Congress, NASA

NASA FY12 budget hearing Monday

The Senate Appropriations Committee has moved up its once-delayed hearing on NASA’s FY12 budget proposal. The Commerce, Justice, and Science Subcommittee is scheduled to hold a hearing on the NASA budget proposal this Monday at 4 pm. The hearing had been originally scheduled for March 31, but was postponed. At the time of the postponement the hearing had been rescheduled for May 5, but has since been moved up to Monday afternoon. (May 5th would have been an interesting date for the hearing: it’s the 50th anniversary of Alan Shepard’s suborbital spaceflight.) NASA administrator Charles Bolden is the only announced witness.

49 comments to NASA FY12 budget hearing Monday

  • SpaceColonizer

    (previously posting as James T)

    NASA FY12 Budget Hearing Drinking Game:
    – Obama’s plan ignores/follows the bipartisan 2010 act, take a drink!
    – There is/isn’t enough money for SLS by 2016, take a drink!
    – We do/don’t need the SLS this decade, take a drink!
    – Commercial is/isn’t vital to our space program, take a drink!
    – Commercial is/isn’t going to be ready in time, take a drink!
    – Earth Science is/isn’t a good place to cut spending, take a drink!
    – NASA is/isn’t important to national security, take a drink!
    – China scary, China bad, take a drink!
    – Yuri Gagarin’s upcoming anniversary, take a drink!
    – Falcon Heavy is mentioned by name, take a drink!
    – “Decadal Survey,” take a drink!
    – Bolden says “I’m not a ____, I’m a ____”, take TWO drinks!!
    – Bolden says he’ll get something and have it submitted to the record, that’s THREE drinks!!!

    Feel free to suggest your own drinking rules. It’s already set up to be one hell of a Monday afternoon!

  • DCSCA

    More free drift.

  • Scia

    Replying to SpaceColonizer

    I got one more rule to add

    If nothing gets accomplished by the end of the hearing, and its all things that have been said before. Add up all of the drinks you have taken and drink that much at once.

  • SpaceColonizer

    @ scia

    LOL. That was kind of the point of most of the drinking rules I already came up with, that the same things that have been said before will be said again. But hey, I like you’re idea…. DOUBLE DOWN!!!

  • Justin Kugler

    Are you trying to send someone to the hospital, Scia? :)

  • Scia

    Replying to Justin Kugler

    I was hoping senator Shelby would be watching.

    Did you know that he is now trying to get commercial crew removed from the CR that funds the government for the next 6 month?

  • I would need a stiff drink just to watch this farce. Bolden should ask the Senators if they’ve completed the blueprints yet for the SLS, since they took it upon themselves to design it.

  • CharlesHouston

    In about a year we will be again panting after the new budget has just been agreed to :-(
    This next budget is shaping up to be a bigger fight than this last one.

  • SpaceColonizer

    Scia wrote @ April 10th, 2011 at 5:32 pm

    “Did you know that he is now trying to get commercial crew removed from the CR that funds the government for the next 6 month?”

    WHAT!? Where did you hear that? Link please if there is one!

    Talk about bitter politics. Newton’s third law: every action has an equal and opposite reaction. SpaceX announces a heavy lift rocket that could change the course of HSF, and Shelby seeks to cut the financial aid that’s going to make it happen sooner. He sees the writing on the wall and knows that the pork train is hitting the end of the line by the end of the decade. Even if the SLS gets finished, there won’t be any more shuttle derived crafts after that. He’s doing everything he can to make the “money pit” last as long as possible.

    As has been said by many people on both sides of the space aisle, space policy lacks true leadership right now. I hope as these budget talks go on that Obama stays on message: Win the Future, Invest in Innovation, Cut Costs. The members of his party have to play ball too. They need to stop chanting the “but we compromised so well last year” mantra. YOU SIGNED A BAD DEAL DEMOCRATS!!! You got lazy on the fight for your president’s agenda, and you tout it as an example of compromise? And then you didn’t even appropriate it when you had control of the government! And now, elements of your so called “compromise” bill are under attack. The good elements! The ones that will save money in the long run and create private sector jobs. The ones that should be easy to get conservative support for. But instead you choose to sit back and watch your taxpayers’ money get wasted on launch vehicle that you KNOW we can’t build on time or on budget, that you KNOW has NO missions. You don’t have to make it a high priority, but the conversation needs to start being more public. I still have faith enough in the American people that if they were all actually aware of the situation, they would be smart enough to realize what the only rational future for NASA is.

    That faith is slowly shrinking… we’ll see where it is in 2012.

  • SpaceColonizer, if watching in a group, whenever Bolden starts crying the last person to say “crybaby” has to run around the house with their pants on their head.

  • Jeff Foust

    To Scia and SpaceColonizer: Sen. Shelby was not mentioned by name in the Space Access ’11 session linked to above (which I attended). Instead, Jim Muncy said that a “particular senator who shall remain nameless might have a staffer” talking with the appropriations committee to try to cut commercial crew funding in the final FY11 budget, but could not confirm it. Muncy added that he thought it was likely that no specific amount for commercial crew would be included in the full-year CR, giving NASA the flexibility to allocate funding to it.

  • Scia

    @Jeff Foust

    Sorry then i misspoke.

    But I would guess Shelby would the most likely candidate for axing commercial crew.

    Also by any chance is the Falcon Heavy in this weeks Space Review?

  • Beancounter from Downunder

    ” SpaceColonizer wrote @ April 10th, 2011 at 6:50 pm
    Scia wrote @ April 10th, 2011 at 5:32 pm

    “Did you know that he is now trying to get commercial crew removed from the CR that funds the government for the next 6 month?”

    WHAT!? Where did you hear that? Link please if there is one!

    Talk about bitter politics. Newton’s third law: every action has an equal and opposite reaction. SpaceX announces a heavy lift rocket that could change the course of HSF, and Shelby seeks to cut the financial aid that’s going to make it happen sooner.”

    Just a point, but SpaceX, so far as I know, is not relying on any gov’t aid to develop and fly FH. They’re looking for a customer for the first flight however they said they’d do this on their own dime if necessary. They are in serious talks with customers for flights 2, 3, and 4 according to Elon’s press conference.
    So without any government aid (for the FH), a private company is going ahead with it’s 3rd booster vehicle since that company’s inception (less than 10 years old), together with continued development of the 1st private capsule to go to leo and return, and now the biggest booster since Saturn V. Ain’t that just something.

  • Gregg

    Stephen C. Smith wrote @ April 10th, 2011 at 5:41 pm
    I would need a stiff drink just to watch this farce. Bolden should ask the Senators if they’ve completed the blueprints yet for the SLS, since they took it upon themselves to design it.

    NASA already has plans for SLS. SLS was called NLS 10 years ago. The Block 0 (core stage only with two 4 Segment SRBs and three SSMEs) SLS is nothing more than a dusted off NLS. Congress is not always as stupid as most people think, as there are many Congressional Staffers who really know their stuff. The man who wrote the 2010 NASA Authorization Act is one of those staffers who knows his stuff.
    The big problem is within NASA, not Congress. If NASA would just do what they were directed to do by Congress, then Congress just might give NASA the money required to do it.
    Conress is in control here, not NASA, as Congress is the one with the check book.

  • SpaceColonizer

    @ Beancounter

    I was suggesting that the money might help things happen sooner. I personally have nothing but optimism that commercial space will succeeds with or without government investment, but the money helps grease the wheels. And not everyone has the momentum of SpaceX, some of the other guys could use some help so we can have a healthy competition.

    So I guess the CCDev2 announcement can’t be rescheduled until after the budget gets fleshed out. I saw on CNN that 300m might be cut from the the FF11 budget (it was on the screen in a list of cuts, but was not discussed at all). If that number holds true, there’s no way the SLS will get that heavily defunded. Some of the cuts might be from that account, since this first half year of development shouldn’t be too fund hungry anyways. But I’m starting to worry that the other money is coming from CCDev and Earth Sciences.

    Seems kinda pointless to have another FY12 budget meeting before the FY11 budget is approved. I suppose they all have a general idea where things will be after the “deal” on Friday, but still… they’ll be discussing a budget from which they don’t know the jumping point.

  • Major Tom

    “NASA already has plans for SLS. SLS was called NLS 10 years ago. The Block 0 (core stage only with two 4 Segment SRBs and three SSMEs) SLS is nothing more than a dusted off NLS. Congress is not always as stupid as most people think, as there are many Congressional Staffers who really know their stuff.”

    If the staffers “know their stuff” then they wouldn’t have “dusted off” a plan like NLS that never got off the drawing board because it proved to be unaffordable the first time around. NASA and USAF proposed NLS to replace the Titan IV, the most expensive launch vehicle of its time besides Shuttle. NLS couldn’t beat Titan IV and was too expensive for the NASA and USAF space budgets combined. NLS is a very poor justification for SLS.

    Titan IV was eventually replaced by the Delta IV Heavy, which has proven cheaper (although not a cheap as hoped). That should tell us something about the relative costs of the Shuttle versus EELV workforce and infrastructure.

    “The man who wrote the 2010 NASA Authorization Act is one of those staffers who knows his stuff.”

    No one staffer writes a large piece of legislation.

    “The big problem is within NASA, not Congress. If NASA would just do what they were directed to do by Congress, then Congress just might give NASA the money required to do it.”

    And what is it that Congress wants? A 70-100 ton payload capacity by 2016? Or a 130-ton payload capacity by TBD (Sen. Hatch)? Or Constellation/Ares V (Sen. Shelby)?

    “Conress is in control here, not NASA, as Congress is the one with the check book.”

    It’s a different part of Congress that writes the checks. The appropriators may or may not follow the authorizers. And they have to negotiate with the White House.

    Our system of government is not an oligarchy. It’s a representative democracy with power shared between three federal branches.

    FWIW…

  • BeancounterFromDownunder

    SpaceColonizer wrote @ April 11th, 2011 at 3:58 am
    @ Beancounter

    I was suggesting that the money might help things happen sooner. I personally have nothing but optimism that commercial space will succeeds with or without government investment, but the money helps grease the wheels. And not everyone has the momentum of SpaceX, some of the other guys could use some help so we can have a healthy competition.

    Yes apologies. I agree. One of NASA’s roles is to promote and help develop commercial capabilities. One most polies seem to have conveniently forgotten.

  • John Malkin

    My guess is that Commercial Crew won’t be killed because the Congressional members that want MPCV and SLS know it’s a good idea to have “backup”. It will be easier to kill SLS if we have a commercial alternative ready or close to ready. You don’t see them going after COTS Cargo only CCDev because ATK and Lockheed have nothing to launch next year to compete with COTS Cargo and contracts for services have already been awarded. So Commercial Crew will survive at least as a backup but I’m hoping it will be close to fully funded.

  • common sense

    @ Gregg wrote @ April 10th, 2011 at 10:00 pm

    Catching up with the trend here: What a load of bravo sierra!

    “Congress is not always as stupid as most people think, as there are many Congressional Staffers who really know their stuff. The man who wrote the 2010 NASA Authorization Act is one of those staffers who knows his stuff.”

    When some one starts a sentence like “Congress is not always as stupid as most people think”, to me, it says it all. Yes Congress is darn effing stupid. But for the sake of argument, tell us who did write the Act: Name, experience and background in space LVs and RVs. Please. I’ll make sure to apologize if needed.

    “The big problem is within NASA, not Congress. If NASA would just do what they were directed to do by Congress, then Congress just might give NASA the money required to do it.”

    Do you really believe what you write? When is is that you tell people to do and not give them a budget. NASA is not a “paid for service” agency now is it? They don’t have fixed price budget do they? If Congress really wants NASA to do something any thing they would give NASA a budget to do it. Then again Congress does not tell NASA what to do. You know NASA works for the WH not for Congress.

    “Conress is in control here, not NASA, as Congress is the one with the check book.”

    Yeah we just saw how much control. A group of morons who have a historical what, how much was it? $38B WoW!!! What a bunch of losers and they wanted to shut down the government over that! What kind of control is that? I am longing for the next elections so that most of those clowns be bailed out.

  • Bennett

    Will there be video access to the hearing? Does anyone have a link to whoever may be streaming it?

    Thanks!

  • anonymous

    The SAC-CJS hearing webcast is available at the committee website. Tune it at 4pm EDT.

    http://appropriations.senate.gov/

  • SpaceColonizer

    @Bennett

    It will be airing on C-SPAN 1. If you don’t have TV, here’s is the link to the webcast of C-SPAN 1 (all 3 C-SPANs plus their radio station are free online).

    Meeting starts at 4pm EST, 1pm for the other pacific coasters like myself.

    Follow me on twitter (@SpaceColonizer) if you’re playing the drinking game, I’ll be calling out the drinking points.

  • sb023

    How about NASA TV? Anyone know…

  • Bennett

    @SpaceColonizer

    Thanks! By the way, I loved your game rules. I was sorry to see that Trent had beat me to the punch about the tears bit, but his rule was much better than what I envisioned.

    I have a school board meeting at 6:00 so I’d better not play along this time…

    Thanks also to anon for the link.

    Cheers!

  • SpaceColonizer

    Sadly I just found out that I’ll have to be driving and listening to the hearing at the same time… so I can’t drink to my own game (and won’t be tweeting the drink by drink either).

  • amightywind

    Thanks for the link Dan Woodward.

    “We cannot continue to coddle the dreams of rocket hobbyists and so-called ‘commercial’ providers who claim the future of U.S. human space flight can be achieved faster and cheaper than Constellation

    Even I couldn’t have said this more eloquently. Obama is now reeling over his own feckless budget. He will have to stake out a position of cuts or else be overwhelmed by the Ryan budget. Now is the time to kill hobbyspace.

  • Scia

    Bolden is crying again

  • Bennett

    Dang, Gen. Bolden made it almost all of the way through….

    Ahhhh…. nice recovery! I thought the tears were gonna flow.

    Was there any real news in today’s hearing?

  • common sense

    So what a great use of taxpayers money. I mean this hearing. I know I am a little slow but what was the point? Anyone care to share?

    The one thing I got though was that NASA was absolutely not wasting taxpayers money, nope, not a penny. Now y’all know why, right? Because if NASA were to admit wasting any penny, well, said penny would immediately be transferred to some other budget. Other budget that may address things possibly not as important as Orion or SLS but nonetheless important to our economy and well being.

    Thanks Congress for wisely using our time and money. It was a very important hearing. My ears are still ringing I have to say. So much information in what 1 and 1/2 hour.

    I was afraid that Gen. Bolden was wasting money somewhere. Now I am and I mean it reassured.

  • Vladislaw

    wind wrote:

    “Even I couldn’t have said this more eloquently. Obama is now reeling over his own feckless budget. He will have to stake out a position of cuts or else be overwhelmed by the Ryan budget. Now is the time to kill hobbyspace.”

    How will the Ryan budget get through the Senate? How would the Ryan budget get past a Presidential veto?

    Kill “hobbyspace”? How many times did your mother drop you on your head?

    The Nation’s employment numbers were driven off a cliff with almost 1 million job losses a month and still have not come close to recovering. Although the last 13 months have shown some progress on the employment numbers your recommendation for the Nation is to murder a sector of the economy and those thousands of jobs?

    Are you insane that you want a terrible thing to happen to your fellow Americans like a government mandate to murder off their entrepreneurial, capitalist employer’s free enterprise companies? You are really one sick puppy.

  • common sense

    @ amightywind wrote @ April 11th, 2011 at 4:55 pm

    “Even I couldn’t have said this more eloquently. ”

    I seriously doubt that. You’ve shown us the extent of your eloquence quite a few times already. I actually am disappointed you are rehashing 2010 garbage.

    A low day?

    I am longing for the real amightywind to come back because this above sir only is a travesty of yourself.

  • Ben Russell-Gough

    @ Bennett,

    Yeah, Administrator Bolden expects to be able to present Congress with a plan about how to make the plan for going forward within a few days.

    Damn! That is a fast-moving organisation! I wonder how the guys on E-Street handle the g-forces soemtimes!

  • Michael from Iowa

    Mighty, your posts never fail to amuse. You’ve been declaring how commercial space is just a ‘passing fad’ since day one.

    “Commercial space will never complete development of a launch vehicle!
    What’s that? Well, I guess they can… but it’ll never be as cheap as they say!
    Oh, it is? Well, they’ll never actually launch a vehicle!
    They have? Oh, well they’ll never develop a spacecraft to go with it!
    Really? Well it’ll never fly!
    Oh come on!!!”

    Hell, if you’d been alive for the Chicago World’s Fair you would have dismissed electricity as well
    “Bah! ‘Electric lights’! Just a silly fad! The real future’s in whale oil!”

  • Justin Kugler

    There is no way to do BEO exploration with NASA’s budget without strong private-public partnerships. The monolithic infrastructure and approach of Apollo just doesn’t work under the constraints we have today. The status quo certainly won’t work under the kinds of budgets the likes of Ryan are proposing.

    If we want to have a national space program where we’re actually doing something worthwhile, we need a balanced risk portfolio that leverages the innovation and cost benefits of entrepreneurship with NASA’s ability to push back technological and scientific boundaries without regard to a Wall St. banker’s bottom line.

    Why windy wants to kill that in the cradle is beyond me.

  • Robert G. Oler

    Bennett wrote @ April 11th, 2011 at 5:26 pm

    Dang, Gen. Bolden made it almost all of the way through….

    Ahhhh…. nice recovery! I thought the tears were gonna flow.

    Was there any real news in today’s hearing?…………..

    the only thing so far I found entertaining was KBH….from what I have read (and not the direct testimony) she is falling back on Orion as the new JSC work program Robert G. Oler

  • common sense

    @ Robert G. Oler wrote @ April 11th, 2011 at 6:17 pm

    “the only thing so far I found entertaining was KBH….from what I have read (and not the direct testimony) she is falling back on Orion as the new JSC work program”

    You should have seen the desperate look on her face though. She knows it’s the end. Could be why Gen. Bolden got emotional? I don’t know. Could be though.

  • Ferris Valyn

    Actually, I saw 2 things of interest, and they came from the Chair

    First there was her take down of KBH over the issue of the 2010 approps

    Second, there was her question about fixed price being better than cost-plus

  • Coastal Ron

    amightywind wrote @ April 11th, 2011 at 4:55 pm

    Thanks for the link Dan Woodward.

    Indeed. From the article:

    …Shelby blasted those companies and said rocket science was so complicated that it requires a government program.

    So here we have a senior Republican saying that government is the answer? I guess you can’t judge a book by it’s cover, or in this case, a Senator by his party affiliation.

    Of course Shelby is oblivious to the fact that the satellite industry doesn’t rely on government programs, and that every major piece of space hardware has been built by commercial companies – paid for by government programs, but the talent is with the industry, not the government. Clearly he’s bloviating.

    No wonder Windy identifies with Shelby so much… ;-)

  • Aberwys

    If anyone was with me at Lunch with Mikulski earlier today, did you notice that she repeated much of her apple pie talk in her opening remarks?

  • amightywind

    I am longing for the real amightywind to come back because this above sir only is a travesty of yourself.

    You are very perceptive. It is both a low day and I am under the weather. But don’t worry. I’ll soon be back to full strength. This spring season of politics is going to the best best in a long time.

    As for the final disposition of the shuttles: One for KSC. They should build a facility like they have for the Saturn V. Nice. One for the Smithsonian. No brainer. One will go somewhere unexpected as an Obama political payoff. Sorry to disappoint you JSC, but you didn’t take very good care of the Saturn V you were given. I was disappointed to see it covered with pigeon droppings. Good night!

  • vulture4

    Unfortunately there are many within the space program who favor SLS and Orion despite its extreme cost and lack of practical value. It is a bitter irony that NASA, having been forced by Congress to waste billions on Constellation, now has to defend itself against waste.

    I know this may surprise people but there are hundreds of scientists and engineers at NASA with good ideas who can’t get a thin dime because their projects, however valuable they might be to real people here on earth, aren’t in the “critical path” to send a few civil servants to Mars.

    On the bright side, the current crop of space launch companies seem competent and may actually succeed despite the best efforts of “small government” advocates like Senator Shelby and Congressman Posey.

  • A_M_Swallow

    Senator Hatch may wish to get her staffers to ask JSC about cargo lunar landers. In FY2012 something interesting may happen.

  • Major Tom

    “Thanks for the link Dan Woodward.

    Even I couldn’t have said this more eloquently.”

    You also couldn’t be more out of date. That article is 14 months — over a year — old.

    It’s one thing to live in the past. It’s another to argue from it.

    “Now is the time to kill hobbyspace.”

    Agreed. The amateurs in the Senate should not be designing the SLS.

    Sigh…

  • common sense

    @ amightywind wrote @ April 11th, 2011 at 7:42 pm

    “You are very perceptive.”

    Yep, just don’t forget it ;)

    “But don’t worry. I’ll soon be back to full strength.”

    I don’t. I’ve seen your desperate yet entertaining enthusiasm before and I expect more. I wonder if you can best yourself though. Because this tired tirade was not very good you know. But in all cases be well soon, I don’t want to miss the fun. Skiing was not all that fun then? Could it be a bug from Global Warming? Nah, come to think of it if you don’t believe there is any then there cannot be any bug related to Global Warming in the air.

    “This spring season of politics is going to the best best in a long time.”

    I am not so sure about that. Well let me rephrase. You may make it entertaining as always but substantially speaking it does not look that interesting. More government shutdown on the horizon? More political nonsense when they make history and cut another few billions putting more people at risk with health coverage and retirement and job loss? It seems to me that some one already pronounced the last rites for this Congress. I am personally more interested in the next presidential elections. Trump vs Romney vs Palin vs Bachman. At least there is hope we don’t have Palin now that Trump may be running. But it gives a clear idea of the depth of the political discourse from the GOP. I am not sure it still qualifies as “depth” though. I digress sorry. Well maybe we’ll see Hutchinson ask Bolden yet another time whether NASA is wasting money. The real fun would be if he says yes but it won’t happen. Too bad.

    Anyway, again be well soon.

  • Aggelos

    I was with Direct concept shuttle derived Hlv ..

    but after 53 t falcon heavy …no longer..

    maybe nasa have to give most money to payloads in space spacecrafts robots etc.

    thats my opinion as a simple space enthusiast..

    and leave Heavy launchers to Spacex..

  • Ferris Valyn

    Senator Mikulski – what happened to flexibility?

  • Marc

    Bolden sprouts some leadership and/or innovation, chug the bottle!

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