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Budget

House Approps Take on NASA's FY 2013 Budget (Update)

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
April 26, 2012
Filed under , , ,

House Appropriations Commitee FY 2013: Commercial crew (excerpt)
“The Committee believes that many of these concerns would be addressed by an immediate downselect to a single competitor or, at most, the execution of a leader-follower paradigm in which NASA makes one large award to a main commercial partner and a second small award to a back-up partner. With fewer companies remaining in the program, NASA could reduce its annual budget needs for the program and fund other priorities like planetary science, human exploration or aeronautics research.”
House Appropriations Commitee FY 2013: Planetary Science (excerpt)
“The Committee’s recommendation of $1,400,000,000 seeks to address programmatic areas where the Administration’s proposal is most deficient in meeting the decadal survey’s goals while also ensuring that the program, as a whole, maintains balance among program elements.”
Keith’s note: According to tweets by Bill Adkins and Marcia Smith mark-up has been completed (with no changes to the NASA portions) and the bill will be the first appropriations bill sent to the House floor on 8 May 2012.

NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.

22 responses to “House Approps Take on NASA's FY 2013 Budget (Update)”

  1. Andrew_M_Swallow says:
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    It will be interesting to see the reaction of the House Appropriations Committee if the contract is awarded to SpaceX with Blue Origin as the backup.

    • muomega0 says:
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      LOL! 

      —  But on a more important topic:

      But the tactic is so clear:  pour billions into the HLV “government”
      solution and narrow the “commercial” selection to the government-
      subsidized-for-decades ELV solution.

      While most believe that the government should leave the low risk
      ventures to industry and focus on higher risk, higher payoff ideas, this
      group “flips” the concept and says stay away from high risk!  

      A decade ago, the Constellation “market” was annual IMLEO of over
      200,000 kg or effectively 6 day lunar sorties twice a year, with the
      government paying billions for a sole sourced HLV, with an inflexible-to
      any-other-commercial-provider architecture, while totally gutting
      technology development.

      With billions in government subsidies, they now seem comfortable letting the rest of the
      companies raise their own capital, and let them “compete” for the NASA
      “market”.  “let the free market decide!”

      Quote: “As such, there is a risk of repeating the government’s experience from
      last year’s bankruptcy of the solar energy firm Solyndra, in which the
      failure of a high risk, government subsidized development venture left
      taxpayers with no tangible benefit in exchange for their substantial
      investment.”

      Was it inconvenient to bring up that the HLV Constellation/SLS
      architecture is 57B more expensive than the existing fleet/COTS?  Is
      this worth repeating?

      But rather brings a high payoff renewable energy infrastructure company like Solyndra which has *nothing * to do with LVs?  Huh?

      Is this what make America great:  don’t compete on economic and performance grounds:  get a house authorization bill instead….

      • dogstar29 says:
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        The problem is that  the SLS has infinite risk it will fail. 

      • hikingmike says:
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        And I’m actually in favor of the government doing high risk things like the Solyndra method of solar power. It was high payoff along with the high risk but the market changed so much it worked against them. Space is high risk too. This is what the government is for, and they also have a great opportunity to give a boost to industry to compete in the relatively low but still kind of high risk of LEO, ISS cargo, etc. The potential for our long term future is incredible.

      • Steve Whitfield says:
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        muomega0,  I think that it’s a good time to raise these issues once again in order to try to give a little perspective that many people seem to be missing.  Should government (tax payer) spending be used for the high-risk ventures that have possible high returns? I’m inclined to say, “yes,” if they are ventures with the potential to improve the quality of life and/or environment of the general population. The caveat here is that people must realize and accept that the high-return/high-risk ventures are also high-cost/long-term investment situations and be prepared to accept those terms. Companies (even big ones) can’t take on high-risk/high-cost/long-duration tasks because they live or die by their cash flow, and so they can’t accommodate these terms.  It’s also important to accept that any venture, government or private, large or small, involves an element of risk, and there is no guarantee of success, none whatsoever. When a venture fails (in whatever way), people immediately go looking for someone to blame, when often the simple reality was that, for any number of reasons, the venture was never likely to succeed, never likely to survive. It could be as simple as the right thing at the wrong time or the appearance of an alternative technology or material that changed the market place; an unpredictable change that had a major impact on the venture in question. This is the risk element. It’s well understood, yet when the risk coin is flipped and purely by chance lands wrong way up, closet analysts always manage to come up with scapegoats, confusing the risk with the people who undertook it. This makes no more sense (to me at least) than blaming the rain for the clouds.  You’ve raised some important questions (in my opinion). Unfortunately, we never seem to get unanimous answers to questions like these. And the answers we do hear seem to me to have been arrived at subjectively rather than by properly understanding and analysing the facts. Should the government turn away from high-risk ventures simply because Solyndra was a flop? The way I see it, if that sort of policy was universally accepted we would still be living in an 18th-century world. Steve

  2. no one of consequence says:
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    … immediate downselect …
    Why are we in a hurry?

    Perhaps out of fear … that multiple “commercial” … might become too successful … too quickly?

    And that arsenal space’s K street advocates might not be able  to snag their congressionally reserved billions.

    Franky we need more options of lower cost than arsenal space right now.

    This is bad policy.

    • guest says:
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      The greatest huh ? is “single competitor”. I believe i saw it in the upcoming “Dictator” movie trailer.
      Yes , in fact, look for “Dicator – official trailer” clip on youtube and scroll to 1:30 mark. There’s a single competitor.

      • RandomFeedback says:
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        I’m not sure if “single competitor” is an oxymoron, or a synonym for “sole source.”

  3. Todd Austin says:
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    With respect to commercial crew, the members who authored this statement impress me as being either 1) willfully ignorant of basic budget, acquisition, and scientific realities, or 2) so completely bought and paid for by the fat wallets behind big aerospace and and the buyers of votes from the ignorant masses that they really don’t care a whit what they say anymore.  It would be hard to come up with a proposal any more opposed to the best interests of the country than what they’ve put forward here.  Chilling.

  4. chriswilson68 says:
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    Once again, those congressional representatives are selling out both the future of our civilization and all the free-market and meritocratic principals this country stands for.

  5. robert_law says:
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    makes a lot of sense to me , in a limited budget for space flight it make more sense to pick one commercial program and back it , so far Space-X is the most furthest forward a cash injection would help speed up , the ISS is comming to the end of its life time , at the slow rate of development  they will be lucky to have commercial space flight by 2020 , what happens after 2020? the ISS cant last for ever.

    SLS  opens the door to a giant SKYLAB type station which only requires one launch

    • dogstar29 says:
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      The ISS is modular in construction and was planned to be maintainable and upgradable indefinitely. The goal of many in Congress, particularly Congressman Wolf, is to stop Commercial Crew from reaching the ISS. Although some in Congress are doing the bidding of lobbyists, most are motivated by politics. NASA Commercial Crew because it is associated with the current administration. The degree to which the party not in power is motivated by personal animosity toward the president is unprecedented in my experience.

      • Paul451 says:
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        The comparison to “Solyndra” is telling. The only lesson for NASA from Solyndra is that companies and technologies sometimes fail. The solution is to make sure you have a bunch of companies, and a bunch of rival designs. Like, say, Commercial Crew. And not, for example, SLS or what Congress wants for Commercial Crew.

        • JJ says:
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          …  “a bunch of companies” only works if there is a bunch of customers, aka a market.  There is no signs of substantial private market in aerospace.  Besides if “Solyndra” fails, big deal, we still have conventional power.  If SpaceX fails or decide on its own to leave because it is not financially worh it, then the big deal is that there is no backup … hence SLS.  NASA should indeed go after the hard stuff and leave the easier stuff to companies like SpaceX.

          • Paul451 says:
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            “If SpaceX fails or decide on its own to leave because it is not financially worh it, then the big deal is that there is no backup”

            Errr, except Boeing, Blue Origin, Sierra Nevada. Which is my point. SLS is not a backup, the other CCDev providers are the backup. (And if SpaceX did drop out, you can replace them with OSC, XCOR, or any of the others who bid for CCDev SAA contracts.)

            Frankly SLS/MPCV should be run the same way, for the same reason. Multiple vendors/groups working on multiple independent designs, on a fixed cost pay-on-milestone basis.

    • no one of consequence says:
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       SLS  opens the door to a giant SKYLAB type station which only requires one launch
      No.

      From long before Saturn V, the concept of the “wet workshop” station was considered with the S-IVB stage design. Which was even considered with Saturn IB lofting it.

      With SLS there is no presumption of mission(s) or mission hardware.  It was designed by senators.

      Tell me one senator that talked about a Skylab-like station and what it would need of SLS. You can’t – they didn’t. Nor other missions.

      They simply said “bigger!”. Bigger than X tons. Might as well be an Estes rocket.

      What if it can’t be used as designed for specific mission hardware? Does that mean we spend another +100B for SLS II (or III) to get to something mission specific useful?

      Do we even have agreement on specifics of missions, to generate mission hardware, such that we can specifically design its specific HLV? Aerospace engineering is all about narrow specific design – when we don’t do this we create horribly expensive “pink elephants” that have horrible design flaws that we are stuck with for half a century.

      You want something ontime, on budget,  addressing a need, and successful?

      You define the mission. You choose the mission hardware. You then choose the LV to get it there. All else is noise. SLS is noise.

    • hikingmike says:
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       “SLS  opens the door to a giant SKYLAB type station which only requires one launch”

      Or two ISS modules? that possible? Kind of dumb to throw away ISS. It also has way more usable space (storage space, wall space) than a Skylab does since that’s just one big room initially.

  6. James Muncy says:
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    Folks, 

         There’s no question that this report language, if implemented, will not achieve its stated goal.  That said, please keep your comments focused on its unworkability, and don’t attack what you suspect are the motives of the people involved. 

                           – Jim

    • no one of consequence says:
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       Jim, from the standpoint of supporting NASA and HSF that seems sensible. Because it doesn’t injure the concept of budget which ever way things work out.

      Which presumes a) people will be able to come together afterward and not be permanently polarized and b) that the interim consumption/denial of budget to each itself isn’t the goal of this report.

      Aren’t you a bit … over optimistic here? Isn’t this reason enough to climb on people for their motives? I quietly pushed back to people like Kraft early on, that did nothing – things went to hell just the same.

      Same with ESAS and Griffin. There is a predictable pattern here. How else do you suggest getting away from systematic failure?

  7. Doug Mohney says:
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    House Appropriations CommitteeWashington, DC OfficeH-307, The Capitol, Washington, DC 20515T (202) 225-2771

    Representative Frank Wolf (R-VA and part time socialist)
    Washington Office 241 Cannon Building Washington, DC 20515 (202) 225-5136 (202) 225-0437 fax

    Stop being nerds. Pick up the phone. Write a letter. Make yourself heard rather than being part of the herd.
     

    • hikingmike says:
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      I just emailed my congress critter yesterday when I saw he put a photo that he took himself of Discovery piggybacked flying around Washington in his email newsletter! Major kudos for that. I think non-space industry states need to speak up a bit more. We have the goals at heart and not the pork.