Congress, NASA, Other

Shutdown and potential sequester mean “everything is in flux” in NASA and NSF astrophysics programs

As NASA and the NSF’s astrophysics programs try to get back on track after a government shutdown lasting more than two weeks, those agencies are dealing with uncertain future budgets that are complicating planning for current and future programs, officials said Monday.

“Almost everything is in flux,” advised Paul Hertz, director of the astrophysics division in NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, at the beginning of his presentation Monday to the Committee on Astronomy and Astrophysics at the National Academies in Washington.

In the near term, Hertz said his division was dealing with the effects of the government shutdown. That included the cancellation of plans to fly high-altitude long-duration balloons carrying astronomy experiments above Antartica for the 2013-14 season because of the late start to the overall Antarctic field season caused by the shutdown. Nine flights by the SOFIA airborne observatory were also cancelled by the shutdown, while an x-ray instrument being developed by NASA for Japan’s Astro-H mission has been delayed for as much as five weeks, although Hertz said they are looking for ways to mitigate the delay. There may also be a small schedule adjustment to the James Webb Space Telescope due to the interruption of tests on the telescope’s backplane at the Marshall Space Flight Center during the shutdown, although that program in general is in good shape.

The big concern now is the state of the fiscal year 2014 budget. NASA is currently operating under a continuing resolution that funds the astrophysics program at a rate corresponding to an annualized level of $607 million, slightly below the $617 million is received post-sequester for 2013. (JWST is funded under a separate account, and is being protected from cuts because it is deemed an agency priority.) The NASA budget request called for $642 million for astrophysics in 2014. However, Hertz warned that if a second round of sequestration goes into effect in January, NASA overall would end up with $16.25 billion, and astrophysics would likely be cut to $592 million, give or take $10 million, he said. “That’s the kind of worst case one might imagine,” he said.

In that scenario, with astrophysics cut by about $50 million from the administration’s request, Hertz said he would be faced with some tough choices. “I don’t know if sequestration is going to happen, but I worry about how astrophysics will be funded, and realize $50 million in savings, this year,” he said. One area of concern is the “senior review” of ongoing astrophysics missions planned for early next year, when the agency determines if those missions are productive enough to continue funding. While two major space telescopes, Hubble and Chandra, will be insulated from the review, other missions may face termination in the senior review if sequestration does further cut the astrophysics budget. “If I get sequestration, we don’t have enough money to keep everything going,” he said.

Further exacerbating the budget challenge, he said, is the long-term uncertainty about budgets. Under current law, sequestration remains in effect for ten years, but budget requests from the administration assume that alternatives to it will be found that restore budgets. “If you told me that my budget would be 10 percent low forever, I would make decisions that had out-year savings,” Hertz said. “But if you tell me that I’m down 10 percent for one year, and then it comes back the next year, which is what the administration says… I make very different choices if it’s only a one-year cut than if it’s a forever cut.”

Hertz also revealed at the committee meeting that NASA is not implementing the controversial educational restructuring program unveiled in the administration’s 2014 budget request in April, which would have consolidated overall STEM education work in the federal government into a few agencies. “NASA will conduct E/PO [education and public outreach] in the current fiscal year, FY14,” he said. “NASA will continue doing STEM education.” The challenge, he said, is that there’s no funding for E/PO activities in the FY14 budget because of the restructuring plans; individual projects in his division will negotiate with him about how much E/PO they plan to do and the impacts on the overall project of reprogramming funding for them. How E/PO programs in general will be managed at NASA remains to be determined, he said.

The NSF’s Division of Astronomical Sciences is also facing funding uncertainties. In a presentation later Monday to the committee, division director James Ulvestad noted that planning back in 2010, when the astronomy decadal survey, titled “New Worlds, New Horizons,” was published, had his division’s budget at $297.8 million in FY13; the division actually got $232.5 million. “That gives an obvious reason why we can’t execute everything that was in ‘New Worlds, New Horizons,'” he said.

The situation for FY14 isn’t looking any better. The House and Senate versions of the spending bill that funds NSF offer very different numbers for the agency, with the Senate providing more than the House. Ulvestad warned that the division could face a five- to ten-percent cut in 2014, which could potentially delay the start of work on a new groundbased observatory, the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST). “That could, in fact, be something that we don’t learn about until the middle of the year,” he said, depending on when Congress reaches a final deal on the FY14 budget. “That’s obviously something pretty difficult to plan for.” He did note that, unlike in 2013, funding for facilities would not be protected at the expense of research grants if there are more cuts in 2014.

Current trends in his division, he said, could lead to having only funding in a year or two for individual investigators and large-scale facilities, with nothing in between. “We may have to make some tough decisions in a few months,” he said. “We’re aware of what those decisions might be, but we don’t want to be making them prematurely because we still believe that the President’s budget request is something we can execute and we would like to be able to execute it.”

34 comments to Shutdown and potential sequester mean “everything is in flux” in NASA and NSF astrophysics programs

  • Neil Shipley

    Be prepared to take the cuts on the chin and live with them indefinitely is my advice. Your business is a ‘nice to have’ in the scheme of things and will probably face further budget reductions in the future. Just like NASA, you’re going to have to learn to do more with less.

    Please don’t get me wrong, I believe that there are many other things in government that should be cut before basic research however you reaping what you sow in the form of JWST and you’re not providing as much return jobs wise as other agencies. Only a couple of large projects as opposed to a number spread around the place and JWST is protected pork which just leaves the balance of your budget to be carved into.

    Just my reading of the tea leaves.

  • Hiram

    “however you reaping what you sow in the form of JWST and you’re not providing as much return jobs wise as other agencies.”

    That’s naive. Almost all government expenditures in this country are used to pay people doing jobs. JWST is paying loads of people to do jobs, in proportion to the huge investment being made on it. That “protected pork” is money that is protected to pay people who work on JWST. The leaders being quoted here aren’t denying that they’ll make tough decisions if they have to. They’re ready to “take it on the chin”. The only point they’re making, which is the point that their community wants them to make, is that “taking it on the chin” won’t be pretty. What, they’re supposed to offer up their chin and happily invite Congress to whack them?

    It is clear, however, that if you don’t know what your budget is going to be in the out years, investment in large flagship projects isn’t smart. If your budget might end up being 10% less, then you’d better do stuff that you can say “we’ll do 10% less of this”. Building large facilities isn’t one of those things you can do that way.

    • Neil Shipley

      So, after all the waffle, you’re really agreeing with me :)

      • Hiram

        No, I’m disagreeing. You said that “you’re not providing as much return jobs wise as other agencies.” I’m saying that’s a silly metric. It has nothing to do with other agencies. You’re providing as many jobs as your funding can buy salaries. Just like other agencies do. A “nice to have” policy is what our programmatic leaders should be pushing toward. Better than “Eh, let’s just throw in the towel.” Pass the syrup.

  • Coastal Ron

    The biggest effect to “uncertainty” is the inability to use taxpayer money efficiently.

    Starts and stops, and short term plans are a big waste of money when compared to a definite budget and long range plans.

    The uncertainty the politicians have created is wasting far more money than they THINK they are saving.

    UGH!

    • common sense

      “The uncertainty the politicians have created is wasting far more money than they THINK they are saving.”

      So very true and not just at NASA.

      Are we seeing a “market correction” in Congress? If yes where are the new entrants?

      • Hiram

        “The uncertainty the politicians have created is wasting far more money than they THINK they are saving.”

        Think again. No money is being wasted. It’s paying for people, and people have jobs. With regard to Congress, that’s exactly what NASA is for. Making jobs. NASA is an efficient faucet that spews dollars, and it makes roughly the same number of jobs each year, perhaps distributed a little differently among congressional districts. Now, if Congress really considered space accomplishment to be the purpose of NASA, things would be different. But as we all know, they don’t. Space accomplishment is just the excuse for those jobs, not the goal of those jobs.

        Of course, when SLS is cancelled, Congress will consider it a great success, because of all the jobs it created (never mind the now-useless hardware and designs it will have created). Many in Congress talk about Constellation that way.

        • Coastal Ron

          Hiram said:

          No money is being wasted. It’s paying for people, and people have jobs. With regard to Congress, that’s exactly what NASA is for.

          Luckily I’m not in Congress, so my perspective is from being a taxpayer, and what the ROI of my tax money is producing. And to me waste is not a positive ROI. I’ve been around enough to know firsthand that businesses and programs make less efficient choices when they are faced with future uncertainty, and that uncertainty is directly attributable to our politicians.

          And yes I know about what motivates politicians, but that doesn’t mean I have to reward them for bad behavior. That’s one of the reasons I use every opportunity I can to educate people about the humungous waste that is sometimes known as the “Senate Launch System” (i.e. SLS), which is a very visible example of waste.

          So maybe I am tilting at windmills, but as they say in baseball, if you don’t swing, you’ll never hit the ball. If we don’t keep reminding our politicians that they are acting wastefully, they might not realize it.

          • Hiram

            Agree entirely. My point is that, from Congress’ perspective, JOBS ARE NEVER A WASTE. You can employ people to do the silliest things, but what counts is that they’re employed. That counts as ROI in their book. From my perspective as a space accomplishment oriented taxpayer, I think that’s obscene. But space accomplishment doesn’t buy votes. Jobs numbers do.

        • common sense

          Maybe I misread but we are talking about all the tribulation Congress is putting the whole country through with sequestration and other nonsense such as raising the debt ceiling, shutting down the government. Not necessarily that NASA is a waste.

          I personally think we need to invest in NASA, NSF and other things that have no immediate ROI. All those investments eventually have an ROI. ALL.

          But shutting down, restarting, canceling and restarting, closing down and opening, budget uncertainty, all of those activities have a cost and it is mostly wasted.

          There (supposedly) is a democratic process to make choices and impart direction. Those wasting money are those who are not happy with the democratic process. And I wish them to just go out of this process as they are nothing but an impediment.

          • Coastal Ron

            common sense said:

            I personally think we need to invest in NASA, NSF and other things that have no immediate ROI. All those investments eventually have an ROI. ALL.

            I agree.

            But shutting down, restarting, canceling and restarting, closing down and opening, budget uncertainty, all of those activities have a cost and it is mostly wasted.

            Agreed too, and that was my original point.

            Those wasting money are those who are not happy with the democratic process.

            Ironic that those supposedly against government waste are creating a whole bunch of it right now, and it’s effects could be felt for years….

        • Neil Shipley

          You clearly didn’t hear the outcry about waste during the last shutdown, criticism not only from within but also from other nations. You need to get away from your seemingly rather narrow fixation on jobs. There’s actually more to the world than simple job numbers. In the longer term it’s about what those jobs produce. Hence the concern with ROI.

      • Coastal Ron

        common sense said:

        Are we seeing a “market correction” in Congress? If yes where are the new entrants?

        We really won’t know until the next general election, when we see who wins and who loses. In the past, polls have shown people want to vote out all the politicians – except for their own. We’ll have to wait and see if that has changed…

        • common sense

          Actually I have been pondering this for some time now.

          My pragmatic side says we should find compromise, make things work while my rebellious side says “hell with it!”, time to make some changes.

          And one has to question the identity of the rebellion. One has to figure what is at stake and who is manipulating whom and who will benefit from a change. Not necessarily the need to shake things up. And I think that is what is missing in this whole story.

          Government shutdown does not help Joe-Six-Pack quite the opposite. So what gives? Who are this people backing the rebellion? What will they get?

          Only by answering such questions will we know the true impact.

          • Coastal Ron

            common sense said:

            My pragmatic side says we should find compromise, make things work while my rebellious side says “hell with it!”, time to make some changes.

            And the way that our founders set up to do that is through the ballot box. That’s why elections have consequences – you can’t just vote for someone just because of what they say, you have to dig deeper and see if you can figure out what they plan to do.

            I try to do that, and I’m certainly not 100% accurate, but I don’t know how many other people really “connect the dots” to understand that if they vote for someone like Ted Cruz, that he did not intend to compromise with just about anyone, including his own party.

            Government shutdown does not help Joe-Six-Pack quite the opposite. So what gives? Who are this people backing the rebellion? What will they get?

            Follow the money. At least on the Republican and Tea Party side, it’s pretty clear who wants what to happen, and why. Lots of ideology, but lots of regular “hey, that’s MY money!” self protection too.

  • amightywind

    NASA and NSF should just assume the next round of sequestration will be implemented, as it surely shall be. It is called worse case planning. We in industry live by it. So some propeller heads pet projects get pushed back a year. No biggie.

  • James

    The real problem with Astrophysics is the death of any kind of mission other than the top priority flag ship of the Decadal Report, and Explorers or smaller Sounding rockets, Balloons and Sophia missions

    JWST has pretty much ensured that the word ‘flagship’ has been struck from the dictionary, as OMB/Congress will have no appetite for another expensive mission.

    All the science themes withing Astrophysics will be put out to pasture as each can expect an Observatory Class mission once every 40 years.

    The Era of the Great Observatories, the paradigm that fostered that era; all gone at NASA.

    • Coastal Ron

      James said:

      The Era of the Great Observatories, the paradigm that fostered that era; all gone at NASA.

      I know the JWST budget has a few more years to go, but after it’s built what comes next?

      Will NASA’s budget just reduce as the JWST portion finishes, or if the overall budget stays the same, then someone has to be making plans for what that will be. What is it?

      • James

        Good Question.

        Some of JWST’s monies have been stolen from other SMD science divisions, so I fully expect those divisions to want some of the post JWST monies put back into their coffers.

        How much of that ~ $650M per year (the last few years) is going to stay in Astrophysics Division, I can’t say. But what is left, will be used to ramp up the Decadal Winner and get that mission started, i.e. WFIRST w NRO Mirror mission.

        There isn’t enough $ to handle more than on large mission per decade….so…time for small ball at SMD

        • Neil Shipley

          Well that was my point. Not only that but the U.S. Is going to, at some point start to wind back it’s massive money printing program as a means of stimulating its economy. That is in effect, what sequestration is about but many external observers don’t believe it is sufficient. Europe has bitten the bullet and is suffering. The U.S. has some way to go before it realises what’s required. But that will have to be done carefully and is Congress really capable of understanding what’s at stake. Recent history says ‘no’.

      • Neil Shipley

        How many more trillions of dollars in budget deficit spending will the U.S. have run up by then and what will be the response between now and then?
        Crunch time for the U.S. economy is coming. It’s just a matter of when.

        • Neil Shipley

          Qualification: Unless they can increase their productive economy that is and that seems unlikely.

          • Coastal Ron

            Neil Shipley said:

            Qualification: Unless they can increase their productive economy that is and that seems unlikely.

            Some economists would argue that deficits usually get bought down not by reducing government spending, but by a strong overall economy bringing in lots of tax revenue. Plus, they argue that reducing government spending during recessions is exactly the wrong solution, that stimulating the economy reduces the amount of time the economy is in recession.

            Unfortunately there is no current consensus between our two dominate political parties about which approach is better, even though Republicans USED TO believe in economic stimulus – whenever they controlled the White House.

      • Hiram

        “Will NASA’s budget just reduce as the JWST portion finishes, or if the overall budget stays the same, then someone has to be making plans for what that will be. What is it?”

        NASA’s budget has nothing to do with the completion of JWST. Nor probably does SMD’s. The Astrophsyics Division budget, on the other hand, is somewhat precarious. It has not escaped attention that by removing JWST from the Division, some $600M/year hasn’t been put back in the Division. NASA Astrophysics controls LOTS less money than it used to, even though JWST is a mission about astrophysics.

        The question is whether the AD will get that money back under it’s control when JWST is successful. Many would say that’s unlikely. So who gets it?

        Astrophysics missions are seriously handicapped by the need for size. Astrophysics is largely about faint things, and faint things need light gathering power. Light gathering power means big telescopes, and big telescopes mean many many dollars. Yes, there are relatively economical scout missions like Kepler, but those just find the targets you need to look at with large telescopes.

        It’s hard to understand this, with the impressive prospects for JWST, but NASA astrophysics is in a really hard place right now. All NASA and NSF science is suffering these days, but astrophysics has the abysmal cost impact of JWST hung around it’s neck, so it’s in much worse shape than the others in the long run.

        • James

          I think you will see ‘some’ of the JWST monies returned to the Astrophysics Division; but not all of it.

          Only enough to mount the next ‘large’ mission (don’t use the word ‘flag ship’ for a least another 20 years – thanks NASA/JWST mis management), which if I understand correctly will be the WFIRST/NRO mirror mission.

          I’ve already heard some young astrophysics lament the predictable future of Astrophysics and wonder if they should leave NASA and go work for ??????

          Of course, its pretty clear, given Keplers stunning success, that the next Decadal Winner, in 2030 will be an Exoplanet mission. So, others in AP will have to wait till 2030 for any hope of their next great observatory….which given how long it takes to develop technologies and develop the mission, handle expected over runs and independent commission findings, won’t be launched till 2045 ish .

          Egad.

          Of course, all of this is lost on Congress, who can only view NASA’s credibility through the lens of the JWST fiasco. Perhaps, in 2019 or 2020, if JWST is successful, and is re writing history books again, Congress/OMB will forget the $8B price tag, and look to fund a large aperture AP mission…

  • DCSCA

    “everything is in flux”…

    aka ‘free drift.’ The space agency and the space science community should be in ‘safe mode’ until Mr. Obama’s years of neglect are worked out of the system and have contingency planning to hit the ground running with fresh minds and younger management, purged of the commercialist bug- when HRC is elected three years from today. 36 months of regrouping, reorganizing and clensing would be good for the angency– and the space science guys as well. No more bloated projects like Curiosity– and no more Ares-styled management.

    • Coastal Ron

      DCSCA said:

      …purged of the commercialist bug- when HRC is elected three years from today.

      You sound so… quaint when you say “commercialist bug”, as if commercial enterprises are going to become a thing of the past.

      That is your problem. You think non-government activity in space is the exception, when the clear trend has been that government activity is the exception. Even our military is buying more and more commercial space services and commercial hardware. And, of course, every DoD/NRO payload is launched on a commercial rocket, which won’t change.

      If anything commercial space services have already passed the barrier where they can be suppressed. Commercial Cargo is an unqualified success, and the economics of it are undeniable. Commercial Crew is unlikely to be stopped at this point to, because even if Congress zero’d out the funding SpaceX would still create their crew transportation service, AND Congress would giving them a virtual monopoly on U.S. business.

      And it’s been pretty apparent that you have a “thing” for HRC, but what is Hillary supposed to do to change that? Do you think a study group that takes 1.5 years to come up with “proposals” is going to change the political situation between Republican’s disliking Democratic Presidents (ESPECIALLY those named Clinton), and the normal pork politics of NASA?

      One of these days you’re going to leave your basement and step into the light, but until then you are going to continue to be hopelessly out of touch with reality… ;-)

      • DCSCA

        “Commercial Cargo is an unqualified success'”…

        Following in the wake of three decades of the success of the Russian Progress simply demonstrates ‘commercial’ is a follower, not a leader in this field, Ron. Decades behind. Lofting a satellite was accomplished in 1957 by the Russians– and in ’58 by Americans, Ron. SSober And, of course, it is HSF that matters. and in case you havent noticed, NewSpace has failed to even atempt to launch, orbit and return anybody from LEO. False equivalency does not create parody for NewSpacers, Ron. In the long run, NewSpace is a dead end. LEO is a ticket to no place, going in corcles, no where, fast. Tick-tock, tick-tock…

  • Vladislaw

    Ole Newt just provided the answer to this problem:

    ““This is a good example of what’s wrong with the current political system,” Gingrich said. “I gave a serious speech in Florida at the Space Coast outlining a very bold strategy. … I got savaged by two of my competitors, Romney and Santorum, who deliberately distorted the speech. I got ridiculed by ‘Saturday Night Live.’”

    Gingrich, who now hosts a show on CNN, writes in his newest book “Breakout” that Washington is a city full of “prison guards of the past,” who are slowing the pace of innovation in fields like space exploration.

    He specifically calls for redirecting government funding from NASA to the private sector, where he believes projects can be more efficiently funded and implemented.

    “The one period of glory in NASA was the first nine years when they weren’t a bureaucracy yet … and they haven’t gotten back to that excitement, that adventurism, and won’t,” he said. “So, I would take most of the NASA budget, and I would turn it into prizes for private sector.””

    Out of this world: Why Gingrich wants to go to space and says GOP turmoil is healthy

    If the question was pork or prizes … I would go the prize route.

    • DCSCA

      “Gingrich, who now hosts a show on CNN, writes in his newest book ”

      Newt Gingrich, Moon President, as SNL ao aptly labelled and lampooned him, preached to his students years ago that NASA should have been disbanded after Apollo ended. Gingrich has virtually no has no credbility any more– much like the organization that has now hired him to make pointless noise to sell commercial time– CNN.

  • Gregori

    Convert NASA to prizes if you want to see the agency turned into a series of one off stunts. Otherwise its a profoundly stupid idea.

    • Neil Shipley

      Nope not if you structured them properly so that they progressively funded the technology required to move out into beo in a cost sustainable manner. COTS and CCiCap are two examples. Some examples I can think of off the top: long duration spacecraft only for in-situ space operations, space habitats, in-situ space medical procedures, techniques for producing gravity effects in space, in-space nuclear drives, etc. plenty to be done but not if you spend all your bickies on an unneeded HLV.

  • DCSCA

    Look, the new book, ‘Double Down’ confirms that Mr. Obama told his staff he all but had no agenda for his second presidential run, which houl tel lyou how far down space ops woulsd have been with a ‘no agenda’ candidate.

    Space advocates best realize that the Obama years are a time to regroup manangement, jettison shuttlera and commercialist deadwood, truncate old Cold War planning (ISS et al.,) streamline organizations, clarify goals for planetary and HSF ops, focus on those goals, and prepare to hit the ground running in the next administration– Hillary’s. For this one has been a deep diosappointment to space advocates who know the long term commitment such goals and technologies require.

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