Morning After Reaction To NASA Budget

More saluting among the bureaucrats. This was released by ESMD AA yesterday. Glad to hear that he sees the "good news" in all of this. NOT

"Dear Exploration Colleagues,

Today the President released his FY2011 Budget Request, and with it a bold, new focus for NASA. The extremely good news is that the Agency is receiving a plus up of $6B over the 5 year budget horizon, an extraordinary show of confidence in NASA in these challenging budget times. Many other agencies will be taking cuts, and the President is choosing to invest in NASA, in large part due to the capabilities and commitment of all of you. I’ll tell you more about what the President has in mind for us in a moment, but first I want to focus on Constellation.
The President’s budget cancels the Constellation Program, including Ares I and V, and Orion. This is obviously a big hit to all of us, me included, as we have all worked countless hours to make this program successful, often under difficult circumstances. Charlie Bolden and I both understand that this will be a difficult transition, but it is one we are committed to making smartly, working with our stakeholders in Congress, and with all of you. For the time being, Jeff Hanley and I need you all to focus on the near-term milestones we will continue to work towards, particularly Program PDR, as we begin planning for the Program transition. We will be putting teams together to examine the smartest way to transition from Constellation to the new programs the President’s Budget outlines for us. I think many of you will find these new programs to be exciting, forward looking, and innovative. And we will need your expertise as we move forward to plan and eventually execute these programs. I especially want to thank Jeff Hanley and the Constellation team for the dedication and hard work on this program.
The civil servants should all feel completely secure that we will have exciting, meaningful work for all of you. You should know that the Agency will be working with Congress to move to a unified labor account in FY2011. That will ease some of the challenges of the transition for civil servants. Of course, the situation is more uncertain for our contractor colleagues, and we will be working expeditiously to put plans in place to provide as much certainty as we can and open up the opportunities that will exist in our new portfolio. Again, remember, NASA’s budget is increasing, so there will be new opportunities. But I understand that this transition will be especially challenging.
So let’s talk briefly about the new Programs the President envisions for us. I think it’s fair to describe his strategy as a shift from building off of current capabilities to developing new, enabling capabilities and technologies that will allow us to move farther into the solar system as expeditiously as we can. To that end, the President has proposed 4 new activities within ESMD, and has increased our FY11 budget to 4.62 billion dollars, about half a billion dollars over the FY10 enacted levels. First, there is a robotic exploration precursor activity that will send robotic scouts to destinations of future human exploration to test technologies and capabilities, including the Moon, near Earth objects, and Mars and its environs. Next, there are two new technology development activities, one focused on heavy lift and propulsion, and one focused on other advanced space capabilities that we will develop and demonstrate through small and large scale space missions. Over the years, I have personally advocated for many of the technologies and test flights that are outlined in this budget. Finally, there is a commercial crew program that asks us to work with our partners in the aerospace industry in creative ways to launch humans into low earth orbit. In addition to these new ESMD activities, there are increases in our Human Research Program and other new or expanded activities across the Agency, including expanded ISS utilization, enhanced climate change missions and research, and expanded investment in green aeronautics and next generation air transportation systems.
I hope you’ll take a few moments and contemplate what these new programs could enable for NASA as we move forward. We will continue sending humans into space, and we have been asked to position the Agency to lead the charge beyond Earth orbit with forward looking and innovative technologies. It is not the Program we have all been working so hard on, but it will capitalize on all we have learned, and all we have achieved. I recognize that things will be difficult in the near term as we move forward. And there will be a lot of discussion about all this. But the President through his plan, the NASA Administrator, and I are all asking you to work with us as we seek to enable a NASA for the 21st Century. I look forward to working with all of you as we do.
Respectfully,
Doug Cooke
Associate Administrator, ESMD

Some of us are beyond the mourning (because we knew this day was coming based on Obama's first stated wish for NASA transformation), and now we are watching what the other hand is doing in this magic show. Here is some info from contract release C10-004:

The selected teams and awards are:
Blue Origin will receive $3.7 million
The Boeing Company will receive $18 million
Paragon Space Development Corporation will receive $1.4 million
Sierra Nevada Corporation will receive $20 million
United Launch Alliance will receive $6.7 million

Questions arise naturally:

1) What was the criteria used for apportionment of these awards? (i.e. why are SNC's and Boeing's awards disproportionately large compared to the others?)
2) What are the actual deliverables associated with these contract awards? When you figure that lawyers and business ops are also paid for out of these pots-o-gold, you wonder what actual space engineering the GOV is planning to get for these sums.

Forgive my skepticism, but 48 years of life for this engineer has taught him to be wary of government when they are giving out money without clearly defined deliverables.

I think this is the greatest idea ever. It ruffles a lot of feathers. Yes, he may lose Florida and Texas next term. But as he put it, he'd rather make unpopular decisions and be a good one term president than a mediocre two term president.

Someone mentioned here that this is far closer to the spirit of the VSE than ESAS or Constellation ever were and I agree wholeheartedly. VSE was the way to go, a great policy, and I'm glad to see we're gonna follow it even if not by name.

Well, what did Obama expect? A cakewalk? There's little here for the public to go 'oohhh, ahhh' anymore than before but, on the other hand, there's an audible 'CHA-CHING!' from a few self-proclaimed (until proven otherwise) 'commercial human spaceflight' enterpreneurs.

Keith, when can we expect fair NASA criticism from you should this 'change in direction' fail? Perhaps six years from today (Feb 2. 2016) if by then there is still no certified U.S. human spaceflight capabilities? What about cost overruns, perhaps when costs reach $8B total which is pretty much where Constellation/Ares is?

This is, I believe, a fair question for us skeptics to be asking.

When the dust settles, I think people will come to realize that operations and development costs of Shuttle and Constellation has always consumed NASA for years. Neither Congress or successive Presidential administrations have been willing or able to break thru that impasse and fund technology development that would be exploitable for future missions. Now at last, NASA is exiting the operations business (other than ISS) and has the proposed budget to do so. All of the readers of this site know that the lunar program was falling further behind every day. We would never had ever gotten there under the previous approach. There will be lost jobs in this transition, that is likely to be true. But we have no choice but to forge ahead. This is a new Space Age. Let us embrace it.

Frank,

I respect your opinions (and I really mean it) but there's just too little of substance for many of us to 'embrace' with a price tag of $20B/year.

If this is the best we can do for the money then, quite frankly, it's time to shrink the agency down to an 'ESA size' of $4B/yr, which is more than enough to sustain a decent number of robotic space missions, pay for a few humans to ride on Soyuz, and 'motivate' a future generation into low-paying, dead-end, and fickle aerospace jobs. The delta-cost from $4 to $20B is not worth its meager results.

Ratings are Blue (very high level of confidence), Green, White, Yellow, and Red (very low level of confidence). First color is for the evaluation of the Commercial Crew Capability Maturation Plan, while the second color is for the Company Information Evaluation. If there's values in parentheses, it's what the final evaluation was after due diligence by the company.

ATK: yellow / white
Andrews: white / white
Ball: green / white; (green / green)
Bigelow: yellow / green
Blue Origin: white / green; (green / green)
Boeing: green / green; (blue / green)
Firestar Engineering: yellow / yellow
HMX: yellow / yellow
Oceaneering: yellow / yellow
Odyssey Space Research: red / white
Orbital Outfitters: white / white
Orbital Sciences: white / white
Paragon: green / green; (green / blue)
PlanetSpace: yellow / white
Sierra Nevade: white / green; (green / blue)
SpaceX: white / white; (green / green)
ULA: green / blue; (green / blue)
XCOR: green / green; (green / green)

Link:

http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=20268.30

In case anyone wants to see today's press conference.

Link(NASA Enters A New Era of Innovation and Discovery):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9YvIESqDUk

Can anyone answer these questions. The 1200hrs of WT time that Sierra Nevada mentions on its web page for the HL-20 (Langley version I assume) or the Dream Chaser? Or do the two vehicles have the same mold line? And if the WT is only for the HL-20, is the time mentioned for the final version of the HL-20, or does that include previous versions of the Langley design?

Also, How much work was done on integrating the HL-20 onto the launcher in regards to aerodynamics and loads? A few years ago there was an SBIR (AF04-038) solicitation to design a large fairing for a space mirror to be launched by an Atlas or Titan. ATA Engineering's fairing design can be found on this web page: http://www.ata-e.com/brochures/ and Nielsen Engineering and Research's design can be seen here http://www.nearinc.com/pubs/AIAA-2007-361-540.pdf And, as far as I know the mirror was round. Some of the issues were to keep the stability and bending in spec and to minimize the vibrations for the rocket and payload. The two fairings have very unique shapes.

And the HL-20 on top of the stack may cause aerodynamic instability/flutter at transonic speeds.

So why is this design better than the SpaceX design? I'm assuming the SpaceX design is based on their dragon capsule, but I have no idea.

OK, I guess this also puts me in the skeptical column.

I’ll admit, I may have been in panic mode with the release of the NASA budget for FY2011. It’s not because I was a fanboy of the Constellation program of record. It’s been argued to be the savior of exploration and the death of it with equal justification an fervor; but it was the only concrete path that we had out of LEO. Maybe what was being proposed was a new direction. So I went back to the Fact Sheet and supporting document the White House released yesterday and the administrator’s statement. Even with it’s support of commercial crew transport to the ISS, (which is the perfect place to get commercial entities more involved in the design, construction and operations of HSF) this budget is a huge step backwards for US human exploration beyond LEO.
Let’s take a look at a few examples:
Research and development to support future heavy-lift rocket systems…….
There has been tons of research done on heavy lift with the latest available technologies. I don’t think 5 more years of study is going to bring significant ROI by lowering launch costs significantly. It’s well past time to pick a concept and stick with it.
A vigorous new technology development and test program that aims to increase the capabilities and reduce the cost of future exploration activities.
$1.2 billion for transformative research in exploration technology that will involve NASA, private industry, and academia, sparking spin-off technologies and potentially entire new industries.
Sorry but there are no specifics here and from the wording seems to be a $1.2 billion payoff to get Boeing, LockMart and others to fall in line.
..create the 21st Century launch facilities and infrastructure needed at Kennedy Space Center, transforming the facility to more effectively support future NASA, commercial, and other government launches.
Call me cynical but this sounds like the razing of the VAB and Launch Complex 39 with nothing to replace them.
From Bolden’s statement we get this:
Next, the president has laid out a dynamic plan for NASA to invest in critical
and transformative technologies. These will enable our path beyond low Earth orbit through development of new launch and space transportation technologies, nimble construction capabilities on orbit, and new operations capabilities. Imagine trips to Mars that take weeks instead of nearly a year; people fanning out across the inner solar system, exploring the Moon, asteroids and Mars nearly simultaneously in a steady stream of “firsts;”
When a nation can’t even launch a person into low earth orbit, (which after the last shuttle flight the US will not be able to do for an indeterminate amount of time) it’s strains belief to hear stories like, “ people fanning out across the inner solar system,”.
“Transformative technologies” sounds like Bolden want to start our trip into the solar system on the Queen Marry 2 instead of the Mayflower. What is a solid goal of these technologies? Bring launch costs down by a factor of 10? Is it reasonable to expect to bring Mars transit time down to a few weeks anytime in the near future?
Advancements in human space flight must be made by evolution not revolution. It isn’t glamorous but small steady improvement in rocket engine design, materials and procedures are what will start us on our path out of LEO.
I believe that without an over arching goal and a reasonable time frame these individual projects would be picked off in future budget years to go to other programs or agencies or deficit reduction.

"Of course, the situation is more uncertain for our contractor colleagues, and we will be working expeditiously to put plans in place to provide as much certainty as we can and open up the opportunities that will exist in our new portfolio."

Translation = All you support service contractors that pulled the long hours, spent time away from your families, and worked just as hard along side your CS teammates, resumes are in order......

The real world sucks. If only everyone could work for the post office, we'd all be secure and comfortable.

I just cannot bring myself to believe that NASA should be a perpetual welfare agency for nerds. Was that in the charter or something? Are all you guys just really, really happy with the minimal (but expensive) progress in HSF over the last 40 years?

The moaning and teeth-gnashing here is just amazing.

And yes, I work for a company with NASA (and all sorts of other government) contracts. But I'm also a taxpayer and would rather see my taxes used intelligently at NASA, not shoveled into a black hole like Constellation.

"I just cannot bring myself to believe that NASA should be a perpetual welfare agency for nerds."

I think you're assuming most of the people that work on Constellation aren't hard working. Very few criticisms have been aimed at the engineers, but rather the overall concept and management. Place your criticisms where they belong.

"And yes, I work for a company with NASA..."

So, YOU want to get paid from taxpayer dollars that comes through NASA, but you don't want NASA civil servants to be paid. Isn't that a 'little' hypocritical?

Predictions:

All Republicans in the Senate will oppose this new NASA direction and nearly all Republicans in the House will also oppose this program. And most if not all House Democrats in the states of Florida, Texas, and Alabama will also oppose this program. And I think the president will end up compromising with Congress on this issue.

I don't think this Congressional opposition will result in the return of the Ares architecture and maybe not even a return to the Moon. But I do think there will be continued funding for the Orion and finally some serious funding for an HLV that can launch an Orion plus cargo and unmanned payloads (Something like the Jupiter/DIRECT).

Marcel F. Williams

You sure can make a lot of assumptions on small data, giskard03. I didn't impugn the work habits of anyone. If I did, then you quote me, or sit back down.

Maybe you can understand it like this: The purpose of NASA is not to fund a specific number of jobs; it is to DO a job.

Read and comprehend before you post.

I don't think Punder meant anybody's lazy, just that everybody should feel some of the risk. In industry, we are constantly facing win/lose moments, joy or despair. And we are very familiar with the risk of pouring your all into a project or proposal and then getting canceled or not selected. My condolences, because it sucks. Welcome to our world. Uncertainty abounds.

If you've never felt your job or your center's workshare was threatened until now, then Punder's use of the word "welfare" is appropriate --i.e. insulation from risk. _Of course_ it's not fair that you feel the blade now -- it almost never is. But it wouldn't be fair -- or good for NASA in the long run -- if you were perpetually and structurally insulated from it, especially by dumping all the risk on industry. FWIW, that's how it often feels further down the food chain.

"I don't think this Congressional opposition will result in the return of the Ares architecture and maybe not even a return to the Moon. But I do think there will be continued funding for the Orion and finally some serious funding for an HLV..."

That's exactly what I'm hoping for. What Obama is proposing has a lot of good merits, but not actively funding an HLV is trapping us in LEO for the forseeable future. I also hope Orion survives, although 'trimming' it up would be advantageous. We really don't need much more R&D for a heavy lift... plenty of options have been explored, and many are adequate to get the job done (Ares V lite or Direct-like/SDLV - except sidemount).

I really don't want an HLV to go commercial for 3 reasons:

1. Current commercial companies don't have the tooling or experience for anything bigger than something like the Delta 4 'Heavy'

2. There's a good chance if we pursued an HLV, it'd be a SDLV, and contracting that out would result in a lot of loss of knowledge and experience that already exists within NASA...

3. MSFC has a workforce already assembled to design and build Ares, and management issues aside, it'd be a shame not to take advantage of that knowledge base and experience, and just let them dissolve into other industries...

To Lowly contractor,

I realise this is a USA website talking about NASA. All the same, thanks a bunch for the "ESA-size" derogatory comments from an "ESA-size" engineer.

With this 4B€/year (more like 6 B$), ESA has built the one place on the ISS where real science can actually be done, the Colombus module, and will take its share in servicing the ISS, likely at a time when the US won't. The "few robotic missions" have landed further than any US or Russian missions have (Halley Comet or Titan). The rocket developed in Europe are market leaders in the commercial world, in which NASA appears so keen to enter now.

Just for your information, in Europe it's actually hard to get some people coming to work for ESA because Aerospace companies have extremely good pay and conditions. None of the people I know who work for ESA programs would describe themselves as in low-paying, dead-end, or fickle jobs.

My own experience is in fact that one reason ESA uses less money is possibly because it is way more efficient. In every international meeting and project I've been it's consistenly been a ratio of 2:1 for US/EU engineers to do the same thing. I did a few of these and this is corroborated by my peers.

Maybe you should think a bit more before deriding everything that's not a bloated self-serving project to nowhere like Constellation was as was obvious to anybody in the business.

Wouarnud.