Congress, Lobbying, NASA

NASA budget debate shifts to the Senate

The House of Representatives passed HR 4660, the Commerce, Justice, and Science (CJS) appropriations bill late Thursday night on a 321-87 vote. While dozens of amendments to the bill were proposed in the floor debate, which started Wednesday evening, few of those addressed NASA (the Census Bureau, oddly enough, was far more frequently targeted for cuts) and most did not pass.

The House did approve by voice vote an amendment by Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-OH) to transfer $7 million from NASA’s space operations account to its space technology account, a very small offset of the $85.5 million cut the program received versus the administration’s request by the Appropriations Committee. (Kaptur, whose district includes NASA Glenn Research Center, proposed and then withdrew an amendment to increase space technology funding during the markup of the bill by the full appropriations committee earlier in the month.) The House also passed by voice vote an amendment from Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA) to block NASA from spending funding on its Advanced Food Technology Program, a very small program that has been flagged by Sen. Tom Coburn’s “Wastebook” in the past. SapcePolicyOnline.com has the full rundown of the NASA-related amendments and their outcomes.

The passage of the bill did not get much attention from the space community. An exception was the Coalition for Space Exploration, which thanked the House for passing a bill that includes “critical additional funding needed for programs that are vital to our nation’s future, and for providing the means to keep our deep space exploration program on track.” The organization didn’t identify those programs, but it’s a likely reference to the Space Launch System and Orion, which both receive increases in the bill versus the administration’s request.

Attention now turns to the Senate, where the CJS subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee is slated to mark up its appropriations bill Tuesday at 11 am. Many expect the Senate to offer NASA funding in the bill at or above the overall level in the House bill, although how those funds are spent among various programs may be different. The Planetary Society, for example, is concerned that NASA’s planetary science programs won’t get the same increase in the Senate bill as they did in the House. It’s asking its members who live in California and Maryland to contact committee chairwoman Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) and committee member Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and request at least $1.45 billion for planetary science, the same level as the House bill.

28 comments to NASA budget debate shifts to the Senate

  • red

    “The passage of the bill did not get much attention from the space community. An exception was the Coalition for Space Exploration, which thanked the House for passing a bill that includes “critical additional funding needed for programs that are vital to our nation’s future, and for providing the means to keep our deep space exploration program on track.” The organization didn’t identify those programs, but it’s a likely reference to the Space Launch System and Orion, which both receive increases in the bill versus the administration’s request.”

    The Space Coalition members are Aerojet Rocketdyne, ATK, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman. SLS and Orion belong on page 1 of Coburn’s Wastebook, but the Coalition for Space Exploration corporations aren’t likely to admit that.

    • reader

      The Space Coalition members are Aerojet Rocketdyne, ATK, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman.

      Yep, you get actually more direct unabashed headlines like this, too : SLS Budget ‘Reasonable,’ ATK Boss Assures Investors
      The Arlington, Va., company, whose Magna, Utah-based Aerospace Group saw year-to-year operating profits rise 9.4 percent to $40.6 million on nearly flat sales of $319 million for the three-month period ended Sept. 29, is the prime contractor for the heavy-lift launcher’s twin solid-rocket boosters.

  • Egad

    Oh, good. A month ago, on May 1, Mr Bolden told Senator Shelby at a CJS hearing,

    http://www.spacepolicyonline.com/news/mikulski-deeply-troubled-by-nasas-budget-request-sls-wont-use-70-percent-jcl

    …he would know within a month exactly what launch date the agency is planning toward and the program’s cost estimate after the results of the Key Decision Point C (KDP-C) review are released.

    Let’s hope that Senator Shelby will be present this time and remembers to ask about that cost estimate.

  • Henry Vanderbilt

    It would be good to see some support in the Senate CJS Appropriation markup for accelerating Commercial Crew IOC, but I’m not holding my breath. The way to bet is still a plus-up for SLS/Orion, and no provision for the other programs that’ll have to be shorted to do that.

    Another interesting issue is, will they sign on to the push for a joint DOD/NASA development of an RD-180 replacement. I suspect any such will be a joint bureaucratic boondoggle and a colossal waste of money, but good chunks would go to Huntsville and AerojetPWR, so it may happen.

  • Andrew Swallow

    What will NASA Glenn Research Center be using the $7 million for?

    Who are the victims of the $85.5 million cut in the space technology account?

  • Have to wonder if SLS had been put out to bid, similar to commercial crew, what savings and increased accomplishment might have/could still be achieved?

    • Robert G. Oler

      I agree with what “Moose” wrote. I would add this. the problem with SLS is that no one knows what the damn thing is for other then keeping the industrial base going. One of the things that has hurt the US is the stifling of innovation…by the very nature of the industrial complex getting its fingers in the taxpayer till and not the tax payers are “welfaring” those complexes to stay in business.

      It is the Reagan welfare queen with the big screen tv on a much much grander scale. there efforts go mostly in poor red states where the “elite” such as they are have to have federal or federal spin off jobs to have a standard of living above bubba and the trailer park.

      There has always been pork, what would become the Constitution class frigates only got approved after VA and GA got a piece of the building pie. but today it is on an unimaginable scale. RGO

  • Moose

    The thing is, Tommy, SLS wasn’t conceived as the sort of thing that could be competed. The requirements aren’t simply payload goals and performance milestones, its a program designed to use the Shuttle’s industrial base to build a new rocket.

  • James

    Anyone who ever thought NASA should return to it’s roots and a Technology Development R&D Agency should note how well “Technology Monies’ gets treated. Chop Chop Chop, to pay for pork projects.

    NASA has a long history of this happening,and the future holds more of the same.

    Can’t spread that Tech and R&D money to porkers like you can program $
    ‘s

  • The organization didn’t identify those programs, but it’s a likely reference to the Space Launch System and Orion, which both receive increases in the bill versus the administration’s request.

    Very wise on the House’s part.

  • Coastal Ron

    The House budget confirms that Congress has no idea what the SLS is needed for yet, and that is a bad sign for both the SLS and the Orion.

    If nothing new is added to the Senate budget version, then we can write off this next year for any SLS-related mission or payload development, which means Congress as a whole is that much closer to finally realizing that those few in Congress that pushed for the SLS were wrong – there is no need for a government-owned HLV.

    • That’s like saying there is no place for a government owned aircraft carrier.

      • Dave Huntsman

        Negatron, they are not the same. There is no indication that a government-owned, government-designed, government-operated launch vehicle – of whatever size – is the right way to go. In fact, the evidence suggests otherwise, such as the two new launch vehicles developed under the COTS program that would have cost many times more to develop if they hadn’t been industry-led, including industry-operated. Launch vehicles are trucks; and government-owned, designed, and operated trucks, of whatever ilk, are not the way to go, particularly if one is including cost in the equation; but also time, and operability.

      • common sense

        I did not know that the Navy had no requirements and no missions for their carriers.

        Interesting. Odd but interesting.

        Oh well…

      • Robert G. Oler

        that is wind a rather silly statement even for you. There is a precise mission for the CVN’s and they are designed to that. It is a mission that no commercial counterpart can do except in an emergency and then not as well. If the CVN’s had amission like SLS…they would look like SLS…ie only a hull with no idea of what the upper works were like (ie the second stage) RGO

      • Coastal Ron

        amightywind said:

        That’s like saying there is no place for a government owned aircraft carrier.

        No wonder you are always confused.

        An aircraft carrier is a reusable vehicle that is dependent on it’s crew to project force around the world – something that has a long established and proven need.

        The SLS is an unmanned mass mover that has yet to have a proven need.

        Understand the difference?

      • Dick Eagleson

        More to the point, they would have no aircraft or helos, no self-defense weapons and nothing in the jet fuel bunkers.

  • vulture4

    Aircraft carriers are custom designs but there’s nothing similar on the market. Even the military does not design most of its vehicles; unless they have unique requirements they are bought commercial off-the-shelf, and when practical modifications of existing commercial aircraft meet military requirements that’s what they use as well. Interestingly, Congress has occasionally forced the military to buy equipment it did not want or need.

  • Fred Willett

    Actually getting back too NASA’s budget for a second. It’s worth noting that NASA’s budget has fallen to 5.5% of the global space economy.
    Compare this to a few years ago when I reported in this forum that NASA’s percentage had fallen to 9%.
    In a Brookings forum here
    http://spaceref.biz/space-policy/forum-the-future-of-the-us-space-program.html
    the point was made that commercial is moving away from looking to NASA for leadership in space. Commercial aims are different. Space mining, space tourism and so on.
    Science and exploration are not commercial concerns.
    And with the space economy growing at an amount around $10B a year NASA’s relevance is going to continue to slip.
    Not that NASA is going to disappear any time soon. It still does good work and punches well above it’s actual weight. But commercial space has moved on. No one’s waiting around for SLS anymore.

  • Dick Eagleson

    Science and exploration are not commercial concerns.

    They’re not intrinsically commercial concerns. But if an established commercial launch services provider (cough, SpaceX) with bargain-priced used boosters on its lot decides to run a President’s Day Sale on, say, 2 metric tonne payloads to the outer solar system, do you think a few major research institutes and/or research universities might cobble something together and take them up on the offer? I do. Once launch opportunities get cheap and frequent enough, I’m guessing a lot of researchers who can rustle up their own probe funding would geek to commercial providers in a hot minute.

  • Fred Willett

    If you’re poor scientist I’m sure SpaceX selling flights on F9 at $5-7M a pop is going to be very attractive. But I’m equally sure SpaceX is not going to care if it’s a science payload or some hair brained business man who is shipping empty bottles to space to be filled with vacuum and then sold on ebay.
    (I’ve actually heard this business plan, I think it’s a doozy. Better than pet rocks.)
    Bottom line: Science will still get done.
    It’s just that the model is different.

    • Dick Eagleson

      Precisely my point. Science will follow availability and affordability of supporting services such as – critically – launch.

  • Gary Warburton

    So if Obama can sign an executive order to halt pollution could he sign an executive order to fund commercial space to the full amount?

    • Fred Willett

      Short answer No.
      Long answer. He could pressure congress to pony up, after all they control the purse strings. But that would require him to expend a lot of political capital and that ain’t going to happen.

  • Henry Vanderbilt

    Only fragmentary results so far out of the Senate CJS Subcommittee markup today. SLS up $100m (from last year, and from the House CJS Appropriation) to $1.7b. (That’s not including something over $300m for SLS-related construction.)

    The markup set Commercial Crew to $805m – from $696m last year, $848m White House requested this year, and not broken out in the House CJS Appropriation.

    Senator Shelby mentioned the markup also provides for “greater accountability and budgetary transparency in Commercial Crew and future Commercial Cargo”, which from an opponent of both programs is ominous. This could be anything from minor additional paperwork to crippling imposition of full FARS Cost-Plus contracting. It’ll be interesting to see once the text is available. (Anyone seen it yet?)

    • Dick Eagleson

      Agreed that anything the Dark Lord of Alabama has to say is potentially ominous. But it could also be that it’s just a face-saving bit of rhetoric to cover the fact that he lost on cutting commercial crew back from the $805 million level. Perhaps, as I have speculated here more than once, the Orbital-ATK merger has changed the political alignments on these matters enough to give the upper hand to the good guys for a change. Once the money’s actually authorized and appropriated, I have no doubt the NASA functionaries in charge of commercial crew will be every bit as deft at actually getting and spending that money as their SLS counterparts have been. This could be good news.

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