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Budget

House Passes NASA Budget Bill – Minus A Few Hundred Million

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

Chairman Hall Statement on Passage of Science Appropriations Bill
“Importantly, this bill maintains development of a new heavy-lift launch system and crew capsule. It maintains a healthy space science enterprise, continues to support innovative aeronautics research, and funds the Administration’s commercial crew program at the authorized level of $500 million. Our Committee will continue to provide oversight of the commercial crew program and work with Appropriators to support a program that has the best chance to succeed on schedule, with appropriate safeguards for the crew, and with the best use of taxpayer dollars.”
NASA Budget Takes $126M Hit on House Floor, Space News
“But by midnight, the House voted 206 to 204 to adopt an amendment offered by Rep. Michael Grimm (R-N.Y.) to take $126 million out of NASA’s Cross Agency Support account — which covers overhead at the agency’s nine government-run field centers — and move it to the Justice Department’s COPS community policing program. With the additional cut, NASA would see its budget shrink by $324 million — a 1.8 percent drop compared to 2012.”
Keith’s note: Congressional sources report that some people had a problem getting in touch with NASA Legislative Affairs AA Seth Statler during recent House budget deliberations. These sessions are seen as crucial hand-to-hand combat – a time when the Code L AA is expected to be in the trenches ready to work behind the scenes at a moment’s notice.

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

20 responses to “House Passes NASA Budget Bill – Minus A Few Hundred Million”

  1. chriswilson68 says:
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    Minus the most important few hundred million — a huge percentage of the CCDev request.  Meanwhile, SLS and Orion are showered with money that will be wasted on systems that will most likely be cancelled years before they ever do anything, and which would have virtually no mission in the unlikely case they actually survive to completion because just operating them would suck up every available human spaceflight dollar.

    • Rob Ferguson says:
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      In the late 19th century, Empress Dowager Cixi used funds from the Navy to build something that looked like a sidewheel steamboat at the Summer Palace (restoring an earlier boat structure). It was made of marble. 

      Friends, we are building a Marble Rocket.

      • Neil Fraser says:
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        Wikipedia (for what it’s worth) says that the Summer Palace expenditure is a myth.

        • Joe Cooper says:
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          Unfortunately, SLS is not.

          Well, the expenditure isn’t.

        • Allen Taylor says:
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          It’s not a myth. The marble boat is there and it was not built for free. It’s a pretty nice marble boat, as such things go. The money for it came from somewhere. The Navy is a logical place.

  2. hikingmike says:
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    @#KJGKJ#L$K&Q#*$&#^$!^H$BGGB$Y

    I hope my rep was in the 204.

  3. dogstar29 says:
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    We are being told the the “stakeholders” support SLS/Orion and insist that it receive first priority in funding. Only if it is fully sated should any money go to practical transport to low earth orbit. We should inform Congress that we, the American citizens who believe in the importance of sustainable human spaceflight, do not support this travesty. 

    • Jeff says:
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      I support SLS and it should recieve priority. If the alt.spacers want to talk about how private space can do things better–then do it on your own dime. The Chinese are doing an HLLV with a 9-meter core. They have the sense to ignore idiot HLV bashers like the trolls here

      • don says:
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        Of all the many funded future missions for the SLS, which funded mission do you like the most?

      • no one of consequence says:
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         They have the sense to ignore idiot HLV bashers like the trolls here.
        I don’t mind HLV. As long as “commercial” does it. Not fake commercial like ATK. Cause the commercial guys do it with a better business case through reuse/commonality.

        Its the govt only / “arsenal space” trolls I can’t stand. Because they waste trillions. And get nowhere.

        To compete with China, you have to “out China” China. Like when China claims it can’t compete with SpaceX launch pricing.

        Isn’t that how you win … when you play their game better?

        • dogstar29 says:
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          Yes, that’s a good point. China is not interested in competing in the marketplace of ideas, in fact modern Chinese leaders do not even lay claim to an ideology. They are competing in the marketplace of the marketplace, down and dirty capitalism with no rules except the ones you make up. China is putting people in space (rarely) to demonstrate to its still-insecure domestic audience that it is one of the leading nations of the world, and to demonstrate its industrial capabilities to potential customers. It’s new human launch system, the CZ5, is also intended to be competitive for large commercial payloads, unlike the SLS. China may go to the moon in their own good time, but the last thing China wants is a new moon race. If they lost, they would look incompetent. If they won, they would irritate their biggest customer.

      • dogstar29 says:
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        People who support SLS often do so for existential reasons, so they tend to assume that people who don’t think it is a good idea are simply ideologically or politically opposed to it. Nothing could be further from the truth. I busted my tail for Constellation. But I think it is a poor investment because I know it will fail.

        Have you considered the operational cost of the SLS/Orion system? How many man-hours it takes to function? How much will it cost, per year, to keep a dozen people living on the moon indefinitely with this technology? At a billion dollars, at least, for each SLS launch alone? What will a dozen people on the moon produce that is worth the cost of supporting them there with this 40-year-old technology? Helium 3?

        Does anyone here remember why Nixon cancelled Apollo? Why the public did not support it after the first landing? What little long-term benefit it provided? What makes you think things are different now?

        Human spaceflight has great value, but that value is finite. We need technology that makes its cost commensurate with its value. It is an Illusion to think that patriotism and strong leadership would make it work. The program doesn’t even have money for landers and the GOP is proposing a cut in the NASA budget. They can’t keep cutting commercial crew forever to make up the difference, because there isn’t much left of it as it is.

      • dogstar29 says:
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        If you have evidence that “the Chinese are doing an HLLV with a 9-meter core” it would be very helpful to provide a link. The largest core stage of the proposed CZ-5 is 5.2m in diameter, and indeed the largest version of the CZ-5 is, except for being man-rated, very similar in capability to the Delta IV heavy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wik…. The proposed three-core Falcon 9 heavy (if it is funded) would have a higher payload capacity than any currently proposed Chinese launch vehicle.

      • AstroDork says:
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        Hmmm … troll, kettle, black.

  4. James Lundblad says:
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    How did Planetary Science fair in this version of the budget?

  5. Steve Whitfield says:
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    Note: I’m sorry this is so long (it’s a bad habit of mine).

    Time and time again, I’ve included in my NASA Watch posts that, in my opinion, and despite any written legislation, Congress controls NASA. NASA is not permitted to choose, nor even nominate (with any hope of success), which potential programs they will do, nor even how resources are applied to the programs they are doing (they can plan programs, but can not, of their own volition, execute them). The President is likewise not in control of NASA (again, despite the written legislation to the contrary) since NASA can do programs and execute policies that the President proposes only if Congress agrees and allocates enough money to do them. And often times, like now, it doesn’t matter what the President proposes for NASA, Congress will disallow it simply because it was the President who proposed it. So many of today’s space news items include the word “bipartisan,” but what that really means is that Congress as been sufficiently mollified on a particular issue. In my opinion, this system is little different from a combination of sanctioned bribery and a protection racket. Calling it horse trading doesn’t make if any less disgusting. Congress absolutely controls how money is allocated to NASA each year, and the exact manner in which that money is to be spent, often down to the major program line-item level. One fact that makes the situation worse is that a President is in power for a maximum of two 4-year terms, whereas Congress people can be continually reelected, so that the personal policies of a particular Congressional group can “rule” for many years, or even decades, giving those policies, good or bad, a power almost equivalent to law, in that they can not be effectively challenged once put in place.

    And almost every time I’ve posted this idea that Congress is in control of NASA, one or more people write back “explaining” that I’m wrong, basically rehashing the Google! item (or something similar) describing how the system was originally set up, and was, by law, supposed to work. In other words, a reworded version of the 1958 (and amended) NASA Charter, which hasn’t, in reality, been in affect since the mid-Apollo days.

    Well folks, the written charter, and similar documents are, it seems, of historical interest only (and of no interest at all to Congress). Congress controls NASA programs and spending, entirely, and anyone who still believes otherwise after reading so many budget articles (like these in this NASA Watch story), year after year, has their head stuck firmly in the sand.

    Congress controls NASA program selection, scope, and spending, period; and does so at a level of detail that these old Senators and Reps couldn’t possibly understand, with maybe a half dozen exceptions. Congress controls what NASA does, and for reasons that have nothing to do with creating and/or maintaining a strong, useful civilian space program for the country. And I maintain that those people who continue to argue otherwise — blaming NASA and/or the President for the current pathetic state of affairs — are further damaging the American civil space program by unwittingly acting as agents of Congress, strengthening the destructive strangle-hold that Congress has on NASA. Too often, I’ve read arguments from blog posters and op-ed writers who say that Congress has had to take control because NASA wasn’t. Well, that, people, is the Congressional Koolaid. It’s a dumb excuse that came out of a Congressional subcommittee meeting, and the know-nots have been parroting it ever since. I could perhaps excuse a young person who didn’t live through, or is not familiar with, the pre-2000 space program, but anybody who’s closely followed NASA and its trials in the current century bloody-well ought to know better and not be taken in by the politically-biased media and self-serving Congressional statements.

    NASA senior management has made some mistakes, I agree, but they are in a mighty precarious position (and have been for years) where maintaining the status quo is not viable and any major changes for the better are disallowed by Congress (SLS is not a change for the better; it is mostly a giant step backwards and unnecessarily expensive). The position that NASA has been put into, in other words (in terms that anybody should understand) is: “it’s this or nothing.” NASA has no choice but to continue to execute the current Congress-mandated plans, or they will be all but eradicated; cut down to size; their budget reduced to pocket change; people not working in the right constituencies put out of work; and all space activities given over to the military, who spend money at an incredible rate every year, much more money than the NASA budget (this likelihood has been suggested by members of all interested parties, for and against). Is that what Congress really wants? To model the US after China, the same China that so many Congress people seem to hate and fear? Is it because some Congress people are pathetically still living in the past, or do they perhaps actually welcome the idea of another meaningless war? (taking us back to the good old days that they understood). That’s one hell of a degradation from the situation whereby NASA, the White House and Congress worked together to give us the Moon and a much better social environment during the troubled 60’s.

    To my mind, the greatest thing that the Apollo program accomplished was exemplified twice, by Apollo 8 and Apollo 11 — each time, for a day or two, the entire world was united; past differences were put aside and everybody thought and spoke in terms of “we,” not “us and them.” At Christmas 1968, after one of the worst years that the modern western world has known, the Apollo 8 astronauts sent a well-received message of hope back to whole world as they circled the Moon, not as Americans, but as human beings. And Apollo 11 went to the Moon “for all mankind,” and for days afterwards people all over the world celebrated that event; “we did it!” was the common sentiment around the world; not America did it, but we did it! Even traditional “enemies” shared in the good will that it generated. Consider how these events changed the world, for the better, for so many people, and that’s without considering all of the technical and long-term financial benefits that the space programs created. Now contrast that with what the space programs have given us in recent years, as opposed to what could have been. It’s genuinely upsetting; an unparalleled opportunity that we threw away instead of following up on it and progressing; a better future that was discarded in the name of politics and greed.

    You might ask, “How did we get to this situation? What went wrong?” Well, there’s plenty of blame to go around, and a lot of candidates to distribute it to. But if you look for the major decisions that were responsible for the critical wrong turns that we’ve made in our space programs, I think you’ll find that most of the strings lead back to Congress. That’s where, I firmly believe, the wrong decisions that have detrimentally altered our future again and again were made, by people who don’t think as human beings, or even as Americans (except when spewing boilerplate rhetoric). They only concern themselves with, and make their decisions for the benefit of, selected groups of people within their own constituencies, who in return support them in their bids for reelection. The seeming cynicism in the previous sentence was the bump in the road that I had to get over and accept before properly realizing the true nature of Congressional politics. It’s not an exaggeration, in my opinion, to say that major decisions, affecting all of the people, are all too often made in the self-interest of the powerful, instead of for the welfare of the people that they are supposedly there to serve and represent.

    Congress controls NASA. I strongly encourage those of you who believe otherwise to reconsider the known facts and realize that NASA, for all its faults, is stuck in a no-win situation that can only be alleviated by the very same people who have put it there. I think we must collectively aim our dissatisfaction and our attempts to affect change where the problems have originated: with the Congressional people who have been short-changing NASA and our spacefaring future in general.

    Steve

    • ed2291 says:
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      Steve, your well written thoughts are not too long at all. I even agree that congress deserves much and perhaps even most of the blame. I am not as willing to excuse the presidency, 1960s astronauts, and NASA, however.

      Kennedy was passionate about space in a way no person since him has been. NASA seems quite content to kiss ass and constantly kick worthy projects down the road so far they will never happen. The Apollo astronauts seem content with their glory and happy there is nobody to compete or follow in their footsteps. All should have been kicking and screaming against congress dragging our space program down.

      We landed on the moon before I started 11th grade. I am now 59 and we have not been out of low earth orbit since 1973. This was undoubtedly a congressional failure, but there are other hands in the cookie jar.

      • dogstar29 says:
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        Please keep in mind Kennedy’s statement of the goal of Apollo. “… to send a man to the moon and return him safely to the earth.” Period.

        The part NASA didn’t understand was the period. Apollo was not a plan to explore the solar system. It was a symbolic contest, a substitute for a nuclear arms race that could have destroyed the world. The moment Armstrong and his crew landed safely back on earth, it had no further purpose.

        Apollo was a brilliant strategy for its time. The moon race supplanted the arms race, consumed the resources of the Soviets and undermined their hegemony, and proved the superiority of American ideology.

        But this is not the Sixties, and many who support Constellation today are trying to bring back the past as they remember it, not the past as it really was.

      • Steve Whitfield says:
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        Thanks Ed. I’m not arguing your point (we’re in agreement and we’re much the same age), but actually Kennedy was not really passionate about space, the Moon or otherwise; it was a means rather than an end to him. There is a well-known tape recording, released years after his death, of a private conversation where Kennedy tells the room that he doesn’t particularly care about space at all; he just wants to beat the Soviets. And after November 1963, it was LBJ who made the Moon landings happen. Johnson bullied Congress and industry alike to get what he wanted; he also talked James Webb (a good friend) into taking the NASA Administrator job, a pivotal point in US space history.

        I think you’re right on about the Apollo astronauts, and today I think they should stay in the history books where they belong, because the vocal ones seem (to me) to be entirely out of touch with the realities of this century. Too bad, but that’s how I see it. For all his clowning, Buzz Aldrin is probably the only living vocal Apollo astronaut who is contributing valuable ideas to today’s space world. But I would never begrudge them their glory; they certainly earned it. It’s a shame that more of the people “in the trenches” didn’t get a bigger share of that glory, since they all worked at least as hard as the astronauts (and didn’t get Vets or appear on the cover of Time magazine).

        But then, as now, I think Congress was/is the biggest obstacle to overcome in tackling space; beating gravity was a breeze by comparison.

        Steve

    • DTARS says:
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      Steve I read your long post on how it is congress that is responsible for most of our problems with space and I agree.

      Ok that’s the problem ok????

      Now how do you fix it?????

      My government is corrupted. But what can we do?

      I just saw roseann Demoro on the Bill Moyers show.

      She represents the powerful nurses union that is currently trying to get a financial  transaction tax to get wall street to pay their share.

      My point being I don’t think their  is a lot we can do to help get congress to do the right thing without the people getting fed up and Forcing a complete change in our system.

      Their needs to be a people revolution in this country to clean the government up.

      Will it happen????  

      I’m not that bothered that commercial is getting cut because I think they will survive and be stronger and cheaper.

      I am a fan of NASA supporting “commercial space” by being a mission customer whenever possible, and writing checks to directly develop as little as possible.
      I realize that that I currently impossible.

      Tinkers post showing the Spacex hopper legs sure gave me hope 🙂 I sure hope Spacex let’s us watch their hopper tests. Think of public support they could get as people see that space flight is being made more and more affordable for us all. The recoverable reusable race could be almost exciting  the the old moon race.

      Spacex is still the critical path to Mars.

      Joe Q