Comments on: Final tweaks to the 2013 budget

By: Phil

Phil — Sun, 16 Jun 2013 23:48:23 +0000

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By: red

red — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 19:45:16 +0000

Also, APL and SwRI are not unofficial NASA centers. They mainly do work for national security and other areas. You’d need to assign most of their grass-cutting to non-NASA accounts. However, the point about excessive infrastructure for a shrinking budget still holds. I’ll avoid suggesting closing the center that starts with “M” to solve that problem.

By: Call Me Ishmael

Call Me Ishmael — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 16:41:58 +0000

JPL is not a NASA center. I’m sure NASA is its biggest customer, and there is some kind of “special relationship”, but JPL is owned and operated by the California Institute of Technology.

By: James

James — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 01:51:01 +0000

There are 10 Official NASA Centers plus Headquarters:

GSFC, LaRC, MSFC, KSC, JSC, GRC, Dryden (oops Armstrong), AMES, Stennis, JPL, HQ

Then there are the politically connected unofficial NASA Centers who know how to pull strings and get competed missions awarded to them: Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab (APL),& Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) .

Then there are the other separate facilities that are organizationally umbrella’d under a NASA Center:

Goddard Institute for Space Science (GISS)and Wallops Flight Facility (WFF) and White Sands Test Facility (WSTF)and IV&V, all under GSFC management;

Plum Brook Station under GRC,

Michoud Assembly Facility under MSFC (I think the NASA Shared Services Center too);

That is a lot of road , commodes, grass cutting, building maintenance, etc. to be covered by an ever increasingly shrinking budget. I count 20 different installations that need money to stay open. Not much $ left to do anything.

Egad.

By: Neil Shipley

Neil Shipley — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 00:58:16 +0000

How do they calculate cost to 2030 Fred? Is the $464M what it currently costs or is that the expected cost in 2030? Any clarification available?
Thanks.

By: Fred Willett

Fred Willett — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 23:12:04 +0000

I notice the GAO has discovered the cost of EELV’s has gone up again. Average price of an EELV launch is now $464M through 2030.
If DoD wants to make some saving they ought to try an old fashioned method called Competition.

By: Grandpa Dave

Grandpa Dave — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 20:15:33 +0000

Stephen,

If I’m not mistaken, that’s what all the centers (13 or so… I can’t remember)do after Charlie has a big announcement to make. At least that was the case when I worked, as a private contractor, on Ares I at MSFC until it was cancelled. You see all the centers have to talk about their piece of the pie plus a Q&A with their civil servants and private contractors… (If there are any left… Most have been RIFed.)

Dave

By: Stephen C. Smith

Stephen C. Smith — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 13:43:54 +0000

According to a tweet yesterday by Florida Today space reporter James Dean, KSC Director Bob Cabana will hold a teleconference at 4:30 PM EDT (after Bolden's 3:00 PM presser) to discuss KSC-specific budget proposal matters.