NASA

As she leaves NASA, Garver warns of SLS/Orion delays

Friday marked the last day on the job for NASA deputy administrator Lori Garver, who announced a month ago she was leaving the agency to take a job in the private sector. At a reception Thursday evening at NASA Headquarters, she reflected on the four-plus years in that role, NASA Watch reported, from the clashes she had with then-administrator Mike Griffin when she was part of the administration’s transition team after the 2008 election to being perceived as pushing for change at NASA for the sake of change itself. “You can’t choose the time you asked to serve,” she noted in a top-ten list of things she learned during her time in the job. “It was not easy to serve at a time when the shuttle was being shut down and large programs were being cancelled.”

Garver made bigger news, though, in an interview with the Orlando Sentinel, where she said she believed the first launches of the Space Launch System (SLS) heavy-lift rocket and Orion spacecraft, slated for 2017 and 2021, would likely slip by a year or two each because of insufficient funding. “It’s very clear that we could have slips of a year or two,” she told the Sentinel.

That assessment, she said, comes from experience with past programs like Constellation, which fell behind schedule while being funded at levels similar to SLS and Orion today. A report by NASA’s Office of the Inspector General last month specifically warned of potential delays and cost overruns with Orion, citing the flat funding profile projected for the program versus the more traditional bell-shaped funding profile.

Officials with companies working on the programs disputed that assessment: Boeing’s SLS program manager said she is currently five months ahead of schedule. NASA itself provided a statement to the Sentinel reiterating the party line that the agency’s budget “fully funds” SLS and Orion for a 2017 inaugural launch. Garver didn’t sound convinced. “People are more optimistic than … reality,” she told the Sentinel.

“NASA still has too much on its plate,” she concluded. “We came here trying to avoid that, and I’m afraid we’re headed back in that direction.”

102 comments to As she leaves NASA, Garver warns of SLS/Orion delays

  • James

    “NASA still has too much on its plate,” she concluded. “We came here trying to avoid that, and I’m afraid we’re headed back in that direction.”

    A key aspect of all SES’ers responsibilities, especially when arriving to a new position, is to note the organizational dysfunctions that have plagued the program/office/organization, and resolve that dysfucntion so it does not repeat itself.

    This was Lori’s job; with respect to “too much on our plate’, and ‘trying to avoid that’, she has failed miserably. So has Bolden.

    With respect to ensuring the Agency does not repeat the follies of JWST (chronic underfunding, with no reserve to handle real year problems, thus pushing costs off into the future, where a higher price tag awaits) on the SLS/MPCV, she and Bolden have also failed miserably.

    Something is going on that so far eludes resolution. Clearly, the past few generation of leaders, and their approach to resolving long standing dysfunctions, is are inadequate to the task. They do not have what it takes, and that the future demands.

    History repeats itself once more.

    • Jim Nobles

      So you are laying the SLS/Orion fiasco on Garver and Bolden?

    • Coastal Ron

      James said:

      A key aspect of all SES’ers responsibilities, especially when arriving to a new position, is to note the organizational dysfunctions that have plagued the program/office/organization, and resolve that dysfucntion so it does not repeat itself.

      Internally, sure. But the people running any agency, whether it’s NASA, the DoD, the USDA and so on, have no say over what Congress does.

      And since Congress over-rode what the Obama Administration – who is NASA – wanted regarding an HLV, I think it’s kind of ignorant to expect that Garver and Bolden could have done anything about that.

      With respect to ensuring the Agency does not repeat the follies of JWST (chronic underfunding, with no reserve to handle real year problems, thus pushing costs off into the future, where a higher price tag awaits) on the SLS/MPCV, she and Bolden have also failed miserably.

      Again, you seem to absolve Congress of all fiscal responsibility, when that is their primary role in this.

      If Congress wants to under-fund the programs they create, then why is it NASA’s fault?

      Did you even take civics in school?

      • James

        Coastal Ron, Jim Nobles,
        I certainly am aware of how budgets are proposed, voted on , etc. I know the History here of the role Congress, OMB, & the White House play in the programs NASA is assigned and the budgets they get. I get your point.

        My point is that someone needs to stand up , and however difficult it may be to do so, given the dynamics between Congress, the White House, OMB, and others, someone needs to stand up and lead NASA out of the History Reating Dysfunction that exists between all the parties. Who Better than the Administrator of NASA and his or her Deputy?

        There is not even an attempt by any SES’er to bring leadership, bring a new conversation, to the arena these entities occupy in an attempt to alter the predictable history repeating future of NASA.

        The advent of NASA’s role in fostering commercial space skirts this issue. The dysfunction that is eating HSF will slowly creep into the commercial space programs eventually. Time will tell of course

        No one is willing to take a stand. They all fear for their jobs ( which baffles me , because, as Ms Garver is showing, there is lucrative gold mines awaiting top Officials when they leave NASA.

        NASA leadership lacks courage . If any of the Top Senior Leadership felt it was impossible to reach their goals given the budgets Congress and the White House vote on, they should resign , because otherwise they become part of the problem in hoisting the past into the future.

        • Coastal Ron

          James said:

          My point is that someone needs to stand up , and however difficult it may be to do so, given the dynamics between Congress, the White House, OMB, and others, someone needs to stand up and lead NASA out of the History Reating Dysfunction that exists between all the parties. Who Better than the Administrator of NASA and his or her Deputy?

          Well, sure, that would have been nice. But you still don’t understand how things work in government.

          The Administrator and Deputy Administrator are appointed by the President, and serve to implement whatever the President wants. If the President had wanted Bolden and Garver to lobby Congress for something different, then that would have happened years ago.

          BUT, if the President doesn’t want anyone stirring up things with Congress, IT DOES NOT HAPPEN.

          And apparently the President didn’t want anyone stirring things up with Congress on NASA. You can’t blame the President’s employees for his decisions – the buck stops with him.

          And in any case, the role of the Administrator and Deputy Administrator are to run NASA – they are focused internally, not externally. If the role of Administrator was to be primarily lobbying for NASA in front of Congress, you would see professional lobbyists be appointed.

          • James

            CR
            Yes, indeed, you are correct.

            The type of leadership I am talking about, pointing to, is not present. It is missing. It is not something our elected officials, including the President, have an understanding of. Indeed, the arena of politics shuns the type of leadership that is being called for

            Too bad for NASA and too bad for the Nation for not recognizing that

            In the mean time we get the results we get..including NASA administrators who do what the President wants

            • Coastal Ron

              James said:

              In the mean time we get the results we get..including NASA administrators who do what the President wants

              Which is not a bad thing when the President wants to do something worthwhile.

              But you don’t seem to want to assign any blame to Congress on this, and when talking about the SLS and MPCV they are the whole reason those two programs exist.

              Ask Dick Cheney about fighting Congress, and he would tell you that they can get what they want regardless how powerful the President and his agency chiefs may be.

              The solution is clear here – get Congress out of the making hardware decisions for NASA. Solve that, and most of what you are complaining about goes away.

              • James

                All parties You and i have mentioned are contributing a to a very predictable history repeating future for NASA: The White House, Congress, OMB, NASA

                And NASA’s contribution is the poor results it gets, which invites the other parties to exercise their authority in ways that have history repeat itself

                Very interesting quagmire of a game that is being played with predictable results
                The kind of leadership necessary to alter what is going on is missing.
                It was missing w Ms Garver, it is missing w Gen. Bolden and all his AA’s

              • Coastal Ron

                James said:

                All parties You and i have mentioned are contributing a to a very predictable history repeating future for NASA: The White House, Congress, OMB, NASA

                OK. Add on top of that how dysfunctional Congress is today too, which exacerbates the situation.

                And NASA’s contribution is the poor results it gets, which invites the other parties to exercise their authority in ways that have history repeat itself

                It can only control what it has been allowed to control. If NASA is given a task, and not given the funding they say it will take, and not given enough control over how the task should be completed, then it’s hard to assign the majority of the blame to NASA now isn’t it?

                It was missing w Ms Garver, it is missing w Gen. Bolden and all his AA’s

                If you completely ignore the role Congress has played in dictating what NASA does and then under-funding it, and the over/under-sight that the President has or hasn’t provided, then OK, the peons are to blame.

                But that is not the reality of the situation.

        • Coastal Ron

          James said:

          NASA leadership lacks courage .

          I’m not aware of any civilian agency that requires “courage” for their management.

          I’ll take management expertise any day over someone that lacks organizational skills but has “courage” (however the hell that’s supposed to be quantified).

          If any of the Top Senior Leadership felt it was impossible to reach their goals given the budgets Congress and the White House vote on, they should resign , because otherwise they become part of the problem in hoisting the past into the future.

          You forget what their roles are – they are temporary leaders, and for the ones that are appointed by the President their role is to do what the President wants. End of story. They would not have signed up for such a low paying, thankless job otherwise.

          As to the career people in management at NASA, they do the best with what they get, and they have to do that over successive administrations and Congresses. I give them a lot of credit for staying on even when they get conflicting tasks from Congress and the President. Some do it out of a love for what they do, and some maybe because of future aspirations (political or otherwise).

          • Fred Willett

            In fact Bolden took the only steps open to him to point out to congress the error of their ways.
            He commissioned the Booz Allen report which clearly showed that SLS was unaffordable and would start to slip it’s schedule in 4-5 years.
            Congress chose to ignore the report.

            • Ameriman

              the Booz Allen report which clearly showed that SLS was unaffordable and would start to slip it’s schedule in 4-5 years.
              === ==
              The reason SLS/Orion is so hugely expensive and will still slip it’s budget/schedule is because Nasa is incompetent/incapable… as demonstrated by Shuttle, ISS, Constellation… all far over budget and under delivering…

              Govt/Nasa IS NOT GOING TO GET BETTER… not more efficient, not more innovative, not more competent, not more effective..
              The only rational solution is to downsize/eliminate Nasa… and shift the US space program to private enterprise.. via direct funding or x-prizes.

    • Hiram

      “A key aspect of all SES’ers responsibilities, especially when arriving to a new position, is to note the organizational dysfunctions that have plagued the program/office/organization, and resolve that dysfucntion so it does not repeat itself.

      This was Lori’s job”

      Actually, Lori Garver wasn’t civil service or SES. Bolden and Garver are formally political appointees, not career civil service. Associate Administrator Lightfoot is the highest ranking civil service/SES person at NASA. Those political appointees can be fired without a RIF! That’s why they aren’t civil service. So at least in her Deputy Administrator position, Lori was not SES. That’s an interesting distinction. Bolden and Garver don’t work for NASA. They work for the Administration. The role of a political appointee isn’t to note dysfunctions, but to make sure the agency strategic plan is consistent with the goals of the Administration. So it is not in their job description to go to the Administration and say “no, we can’t do it YOUR way, we need to do it OUR way.”

      So it’s kind of simplistic to say that Bolden and Garver have failed miserably in their job. They did their job. It’s just not what you thought their job was. I would suggest that the reason it was so hard for them to do the job we wanted them do was because of the relative lack of guidance from the Administration in human space flight. That lack of guidance was, I suspect, more about distraction than disinterest.

  • Matt

    James. You seem to want to blame her but you give no alternative plan… The only alternative she would have gotten from congress was to completely while out all commercial space projects and completely wipe out planetary science. Then we would have been sufficiently funded with a two flight a year SLS (at best) and still have the Russians shipping our astronauts to ISS. Please give solutions rather than just sound like a long whine.

    • Guest

      You seem to want to blame her but you give no alternative plan.

      I think it’s kind of ignorant to expect that Garver and Bolden could have done anything about that.

      Oh, give me a break, they could put an SSME on a 5.5 meter tank and mount it to a couple of big LRBs and be flying uncrewed before Obama’s term is out. They are just too vain and chicken to try it. We are in a situation far worse than the ISS, where by 1992 they had spent $8 billion dollars in eight years and had nothing but some viewgraphs. If this thing can’t be cancelled it has to be rescued, but they are hoarding the supplies and drinking salt water in the life raft instead of trying to solve their problem with what they have on hand. The form and function of modern all cryogenic liquid powered, fully reusable, heavy lift launch vehicles are on hand.

      It ain’t SLS.

      • Coastal Ron

        Guest said:

        The form and function of modern all cryogenic liquid powered, fully reusable, heavy lift launch vehicles are on hand.

        Likely they have been for many decades. What you keep forgetting is that the core problem with the SLS is it’s lack of need, not the engineering of it.

        The other issue is whether the government needs to be in the business of running a space transportation system. At this point in history, I see zero evidence that it does.

        Killing the SLS and relying 100% on the commercial launch industry solves both problems, and it frees up $Billions to be used for real space exploration.

        • Guest

          Likely they have been for many decades.

          Er … no. These are entirely new and novel developments. Of the sort that both Garver and Obama hoped for when they originally proposed waiting five years for the industry to mature, only obtained much faster and at far lower costs than first anticipated. The only costs associated with this have more or less been the continued long term drain of SLS and Orion on NASA’s budget, and the lack of suitable propulsion research in the interim. But that’s more or less looking to be solved by now by external private money and commercial forces and investment.

          When you add it all up, eight years at three billion a year and no launches is making NASA and their supporters look really really bad. Something has to be done.

          Lori resigned or was forced out, who knows, but that’s a step in the right direction. And not in the way Constellation, SLS and Orion supporters think.

          • Coastal Ron

            Guest said:

            These are entirely new and novel developments.

            So you say. You still miss the point though that regardless how wonderful the “entirely new and novel developments” are, their use in any sort of HLV is wasted.

            If they can be applied to the current launch market, then OK. But they will have to be quick about it, since SpaceX is extending their lead on everyone else.

            And that’s the thing here, is regardless what the “entirely new and novel developments” are, incremental improvements that are actually used trump any mythical improvements that never make it out of development.

            • Guest

              Well, Ron, hopefully you will get a preview of these mythical improvements later this month. Enjoy.

              • Coastal Ron

                Guest said:

                hopefully you will get a preview of these mythical improvements later this month.

                If you mean SpaceX, I don’t consider that part of what you have been saying, but more what I have been saying.

                As I’ve stated before, you being the “new kid” here, you are kind of late to the SpaceX Supporters group, but we’re glad to add you.

      • Fred Willett

        Oh, give me a break, they could put an SSME on a 5.5 meter tank and mount it to a couple of big LRBs and be flying uncrewed before Obama’s term is out. They are just too vain and chicken to try it.
        In fact this is all SLS is.
        But putting parts together is not Lego. Lego is robust and designed to be used in a number of ways, including abuse by 5 year olds. LVs are designed to work only one way as the mass of the system is critical. You can’t just take a 5.5 meter tank and expect it to work. If it’s too robust for your new LV the extra mass is killing you. If it’s not robust enough you won’t reach orbit. ergo you must redesign it.
        Ditto for every component.
        That is why SLS takes so long and costs so much.
        It uses existing parts, yes.
        But each part must be redesigned, tested and requalified for the new configuration.

    • James

      The results NASA has achieved, or not, indeed, she is accountable for that. Isn’t that what leaders sign up for? Being accountable for the results their organization produces? And she is. Make no mistake.
      So is General Bolden, and Mr Gerstmier
      , and Dr. Griunsfeld etc.

  • Mark R. Whittington

    It didn’t take Garver very long to start lobbing stink bombs at the agency that she just last week was part of. This is political revenge pure and simple and shows her unseemly political side.

    • Dark Blue Nine

      “It didn’t take Garver very long to start lobbing stink bombs at the agency that she just last week was part of.”

      How uninformed and dumb. Garver isn’t lobbing anything. She’s speaking the truth. The last IG report on Orion warns of delays. The April GAO report on NASA large projects warns of delays on both Orion and SLS. The SLS/Orion budget is going down year-over-year. The latest AvWeek article on SLS is rife with integration problems from the SRBs to the SSMEs to the core stack. Nasaspaceflight.com is reporting on yet more problems with the SRBs and Orion life support safety.

      Anyone who claims that SLS and Orion will make schedule is well-paid, a self-deluded idiot, or smoking something from Amsterdam.

      “This is political revenge pure and simple and shows her unseemly political side.”

      “Political revenge”? What planet are you on? Since when has a congressional or White House election campaign been thrown off the rails because a former NASA Deputy Administrator estimated that an ongoing project would need a couple more years of schedule to complete?

      The only thing wrong here is that Garver didn’t speak up more when she was in the Administration and/or that the decision makers in the White House and Congress covered their ears and heard no evil when Garver was speaking up.

    • Vladislaw

      and the clownshow continues. Thanks Mark, you never disappoint. With only bad press about the crony capitalism projects you so love to support and as their budgets slowly die away … you lob a turd into the pool… but mark .. when are you going to figure out … it’s YOUR pool your throwing it into…. LOL

    • amightywind

      She had every opportunity to change the agency from within. She should be ashamed of her 5 year record. The agency is in ruins. If this is the last spiteful statement she makes in her official capacity, I will be pleased.

      • Coastal Ron

        amightywind said:

        She had every opportunity to change the agency from within.

        Since most of what she would do is not apparent for those outside the agency, I’m not sure you have any evidence about this. That this is just another partisan rant from our regular partisan ranter.

        The agency is in ruins.

        The evidence is far more clear on this, and compared to what shape NASA was in when Garver and Bolden took over, the agency is in far better shape.

        Griffin left NASA in a shambles, pushing aside small exploration efforts in the vain attempt to prop up the over-budget, behind-schedule Constellation program that he chose the hardware architecture for.

        Even today it’s a head scratcher to think that NASA was going to launch people to space on a bone-shaking and uncontrollable SRM.

        The-Worst-Hardware-Choice-In-NASA’s-History

      • josh

        the agency is in ruins thanks to fossils like you.

        • Ameriman

          the agency is in ruins thanks to fossils like you
          ==== ==
          The agency is in ruins BECAUSE IT IS GOVT… just like Dept of Ed, Dept of Energy, USPS, etc, etc..
          Govt corrupts, screws up, bankrupts everything it touches… always has, always will, CAN’T BE FIXED.. Govt can only be minimized and decentralized to reduce what it can steal..
          Nasa has not gotten an American beyond low earth orbit in 40 years despite $500 billion blown on US manned space.. and Nasa leaves itself incompetent/incapable of crewing or even resupplying our own space station..

          We need to downsize/eliminate Nasa… close it’s dead wood centers/hq…
          let private enterprise and Caltech’s JPL take the lead.

    • josh

      time to pull your head out of the sand. reality is not going away, no matter how hard you try to deny it.

    • Matt

      Agreed, Mark. She was probably never supportive of the program in the first place, wishing for that money going to her beloved commercial crew/cargo programs that Congress rightfully is still skeptical of (well, crew, anyway, with both Space X and Orbital having flown cargo and demonstration missions, respectively). Once she’s out of government service, may her name never, ever, be spoken of at NASA again.

  • Jim Nobles

    “It didn’t take Garver very long to start lobbing stink bombs at the agency that she just last week was part of. This is political revenge pure and simple and shows her unseemly political side.”

    Revenge on whom?

    And did she say anything we didn’t already know or could have surmised?

  • Mark R. Whittington

    Congress. And she’s intriguing for a comeback in a Hillary Clinton administration as administrator.

    • Coastal Ron

      Mark R. Whittington said:

      Congress.

      Revenge against a constantly changing body of politicians? HA! That’s funny.

      And she’s intriguing for a comeback in a Hillary Clinton administration as administrator.

      You just realized this? Many people could have told you this when she was appointed.

  • Let’s go back to a basic reality check.

    An internal NASA report in January 2011 warned that SLS could not be built for the money Congress had told NASA would be appropriated.

    Congress ignored the analysis and told NASA to build it anyway for the amount of money they said it should cost.

    In August 2011, an independent analysis by Booz Allen Hamilton confirmed that what NASA said was true — it couldn’t be built for the pittance Congress was going to provide.

    Congress ignored the report.

    Let’s look back at the joint press release issued by Bill Nelson and Kay Bailey Hutchison in January 2011 after the first analysis was released.

    “[T]he production of a heavy-lift rocket and capsule is not optional. It’s the law,” they said. “NASA must use its decades of space know-how and billions of dollars in previous investments to come up with a concept that works. We believe it can be done affordably and efficiently — and, it must be a priority.”

    Nelson himself issued a two-sentence statement: “I talked to [NASA Administrator] Charlie Bolden yesterday and told him he has to follow the law, which requires a new rocket by 2016. And, NASA has to do it within the budget the law requires.”

    Today’s situation is exactly what NASA told Congress would happen. The blame for this lies at the feet of Bill Nelson, Kay Bailey Hutchison, and the space porkers in the House and Senate.

  • guest

    James-You are 100% correct. Even Garver herself said at her going away party that it was her job to influence changes in order to make the projects successful. She failed. So did Bolden, so did the others in senior leadership like Gerstenmyer. They have never put forward a meaningful plan. How can they or anyone expect Congress to go for a workable alternative when an alternative has never been presented. Obama tried to cancel Orion and Ares without a meaningful alternative that would have ensured similar funds would have gone to similar constituents. Its easy to sit back an blame Congress but in reality the job of the Administrator and the Deputy is to develop the plan, sell the plan, and keep the plan sold. They are supposed to be politicians and salesmen first and technical wonks second, if at all. These clowns, the senior leadership of NASA, do not have a plan.

    • James

      Thanks.

      NASA is responsible what swirls around it. That is not something I have heard senior leadership own. So, hence NASA blames the .circumstances’.

      • josh

        you’re wrong. congress is to blame mostly. if you don’t realize this even when it’s so painfully obvious any further discussion with you is pointless. simple as that.

    • Fred Willett

      Congress to go for a workable alternative when an alternative has never been presented.
      In fact the problems with any heavy lift were pointed out by the Augustine Committee and an alternative was presented by Obama. The Flexible Path that build the technologies necessary to make a heavy lift affordable while developing the technologies we are going to need anyway to go exploring.
      Congress rejected the Flexible Path in favor of their mega pork rocket.

    • Anyone who thinks that no alternative was presented is either ignorant, or a moron, or (because they are not mutually exclusive) both.

  • Andrew French

    You were really not paying attention if you missed Garver’s constant attempts to get Charlie, the Administration and the Hill to see that NASA had too much on its plate and SLS/Orion were the obvious problems. She just used to put it in terms like “we need to focus on a 21st Century space program, instead of trying to recreate the last Century’s space program”. Obviously she was not able to convince her bosses, so she stepped out of the game for awhile and is now able to speak more directly. I wonder what else she wil have to say?

  • The irony, of course, is that its been the Obama administration that has been purposely underfunding the SLS program right from the start. Of course, underfunding a major space project in the short run usually ends up inflating the total cost of the project in the long run!

    Marcel F. Williams

    • Matt

      Concur, Marcel. Which shows this administration’s lack of real interest in space, unless it’s with the private sector. Which is what this witch Garver was trying to push, regardless of who stood in the way.

      • In the reality-based world, Congress determines the budget, not the White House. Congress passed the 2010 Space Act which laid out the spending authorizations for the next three years for SLS. Congress authorized the actual dollar amounts spent each year.

        Congress was told first by NASA and then by an independent auditor in 2011 that the authorized amounts were inadequate. Congress ignored them; in fact, Senators Nelson and Hutchison ordered Charlie Bolden to ignore reality and build the SLS for the amount they were authorized.

        As for calling Lori Garver a “witch,” it only shows you are a troll, so this is the last you’ll hear from me (until you change your screen name again).

      • “Which shows this administration’s lack of real interest in space, unless it’s with the private sector.”

        Private sector. Hmm. Assuming that’s correct, you say it as if it’s a bad thing…

        • Coastal Ron

          Frank Glover said:

          Assuming that’s correct, you say it as if it’s a bad thing…

          He does.

          Little does he realize though that it’s been Presidential policy since Reagan to shift more and more to the private sector.

          His attitude is a little odd when you think about it, since NASA would have a lot more money to spend on exploration hardware (i.e. NASA owned stuff) if they weren’t being forced to spend so much money on the mundane transportation hardware that the private sector has more experience building and operating.

    • Coastal Ron

      Marcel F. Williams said:

      The irony, of course, is that its been the Obama administration that has been purposely underfunding the SLS program right from the start.

      Congress is underfunding the SLS program – learn simple civics.

      No doubt the Obama Administration would love to shift SLS and MPCV funding to programs that are actually more likely to work and do something useful. But since our form of government has Congress creating the funding bills – not the Administration – it is Congress that is underfunding the SLS and MPCV, NOT the Administration.

      Back to square one for you Marcel.

    • josh

      congress funds nasa. you need a basic lesson on how government operates. btw: sls/orion is overfunded to the tune of 3 billion a year. zero it out already.

    • Vladislaw

      Marcel wrote:

      “The irony, of course, is that its been the Obama administration that has been purposely underfunding the SLS program right from the start.”

      How much did the House appropriate for the SLS .. you know .. RIGHT from the start? Now much did the Senate appropriate for SLS .. RIGHT from the start?

      Why did a few Representatives and Senators say .. you know .. RIGHT from the start there was not enough money?

      Why did the OIG say there was not enough money?

      Why did Booz Allen Hamilton say there was not enough money?

      The REAL irony is that you are still so deluded into thinking Congress wanted to fund an exploration program. This was about keeping jobs in their district, it never has been and never will be about getting out into space and exploring. If it was .. America would be funding a fuel station and be building vehicles like Nautilus-X.

      What isn’t ironic, but more like tragic, is that President Bush called for this in Jan of 2004. Now, 16 BILLION dollars later, nothing is being launched, nothing getting ready to launch, and from the sounds of it, nothing in the near future to be launched. The only thing to look forward to is .. YEARS of more schedule delays and tens of billions of more taxpayer dollars wasted.

      By now we would have already tested and flown new vehicles.

      Astronauts Practice Refueling Spacecraft in Space
      NASA May Develop Fueling Station In Space

      • Hiram

        “This was about keeping jobs in their district, it never has been and never will be about getting out into space and exploring.”

        Let’s carry that forward another step. That being the case, which I completely agree that it is, Congress has no real incentive to complete SLS. Once you complete it, development money dries up, as do district jobs (at least at NASA centers). Also, once you complete it, you can’t afford to fly it. Underfunding results in delays, and delays are what fund marching armies. In Shelby’s mind, for example, it isn’t about the yearly development budget for SLS. It’s about the LCC for SLS development. The longer you stretch it out, the larger that number will be, and a lot of it will land in your state/district.

        • Vladislaw

          So just like so many other NASA “big space project” start and stops, you believe the Porkonauts in congress will have enough pull, once SLS and MPCV are defunded to morph it into a new development project?

          • Hiram

            That’s a fair point. If SLS and MPCV are defunded, instead of continued as never-ending development projects, the Congressional porkonauts will need some other huge project that they can salivate about slowing down to increase life cycle costs. One has to wonder what that might be.

    • Hiram

      “Of course, underfunding a major space project in the short run usually ends up inflating the total cost of the project in the long run!”

      Correct. Of course, with Congress underfunding SLS (as you’ve been overwhelmingly corrected), that’s exactly the plan! What better way to ensure that more dollars get dropped in your congressional district. As the priors starts to balloon, the sunk costs get larger, and the termination arguments to put the project out of its misery lose heft. Just slow it down, stretch it out, inflate the sunk costs, and get more money. The Administration has no incentive to underfund SLS. Congress does!

  • Matt

    Want to blame something? Sequestration is a key factor. Which is what happens when those elected to Congress behave like spoiled brats rather than adults. You’re supposed to govern, not scream “NO!NO!” or “My way or the highway.” Or worse, both. Unfortunately, my congressman (Rep. Tom McClintock, R-CA) is one of those hollering both.

    Garver’s just showing sour grapes that she wasn’t able to “transform” NASA the way she wanted. When idealism clashes with political reality, reality wins.

    • Coastal Ron

      Matt said:

      Garver’s just showing sour grapes that she wasn’t able to “transform” NASA the way she wanted.

      Sore grapes in the way of not being able to stop the wasteful spending on the SLS and MPCV? I guess I’d take that any day over the “sugar coating” that SLS supporters use to hide how expensive and ineffective it will be…

      • Matt

        She’s sour because the money that she wanted for her precious commercial crew and cargo got sent to exploration. Cut and dry, that is it. Now that she’s out of government service, good bye and good riddance.

        • Justin Kugler

          That’s a completely ignorant statement. The original plan that Lori promoted had significant and sustained funding for “Flagship Technology Demonstrations” that would have expanded NASA’s exploration capabilities and created centers of excellence for those technologies at each Center.

        • Jim Nobles

          -
          Matt said, “She’s sour because the money that she wanted for her precious commercial crew and cargo got sent to exploration. Cut and dry, that is it. Now that she’s out of government service, good bye and good riddance.”

          The money went for techno-welfare in certain districts not exploration. And, unless she had to quit for health reasons, I have every expectation Lori Garver will be back to continue the good work she helped start. Mainly getting the deadwood, the deadheads, and the deadbutts out of NASA and out to pasture.

          • Nom de plume

            Jim, I suspect that as much as Bolden, Garver et al tried to affect change and put in their own management team, they still could not get all 10 NASA centers to pull together. I suspect they found it is nearly impossible to get rid of deadwood, deadheads, and deadbutts. Those types would have to do something really stupid, illegal, or drop dead before they’d be eased out and even then it would probably take months of documentation (except for the drop-dead types assuming someone noticed). Passive-aggressive behavior seems to go unpunished. Some are just hanging in there taking up space hoping for a breeze from the right in 2014, then all will be well. Delusional.

            FWIW, I’ve seen an infusion of younger hires and some veterans focusing on innovation, plus some serious long-term coordinated planning. In another few years, NASA may be well into a positive culture change, assuming statesmanship returns to congress,SLS support withers and morphs into workable technology programs, and continued commercial launch success. I can dream can’t I?

            • Vladislaw

              I sure wish someone would write an actual book and NAME NAMES .. provide a list of all this deadwood do nothings so they would actually start being made accountable. Always get the memes about it.. but never the catalog.

              • Bernie Weeble

                We know their names, they are top level associate administrators and program managers. History will not look on these people kindly and I would wager another board of inquiry.

  • josh

    stick a fork in it. sls is not going to fly in 2017, that can be said with certainty by now. i would be surprised if it launches more than once…

  • amightywind

    You can tell a lot about a person by the nature of their departure. Are they magnanimous, even in the face of hostility, and proud of their record? Or are they spiteful and bent on scorched earth. You be the judge on this one.

    • Justin Kugler

      Heaven forbid someone should speak truth to power on their way out the door.

    • Jim Nobles

      amightywind said, “You can tell a lot about a person by the nature of their departure. Are they magnanimous, even in the face of hostility, and proud of their record? Or are they spiteful and bent on scorched earth. You be the judge on this one.”

      Her remarks weren’t particularly spiteful. At most I would say they were blunt. And I don’t think she said anything that surprised anyone. I don’t see much fault here.

    • josh

      you must be talking about mike griffin and scott pace.

      • Jim Nobles

        -
        josh said, “you must be talking about mike griffin and scott pace.”

        Those two guys acted like horses’ rear-ends when they left. Especially Griffin that dweb.

  • James

    The USSR Soviets built a copy of the Shuttle -Buran-and flew it once, unmanned. They built two more that Never flew. This is the fate of SLS. Which makes our politicians comparable to Soviet era central planning big gov’ment communists-only ever interested in feathering their nests.

    • SLS might be more analogous to the Energia launcher itself: Fly it a few times, but even though successful at doing so, it becomes unavoidably clear that you can’t afford any programs that require it…

      • Hiram

        The cold war modus operandi was to assert power by building big rockets. Strategic ICBMs asserted power through powerful rockets. That’s what Energia was an extrapolation of, and that’s why it was abandoned after perestroika and glasnost. Of course, SLS follows in that beloved tradition, except that we don’t have a Cold War. See, fuel depots don’t assert power as clearly.

        Of course, Gorbachev said “Our rockets can find Halley’s comet, and fly to Venus with amazing accuracy, but side by side with these scientific and technical triumphs is an obvious lack of efficiency in using scientific achievements for economic needs, and many Soviet household appliances are of poor quality.” That makes for, as has been noted, a third world country with rockets. The lesson, of course, was that HLVs don’t guarantee power.

        Have to believe that SLS will also give us a third world space program, with a rocket. You know, a humongous tube we can parade around, but that we can really never afford to launch.

        • amightywind

          SLS restores what was right in 1972. America is a first world country with the world’s largest launchers. Justification for America’s space program is the same as that of the Navy: to project power.

          • Justin Kugler

            So, you don’t actually care about building real capability in space or having a program that is relevant to the era in which we live.

            You just want to have a genitalia-measuring contest with the rest of the world, no matter that said objects of projection are too expensive to actually do anything meaningful with.

            Good luck with that.

            • amightywind

              Why do you confuse the desire to project power with chest-beating? All you do is bale out of the debate. The intent is no way symbolic. Projecting power keeps promotes US interests and beats back threats. The US should be more aggressive about this. What benefit has hand wringing and the corrupt status quo at NASA brought the US?

          • Coastal Ron

            amightywind said:

            Justification for America’s space program is the same as that of the Navy: to project power.

            Apollo was that 40 years ago, but since we accomplished that goal (been there, done that) there was no reason to keep it going.

            So that can’t be the rationale for doing things in space today, since we have no conflicts anywhere in the world projecting “power” in space solves. By all means, try to describe at least one, but you will fail in a spectacular fashion.

            Absent what the DoD and NRO do in space, the only national rationale for doing anything in space these days is the same reason we spend money on R&D and science – because even though it may not have a direct impact on our lives, pushing the boundaries of science and technology enriches us far more than if we didn’t do it.

            But that same rationale can’t be used for the SLS, since it takes far more than it gives, and as a nation we can’t afford to use it.

          • Hiram

            “Justification for America’s space program is the same as that of the Navy: to project power.”

            That might well be the case. But at least the Navy sails their ships and subs. SLS will launch so rarely that what it projects is a reluctance to assert power. Think about it this way. The Navy builds an aircraft carrier that it can afford to sail once a year, maybe. We proudly point to it, sitting in port, and imagine what it could do if we could afford to send it anywhere. Our enemies will cower in fear!

            • common sense

              I don’t believe the Navy actually “build” anything, let alone aircraft carriers… http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_Grumman_Newport_News

              Just sayin’

              • amightywind

                No. But they do operate the craft they procure, just like NASA should. Thanks for pointing that out.

              • Hiram

                I don’t believe that NASA actually literally builds rockets anymore either. Of course, when most people “build a house”, they don’t do that themselves either. The Navy “builds” it’s sea transportation in exactly the way that NASA “builds” its space transportation. Congress and the Administration won’t hesitate to claim that they build the country. So your point is … ?

              • common sense

                Actually more or less two points.

                First I daresay that the Navy is not as involved in the design, engineering and production of any of their vessels be they on water, in air, in space or on the ground as NASA is. I daresay they do not enforce the design of a missile but rather set out to provide requirements that the “commercial” sector has to adhere to unlike CEV/MPCV/Orion and SLS/Ares.

                Second. The question of NASA procuring rockets rather than designing, engineering and producing is at the root of commercial space and their associated pay-for-performance contracts that is being battled to go back to FAR.

                Therefore when you say the Navy “builds” something it actually means they do in that context which they, actually, well, don’t.

                I know no one who say they build a house and actually hire a contractor. Those I heard build a house actually do build a house.

                Any reference as to Congress or the Administration “building” the country? because I never heard any such nonsense.

                I thought you were a scientist?

              • Hiram

                “Therefore when you say the Navy “builds” something it actually means they do in that context which they, actually, well, don’t.”

                Slow day, eh?

                “Those I heard build a house actually do build a house.”

                You should get out more.

                “Any reference as to Congress or the Administration “building” the country? because I never heard any such nonsense.”

                http://lmgtfy.com/?q=congress+%22build+the+country%22

              • common sense

                Profound, really profound.

                Not much of a scientist then.

                Oh well.

    • Michael Earnest

      Well James, your comments have been disproven. SLS is on track and here to stay. I will predict that the program will be at least as successful as Apollo.

  • Vladislaw

    Some more interesting thoughts from Garver at SpaceNews:


    “It is Garver who will forever be known as the champion of NASA’s Commercial Crew initiative, which aims to outsource crew transportation to and from the international space station.

    The program has proven resilient despite plenty of opposition, but continued budget uncertainty threatens NASA’s plans to keep at least two U.S. companies in the running to fly astronauts to the space station by 2017.

    Garver does not see the budget pressure letting up any time soon.

    “If we see the likely scenario of flat or declining budgets, my projection would be that there are slips to the major programs,” she said. This includes Commercial Crew and the Asteroid Retrieval Mission the Obama administration rolled out this spring amid considerable skepticism, she said.

    Orion and SLS are likewise likely to slip, with or without outside budget pressure, Garver said.

    “The nature of these large government-led spaceflight programs has been cost growth and schedule slips,” she said. “Space station was an $8 billion program and it ended up being a $100 billion program. And we consider it a huge success.

    “The reason [the Obama administration] did not propose programs like this is because we believe to get out of that paradigm we needed to invest in technology, to do these technology demonstration missions that we proposed,” Garver continued. “But that is not what Congress said [to do]. So now we have a program that’s not as dissimilar to Constellation as the president proposed.” “

    I agree with her, I would have REALLY prefered all the technology programs they wanted, included a fuel depot, rather than the make work SLS.MPCV that now looks like it will not have a crewed flight until 2023? Gosh .. only 16.5 billion for a disposable capsule…

  • Neil Shipley

    Congress has a lot to answer for. Wasters!

    • RockyMtnSpace

      What a joke! Medicare/Medicaid wastes more in one month ($4B/month in waste/fraud/abuse based on GAO findings in 2010) than NASA’s Exploration program wastes in a year assuming the entire EX budget is considered wasted spending, including the $525M allocated for Commercial Crew. The Administration has far more to answer for than Congress.

      • Neil Shipley

        Stay on topic. This is about space not other wasteful activities of the U.S. government.

      • Hiram

        So you’re complaining about $48B wasted out of $600B? Not a bad deal. Perhaps if we shifted Exploration funding over to that other account we’d get more out of the money, at least in terms of quality-of-life. But I agree. This isn’t a forum about other federal expenditures.

      • common sense

        Usual nonsense. But what’s new? SLS/MPCV affect as many people as Medicare/Medicaid? People will revolt if we stop what programs? Ever use your brain? Even if a little.

        The Administration has to answer for Medicare/medicaid??? Because… They implemented those programs?

        Oh well.

  • Look forward to Lori coming back in a few years with a more progressively minded Congress to support her and her vision.

  • Michael Earnest

    I’m glad everyone who posted to this topic is so wrong. The program is on track for a Dec 2014 test of the Orion spacecraft atop a delta IV heavy and on track for more testing 2015-2017.

    What is needed is more reporting from the media. As of today, most news outlets report that the US Manned Space Program is dead and will not be coming back-ever, if they report anything at all.

    The next strategy is to start creating SLS/Orion themed toys to include Legos, plastic model kits, die cast, etc. to fire up the imagination of our young people who will grow up to fly these systems.

    We don’t need to worry about all this while Obama is in office, he really doesn’t care about the space program and has made many attempts to steer NASA off track of its mandate by encouraging silly programs like multicultural programs in the middle east.

    Once we have real serious leaders in Congress and the Whitehouse, we will the SLS/Orion program moving full speed ahead.

    Michael Earnest
    Stanwood, WA

  • Michael Earnest

    What does progressively minded mean? If its liberal or progressive, we don’t need it.

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