place at NASA centers prior to enactment of this Act in order to facilitate timely implementation of the requirements of this Act and to minimize disruption to the workforce. The Administrator may not implement any reduction-in-force or other involuntary separations of permanent, non-Senior-Executive-Service, civil servant employees before September 30, 2013, except for
    cause on charges of misconduct, delinquency, or inefficiency.

  • amightywind

    The Administrator may not implement any reduction-in-force or other involuntary separations of permanent, non-Senior-Executive-Service, civil servant employees before September 30, 2013, except for cause on charges of misconduct, delinquency, or inefficiency.

    I would argue that NASA and all federal agencies need a good old fashioned, corporate style 10% RIF. Nothing like a game of Russian Roulette to keep employees on their toes!

  • mike i

    they were in response to the levels of funds the Continuing Resolution provided. Some were planned as part of shuttle retirement (KSC Ground Ops, JSC Mission Ops) others from Constellation were because we got about half the money we were expecting so either everyone sits around with nothing to do or you layoff contractors so you can buy hardware to build a vehicle. Tough spot to be in and I feel bad for the contractors let go, but Orion is trying to get this test flight in 2013 so you had to scale back vehicle capabilities, and personnel to make that happen.

  • CharlesTheSpaceGuy

    Correct me if I am wrong but there were no RIFs (losses of government workers) anywhere. The only people laid off were contractors. In many cases, civil servants are now learning the jobs that the contractors were doing.

  • byeman

    “Were RIFs last week and earlier this week rushed in order to circumvent the intention of this section?”

    No, because the RIF’s were contractors and not civil servants which is what is in the bill

  • Robert G. Oler

    amightywind wrote @ October 7th, 2010 at 9:34 am

    I would argue ..

    much as you argued that the FaLCON9 SECOND stage did not make it into orbit. more bomb throwing from you

    Robert G. Oler

  • MoonDog

    The compromise “protections” specifically included contractors from any NASA facility in S3729 S1105, which you’ll notice if you read carefully (please read below). Perhaps the contractors were rushed out, especially at “red centers” like JSC, in order to make the monies available to re-program to swing states, and in time not to be held to this compromise legislation which is only being signed by the President today according to the lead-off article. Again, the administratorcir effectively cumventing the intent of the legislative comprimise .

    An important question is whether the legislation will be in affect for all of FY 11, and if so, are any lay-offs which happened to contractors at NASA facilities after Sept 30th act counter to this specific wording? And would those contractors retroactively be “protected” from RIF unless if it was for cause, but not for budget, etc. which appears to be the rationale in many cases.

    ” none of the funds authorized for use under this Act may be used to transfer the functions, missions, or activities, and associated civil service and contractor positions, from any NASA facility without authorization by the Congress to implement the proposed strategy.”

  • Though there was and is a tremendous amount of uncertainty involved in this debate, the one clear thing was that the FY2011 NASA appropriations will be a big change from the FY2010 levels. Putting an authorization on record that at least frames out what the appropriations will look like allows NASA to change gears to the new plan, even if they aren’t able to fully engage.

    This is an excellent post. These studies will go a long way to defining central pieces of any new direction for NASA. In the case of the NASA infrastructure, HLV, etc, we’ve been waiting 8 months to get some real solid clarity on it. In the case of manned spaceflight requirements, commercial has been waiting half a decade for it.

    I’m sure Sierra Nevada, SpaceX, Boeing, etc. are operating on pretty solid educated guesses, but I’m sure there will be a piece or two in any final requirements that hasn’t been accounted for.

  • mr. mark

    Sierra Nevada should get not a dime. Their Dreamchaser design is just that chasing a dream. The actual build out cannot be accomplished until after 2020 and NASA needs private vehicles several years before that. Give seed money to companies that have shown a history or at least some actual hardware. Spacex has and is in the process demonstrationing Falcon 9 and cargo Dragon which are actual physical vehicles. You can see them on video or on their website at spacex.com. They are not powerpoints. ULA has a long history of launch vehicles as well as Boeing. If you are going to give money, give it to ones that can deliver. Of course everyone will have an opinion on that. :p

  • Mike Snyder

    MoonDog,

    You are reading too much into the layoffs. Those were planned several months ago and the Authorization Bill was going to have zero impact on them. There will still be more regardless.

    The intent of the Bill is not to say the absolutely no one can be laid off. The intent of the Bill is to protect from a mass culling where NASA is in worse shape with whatever plan ultimately emerges from a personnel standpoint. Civil Servents are more or less protected, and always have been. It is the contractor workforce, which in reality is the majority of the “NASA workforce” that is under the largest threat

  • “Sierra Nevada should get not a dime. Their Dreamchaser design is just that chasing a dream. The actual build out cannot be accomplished until after 2020″

    I’ve only seen this claim once before, and it may have been by you. I’m curious what your source is.

    As to Sierra Nevada’s hardware, it’s based off of a NASA design. And from my recollection they had some models a few years back. But like Blue Origin, they keep it close to the vest, so really, it’s pretty hard to say. I would actually love to see some sourced references discussing what, if any, progress they’ve actually made, as opposed to conjecture.

    And again, given Blue Origen’s mystery orbital craft that took even the commercial proponents by surprise, I’m not counting anyone out based on lack of evidence. When the first round commercial money was dished out back in spring, it was the result of site visits by NASA. While I won’t say NASA is infallable in its judgement (far from it), I lend more credibility to engineers and program directors that have actually visited and evaluated the companies than to folks like myself who are on the outside waiting for scraps of data from the table.

  • Bennett

    aremisasling wrote @ October 7th, 2010 at 2:22 pm

    I second that request to mr. mark. Do you have any information that substantiates your claim?

    Thanks.

  • Coastal Ron

    aremisasling wrote @ October 7th, 2010 at 2:22 pm

    As to Sierra Nevada’s hardware, it’s based off of a NASA design.

    I may want to put Dream Chaser in the “high-risk” channel of investment, but I think it’s definitely worth pursuing. In fact, if it had enough funding I think it could be in test in just a few years.

    While I also think that SpaceX and Boeing are the two leaders for commercial crew, I would want any leftover funds to go towards getting us back to civilized landings (i.e. wheels on a runway). The problem with the Shuttle was that it combined crew + cargo + living quarters, whereas a pure crew vehicle like Dream Chaser could be the right combination of features to be viable. It’s worth pursuing…

  • Major Tom

    “As to Sierra Nevada’s hardware, it’s based off of a NASA design.”

    It’s based on the HL-20 Personnel Launch System developed by NASA’s Langley Research Center, Rockwell, Lockheed, and a couple universities in the late 80s/early 90s. You can look it up on wikipedia. Full-scale engineering models were built.

    The HL-20 design, in turn, is based on several earlier U.S. and Soviet spaceplanes, including the X-23, the MiG-105, and the BOR 1-6. The X-23 and most of the BOR spaceplanes had successful suborbital, orbital, ad reentry test flights.

    FWIW…

  • mr. mark

    I do have information but this is based on information I obtained at another website from a source so please, do not think i’m an insider at Sierra Nevada. With their permission of course, I’ll contact them and post it. As for hardware issues, It is now getting to the make or break point. NASA wants real vehicles around 2015-2016. That means developing real hardware very soon or now. So far Spacex’s Falcon 9 launcher and cargo Dragon are real vehicles and cargo Dragon forms the basis for a HRV and we’ve seen mockups for Lockheed’s Orion and I have heard that Boeing’s is undergoing some form of testing but, i can’t confirm that. At least these are in the loop and have moved beyond just the planning stage. Eventually NASA will have to make some informed and tough choices. We are starting to see that process already.

  • Ferris Valyn

    Mr Mark – we’ve also seen mockups of the Dreamchaser

  • mr. mark

    True, but this link shows some of the nature of the project. They have hired college students to do a 15% minuture to perform glide tests. You can deduce how it’s going from the update page. I find it facinating that they are not doing this in house. It speaks volumes about their funding and abilities. http://aeroprojects.colorado.edu/09_10/dreamchaser/index.php?content=project

  • Vladislaw

    Dream Chaser will get some funding, how much is anyone’s guess but both NASA and the military want wheeled landings. Although NASA will fund a capsule in the short term, long term you can bet NASA astronauts who said they prefer leasing/owning over a taxi service want to control the “stick” and land themselves and not with a water landing in a capsule.

  • Lars

    AFAIK Sierra Nevada has not built a DreamChaser mock-up. They just took over the HL-20 mock-up NASA built, and slapped their own name on it. (correct me if I am wrong)

    While they certainly might have made progress, they have not shown any of it publicly. Whatever funding they have received seems to have gone towards power-points.

    There is zero evidence that they have any intention or capability of actually producing hardware.

  • Dennis Berube

    Gents, I have a feeling that those hot five seg. SRBs are going to be in use.

  • Martijn Meijering

    There is zero evidence that they have any intention or capability of actually producing hardware.

    See http://www.recovery.gov/Transparency/RecipientReportedData/Pages/RecipientProjectSummary508.aspx?AwardIDSUR=90258&AwardType=Grants for a short description of SNC’s CCDev milestones.

    SNC has four milestones that are tied to the CCDev funding: Milestone 1 – Program Implementation Plan Review. Milestone 2 – Manufacturing Readiness Review of Aeroshell Tooling. Milestone 3 – Space Vehicle Propulsion Module Test Firings. Milestone 4 – Dream Chaser Engineering Test Article Primary Structure Load Proof Testing. In addition to these four milestones, SNC will be supporting these additional activities on this award: a.) Requirements definition for Dream Chaser systems design & major subsystems. b.) Build & Test Spacecraft Primary Structure. c.) Integrated Loads Definition & CFD. d.) Main Propulsion Motor Build & Test. e.) RCS Thruster Prototype Build & Test. f.) Develop Atmospheric and Orbital GN&C architecture. g.) Flight Algorithms & Software Assurance Plan. h.) TPS Trades. i.) Atlas V Integration analysis. j.) Wind Tunnel Model Build

  • Sec. 1105 states:

    The Administrator may not implement any reduction-in-force or other involuntary separations of permanent, non-Senior-Executive-Service, civil servant employees before September 30, 2013, except for cause on charges of misconduct, delinquency, or inefficiency.

    Is there any remaining doubt that the space committee members views NASA as a government jobs pork program for their districts?

    And a lot of those committee members are Republicans who scream “SOCIALISM!!” when the Obama administration tries to create or save jobs in the private sector.

  • Moondog raises a good point in the first comment. On one hand they say preserve the workforce and the administrator will not implement RIFs, but what happened in the case of people working CxP is that tasks were eliminated or reduced. The contractors had less money, and had to do the layoffs. NASA doesn’t lay contractors off.

    The Upper Stage work just stopped, even under the CR.

    If Congress really wanted to preserve the workforce, they should have finished the NASA Bill earlier and finished the appropriation, so things could transition smoothly.

  • sc220

    Amightywind: I would argue that NASA and all federal agencies need a good old fashioned, corporate style 10% RIF. Nothing like a game of Russian Roulette to keep employees on their toes!

    Amighty…I have to say that I agree with you on this one. It’s unfortunate that people don’t realize that reduced spending means less employment. But that’s the hard reality of life. NASA needs to downsize, along with the rest of the federal government. I’ll listen to people talk about reducing taxes only if they also address how they’ll cut spending!

  • Beancounter from Downunder

    Dennis Berube wrote @ October 7th, 2010 at 7:03 pm
    ‘Gents, I have a feeling that those hot five seg. SRBs are going to be in use.’

    Dream on Dennis. They’re too expensive, haven’t flown anyway, and it’s the contractors that are being hit with the lay-offs. No matter what Congress mandates, at the end of the day, it’s dollars that now count.

  • Major Tom

    “AFAIK Sierra Nevada has not built a DreamChaser mock-up. They just took over the HL-20 mock-up NASA built, and slapped their own name on it. (correct me if I am wrong)”

    I doubt that’s true because the NASA mockup is a couple decades old and housed ten crew while the SNC version is downscaled to six crew.

    And it misses the point, anyway. SNC is building on a design and outer mold line with tons of design and testing heritage courtesy of prior government investment. If it’s applicable and useful, SNC should leverage NASA’s mockup and any other models, data, etc. that NASA generated for the HL-20. Recreating engineering tools that already exist is a stupid waste of money.

    “While they certainly might have made progress, they have not shown any of it publicly. Whatever funding they have received seems to have gone towards power-points.”

    Per Mr. Meijering’s post, the CCDev milestones that Sierra Nevada must meet to get paid by NASA are publicly available.

    “There is zero evidence that they have any intention or capability of actually producing hardware.”

    SNC has 2,000 employees and over 40 years of fairly complex systems integration experience:

    sncorp.com/

    SNC’s Dreamchaser team includes Boeing Phantom Works, Draper Labs, Aerojet, MDA, and others.

    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceDev_Dream_Chaser

    As of February, the company has put in $10 million of its own funding:

    aviationweek.com/aw/generic/story_generic.jsp?channel=awst&id=news/awst/2010/02/22/AW_02_22_2010_p53-204735.xml&headline=Sierra%20Nevada%20Building%20On%20NASA%20Design

    SNC arguably has both the capbility and intent.

    FWIW…

  • Lars

    Major Tom, I hope you are right re: DreamChaser.

    Sierra Nevada may be an established company – I just question how much effort they are expending on DreamChaser. It is not their primary focus for sure.

    If they are eager to push for Commercial Crew, they should be more open about their progress, rather than treat it as a black project. (if that is indeed what is going on)

  • Coastal Ron

    Lars wrote @ October 8th, 2010 at 12:25 am

    If they are eager to push for Commercial Crew, they should be more open about their progress, rather than treat it as a black project.

    I’m always mystified by comments like this. Sierra Nevada’s customer is NASA for the Dream Chaser, and I’m sure they have each other on speed-dial and Facebook.

    Everyone else, including you and me, are just observers in a slow drama – very slow.

  • Beancounter from Downunder

    Yeh I think some of us have been spoiled by companies like SpaceX and Armadillo and don’t understand that it’s a privilege to have access to up to date info’ which other companies would consider private and confidential.

  • Ben Russell-Gough

    @ Beancounter

    Oh, I think we’re getting the message. SpaceX has recently decided that discretion is a virtue and has massively reduced its mass-media presence. The ludicrous lengths they went to to stop unauthorised images of the Falcon 9 prototype flight’s wet dress rehearsal is proof of that.

    Of course, I don’t blame them. Uncontrolled information release can cause private companies problems with investors. Worse, we Internet-types are shameless speculators and have a nasty habit of couching our pet theories as if they were facts. That level of guesswork-conflated-to-fact isn’t something that a private company working on perfecting what is, for them, a new capability, wants to have regarding their products and quality control procedures.

    We’re just going to have to get used to knowing only what the guys at SpaceX, ULA, Sierra Nevada, OSC, et al want us (and, more importantly, their investors) to know. ;-)

  • Bennett

    The ludicrous lengths they went to to stop unauthorised images of the Falcon 9 prototype flight’s wet dress rehearsal is proof of that.

    Ben, what did they do? I didn’t see any of that, so I must not visit the same sites as you. I do recognize that they’ve slowed down the release of updates and new videos. SpaceX and Armadillo have been incredibly inspirational in the way they’ve let us watch the development, tests, and progress towards flight.

    I never though I’d see the day when a rocket company did that, and I still hope that it catches on for other companies. I watched the streaming of the Atlas V launch a week or so back, is this something ULA has been doing all along?

  • Ben Russell-Gough

    @ Bennett,

    Come on, Bennett, don’t tell me that you don’t remember them insisting that the guys at CCAFS turn off all the cameras around SLC-40 during the WDRs and test fire! I admit that we’ve probably been spoilt by the level of detail that they normally provide (especially compared to, say, ULA’s launches for NRO). However, since Falcon 1 flight 5, the lid has started slowly coming down.

  • Bennett

    Honestly Ben, I didn’t catch that. Must have been during one of the colds that my 4 year old brings home for me to suffer though, but this is the first I’ve heard of it.

    And yes, we have been spoiled by SpaceX, and I hope it continues.

  • mr. mark

    Ben -I don’t see that as well. Spacex has been totally tranparent when it comes to development. Just look at the integration photos for the new Falcon 9 COTS -1 vehicle. I wouldn’t call that hiding anything. When Spacex has successes nay sayers try to find anything to beat them up on. Personally I’m growing very tired of this. Wasn’t it amightywind who said that the second stage of the first Falcon 9 flight fell out of orbit? That was after multiple inependent trackng station VERFIED that it was in orbit. All I can say is wow???!!!!

  • Ben Russell-Gough

    Just to let everyone know that NASA have announced a teleconference today (10/11/10) regarding the signing of the authorisation bill. That suggests that it is going to happen today.

    Unless I’m very much mistaken, this is the very last possible day for it to be done and still be valid. I wonder if someone is trying to tell someone something. Either that or someone was hoping that something would come up before now.

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