Congress, NASA

NASA operating plan adjusts commercial crew, planetary science funding

Space News reported Friday that a long-awaited fiscal year 2013 operating plan for NASA will make some funding adjustments for several key programs, including commercial crew development and planetary science. The plan, not publicly released yet by NASA, would fund commercial crew at $525 million, effectively undoing the effects of sequestration and rescission on the program. Planetary science, which received additional funding even after sequestration and rescission compared to the administration’s request, would lose that funding: it would go back to $1.2 billion, the amount originally requested by the administration for FY13. The funds cut from planetary would be redistributed to the James Webb Space Telescope and to earth sciences.

Neither change is that surprising. Back in April, NASA associate administrator for human exploration and operations Bill Gerstenmaier told a joint meeting of the Space Studies Board and Aeronautics and Space Engineering Board in Washington that NASA would try and recover funding lost by commercial crew due to sequestration and rescission. “We can repair some of this with an ops plan change with Congress, so we’ll probably make some movement to try and fix commercial crew a little bit,” he told the committees at the April 4 meeting.

Last month, planetary scientists warned that the increase provided to NASA’s planetary science program was in danger of being rolled back by the operating plan. Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), a staunch supporter of planetary science and a member of the House Appropriations Committee, told Space News he “will be working with my House and Senate colleagues to push back on these cuts.” It’s unclear if there’s enough support among his colleagues to reject the operating plan and force NASA to undo those changes to planetary science funding.

6 comments to NASA operating plan adjusts commercial crew, planetary science funding

  • Coastal Ron

    I can imagine this will open up some old discussions. Not sure if anything good will happen with those discussions, but it will be interesting to see what everyones stance is these days.

    Call it a trial balloon for the bigger budget battles to come, when they debate the full-up FY14 NASA budget…

    • Dark Blue Nine

      “I can imagine this will open up some old discussions.”

      Not really. The offset for the commercial crew increase —
      savings from Shuttle closeout — is not very controversial:

      “The money for Commercial Crew came out of the space operations account, using funds originally budgeted for a space shuttle closeout effort that has since winded down, according to the government source who saw the operating plan.”

      http://www.spacenews.com/article/civil-space/35684commercial-crew-gets-reprieve-in-nasa-operating-plan#.UbWPEetdqbE

      Cutting planetary science for JWST and earth science will torque off the California delegation, as the quotes in the article above show. But there won’t be much discussion as long as Mikulski chairs Senate approps.

      The bigger, more ominous question is why does JWST need more funding now? Just a month or two ago, the deputy PM was claiming that the program was on schedule and on budget, despite half of JWST’s instruments slipping almost a year:

      http://www.spacepolitics.com/2013/04/25/not-so-news-about-jwst/

      The PMs need to get a grip on this program, and they clearly don’t have it if they swing from “on budget” to needing a $50 million increase in less than 60 days. Scheduled for launch in 2018, JWST can’t survive five more years of budget growth.

      • Coastal Ron

        Dark Blue Nine said:

        The PMs need to get a grip on this program, and they clearly don’t have it if they swing from “on budget” to needing a $50 million increase in less than 60 days. Scheduled for launch in 2018, JWST can’t survive five more years of budget growth.

        I wonder if there is a “point of no return” where Congress would just give in to budget growth instead of canceling it? I think we’re something like $5.5B into what is supposed to cost $8B through 2018?

        And if they have run out of their reserve budget, then we could find out pretty soon if it has in fact hit that point. Not that running out of their reserve budget is anything unusual – the JWST was originally budgeted for $1B…

      • Hiram

        I don’t think anyone said that JWST was getting “more funding now”. The agreed-upon JWST cost plan never agreed upon where those dollars were going to come from, unless you really believe in those artifices called budget runouts. All we know is that those funds are going to come. The peak funding in the JWST funding profile happens to be in FY14.

  • I would call it a mixed bag. It is good that commercial funding is being brought back up. The public-private programs are the most hopeful approach to creating a sustainable path by reducing costs. SLS will do just the opposite and planetary missions are largely unable to reduce costs of future operations.

    On the other hand, James Webb is an example of continued funding of the worst budgetary offender. And it seems unfair to me to so favor Earth science when Mars science is in such need of support.

  • common sense

    “And it seems unfair to me to so favor Earth science when Mars science is in such need of support.”

    Well surprisingly our species lives on Earth. For now anyway.

    Dunno, could be why.

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