In contrast to their House counterparts, Senate appropriators appears to be more generous with NASA, at least at the overall level. A summary of the Commerce, Justice, and Science (CJS) appropriations bill, marked up with little fanfare by the CJS subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee Tuesday morning, reveals the committee is proposing $18 billion for NASA in fiscal year 2014.
“The $18 billion in the bill for NASA will preserve a NASA portfolio balanced among science, aeronautics, technology and human space flight investments,” the summary states. “Moreover, it will keep NASA in the forefront of innovation, inspiring private companies to build new crew transportation and spawning a new satellite servicing industry that can revive, refuel, and rejuvenate defunct communications satellites.”
The summary doesn’t break out how that spending is allocated among the various accounts, but the summary does note that NASA’s science account would get $373 million more than the House version (or $5.154 billion, slightly above the administration’s request) and $597 million more for exploration (to $4.2 billion, again above the administration’s request.)
Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), chairwoman of both the CJS subcommittee and and the full appropriations committee, said nothing about the NASA budget in her opening statement at the brief markup session, but Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL), the ranking member of the subcommittee and full committee, did mention the budget. “These funds will give NASA the ability to maintain key schedules for ongoing missions and activities, including development of a heavy-lift launch vehicle while funding ongoing activities of the International Space Station and other important research activities.” Shelby added that he worked with Mikulski to include language in the appropriations bill to provide “greater accountability and budgetary transparency to the commercial crew program, to ensure that taxpayers are getting the best value for their dollar.”
Shelby, though, revealed that he will not vote for the full appropriations bill, because the total funding in the bill is too high. “For that reason, and that reason alone, I will vote against the bill at the full committee,” he said.
The full Senate Appropriations Committee is scheduled to take up the bill in a markup session Thursday morning, one day after the House Appropriations Committee marks up their bill.
“… and spawning a new satellite servicing industry that can revive, refuel, and rejuvenate defunct communications satellites.”
Gotta love Mikulski’s pork barreling even in the broad press release for the entire bill. Without Hubble, that satellite servicing team at Goddard has to find something to do. Porker Mikulski to the rescue!
Ugh…
Well said. The work that GSFC space servicing group is doing is creative and innovative, but it also is nothing that NASA needs to be doing. NASA has no business reviving, refueling, and rejuvenating defunct communications satellites.
Tell me it ‘aint so! They don’t really have such a team do they?
http://ssco.gsfc.nasa.gov/
This is nice stuff, but if the comsat industry really wanted this, they are certainly flush enough to make a substantial investment in it. You’re looking at $50M/yr, as mandated by the FY13 Senate CJS report language (thanks, Barb!)
“This is nice stuff, but if the comsat industry really wanted this, they are certainly flush enough to make a substantial investment in it.”
Heck, contrary to the claim in Babs’ own press release, the deputy manager of NASA’s Satellite Servicing Capabilities Office admitted that there’s no business case for Goddard’s technology:
“‘The technology exists today to do on-orbit servicing, even though the client base we’re talking about is not prepared for servicing,’ said Benjamin Reed, deputy project manager of the Satellite Servicing Capabilities Office at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, during a session of the Satellite 2013 conference here last month.”
http://www.spacenews.com/article/satellite-telecom/34747satellite-servicing-efforts-grapple-with-the-business-case#.Uebu7CDD9pM
But let’s ignore the experts that we’re paying and shovel more taxpayer money at them!
Oink, oink, Babs. Oink, oink.
Ugh…
I think you pointed it out earlier, but the raison d’etre for this funding is to prop up the Goddard Hubble servicing team which was in ‘goin-out-of-business mode as of the last Shuttle servicing mission. The idea of robotic servicing (or maintenance, or construction) of spacecraft is wonderful, but there are unfortunately no real plans to make use of that capability in SMD or HEOMD. The idea of servicing what are technologically largely obsolete commercial comsats is a fairly specific application that doesn’t necessarily feed-forward to scientific or human exploration capabilities.
Agreed.
I think the Satellite Servicing folks would counter argue that there is no technology solution that is mature enough to become a de-facto industry standard,,,thus industry is not yet ready for servicing.
The problem I have is, just because one has a servicing standard, and a technology, still doesn’t mean there is a business case, future profits, etc.
And I can’t see SMD ever making a policy that their spacecraft need to be serviceable.
In the end, Satelliteb Servicing is being sold to Bab’s based on a business case for the future, but more importantly, employment for the contractors in the present. And those contractors are very well connected to the political pork process.
So it is a reality. Well since there’s no commercial demand and apparently none from DoD, why does this unit exist and what are they doing that provides value for the U.S. taxpayer?
Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) said:
“These funds will give NASA the ability to maintain key schedules for ongoing missions and activities, including development of a heavy-lift launch vehicle while funding ongoing activities of the International Space Station and other important research activities.”
and then…
“…I will vote against the bill at the full committee”
Boy, how is that for being FOR something, while simultaneously AGAINST it!
No wonder he is a good politician…
Shelby is trying to have his cake and eat it, too. But it says something about support for MSFC and NASA in Alabama when one of its Senators thinks he can earn more votes in the next election by voting against an increase for NASA than by voting for it.
msfc should be shut down. it is not deserving of support. they botched too many big projects.
Someone is trying to grant your wish:
NASA Amendement Would Weigh Marshall Closure
http://www.spacenews.com/article/civil-space/36313nasa-amendement-would-weigh-marshall-closure#.UedQZyDD9pM
The Senate is attempting to make room for negotiating with the House by padding their initial bid. It won’t work. The House has leverage because they are willing to shut down the statist’s beloved agencies.
amightywind said:
“The House has leverage because they are willing to shut down the statist’s beloved agencies.”
If it means shutting down MSFC (SLS) and JSC (Orion/MPCV), I’m all for it. Let’s play chicken!
Hi CR –
Who knows? Perhaps the lefties and tea party folks will unite, and tell everyone that they don’t think spending that much money right now on manned flight to Mars is such a good idea. :P)
Aside from that, in all of these hypothetical budget releases, you can not find line items for the NEO detection budget.
“Aside from that, in all of these hypothetical budget releases, you can not find line items for the NEO detection budget.”
What “hypothetical budget releases” are you talking about? In the House Authorization bill markup, there are three pages (Sec 322) on NEO surveys, including reaffirmation of previous Authorization Act policy, as well as a request for recommendations from NASA about required funding to do the job right. The concern of the Authorizers for a well funded survey program is overwhelmingly self-evident.
You won’t find “line items” in this bill for most individual projects with yearly budgets considerably larger than what is now being spent on NEO detection. So you can put your magnifying glass away.
By the way, in no bill or budget proposal is anyone asking for money to be spent on a manned flight to Mars. Nowhere. So I think everyone is united in that although it might be a good idea to send a human to Mars someday, that idea doesn’t yet deserve any money. In fact, wouldn’t it be nice if the SLS were justified by something (anything!) like that. But the rationale for SLS is instead twofold — (1) lift big heavy stuff, and (2) fill the pockets of aerospace contractors and MSFC.
BTW, the “line item” you’re looking for is at least in the Senate CJS report language (which it’s true, is not “bill” language that would be made into public law, but which provides funding details that agencies largely obey). That lists Near Earth Observation with a committee recommendation of $20M for FY14, in the Planetary Science Research account.
Someone is trying to grant your wish:
NASA Amendement Would Weigh Marshall Closure
http://www.spacenews.com/article/civil-space/36313nasa-amendement-would-weigh-marshall-closure#.UedQZyDD9pM
Wow, that’s cynical of Rep. Edwards. She’s trying to turn Rep. Smith (R-Johnson) and Rep. Palazzo (R-Stennis) against Rep. Brooks (R-Marshall).
It won’t work, but I want a front-row seat for this one.
If the House and Senate don’t agree on a budget for NASA, really CSJ, then funding continues as a CR. That would mean a budget increase relative to what the House wants to do. In other words, a CR would be better for Orion, SLS, and although not by much, for Commercial Crew than what the House Approps. Committee has currently approved. Still interested in playing chicken?
The GSFC Servicing Team got what it did because of Frank Cepolina (aka “Ceppi”). There’s a lot of force that comes from Ceppi. Goddard management is listens to his management “style”
Ceppi’s been inventing all kinds of uses for his servicing approaches, though none quite have a home.
Directed work, anyone?
It’s Frank Cepollina, and his nickname is Cepi. But that’s right, Goddard listens to his management style. For reasons that have never been completely obvious, except he has what has been called “presence”. Also that Cepi is hugely smart and politically well tuned. He also defends his underlings. But it really isn’t completely clear what satellite servicing, as being developed by his SSO, offers Goddard in the long run.
Mr. Cepollina is also very well acquainted with Dr. Grunsfeld, he of HST servicing mission fame and now SMD AA. I do believe that Dr. Grunsfeld is seeking to have WFIRST, with the NRO mirror now as part of it’s telescope, serviceable by SSO? Anyone know for sure?
The SMD charter for the Science Development Team for the WFIRST concept required that they consider servicing, and the team has concluded that the observatory can be designed to allow robotic servicing from Earth. A GEO orbit makes this more credible than, say, a ES L2 orbit. No doubt that Cepi has his fingerprints on this requirement, and of course he knows Grunsfeld well, having designed the strategies that Grunsfeld used for Hubble servicing. But the kind of servicing we’re talking about has little similarity to servicing of comsats, and like for HST it is a once-in-a-blue-moon kind of mission. It’s what you might do if the capability were widely available, not what justifies making that capability widely available.
SMD missions in Earth orbit are mostly Earth Science missions, and the Earth Science community is largely uninterested in servicing.
Hiram- I agree with you–presence and pressure are why he gets attention.
James- I heard from WFIRSTers that a home for servicing was proposed.