“The cancellation of Project Constellation was a political aberration.”

It’s funny how someone that claims to be a fiscal conservative can be so blind to bloated programs like the Constellation. That was the only reason Congress agreed to cancel it, and Republicans voted to cancel it too.

“It is ‘commercial space’ that will be vulnerable in the next few years.”

Hard to see how a program that doesn’t go over budget, and delivers what’s promised, would somehow be in danger.

Besides, commercial transportation services supports the ISS, which Congress supports.

“The NASA’s the CCDev2 appropriation indicates there is already a down select baked in.”

Nothing has changed with the grand bargain that allowed CCiCap (not CCdev2) to do the 2.5 spacecraft award. Sequestration hit all the programs per the overall formula, and Congress is working on re-boosting Commercial Crew along with the SLS back up.

Commercial Crew can live with a reduction in funding better than the SLS program can, especially since SpaceX is likely to be ready far in advance of the planned switchover from Soyuz in late 2016.

Besides, only someone that wants us to continue to be beholden to Russia would root for canceling the Commercial Crew program – is that you?

“Appears to be no signs of anyone interested in killing SLS so far…”

Cancellations usually require some sort of recognition that the program is in fiscal or programmatic trouble. That was the main driver for the Constellation cancellation. The SLS program has been a little young for that to happen yet, but if I recall correctly, there is a fiscal review to Congress coming up soon.

The other part of the equation is actually using the SLS. So far the Administration (nor Congress) has not suggested building anything for the SLS to launch, which means that the SLS is doomed to sit around for years doing nothing. How safe would that be?

The only known possible mission is the Obama proposed mission to an asteroid, but since the SLS took the money they were going to use to develop technologies for that mission, it’s hard to see how that will happen by 2025, regardless if the SLS is ready or not.

Even the MPCV is in danger of being cancelled if they can’t solve the massive excess weight issues it has.

“Many budgets to go but each one makes its survival more inevitable”

If your goal is to have a massive rocket added to the Kennedy Space Center tour, then your dream may come true. However there still is no evidence of any paying customers for the SLS, so it continues to be a rocket being built far before it’s needed.

Do you think the military does not have access to this data already? Besides that, for this to be a motive, NASA would have to operating the satellites. They are not. NASA’s role is procurement (acquisitions), not operations. Check the article.

That is how it is down now. That doesn’t change. It is just which org that congress funds will change.

“Perhaps the right answer is for NOAA to get the smarts it needs to do space procurement right.”
NOAA has never done spacecraft procurement. The right answer is to have one civil gov’t org do all spacecraft procurement for govt needs to prevent duplication of effort.

But the troublesome issue is, as several observers have pointed out, NOAA is still going to be responsible for the spacecraft requirements, while NASA is going to have to negotiate contracts for those spacecraft. That’s a troublesome arrangement, and one that never proves economical. To the extent that NOAA simply doesn’t know how to negotiate such contracts responsibly, it would seem that maybe the space product responsibility of NOAA should be wholly folded into NASA. But the idea that only one non-defense institution should be trusted with space has echoes in current issues about commercial spaceflight. Perhaps the right answer is for NOAA to get the smarts it needs to do space procurement right.

DCSCA is wrong again.

NASA has always procured spacecraft for NOAA. The only difference now, instead of NOAA getting the money from Congress and then passing it on to NASA, NASA gets the money directly. NOAA will still operate the spacecraft as they do now.

“NASA and NOAA programs already overlap”

Blowhard is also wrong.

There is no overlap. NOAA spacecraft have proven and operational sensors. NASA does R&D and new sensors. NASA is not performing NOAA’s. Also, NASA is managing spacecraft procurement, something that is NASA’s role and expertise and not NOAA’s.

“If a primary mission of NASA is to do missions beyond Earth orbit ”

It is not “The” primary mission, it is one of. LEO and earth science are just as much part of NASA’s primary mission

As happens every 4 years there will almost certainly be a boost in government spending. It may be in the budget or in a second bill. The money for COTS was in a second bill.

NASA could prepare a list of items for this bill. Projects that can be completed in about 2 years. Include an approximate number of jobs.

There are several technologies whose prototype has been constructed but that cannot afford a launch vehicle. They could be combined into 2 or 3 satellites and launched.