I was telling someone yesterday that the scientific community appeared to be in “open revolt” against NASA’s planned cutbacks in space science funding. That assessment is only slightly hyperbolic: SPACE.com and Astronomy report on “NASA night” at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Houston. SPACE.com called the event “a powder-keg of emotion”, as NASA’s Mary Cleve and Andrew Dantzler played up the size of the planetary science budget for FY07 ($1.8 billion) while defending the cancellation of Dawn, indefinite delay of TPF, and a lack of a Europa mission. It’s clear there’s a serious disconnect between scientists, who were expecting more from the budget, and NASA, which is still trying to figure out why scientists are angry with a budget that still contains a substantial amount of money for research. After one person complained of a “science vacuum” at NASA headquarters, SPACE.com reported, Cleve responded, “I don’t understand why you’re so angry. We come to work every day and we work hard. We really care about this program.”
Astronomy reports that one congressman, John Culberson (R-TX), who sits on the House appropriations subcommittee whose jurisdiction includes NASA, circulated a letter at the meeting calling for the transfer of $1 billion in homeland security funding to NASA to offset science cuts. “Homeland Security has a surplus of at least $6.8 billion sitting in the U.S. Treasury that was intended for first responders but has not been spent in over 3 years,” he wrote, according to Astronomy. “Make Homeland Security spend $1 billion before we give them another … and use that $1 billion now where it is needed most for the nation’s security in the future – for scientific research and planetary exploration that NASA is now canceling.”
Interesting idea, though no one will take the suggestion seriously. I know one individual who has examined the budget of the Department of Homeland Security and told me there are tens of billions “unaccounted for”. For some reason, this has not become mainstream news, and he’s not sure why. I’m trying to figure out where $21 billion has gone for post-Katrina reconstruction, when so many along the Guld Coast claim nothing is really being done (they can’t get trailers and other critical services appear inadequate).
Truth is, NASA’s mission is deeply flawed because the White House has no vision for the exploration and exploitation of space that makes any sense. $16 billion is a lot of money to do a lot of good things in space. But when you sink it into wasteful, obsolete LEO-based systems, obviously things look dire. Another billion dollars won’t fix the problem.
When will people figure out that throwing cash at a problem won’t make it go away…
Phil said… “the White House has no vision for the exploration and exploitation of space that makes any sense”
Compared to what other President’s vision? The Clintonian vision of space dollars for idle Soviet weapon’s scientists? or Gore’ vision for $1 billion screen saver at L1? Administrations are usually characterized by the absence of a vision for the space program. The agency is usually neglected as a political liaibility
I think the White House and the Aldridge Commission provided a clearer and more profound vision for NASA than any other administration in the past forty years – and they actually manage to back it up with a large total NASA budget after seeing it axed throughout the 1990s.
I’m sure Griffin could leverage the entrepeneurial space sector to stretch the taxpayer dollars further and reach mission destinations sooner … but compared to the human spaceflight program pre-Columbia disaster I think the Vision for Space Exploration is a change is for the better.
John, I agree.
Dr. Griffin is stuck between a rock and a hard place. Apparently, he cannot much cut the Space Shuttle budget, he cannot retreat significantly from the VSE, and he needs to keep space scientists happy. Something had to give.
I think part of the problem regarding space science is a clear sense of entitlement to what are, after all, huge sums of money on the part of planetary scientists in particular, and space scientists in general. The space science percentage of the NASA budget has consistantly increased relative to the human percentage in last decade and continuing that was never in the cards unless human spaceflight was abandoned altogether. The latter is not going to happen (see Mr. Day’s article on that subject a few months ago in Space Review), and something like the VSE is probably the cheapest politically likely way forward. Space scientists are going to have to prioritize their missions and learn to live with a smaller number. One strategy would be to try to ride more on the exploration budget, e.g., the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and making sure there is good, high-quality geology done on the human flights to the moon.
More money to bail him out would be wonderful, but I wouldn’t hold my breath. . . .
— Donald
I was driving from Texas to Alabama yesterday and saw several hundred trailers on two separate trains in Laurel Mississippi. I also saw in at least three separate locations several hundred units.
I did see some trailers set up and people living there along Interstate 10 in Louisiana.
I also saw several hundred houses in Lake Charles La with the blue tarp material on them and no indication of any construction or repair.
Dennis
Right, let me see if I got this straight. We don’t have any long term propulsion program other than the SSME the Delta IV Medium and the IPD, we don’t have a credible space colonization capable launch vehicle, we don’t have any credible space colonization infrastructure in LEO or GEO, so let’s throw another 100 billion dollars at a mission to go back to the moon, something we already did for 20 billion back in the 60s.
Ok, got it, the 60s are back, except now, there is no money at all, are we are in debt up to our eyeballs with twice the global population and we have a carbon dioxide concentration of 380 ppm. Go Iraq! Go DOD! Go NASA!
Things are twice as good as they were in the 60s, now we got commies AND tourists, I mean terrorists. Who needs civil rights anyways.
Part of the disconnect between the NASA officials (who claim that science money is increasing) and scientists (who scream that they are being strangled) is that, while the overall science budget may be increasing slightly, many costs are being transferred in. This is sort of like Reagan reducing the unemployment rate by redefining “unemployed person” so that huge numbers of homeless people no longer qualified. Sure, the budget item labeled “science” is increasing slightly — but that budget line item is now being used to pay for more things. The net result is that research suffers.
A very obvious example of this is the result of full-cost accounting at NASA centers. Scientists at, for example, Goddard Space Flight Center were once (up to about three years ago) funded as part of a bulk line item for center support — but with the recent transition to full cost accounting, those scientists now compete for funding with the independent “soft-money” scientists in the direct research programs. This is the direct equivalent of a cut to those programs, because there are more scientists competing for the same pool of funds.
The problem is worse than a few percent. While the overall figures at the discipline level (including mission development and science) don’t look very distressing, the small research programs that are the bread-and-butter of university and research institute science are being cut drastically. The Living With A Star Targeted Research and Technology program this year experienced a large cut in available funds, so the funding ratio of new projects dropped from about one-in-three to less than one-in-ten. The Solar and Heliospheric Supporting Research and Technology program is expected to experience similar cuts. Perhaps most ominously, the Low Cost Access to Space program, which is intended to support development of new instrument technologies and ideas, is expected to fund ZERO out of about 20 proposals submitted (3-4 were expected). Contrary to public perception, major NASA missions almost never fly new, untested technology – it is too risky. The main way that new technologies are tested and introduced is via suborbital rocket flights in LCAS and similar programs.
The problem is that these fundamental research projects are only a small percentage of the NASA science budget, so proportionately small changes in the funding profile for major missions result in incredible swings in funding profile in the fundamental science programs. When scientists scream that their programs are getting the shaft, they are not grousing without reason. We are likely to see a major exodus of personnel and expertise from the fields of interest to NASA. That is particularly distressing at a time when American technical supremacy is shaky at best.
Cutting research and new-technology programs like LCAS so drastically is a major problem for the future — equivalent to spending next month’s rent money to pay for movie tickets today. If this trend continues, it is not unreasonable to suppose that the next wave of major discoveries will be published in Chinese, or even that the first scientists to walk on Mars will be speaking Hindi.
Craig, unfortunately (and in spite of what I may have sounded like), I do not disagree with your “big picture” here. Science in the United States is undoubtedly in trouble, and probably to our great future determent. However, as Greg pointed out in a later post, the problem is the way the Bush Administration is handling the United States’ overall budget, forcing all discretionary funding to fight over an ever smaller rate of increase (and in many areas outright cuts).
I believe “full cost accounting” applies to all of NASA, does it not? If so, setting aside whether it is a good idea, it probably causes the same disruption within other parts of NASA.
However, within the budget we have, it is clear that NASA has to prioritize. We should not — and almost certainly will not — give up on human spaceflight. The decisions have been made (both of which I disagree with) to keep the Shuttle flying until 2010 and to develop new Shuttle-derived launch vehicles rather than use the EELVs to get started on lunar missions. NASA has in effect traded short term higher costs for long-term efficiencies. Therefore, scientists need to figure out a way to survive through this cash crunch when NASA is attempting to maintain one human launch infrastructure while developing its replacement.
The key thing to keep in mind is that almost any other strategy to maintain human spaceflight will cost more, and therefore hurt scientists more. Keep the Shuttle flying and not develop something new, you keep the human space budget largely wasted in LEO while having to recertify and upgrade the vehicles at no doubt vast expense. Worse, you only put off the crunch we’re in now, you don’t solve it.
Or, forget the VSE and develop new-technology vehicles as many on this list advocate. Setting aside that strategy’s poor history, the up-front cost would almost certainly be higher than the VSE and any benefits (lunar flights, et al) would be pushed further into the future.
The details aside, the overall VSE strategy was chosen because it promises to get us beyond the Shuttle while minimizing the amount of money that needs to be spent now, and while getting relatively quick visible results. Short of abandoning Federal human spaceflight altogether — which is not in the political cards — any other strategy will almost certainly hurt science more.
— Donald
…the problem is the way the Bush Administration is handling the United States’ overall budget, forcing all discretionary funding to fight over an ever smaller rate of increase (and in many areas outright cuts).
I get a little tired of all this gratuitous Bush bashing. There has never been an administration, or a Congress, for which this tension didn’t exist, at least since the sixties when all the entitlement programs were put into place. NASA has always had pressure on it because it was discretionary, and one thing that has happened in the last couple years is that it at least is no longer lumped in with HUD and the Veterans Administration.
Rand, I believe that with the singular exception of civilian space policy, Mr. Bush’s Administration has been an almost unmitigated disaster. Whether I am right or not, does having that opinion mean that I am not entitled to have an opinion about space politics? There are plenty of people here who seem prepared to sing Mr. Bush’s praises. Do I, alone, have to keep my opinion to myself?
In general, I do try to keep my opinion of Mr. Bush down to a low roar. However, every so often the mess he is making of running just about every other aspect of the country does have an impact on the VSE and the tiny world of space policy.
— Donald
Rand, I believe that with the singular exception of civilian space policy, Mr. Bush’s Administration has been an almost unmitigated disaster. Whether I am right or not, does having that opinion mean that I am not entitled to have an opinion about space politics? There are plenty of people here who seem prepared to sing Mr. Bush’s praises. Do I, alone, have to keep my opinion to myself?
Donald, I never fail to be amused at the faux victimhood of people who, when merely criticized about their opinions, plaintively cry, “Censorship!” It’s sort of like the folks who think they’re being censored because the government’s unwilling to pay them to smear chocolate on their naked bods.
Am I not entitled to my opinions?
We all are entitled to our opinions, Rand, that was my point, not a cry of “censorship.” You were the one who appeared to claim that Mr. Bush should somehow be protected from the opinions of others.
I didn’t see anyone on your side of the fence complaining about all the “gratuitous Clinton bashing” of a few years ago. I’d be more sympathetic if Republicans had not been at least as guilty (I’m being generous here) of the same crime.
— Donald
You were the one who appeared to claim that Mr. Bush should somehow be protected from the opinions of others.
The only claim that I made was that that particular criticism of Bush was baseless. He doesn’t need my “protection” (he has a Secret Service detail for that). There is much to criticize Bush about, but yours didn’t fall in that category, in my opinion (do I really have to state that explictly?).