Let's Double NASA's Budget
Neil deGrasse Tyson to Jon Stewart: “Your Earth is spinning the wrong direction.”, io9
“Last night, Jon Stewart had astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson on The Daily Show to talk about the his new book, Space Chronicles: Facing the Ultimate Frontier. It’s a great interview, but the highlight of the conversation definitely came towards the end of the exchange, when Tyson made his case for increasing space funding, causing Stewart to respond with an impassioned call for Tyson’s presidential candidacy.”
I wish Dr. Tyson luck but doubt he will have much success. I am kind of
with Newt on this rather than with Norm Augustine. Newt wants to give
the space program a boost, but thinks the program could accomplish much
more if NASA got out of the way. Augustine just wanted to give NASA more
money to keep doing business the old way.
I am all for moving into space in a big way. But NASA’s record is not
good in recent years for doing any kind of strategic planning, building
public consensus and support, or for designing and building hardware. It
looks like in most of the big expensive projects, manned or unmanned,
the more you give the more they want, and the slower it goes and the
less we get. The latest, just this morning is SLS; the upper stage engines cannot really be ready in time for a 2017 test flight, and so we either have to delay (which is more money) or design in an alternative engine at least for the initial flights (which is more money)….
I don’t think its a problem with NASA’s workers. I think its a problem with NASA’s senior management. They have done so little with so much for so long that I don’t think they know how to manage to completion effectively or efficiently. When I look arund me I see a lot of dedicated workers who want to contribute but who are given meaningless tasks, or in may cases no tasks at all. There is no plan for what to do, what to produce, or what is needed. I am beginning to feel that the real goal is to stand down the workforce for the foreseeable future.
Get the managers out of the way. Let the workers do their jobs, take NASA back to is early days of R&D, make sure the workers and managers all have realistic functions, and put commercial industry on the hook to deliver. Then maybe Tyson and Newt would have a chance. Afterall, who realistically thinks that if NASA got the challenge and a boosted budget, that they wouldn’t be coming back in a few months asking for even more.
If we want to go back to the real early days, NASA should be on the hook to deliver the R&D and tech development that US industry needs to compete in the commercial market. NACA was created in 1915 to safe the nascent US aircraft manufacturing industry, which was getting crushed by foreign competition. If we forget that mission, space will be irrelevant because we won’t be able to afford it.
This is the best comment. Spot on.
A small part of this is … cost plus is a very useful tool. But when for 50 years you’ve used the hammer as your only tool …
We need a “reset” here. Then we can more selectively use it.
DogStar,
This is so true, and has been suggested many times before, yet I’ve see no indication that anybody official is taking steps to change the current mind set for R&D. I don’t consider it a contradiction to say that we must first go backward if we want to go forward.
Steve
Well if NASA is not taking any steps to change R and D we should be screaming like crazy because they are not doing their most important job!!!
I remember as doesn’t take a rocket scientistt screaming build fly back boosters and I was practically laughed out of here.
Only tinker said he thought some Russians were looking at it.
HEY NASA WE NEED R and D to make space flight affordable and commercial!
DO YOUR DAM JOB!!!!
Your boss
JOE TAX PAYER
Note: This post reflects the opinions of the writer only and does not presume to claim knowledge of any universal truths or proven approaches to space advocacy.
DTARS,
Yes sir. I agree with your thinking completely, and if I were an American citizen, I would be contacting each of my elected officials with regard to each major space issue that came up. I’d tell him/her about the things that I think are import that weren’t happening; the things that were happening but that I thought were mistakes; and the things that I thought were being done wrong.
And most important, I believe, is that with everything I said I would give reasons and, where possible, consequences, and make sure that I had my facts straight. I also believe that all statements must be qualified — whenever I was expressing opinion or offering a guess I would clearly say that that is what I was doing.
I can envision using a set of templates that serve as form letters, but try not to “feel” like form letters, so that each one sounds as sincere, yet as rational, as I could make it. There’s no doubt that this sort of “letter bombing” of ones Reps would take a fair amount of time on a regular basis to do effectively, but imagine if 10 times a year each of say, only 5,000 people (0.0016% of the US population) sent letters to three reps — you’d have 150,000 letters a year going to political power brokers spread right across the country. But don’t stop there; also write to all of the relevant committee and subcommittee members (about 10 more people) and you’re now hitting them with a lot more letters — 650,000+ letters a year! — but each person of our proposed 5,000 need only send a dozen or so letters ten times a year; that’s less than once a month.
Anyway, that’s only what I’d do. We each value our time differently.
As for R&D generally and building fly back boosters, specifically, I agree with you on both counts, but that’s just me. Everybody has their own priorities and interests, and their own opinions about which items will most and best affect the future. And we can’t ignore the fact that some people like what they like, because they like it, and for no other reason; in other words, their preferences/goals are completely emotional, not reasoned out. This, I think, is not a particularly useful situation in terms of moving space programs forward, but it needs to be realized and taken into account, because it can work either for us or against us, and we have to do our best to control which. Sometimes damage control is necessary to rebut and minimize the effects when it works against us, but I think that should be handled by the societies (SFF, NSS, etc.) and the big-name op ed writers, so that “clarification” looks more like it’s coming from an official point of contact instead of being a free for all.
“if NASA is not taking any steps to change R and D we should be screaming like crazy because they are not doing their most important job!!!“
This is important to you and this is important to me; but when you come right down to it, it’s really just an opinion, which makes it a tougher battle to fight. It’s also complicated, I think, by the fact that not everybody agrees with us (but that doesn’t make the other side’s opinion wrong). In fact, my gut feel is that, right or wrong, more and more self-proclaimed space advocates are turning away from R&D thinking; they’re becoming increasingly impatient for something exciting to happen, even if it’s been done before. And while disagreeing with them, I can understand their feelings; they’ve stuck by the cause and been believers, many for decades, many making career choices based on their commitment, and what have they been given in return? — too little reward and too much frustration. That has to make it hard to keep believing. And then you have the younger generation, listening to the previous generation doing a lot of grumbling, combined with the older generation who can still remember when…, and it all must be very confusing and uncertain for the young generation, who we hope will take our dreams and carry them forward. Where is their inspiration going to come from?
Should NASA be doing more R&D or less? And an equally important question: what should NASA R&D be concentrating on? With budgets being cut back significantly, can NASA afford to continue doing research in areas that don’t appear to be directly related to space? (It seems that it’s the perception of not being related that counts, rather than the fact.)
For what it’s worth, I think there’s a decision tree that we have to deal with which takes into account the various different possibilities of how, at a high level, an R&D program can be assessed, implemented, and then evaluated as to its worth (its worth to “space” vs. its economic worth to society vs. its worth in the opinions of the public). To some extent, the same tree could be applied to a mission program. Simplified, that decision tree might be reduced to a list of questions looking something like this (not necessarily in this order):
(I’ll use the word ‘item’ to refer to an R&D program under consideration.)
1) Does the item pertain to Exploration (science) vs. Development (resources/ROI) vs. Colonization?
This is important because this division is a strong factor in both people’s opinions and budget allocations.
2) Is the item currently of interest to the public and/or government?
3) Will the item be necessary for any known reason in the near/foreseeable future?
If neither 2 nor 3 is true, then the item is a No Go.
4) Does the item pertain to a single-goal missions vs. building infrastructure vs. unrelated to either?This is a question of both where the current/future priorities are and the preferences of the majority, much like item 1 above.
5) Is the item a required investment in the future as opposed to a “Do It Now” issue, and why?
This is almost always a subjective question, making it harder to resolve.
6) Are the tax payers and the government willing to invest in long-term plans and programs for this item, or is it a short-term-only task for political gain?
7) Are there various technical approaches to attacking the item that have yet to be debated?
8) What are the identifiable risks (human safety, economic) associated with the item and can they be reduced, at what cost?
9) If the item were undertaken, what would be the division of labor between NASA and industry?
10) If the item were undertaken, what would be the division of labor between the NASA centers?
This is, of course, only a partial list, and we can see that every question in the list is open to debate, some not at all easy to resolve, and collectively a complex obstacle course ready and waiting to trap the unwary. Personally, I believe in stressing the importance of the R&D concept, with a short list each of examples that paid off well in the past and would likely make a big difference in the future — in other words, sell them on R&D in instead of harping on a specific item, or you’ll have to resell R&D for each item you pursue.
“I remember as doesn’t take a rocket scientistt screaming build fly back boosters and I was practically laughed out of here.“
I don’t think many of us laughed; I think most people said nothing, which I guess is probably worse, since that suggests that they dismissed the idea of fly back boosters out of hand. I seem to recall you and I having a few back-and-forths about it. To my mind there are two separate issues here: 1) whether to use fly back boosters; and 2) how to do it (there’s more than one way to beat Clem at poker).
Here at NASA Watch we have some people who have worked with and/or studied the relevant technologies for many years, and some who haven’t. Sometimes, I think, some of the former tend to be a little unforgiving of the latter for not having that same knowledge. This is unfortunate and reflects on them rather than the people they talk down to. I can’t speak for anyone else, but when I discover (or better still, think of) an idea, right or wrong, that I haven’t encountered before but turns out to be old news, it’s still new to me, and that’s exciting (or at least interesting), and I don’t let anybody take that away from me. If I knew everything that everybody else knows, I wouldn’t be hanging around NASA Watch to have fun. I’d be making big money somewhere and worrying about what wine to order with dinner.
All in all, I’d say stick to your guns. For what it’s worth, I think you’re on the right track. I would rather you advocate getting NASA back to sensible, valuable R&D than suggesting getting them out of the way. We need NASA. We need everyone we can get who’s willing to play nice with others. In the long run, it won’t be the US, or Russia, or China who conquers space; it will be the human race. So, DTARS, I invite you to do like me — keep believing in yourself and don’t let the know-it-alls grind you down.
Steve
PS: I haven’t forgotten that other matter; I’ve been tied up with a family emergency and I will get back to you. And I sure wish we’d hear from Tinker.
Steve
Thank you very much for your post it good to know I’m on the right track. It’s late here so I’ll write more later.
First where did Tinker do his radio show couldn’t we find out how he is through that. Does any one at NASA watch know his name. I do miss his creativity and his bold out look.
Also I’m very impatient for missions too. I very much want to see a mars landing in my life time but it is very obvious that to repeat Apollo or a apollo mars version will not work. To see that some approach is not sustainable only to repeat it is outrageously absurd.
It is easy to sell the public that SLS could do this or that with enough money and sadly I believe it will almost get built. And sadder if it put foot prints on mars only to leave space unreachable for another 50 to hundred years.
I recall you saying that you don’t think that we should depend on Spacex. Well I see no better offer at this time. I so wish them luck.
They are our only hope 🙂
Anyway the next time I hand throw some skeet up in the air take a shot at it!! Lol No fun if you don’t hear the shots, hit or miss.
About new ideas not having any Internet at the cabin many of my ideas come from here and me. Tinker once said sometimes you can be more creative if you don’t know all the facts. Anyway I do have fun thinking junk up. Have dreamed Space since 1st grade mostly alone. So fun to know there are others out there that understand.
Newt wants to give the space program a boost, but thinks the program could accomplish much more if NASA got out of the way.
He wants NASA to minimally oversight the process/operations/means and have business compete for prizes to bring down the structural costs of aerospace operations/products/means.
Augustine just wanted to give NASA more money to keep doing business the old way.
He was asked how to make things work better, under the rules of how they work already – “the old way”. Read the charter of the committee – he did what he was asked. And arrived at an obvious conclusion.
The latest, just this morning is SLS; the upper stage engines
cannot really be ready in time for a 2017 test flight, and so we either
have to delay (which is more money) or design in an alternative engine
at least for the initial flights (which is more money)….
Because back in 2005/6, a decision was made involving Congress, that led to selecting a very long path for a very expensive engine, that in order to be afforded, needs to be financed incrementally (again to please Congress).
The point of the alternative stage is again money saving, to reapply an already existing stage as a placeholder for initial flights, so to make the schedule/budget work.
This whole nonsense is a shibboleth to fake a smaller budget over a longer time, to make an already hideously expensive vehicle appear less hideous than it will work out to be. Some of us fear this hides another Webb like budget shortfall, where SLS will work out to be 4-8x bigger end-to-end.
There is no plan for what to do, what to produce, or what is needed.
Shuttle was done mostly by Apollo/Saturn folks. They retired. Current workforce has never done an “all up new” vehicle(s) before – they don’t have the experience. Gaining it is costly/slow. This doesn’t mean they aren’t talented – they are. But if you’ve never done a once in a lifetime thing like this – you are compromised.
We got here because we screwed around too long after Shuttle to do any other HSF from the ground up – we put everything into Shuttle and lost maintaining the proficiency of “all up new” experience. Our last shot at it was X-38, and because stupid Bush wanted to save a lousy $50M we lost $10B+ (and rising) of critical experience.
Get the managers out of the way.
“Meet the new boss – same as the old boss”. The managers are needed, they are twisted and demented by the means they are made to function by an absurd situation. You get rid of them but not the situation that compels their behavior, and you just get a different crew that after a while works the same as before.
Are there “bad guys” ? Sure. Everywhere. But ask yourself this – why do things end up the same, year after year, when the rotating door of people keeps cycling them through. Well, you might blame all NASA, do away with it, make a new one, and still get the same result. What then?
Perhaps it is how we screw around with NASA … in the first place?
“They have done so little with so much for so long that I don’t think they know how to manage to completion effectively or efficiently“
Or were the wrong people for the job to begin with.
I salute you for distinguishing between effectively and efficiently. So many people seem to think they mean the same thing.
Brian, I agree with you, except for the part about “Get the managers out of the way“. Program management is very much a necessary evil, but it must be assigned to people who know how to do it properly. You can not simply promote people into PM positions as a reward for long service or in lieu of paying him/her more money; they absolutely must have the necessary knowledge (training) and experience or they are guaranteed to fail. (Never forget the Peter Principle.)
It should be obvious to those higher up that if you have so many failed and descoped programs on your record, you soon end up with PMs who have never had to work through an end game and exit strategy for a major program.
Steve
Tyson is right, of course, but it’ll never happen. We have the dumbest people running our government. NASA is nothing more than a jobs program to them.
NASA’s program managers and their lack of fiscal discipline isn’t helping things either.
We have the dumbest people running our government
No – even dumber people are those who voted for this mess because they were too self absorbed / self interested to see past the end of their noses.
NASA is nothing more than a jobs program to them.
The really good ones leave for private industry. The worst hang on because they fear there is no place else to go. Bad jobs program caused by idiotic policy that attempts to make things successively worse. Not a rational policy to make things better.
“Yankee can do” should mean that we make it work better not worse.
NASA’s program managers and their lack of fiscal discipline isn’t helping things either.
… because they do what Congress tells them, orders them to do. Straitjacketed in certain cases. Convoluted in others. Tail chasing in others. No it doesn’t have to be this way.
NOoC,
I’d say that your three responses to the above comments by SgtBeavis are right the money, and each of them, I would have thought, was fairly obvious. But so many people will outright reject them, without any serious thought, because either 1) it requires them to personally make an effort, and/or 2) they’d rather, as a reflex reaction, blame anything and everything on their personal favorite target(s), often whether it makes any kind of sense to do so or not (they’re worse than biased; they’re prejudiced).
Steve
“But so many people will outright reject them…”
A totally parochial attitude.
Meaning those people you speak of – not you Mr Steve.
Mr. C,
Theirs, his, or mine?
Steve
“…causing Stewart to respond with an impassioned call for Tyson’s presidential candidacy.”
I’d vote for him!
Our country is looking for vision. What we have, in office and running for it, does not qualify.
No its not. It should be, but its not. We elect narcissists, because we are too interested in looking in the mirror to have a vision of anything but ourselves – what we want to see. As a people.
And those bits of leadership that “happen”, often by accident, may be vision or hallucinations.
The one we have in office doesn’t believe in certain visions, because he knows how easily its manipulated for gain, thus mostly its “client control” he’s doing on the behalf of his customer the voter. He can’t control the arsenal system monster and he knows it.
The others are fools of differing stripes, some more knowledgeable, some are more clueless, some are more pandering … none either see a point or can control the monster either, they just fake it.
The electorate has to change first – this is the hard truth. Yet it’s the electorate that gets us these “leaders”, or better put “anti-leaders” in the first place. They don’t wish to be led, they just want a team/issue to win.
How
about 3 or 4 healthy centers? Then you wouldn’t have to double NASA budget.
Some real accomplishments would, or could, be achieved then.
Alas
that will never happen. NASA is a job center for civil servants.
Grandpa
Dave … A retired, and tired, NASA contractor from the Obama-cancelled Constellation
program. 🙂
… long standing problems with leadership made worse successively with OSP/ESAS/CxP and likely also SLS.
Lessening the civil servants by shrinking NASA made things worse not better. The issues with civil servants originate with the wrangling over budgets/policy in DC – the blood sports battle damage that politicos inflict is temporary to them but permanent and accumulative to the civil service “automatons” they think they can twist into pretzels w/o regard for consequences. You reap what you sow.
As to contractors, they are another kind of pawn here. They get set up, and change of scoped to death, then blamed for not being omniscient even though they knew what they were being asked to do … wasn’t what they should do. Because they are paid to do it that way … until they are canceled … because they did it that way.
You can’t fix this except at the source – the American electorate. And then you’ll have to spent 20 years scrubbing NASA/contractors clean of all the debris caused by temporary political expediency.
Which is terribly permanent.
Double NASA’s annual budget? Congress, the White House and NASA’s human spaceflight aerospace-industrial post-Apollo complex have already managed to squander decades of spending that is in aggregate what Tyson is asking for.
… because everybody has different agendas for said budget.
I still remember listening to former congressman Robert Walker say basically the same thing at STAIF in 2004.
The US saw its largest economic growth during the last 60 years when the Federal government was spending the most on its civilian space program. During the Kennedy and Johnson Apollo development years where NASA spending reached as high as $33 billion a year in today’s dollars, US annual economic growth was 5.1 to 5.2%. US economic growth fell dramatically, down to 3% annually, after Nixon substantially reduced spending on NASA.
US economic growth has never been above 3.6% since the US began to dramatically reduce its investment in civilian space technology and during the Bush years, annual economic growth was about 2%.
Government investment in scientific and technological advancement doesn’t make a country poorer, it makes a country richer!
Marcel F. Williams
Well said, Keynes was right. Bernanke said just today that the Fed can do no more to spur growth, and it’s up to Congress to act if we want to grow our way out of the fiscal mess we’re in.
To grow your way out don’t you need to do truly useful things? Or does throwing billions at a giant rocket that you can’t afford to fly help????
The SLS/MPCV budget is barely $3 billion a year out of the $8.4 billion a year manned spaceflight budget that Obama inherited from the Bush administration.
And the cost of an SLS flights will depend on which configuration is utilized once the expendable RS-25 engines are ready and the upper stage is ready and how frequently SLS components are launched and for what missions.
And there are several types of recurring missions you can use the SLS for,both for NASA and private industry.
Marcel F. Williams
Wrong. The budget is faked lower by segmenting it and phasing it portions in/out over scheduled time. This implies perfect scheduling, execution, and “no surprises”.
This is exactly how we got JWST overruns.
And how we can appear to make something cheaper while actually driving up costs astronomically. It is this idiocy that we must avoid as a country.
Marcel,
I think you’re entirely correct about this, but be careful, because it’s an argument that’s too easy to knock down without some support, a chain of cause and effect that clearly takes us from the start (spending on space increasing/decreasing) to the end (change in economic growth). And it’s more convincing if you also show the converse, that reducing spending reduces economic health. Without details to illustrate the trail of consequences it could just as easily be argued that it was only coincidence, or that both situations were consequences of the same (some other) cause.
As space advocates, I think we need to present important issues like this in such a way that the listener/reader can not help but reach the right conclusion if he/she follows your presentation logically from start to finish. If each step includes the why/how its cause results in its effect, then no one can logically argue it except by trying to change the subject, which automatically puts them in a weaker position.
The thing that I’ve unfortunately found in the past when discussing this space spending vs. national economic growth issue with people is that it’s only obvious after someone see the light. Before it clicks into place, too many people see it as unconnected and confusing; not at all obvious. So, we have to lead them by the hand, step by step, without ever seeming to be talking down to anyone.
That’s been my experience, for whatever it’s worth.
Steve
Double the budget? …. How about cut it and every other agencies in half until our fiscal house is in order! Our children and grandchildren deserve a stable, firm foundation; not a glorified house of cards.
You speak insanely sir! What nonsense is this!
Lololol
DTARS.
I would say it is exactly the kind of insane nonsense we very much need.
Steve
Well said. This country has systemic debt structure. It is unsustainable. Substantial cuts are coming either through planning or collapse. The only wise course of action is to plan for a smaller NASA with refocusing it on R&D as others in this thread have suggested.
Countries that have practised the most austerity during the Great Recession have had the lowest rates of growth.
Basically, the economy contracts further, reducing revenue faster than you can cut spending, meaning that the budget never achieves the surplus necessary to pay down debt, while prolonging the downturn itself.
Austerity works during a boom, to reduce inflation from full employment. And at that time, spending is substitutional and/or inflationary rather than expansionary, because the production capacity is already fully utilised.
… as long as the budget is spent extremely wisely this is true. Because you change the rules and “power out” with economic growth.
What is the issue here is “smart vs. stupid” austerity / affluence. This difference infuriates people.
Keynes assumed that when you got into trouble, it was because stupid, wasteful affluence was replaced by stupid, mindless austerity that made things even worse, by compounding the fat accumulation with a low protein diet to starve the muscle so you couldn’t work off the fat.
So he doesn’t want the starvation, and the unsaid implication is that if you add risk with “doubling down” on budget, you’ll do so with extreme care.
Friedman economics assumes that any use of budget works by human nature just as bad/stupid as before, thus austerity is the only control that after enough damage, compels people to duty to get the desired result to avoid any damage.
Since in economics, you just describe the net causal effect, no one ever raises the “smart vs stupid” issue. But its in general what the whole flap over liberal/conservative is about.
The liberals get trapped by their willful ignorance of human nature, while the conservatives get destroyed by the insidious poison of reactionary impulses they fall ignorantly in thrall to. Both hate to acknowledge own weaknesses in “their perfect worlds”.
Pick your poison and understand how it can backfire to make you your own worst enemy.
You can make any system work if you attend to the details.
Thus, the problem is … attention to details.
When I said…
“Countries that have practised the most austerity during the Great Recession have had the lowest rates of growth.”
…I wasn’t speaking to theory.
It doesn’t work in practice, Austrians be damned.
Dogstar3
NASA doing R and D for commercial ?
A while back when I was flying one of my thought rockets to give y’all a little target practice.lol I was flying a 747 jet engine and a throttleable Merlin engine. Since Steve had said that jets and rockets don’t fly in the same environments and that the jet engines craped out do to lack of air pressure in front of the engine. I was wondering how much R and D testing has been done on how much fuel can be saved if you can gently throttle a rocket engine at just the right amount as you fly higher(staying in your jet engines pressure sweet spot).
How much benefit can you get?
What are you limiting factors?
Has much testing been done on this?
Aren’t throttlable rocket engines kinda new?
Or did this kind of work stop when Kennedy said let’s fly to the moon on SLS
Anyway it seems to me just like you advance/vary the timing on a car engine to get a wider torque range.
That you can fly your jet engine much longer and maybe save tons of rocket fuel.
Making a horizontal winged launch and fly back booster that has it’s jet engines still on board for controlled runway landing, an affordable idea.
Looking for a rocket scientist
DTARS
And waste twice as much as NASA is wasting today? I have a better idea – shut it down adn save 100%.