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Commercialization

Slow Motion Raid On NASA's Commercial Space Budget

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
April 10, 2012
Filed under , , , ,

America’s space act is about to lift-off to a spectacular new future, Bill Nelson and Kay Bailey Hutchison
“If we are to move forward, we must avoid a false competition between our long-range space exploration goals – the moon, Mars and beyond – and commercialized ferrying of cargo and crew members to the space station. In fact, both programs are essential.Assisting development of commercial space capabilities will eliminate America’s reliance on the Russian Soyuz system for crew transportation to low-Earth orbit, while developing our next generation heavy launch capability is a necessity if we are to expand space exploration beyond Earth, to Mars and beyond.”
Keith’s note: According to Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation staffer Jeff Bingham (posting as “51D Mascot”): “It is clearly NOT the intent of people I work with to impede or slow development of Commercial crew, despite all the characterizations to the contrary. The issue is balanced development efforts across the agreed-upon priorities within the context of a severely–and in my view inappropriately–constrained top line budget for NASA.”
I sense that the ground is being laid (in slow motion) for raiding commercial space to fund other things at NASA. “Balanced” is code language for “let’s move money around”. Stay tuned.

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

8 responses to “Slow Motion Raid On NASA's Commercial Space Budget”

  1. chriswilson68 says:
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    It’s not a question of balancing LEO with BEO.  SLS and Orion are not a BEO exploration program.  SLS flies to LEO.  So do Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy, and Atlas V.  Any of those launchers can be used as components for a future exploration program.  SLS is least useful as a component of an exploration program because it’s too expensive to allow us to develop anything significant to send BEO.

    Orion could be used as part of a BEO program, but its initial missions will be LEO only.  The same is true of Dragon and CST-100.

    No, it’s not about balancing LEO with BEO.  It’s about balancing programs that get a lot of results per dollar with programs that get far less for each dollar.  The proper balance there is to kill the programs that are not getting a good return on the dollar and replace them with programs more like the ones that are giving a good return on the dollar.

    • no one of consequence says:
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      … or perhaps we should consider BEO with commercial providers as well. Then we can get “balance” another way.

    • Paul451 says:
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      “The proper balance there is to kill the programs that are not getting a good return on the dollar and replace them with programs more like the ones that are giving a good return on the dollar.”

      That’s precisely what they are doing. Supporting SLS has gotten these Senators a tremendous return on investment, commercial must be kept from threatening that.

    • Brian Thorn says:
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      “but its initial missions will be LEO only.”

      No. Aside from the Delta IV-Heavy heat shield test next year or early 2014, there are no planned LEO flights. The first SLS/Orion flight is a circumlunar flight in 2017-18. The second flight will be manned and do the same thing. 

  2. Anonymous says:
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    There’s a natural division of labor between LEO and BEO. Ideally, the commercial sector would loft anything necessary to LEO. Large spacecraft could be assembled there for use BEO; these would/could be NASA creations. Aside from the usual conspiracy theories (about pork, campaign contributions, local interests, and lobbying), I see no reason why we should not be using existing EELV-class boosters to actually accomplish things. Instead we await a huge rocket which lacks a mission and which will cost so much that it will deprive BEO missions of funding. 
    If we go along with Nelson and Hutchison, best case we wind up with a huge rocket to nowhere and NASA financially crippled for an indefinite period of time. Worst case, the money is just wasted and SLS is finally, painfully cancelled. Either way, we are no closer to BEO operations.
    IMHO, NASA should design modular deep-space craft, then launch the modules on EELVs — and Congress should stop wasting time and money.

  3. Andrew_M_Swallow says:
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    If Congress wants to get back to the ISS then just approve the money and do nothing else.  As Petronius Arbiter (circa A.D. 60) said

      [I]I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing; and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion inefficiency, and demoralization.[/I]