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NASA's Response to Sequestration: Cut Commercial Space – Not SLS

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
February 18, 2013
Filed under , , ,

Letter From NASA to Senate Appropriators Regarding Impact of Sequestration
“Overall, for purposes of this assessment, the Agency assumed that the FY 2013 Continuing Resolution, with all of its terms and conditions, would be extended from March 27 to September 30, 2013, and that the sequester would cancel 5.0 percent of the fullyear amount, which would be the equivalent of roughly a 9 percent reduction over the remaining seven months of the fiscal year. NASA’s assessment of the impacts of a March 1 sequester is presented in the enclosure.”
Space Launch System, Orion wouldn’t be affected by sequestration, Huntsville Times
“NASA has decided to spare its Space Launch System and Orion crew capsule from any direct consequences of budget sequestration this year, according to NASA Administrator Charles Bolden Jr. Taking the cuts instead in the “exploration” part of NASA’s budget would be commercial space companies trying to build spaceships to get American astronauts to the International Space Station. The Space Launch System (SLS) is NASA’s name for a new booster being developed at Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville for deep space missions and the Orion capsule that will ride on top of it.”

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

60 responses to “NASA's Response to Sequestration: Cut Commercial Space – Not SLS”

  1. dogstar29 says:
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    The sequester will halt just about everything that NASA hasn’t already firmly committed to. Even some announced research awards will be put on hold.

    • rktsci says:
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      There are two approaches to handling these kinds of cuts:
       – put everything new on hold to keep you current programs going with as little disruption as possible
       – the “Washington Monument” strategy. Cut the thing most visible to the public in hopes of generating outrage, so that when if the National Parks are threatened with a budget cut, they propose to close the Washington Monument. 

      Right now, NASA has no “Washington Monuments” that they can threaten to cut, so they choose the first option. (Especially since if they cut ongoing programs the total cost would go up.)

      • Steve Whitfield says:
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        rktsci,

        Based on your second alternative, if I were an American, I might go to that public petition web site and propose having Congress/NASA/WH cancel SLS, giving “good sounding” “reasons” for doing so, while insidiously making it plain that SLS is both pure pork and functionally inadequate.  There are other public/government communication web sites where one could supplement this action.

        My intention would be to communicate the SLS boondoggle to a larger portion of the public and have them generate outrage, or at least dissatisfaction.  This would hopefully get people to sign the petition in large numbers and then perhaps we can get SLS canned on a purely fiscal/sequester basis.

        Things would have to be worded carefully so as to not backfire with more cuts to NASA.  Basically I’d say: NASA has done so many great things with continual minimum budgets, but this single rocket, forced on NASA by Congress, is seriously hurting NASA, diminishing its ability to serve the nation, and inexcusably wasting tax payer dollars at a painful rate.  Not that exact statement, bit  words to that effect.

        It’a an idea, anyhow.  Ignorance and deliberate misdirection got us into the SLS dead end; perhaps they can be used to get us out again.

        Steve

        • objose says:
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           Steve you are hot for cancel SLS.  I really am confused.  This is new capability development isn’t it?  I really can agree with commercial LEO human delivery. I can see many other opportunities for commercial turn over. I can agree that after NASA flies a couple of  130m ton SLS turning that over to commercial providers. However, right now, we have no capability for that level of launch. If anything really big is ever going to be designed, the capability to get the stuff off the planet has to be developed.  As a tax payer I am disturbed by JWST over runs but that is going to get us some neat Sxxx when it gets there. I definitely see getting more out of that than another air craft carrier. I see SLS as better money spent than climate research (because no one will actually do anything with the data, not because I am a non believer). Can you send me some place where my perception of SLS development can be revised? I see SLS 150m ton as a whole lot better use of tax $$ than Apollo 15 and 16.  Or anything over STS 100.  Thoughts.

          • Steve Whitfield says:
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            objose,

            Sorry this is so long, but here we go…

            Most of the answer has been said here on NASA Watch many times, and many other places as well, but it seems to continually get lost in the side arguments.  In my opinion, there are two main issues that argue for SLS being a mistake that should be canceled.

            First, there is no use for SLS, and there won’t be for a very long time, if ever.  What we’ll have is a large launch vehicle (SLS), a capsule (Orion), and an ESA-supplied Service Module.  However, the payload fairing is empty and will stay empty, because there are no payloads in existence or planned to launch in it.  It’s all very well to talk about BEO missions, but any BEO mission is going to require considerable additional hardware, plus a lot of engineering and support items which, taken together, would cost hundreds of millions of dollars more (at an absolute minimum).  There is no money in the budget for any of this, now or in the foreseeable future.

            There are no BEO missions planned, just ideas being kicked around with no commitments by anybody.  Congress forced SLS on NASA and the nation, and then right after it was a tied up fact in law, reps from that same Congress publicly asked Gen. Bolden, What is NASA going to use SLS for?  Why would Congress ask him?  It was their idea, not his.  He didn’t want it and had to be ordered to support it.  So, it’s like you work within walking distance of where you live, you have nothing to carry with you when you go to work or come home, but you are forced to buy a 10-ton transport truck, which you can’t afford, for going to work in.  And by the way, this truck costs a ridiculous amount of money to operate and you can only use it twice a year.  It just doesn’t make any sense that I can see.  As a side issue, this was a Congress mandated program, yet NASA, Bolden, Obama and the White House all get blamed for it on a regular basis by people who won’t do a little homework before venturing an opinion.

            The second major problem with SLS is that Congress mandated that certain left over major components from the Shuttle program were to be incorporated into the SLS design. Decades-old technology, with a history of dangerous problems, with a limited inventory, and additional new components can’t be produced because the manufacturing facilities no longer exist and would cost many billions to recreate.  Additionally, this Congress-design-activity forced a lot of other bad decisions on the SLS, such as solid boosters (their use is being reevaluated in a later program phase, at more cost), and engine selection (which forces many design decisions and causes the whole package to be designed around very expensive Shuttle engines).  I could go on, but I’m sure you get the point — the whole SLS design is compromised and very restricted because of very inappropriate constraints mandated by politicians.

            Certain members of Congress wanted a great big rocket, and they wanted the lion’s share of the work (money) for building and operating this rocket to go to the contractors who support their campaigns (pork).  And they got it, with little or no consideration for what the nation actually needed or wanted.  They’ve betrayed a trust as representatives of the population.  Of course, at the same time, much of that same population doesn’t really appear to know or care about any of this, so it’s left to those who do care to yell all the louder for a more sensible plan.

            Steve

          • chriswilson68 says:
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            Oh, I see you already said what I just posted.  I guess I should have read more of the comments before posting.

          • chriswilson68 says:
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            “Steve you are hot for cancel SLS.  I really am confused.  This is new capability development isn’t it?”

            There are two fundamental problems with SLS.

            First, it’s questionable whether such heavy lift is really the most effective use of our dollars.  A lot of people make a good case that using smaller, much cheaper, rockets leaves so much more money available for payloads that we would have a more effective exploration program without heavy lift — at least given the current NASA budgets.  At some point, if budgets were high enough, it would make sense to have very heavy lift because we could afford both that and the payloads to put on that heavy lift to make it effective.

            The second fundamental problem with SLS is its implementation.  Many outside observers think it’s a terrible architecture.  It was designed by Congress, with Congress specifying the architecture in detail, for the sole purpose of keeping the jobs of many who used to work on the space shuttle.  The alternative would be to use a COTS/CRS/CCDev/CCiCap-style strategy.  In this alternative, NASA would specify their requirements (how many tons of lift are needed) and open it up for bids by any company.  Those companies would have to agree to fixed pay-for-performance contracts that include the companies spending some of their own money on the development programs.

          • Paul451 says:
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             At risk of flogging a dead horse:

            “I can see many other opportunities for commercial turn over.”

            Commercial “turn over”? If you mean that SLS will be built then turned over to the private sector (as with shuttle ops), then that is precisely the wrong way to develop a new system (as with the shuttle). You don’t build a clumsy stupid expensive design and then expect to lower costs by calling for ops bids (which, by definition, forbid any design changes). You put out a call for the service of launching payloads first, then let the private sector develop their own designs that lower their costs.

            “we have no capability for that level of launch. If anything really big
            is ever going to be designed, the capability to get the stuff off the
            planet has to be developed. “

            However, at current funding levels, you can have SLS or missions. You can’t have both. There is no “big stuff” to fly on SLS, so why do you need SLS?

            I’d rather see NASA flying missions than flying a big rocket just so we can say “Oo, look at our big rocket, imagine what we could launch on that ifonlywehadntspentallthemoney.”

      • myname says:
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        If only there was some big news story over the last few days involving an explosion over a city… Maybe 1st cut a program to keep an eye out for such events?

      • chriswilson68 says:
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        “There are two approaches to handling these kinds of cuts”

        These are the two approaches that nearly always seem to be used by government organizations facing cuts.  But they are not the only possibly approaches.  Killing large, costly programs with lower bang for the buck is another option, and it would be more effective.  Unfortunately, those who benefit from the status quo usually fight hard against that.

    • chriswilson68 says:
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      “The sequester will halt just about everything that NASA hasn’t already
      firmly committed to. Even some announced research awards will be put on
      hold.”

      This may be true, but it’s a foolish way to run an organization in the face of cuts.  The smart thing to do would be to look at the return for every current program and cut those with the least return for the cost.  A program already underway should have no advantage over one that hasn’t yet been started.  Sunk costs should be ignored, and only the costs from here to the program completion should be taken into account.

      Of course, politics tends to favor the status quo, so we get the biggest, most wasteful programs perpetuated, and the smaller, more innovative programs killed.  And unfortunately we don’t have a NASA administrator or President willing to stand up for the overall good of the country and the space program and fight the status quo.

  2. Michael Reynolds says:
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    Looking over the numbers and where NASA chose to make the cuts leaves me a bit outraged. Basically gutting CCDev in favor of some other pet projects (over 1/3 of the full cut). Then again this doesn’t surpise me. Why would NASA choose to cut programs, operations, staff etc. in house when they can push the worse of it off on their private partners.

    • dogstar29 says:
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      In-house cuts would require laying off civil servants, who can only be fired “for cause”. It’s much easier to get rid of contractors, who are “at will” employees.

      • rktsci says:
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        Civil servants could be laid off. The process is painful and takes a while, but can be done.

        • dogstar29 says:
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           Exactly. It’s painful. Try to find a case where it occurred, even when the civil servants oversaw thousands of Shuttle workers who were laid off, in most cases not a single civil servant has been dropped. And getting rid of contractors is quick and painless (except for the contractors), although it leaves the agency with very few people who actually have hands-on skills.

          • rktsci says:
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            Yes, I’ve complained that when STS was shut down, NASA didn’t cut the civil service at all.

            I noticed that lots of new names at the NASA centers started showing up on mailing lists for meetings for new development projects at NASA. Lots of them.

          • Steve Whitfield says:
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            Guys,

            This perpetual civil service situation is an issue that I see coming up again and again.  You live in a supposedly “representative” democracy, so I have to wonder — considering the major negative impact that this policy(?) causes, has any attempt been made to have it overturned?

            Writing your various reps would at least communicate to them your collective dissatisfaction, and could possibly be the basis of initiating proposed legislation to better “equalize” the system.  A lot more effort has been given to many (lesser) “politically incorrect” situations over the last few decades, often resulting in major changes.  But the initial call to arms came from a constituent, someone outside of the political machine.

            This is one situation where having multiple NASA centers is an advantage, since it gives you more reps in more states to work through.

            The unions (and seniority) are going to be the major roadblocks, so they would have to be addressed up front by those who are asking for change. If “the other side” brings them up first, then you’re immediately on the defensive and already losing.

            Just an idea.

            Steve

        • Michael Reynolds says:
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          I expect some civil servants to get laid off no matter what they choose to cut. My gripe comes primarily from the fact that they are indicating the biggest cut come from one of the most successful programs they have (CCDev). I expected to see more across the board proportional cuts then completely eliminating or “gutting” programs. To be honest I was hoping they would take a good chunk of money from SLS or Orion and spare some of the smaller exploration and space tech projects.
          Whats the point of developing a BEO rocket if you don’t have the technology to safely transport people to your destination (i.e. canceling advanced radiation protection)

          • rktsci says:
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            NASA will not lay any civil servants off unless Congress force them to. Status as a manager at NASA is determined by how many civil servants and contractors report to you. They do seem to have a soft hiring freeze on, so that normal attrition is slowly shrinking the workforce.

          • Steve Whitfield says:
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            Michael,

            One thing that makes it baffling, and often frustrating, is that we don’t know what give-and-take, or even threats, have been discussed behind closed doors.  There are quite possibly trade-offs happening that we’ll never hear anything about (or not until somebody’s autobiography spills them 20 years from now).

            Steve

    • CB says:
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      Sorry about the empty comment – it was inadvertent, I don’t seem to be able to delete it though.

      Carry on.

    • DRMuse says:
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      NASA didn’t “gut” CCDev – the letter compares the sequester numbers under a continuing resolution with the President’s 2013 budget request.  The President requested about $830M for commercial crew for 2013.  NASA only received an appropriation of $406M for FY2012, which is the basis for the current CR.  So the letter compares what the program will have for the rest of FY2013 under the CR + sequester with what it would have had if Congress had fully funded the President’s 2013 request last October.

      • Michael Reynolds says:
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        After reading it a few times I see what you are saying. Although It still will have a major impact on the program.

    • cuibono1969 says:
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       NASA should start cutting some of the panoply of hanger-on programs that have nothing to do with space. My first suggestion would be James (‘arrest me again – I need the publicity’) Hansen and his GISS buddies, who could seek alternative funding from Greenpeace, etc.

    • Bernardo de la Paz says:
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      CCDev (COTS, CCiCAP, whatever the latest name is) is neither ‘commercial’ nor ‘private’. It’s just another NASA contract. Maybe a different style of contract, but a government program nevertheless just as much as SLS, MPCV, etc. If it were otherwise, then it would be unaffected by government spending decisions by definition.
      I’m not expressing a preference here, just saying let’s be honest – this is nothing more than an argument over whose pork is going to get trimmed.

      • Michael Reynolds says:
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        Yeah…the “style” of contract makes these two programs completely different. If SLS was to be contracted out the same way as CCDev then I am sure many people (outside of arsenal space) would take little issue with it. It would also save billions of dollars over the cost-plus style contract that it currently is in.

      • Steve Whitfield says:
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        I see a major difference in that the designs are done by the “contractor” for COTS/CCiCAP/CCDev and simply accepted or not accepted by NASA, whereas the designs are controlled by NASA in the more typical programs.  It’s like the difference between a purchased product and an a custom order.

        There is also much better control over costs (and no cost runaway) with the COTS/CCiCAP/CCDev contracts, again like a purchased product.  What the two program types have in common is that when NASA doesn’t have the money to spend, something doesn’t get bought.  From that perspective, I’d say that this sequester business potentially affects them both exactly the same.

        However, for government money to qualify as pork, it has to be paid to a campaign supporter, or some constituent entity who has in some fashion benefited those who control the government contract payouts.  Do you know whether this is true of the COTS/CCiCAP/CCDev contractors?

        • Bernardo de la Paz says:
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          Yes, they are different types of contracts – so stipulated. I’m not trying to make arguments here for or against one or the other. My only point is that they are both government contract regimes and that neither one can claim to be ‘private’ or ‘commercial’ in the context of this budget cutting debate. If they were actually private, government funding or lack thereof would not be a factor. (see Virgin Galactic, etc.)
          Pork is a subjective term that means many things to many people, but there is no disputing that all the parties involved are using available political influence to argue for maximizing their slice of the shrinking government pie.I’ve stated it here before, but for the record, my personal opinion is that in general terms NASA’s primary civilian purpose is to foster the development of commercially sustainable industries. In the specifics of the present discussion, I respect that there are legitimate arguments to be made that the current COTS/CCiCAP/CCDev/etc. effort may or may not be an effective means to such end. In any case, it must be understood that as constituted it is a government contract business model.

          • Paul451 says:
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            ” My only point is that they are both government contract regimes and that neither one can claim to be ‘private’ or commercial’ in the context of this budget cutting debate.”

            Partly they are just the names we’ve gradually settled on to signify the difference between the two funding models.

            However, one is like walking into a shop and buying something that is also available for everyone else, paying the standard price (plus a bit for the added cost of “delivery” to a government agency.) The other is ringing up a company to get a quote on a special order for you and no one else which requiring them to completely retool.

            It’s not a small difference, it’s not just splitting hairs. And given the whisper campaign being waged against the new model by those who benefited most from the old model, it is well worth pointing out ad infinitum.

            One model saves NASA money, the other is responsible for the last 30+ years of wasted opportunity.

          • Bernardo de la Paz says:
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            “one is like walking into a shop and buying something that is also available for everyone else, paying the standard price”

            That’s a good analogy. So far, only one customer seems to be buying though and the vendors have been making noises that they think there is only one customer that can afford to pay. If that remains true, then net result won’t be that much different in the end.

            I haven’t seen a convincing argument that either model will save money. It is worth noting that there are other models. (Hint – look at the broader N.A.C.A. / NASA history.)

      • Paul451 says:
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        [Apologies for the length, I appear to be in… a mood.]

        From elsewhere in the thread:
        “So far, only one customer seems to be buying though”

        SpaceX is the only one flying so it’s hard to compare. But they certainly have a backlog of non-government orders. Antares should go the same way.

        “and the vendors have been making noises that they think there is only one customer that can afford to pay.”

        Not true. Every NewSpace player wants to develop a private market. Robert Bigelow emphasises private leases as their future market once commercial human flights are available. While they may all be wrong, it is what they all believe.

        The only vendors who “make noises” that NASA is the only possible customer are the traditional arsenal contractors like ATK.

        “If that remains true, then net result won’t be that much different in the end.”

        I don’t see how that’s possible. For one year’s budget for SLS
        development, NASA could be flying 22 Falcon Heavy missions. Every year. (Or better, ten/yr and have half their budget left over for actual mission hardware.) For the estimated launch cost of a single SLS after 2021 (about $1.5b each), NASA could fly 12 Falcon Heavies. So instead of one mission every two years, they could fly once a month…  and still have money left over to actually have missions… and start flying five years early.

        Or, looking at it another way, up to 1200 tons to LEO for the price of one 70 ton manned and one 130 ton unmanned launch. Oh, and SpaceX is developing Falcon Heavy without a NASA contract. How many SLS contractors were working on SDLV hardware before getting a specific NASA cost-plus contract for every single part?

        For ISS’s annual budget, NASA could lease 60 full Bigelow “Alpha” stations just for themselves. Or 10 stations, and still have 85% of their budget left to fund research on those stations. Since Bigelow’s leasing price includes maintenance and ops, you only need to fund your own research. Don’t believe their price? Double it. That still leaves 70% of ISS’s budget available for actual research. Do you think 70% of ISS’s current budget goes on actual research?

        [Ten stations also allows you to specialise. NASA cancelled
        the centrifuge experiment because vibration would mess with their micro-g experiments. Likewise, the power requirements of some experiments means big solar panels, which causes vibration as they track, limiting the precision of other experiments. But with separate stations, you can put your highly sensitive micro-g work in one, your high-power use experiments in another, your centrifuge in another, and your human life-science (jumping around on treadmills) on another. Oh, and that still leaves 6 more.]

        “I haven’t seen a convincing argument that either model will save money.”

        NASA’s own analysis said that they couldn’t replicate SpaceX’s development for anything close to the same cost. And certainly not for what NASA has paid SpaceX for COTS/CCDev.

        SpaceX developed and tested two full rockets and a full recoverable capsule, from scratch, for less than NASA spend modifying a single existing shuttle SRB to launch as a sub-orbital demonstrator (Ares-1x). And SpaceX will spend less developing their 50 ton to LEO launcher that NASA spends in 6 months on its 70 ton to LEO launcher.

        • Bernardo de la Paz says:
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          We are specifically talking COTS/CCDev/CCiCAP here. That means Dragon, Cygnus, CST100, & Dream Chaser. They have only one customer so far – NASA, and they have made public statements to the effect that there are no non-government customers that will step up to the costs of using those systems. Bigelow announced a year or so ago a large scale back in their efforts to develop a space hotel business because they did not see any of these LEO transport systems offering a near term potential for cost reductions sufficient to attract a commercial market. At the moment, other than the suborbital platers, no current human space flight efforts appear affordable to a commercial market. Hence my statement is true – regardless of the contract model, NASA remains the only customer for now. Personally, I hope we do get beyond that, but we are not there and don’t appear to be getting any closer on any of the present paths.

          The commercial satellite business you brought up is a different market outside the original discussion here. But since you brought it up, it is worth noting that the “traditional arsenal contractors” have or do sell their government contract subsidized launchers in that market just like the “NewSpace” contractors sell their government contract subsidized launchers in the commercial market. (In fact, to date, the “traditional arsenal contractors” have made a higher percentage of their actual launches in the commercial market than have the “NewSpace” contractors.) While there are no doubt differences worthy of discussion in terms of styles of contracts and relative mission costs, there is not a fundamental difference in business philosophy between the various old and new players in the government contract business, most especially in regards to the discussion at hand of whose slice of government pie is going to get cut – they all still want as big a bite of Uncle Sam as they can get.As for “I don’t see how that’s possible. For one year’s budget for SLS development, NASA could be flying 22 Falcon Heavy missions.[…]”: 1) It’s pointless to compare development costs of one contractor to operational costs of another; 2) SpaceX is developing Falcon Heavy in part with an Air Force contract, which while not NASA is still a government contract, and deriving it from Falcon 9 developed from government contracts; and 3) Projected Falcon launch costs are based on booster recovery and reuse, which they have so far failed to demonstrate. To reiterate, I’m not offering an opinion on a favorite contractor here, just pointing out that the differences between these contractors are not as fundamental as some pundits seem to claim.As for your final point, this conversation was not about ISS vs. Bigelow. While I am certainly not going to argue in defense of the ISS operating budget, it’s pretty obvious that Bigelow’s proposals do not have the demonstrated maturity to bet on the levels of cost savings you claim to say nothing of the differences in capabilities that would have to be considered.I am all for competition between government contractors and selecting the best vendor for the tax payers’ money. However, it must be understood that the new kids on the block are not offering some new panacea solution. They are still playing the same game of competing for contracts to get a share of the government pie. Maybe they have some new ideas and can do it better, maybe they are inexperienced and promising things they can’t deliver. Time will tell, but it’s still the same old game and I suspect it will turn out to be a little bit of both.As I said, there are other ways to play this game which I would think are worthy of discussion.

          • Paul451 says:
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            “The commercial satellite business you brought up is a different market […] it is worth noting that the “traditional arsenal contractors” have or do sell their government contract subsidized launchers in that market just like the “NewSpace” contractors “

            Except they don’t. For nearly a decade, the traditional US launchers had pretty much abandoned the commercial launch market to foreign launchers. They have few clients outside DoD, and to a lesser degree NASA. Part of the rising costs that the DoD worries about was the tiny number of launches.

            And that’s why DoD wants to accelerate development of Falcon Heavy. (Accelerate. Unlike EELV, they didn’t order it up and pay for the entire development.)

            “and deriving it from Falcon 9 developed from government contracts”

            SpaceX didn’t receive NASA contracts until after it had developed and launched F1, and developed F9. And I believe they received no payments until after the first (private) launch of F9. That was their COTS first payment mile-stone.

            “there is not a fundamental difference in business philosophy between the various old and new players in the government contract business,”

            You simply state this without offering any reasoning. I and others have pointed out the enormous difference between the two methods of buying hardware.

            And it’s an extremely important difference when decisions are being made over budgets. Common sense says when your budget is in a crisis, you buy the most cost-effective hardware to achieve the goal. The proposal to save SLS at the expense of the comparitively tiny CRS/CCi programs is the opposite.

            “and 3) Projected Falcon launch costs are based on booster recovery and reuse,”

            Advertised launch prices. What they actually charge their clients.

            Don’t trust their numbers? Double them. Triple them. The maths is the same. You can launch more payload sooner on FH than on SLS, for less cost to NASA, leaving money left over to actually have missions.

            Note also that you pointedly ignored that I took SLS budget projections at face value. I talked about doubling future SpaceX prices (I also assumed they’d be two years behind schedule) but I did not assume any cost or schedule overrun for SLS. Which, frankly, seem wildly unlikely. If SLS launches people in 2021, I’ll eat my keyboard.

            “As for your final point, this conversation was not about ISS vs. Bigelow.”

            This conversation was about your inability to see the difference between two fundamental ways of doing space missions.

            “Bigelow’s proposals do not have the demonstrated maturity to bet on the levels of cost savings you claim”

            And as I said, if you don’t trust their numbers, double them or triple them. It still gives you more capability than ISS (in terms of rack-space), vastly more liveable volume, vastly lower operating costs, and leaves vastly more of the budget to pay for actual honest to god research.

            As for “maturity”, this is their listed price. If they can’t deliver, you don’t pay. And that’s what is new. Fundamentally different. Radical.

            And it has the potential, if not choked to death, to dramatically improve the effective buying power of NASA at a time of shrinking budgets.

            [edit: I missed the most obvious example of the difference. Dennis Tito’s Mars proposal. Whether or not he can get enough money to fund it, the basic idea of being able to order up a Falcon Heavy, a Dragon capsule, a small Bigelow module, and just go to Mars because you want to. That’s impossible with SLS/Orion. It’s not just that there’s no market for them, it’s that their very nature excludes the possibility of a market. NewSpace has put a Mars mission within affordability of a wealthy oil Prince, or a small ambitious country. That’s new.]

          • Bernardo de la Paz says:
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            We’re both getting long winded, so I’ll stick to the core point. Please note that I have repeatedly said that I am not professing an opinion one way or the other as to which of these contractors can offer the best deal.
            This thread started about the NASA decision to take the brunt of their budget cuts from the COTS/CCDev/CCiCap budgets rather than the MPCV/SLS budgets. Some commenters mistakenly tried to characterize this as the government protecting itself at the expense of commercial enterprises. The only purpose of my comments has been to point out the mistake in that view. The reality is that none of these contractors are actually private commercial businesses operating independently of government funding. (If they were, NASA budgeting choices would be irrelevant to them.) They are all government contractors and this argument is only about which contracts will get the biggest cuts. I’ve agreed that there are different styles of contracts and if you have an opinion that one or the other of them might be a better deal for the taxpayers, I am not attempting to dispute you. The point of this discussion though is that there simply is no aspect of ‘government’ vs. ‘private enterprise’ intrinsic in this government budget slicing debate.

            The rest of your discussion can be summed up as the difference between a contractor being paid before or after delivering services or goods. 
            It is worth noting that when looked at closely, there is an element of both funding models in both the groups of contractors being discussed here. It’s merely a question of degree.
            (It should also be noted that the Falcon 1 you cited here was still largely paid for by government contracts – just from the Air Force rather than NASA.)

            Finally, I’ll throw it out there for a third time even though no one has taken the bait – if the goal is fostering a commercial space industry, there are other models worthy of discussion and that actually are fundamentally different that the government contractor model.

  3. Luis Vázquez says:
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    No mention of furloughs. They aren’t planning any, or they just won’t tell?

    • AnonymousFourEyedCoward says:
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      From what I’ve seen and read, only a relatively small part of NASA’s budget (~20%) goes into Civil Servant salaries and benefits. In order for furloughs to do much to reduce NASA’s costs for the remaining 7 months of the fiscal year, they would have to encompass a very large fraction of NASA’s staff for a decent chunk of time — effectively shutting down parts of the organization. One could argue that furloughs might serve as a symbolic act, although I don’t think most of America would care that much,

  4. si39 says:
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    This is a little off-topic and yet:

    How probable is the sequestration?   Based on past experience a deal will be made to continue at nearly the current spending rate and raise taxes.  I would like note that the majority of tax money is collected from with the middle class: income, payroll, sales, fees.  So, this is where the new tax revenue is likely to come from.  At some point the US will run out of real money.  It will be interesting to see how the adjustment is made.  My best guess is that real/hard assets will become highly inflated as the value of the dollar drops.

    To date there has been no real pain to speak of – other than high unemployment – but mostly at the low end of the job market.

    Back to the point – a deal will be made.

  5. Andrew Gasser says:
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    JWST and SLS come through but hurting.  iCap is essentially ruined.  Not too much else leftat SMD.

    • RockyMtnSpace says:
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      Not sure where your SMD comment is coming from, it was barely touched.  Total sequestration hit of about 1 percent and was lowest percentage of all of the areas indicated.  Note however that only $10.8B of NASA’s $17B was impacted if Bolden’s letter fully encompasses the impact.  OCT took a 21% hit but most of that is to internal projects that  US industry had little to no involvement in, thus emptying the sandbox isn’t such a bad thing from my POV.  CCiCAP providers can go source their development funding in the private sector where they should have been doing it in the first place, so again, not a bad thing from my POV.  If/when they are ready to fly, they can bid on a services contract with NASA as taxpayers shouldn’t be shouldering the development risk.

      • dogstar29 says:
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        OCT is supported by contractors, and at least welcomes new ideas, which few parts of the agency do. CCiCAP is getting paid for providing services to NASA, both to replace services we are currently procuring from Russia at great expense and to jump-start new industry, as NACA was created to do almost a century ago.

      • Anonymous_Newbie says:
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        Since OCT is the funnel for innovation, I suppose you feel there is less need for innovation if not occuring in industry? NASA has goals (planetary exploration for example) that there are no real industrial markets for (or frankly much chance of getting private sector funding for given the lack of monetary return on investment). Does that make them less worthwhile? And, there are plenty of contractors supporting OCT. From your POV does that make it less bad that they are getting a 21% cut? I find it curious that you have a problem giving government funds to do “in house” research where there is no market demand, but you don’t mind taking government money and giving it to private industry for development where there is a private market. From my POV, it is not the place of government to tax its citizens to give money to prop up private business. Also, from my POV, based on your comments on OCT, you have no idea what they do.

  6. old_1150 says:
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    Charlie Bolden has got to go.  Slashing CCDev while leaving SLS untouched?  That ~$450M CCDev cut, if applied to SLS, would delay SLS for what, a few weeks?  But instead NASA’s going to delay CCDev for years while it gives that same amount of money to the *Russians* to ferry crew and cargo.  That is worse than crazy.  And for Science and Technology the Bolden strategy seems to be similar: leave the boondoggle programs intact (1% cut to SMD) but choke off anything disruptive – no matter how small – like OCT/NIAC. 

    If, as it appears, NASA HQ is going to execute Mike Griffin’s plan instead of the president’s, let’s get Mike Griffin back as the NASA administrator.  At least he could coherently argue his positions.  At least he didn’t play small-ball (e.g. trying to close NASA Ames).  At least he was smart.  At least he didn’t weep every time he spoke about space.

  7. Littrow says:
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    Some of the NASA organizations are specialization areas in which the core of people have considerable experience in specific systems or disciplines, so it makes sense to maintain the workforce. Over the years, however, this has become less the situation as the non-specialists, such as from operations, have moved in and diluted the experience base. It is also why NASA is having so much difficulty trying to accomplish anything; especially when the leaders have no experience base and make poor decisions based on lack of knowledge. 

  8. Dewey Vanderhoff says:
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    What if SLS were commercial and had to pay its own way with the same percentage of support NASA has been giving SpaceX ?  Would Lockheed, Boeing, Rocketdyne et al be willing to invest mightily in the future of the national space effort by funding more than half the cost of the heavy lifters  and manned spacecraft from their own deep pockets ?   Boeing has their own capsule and Delta IV to launch it, and Lockheed is partnered with Sierra Nevada on the Dreamchaser besides being entrenched in Orion.  So rather than NASA going down that well rutted road of Cost Plus, cost overruns, long drawn out delays that result in vastly overpriced launches that might as well burn billions of dollar bills instead of LOX and kerosene, let’s ask the military-industrial complex to put up half the skin in the game.

    • mattmcc80 says:
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      For SLS to ever happen under a commercial (fixed price, not cost-plus) arrangement, it would have to have a commercial market and a prayer of being cost competitive with other platforms.  Do either of these things seem likely?  I certainly don’t think so.  That’s one of the reasons SLS is described as a jobs program: It’s something the commercial industry wouldn’t have chosen to do.

    • Paul451 says:
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      If the heavy lift program was run like COTS, it wouldn’t be SLS, and no bidder would choose that architecture. (Which would certainly tell you something about SLS.) It’s not about “asking” the contractors to put up half the funding on a NASA-chosen design.

      That’s the difference between “commercial space” and “government contractors”, when it comes to NASA work. If you want to buy a heavy lift vehicle via commercial space, you define the problem as “delivery 70 & 130 tons to LEO”. You don’t specify the design, the components, the pad, etc. That’s SLS.

      • Steve Whitfield says:
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        Also, if the contractors had to put up their own cash, the total cost would magically be a lot less than it is now.

  9. Dewey Vanderhoff says:
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    P.S. To my mind presently NASA’s first and highest  priority should be bolstering the constellations of Earth Resources satellites and their data systems. All of our earth observation birds are getting old and followons are simply not in the pipeline. Just when we need to go to depth on climate change and geophysics, we are slipping perilously behind. So I suggest in the strongest possible terms that NASA’s first responsibility is to do what it does better than any other entity on the planet : Space Science.  Ahead of commercial crew ( second most important) and then use what’s left on the recycled Apollo launch conglomerates that reward a bloated military industrial contractor base. Been there done that . SLS  should be cost shared with private sector. QED.

    • Steve Whitfield says:
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      Dewdle,

      Not surprisingly, if you substitute “Congress persons” for “Earth Resources satellites” and “birds” in your comment, then the statement is still true and important.  So, let’s replace both the satellites and the Congress people.

      Steve

  10. hamptonguy says:
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    NO surprise that SLS and Orion will be mostly spared while the fledgling competition to these will be cut.  NASA is all politics and circle jerk payoffs between NASA managers and the contractors that will likely one day give them jobs after they retire so they can nail the taxpayer twice for working on a program that will go nowhere because it has no mission that will ever get funded.  NASA’s best move was CCDev to get a private launch industry going but obviously too much success could show the need for SLS and Orion may not be there and the private sector, with a little seed money, can get there a lot quicker and cheaper and serve a useful purpose.  

    Expect anything to change.  Not likely until reality in the form of budget cuts comes in and then hopefully the WH will make the right decisions and get NASA back on track to do the cool science and technology stuff and leave the launchers to private sector.

  11. Scot007 says:
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    The way to get rid of civil servants is that you eliminate their job function(s).  There can be bumping, where more senior people with demonstrated expertise can bump a younger person from an existing position, but if the position descriptions are tightly written, that is a minor side effect.  There should be opportunity to eliminate a fair number of job functions now, but the will to make those moves is probably not there within NASA.  Also, my guess is that position descriptions are probably both out dated and/or poorly written for many of the CS.

    • rockofritters says:
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      “..more senior people with demonstrated expertise can bump a younger person”.. that’s hilarious right there. no the way bumping works is a civil servant who has more seniority bumps somebody out. this is government, not private sector. even if a guy is in his mid 50’s and hasn’t done anything serious in 15 years he’s going to bump the guy who’s 30 just to keep his gs13 or 14 salary until his kids are out of college. it has nothing to do whatsoever with “demonstrated expertise”. but i admire your childlike optimism… that was funny right there…

  12. Anonymous says:
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    While everyone argues with each other, I watched a PBS program couple months ago about pieces of what appears as large ocean-going ships by China some hundreds of years ago. And concrete evidence Chinese had commerce between India and Africa, plus raise the question what if Chinese continued this naval capability and ventured around the world (the world would have become a much different place). But this fleet was discarded in 1300 or so.

    I asked a friend from Taiwan of what his impression of this. He said China had no powerful enemies to deal with so internal corruption became more and more, and the fleet got smaller and smaller.

    I see many parallels these days.

    • chriswilson68 says:
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      You’re referring to the expeditions of Zheng He from 1405 to 1433.  During this time, large Chinese fleets travelled in South Asia and as far as the Horn of Africa.

      There’s a lot of modern mythology built up around Zheng He and his ships.  The myth goes that China had a great ability and foolishly threw it away to focus internally.  In this narrative, if only China had maintained its fleet, it would have colonized the world instead of Europe.

      There is some bit of truth to that, but the reality is more complex.  First of all, while Zheng He had an unusually large, official fleet, it was neither the start or the end of Chinese commerce.  Chinese merchants had sailed many of those routes before, and continued to sail some of them long after.

      There’s nothing to suggest any technological advances in Zheng He’s big fleet.  The Chinese simply built a large fleet of large vessels and used the same old way to navigating near coastlines that had been used for centuries.  Certainly the big fleet made an impression where it went, and left some monuments, but it didn’t have any lasting effect.  It had a huge cost for little economic return.

      That’s exactly the opposite of the way that Europe succeeded.  Most of the European voyages of discovery were modestly-sized, depending on technological advances from a thriving merchant culture back home, and always geared to opening up trade and focused on economic returns.

      The real reason Europe ended up dominating much of the world instead of China was the Europe at the time was in the midst of a wave of rapid technological development and China was not.  Chinese society valued stability, not innovation.  Europe was highly fragmented and unstable, and that instability led to constant competition.  That competition and innovation led to Europe dominating the world.

      • Anonymous says:
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        “large fleet of large vessels and used the same old way”
        SLS?

        “European voyages of discovery were modestly-sized, depending on technological advances from a thriving merchant culture back home”
        CCDev?

        Thanks for the brief about Zheng He.

  13. golfer4texas says:
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    if these companies are as they say…commercial…they shouldn’t even be in this conversation about sequestration…their addressable markets for the most part (as they claim) shouldn’t depend on the government

    • Michael Reynolds says:
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      I think you’re misunderstanding the argument here with sequestering CCDev. It is between doing things the old way (cost-plus style contracts like SLS) vice the new way (fixed price, pay for performance milestone contracts like CCDev).
      “Commercial”, as you put it, is one way or another going to build the rockets. I would not have a problem with SLS if it was contracted out the same way that CCDev was and I am sure many people here on NW that are so critical of it would agree.

    • Steve Whitfield says:
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      If the government is buying something that the seller designed and built, then the government is part of the commercial marketplace.  If the government is paying a contractor to build a government-specified item (as opposed to a purchased product), then that is a government contract.  So, the companies in question are commercial since they depend on sales into the commercial marketplace.  The government just happens to be part of that marketplace.

      In a similar way, at the beginning of airplane use, the government was buying DC-3 airplanes from McDonnel, which was a commercial buy (of a McDonell-designed and -built product).  The purchase of F-22 fighter jets, on the other hand, was a government contract, since the seller (still a commercial company) built and sold what the government specified, not a design of their own.

      Bottom line: whether a commercial buy or a government contact is involved, if the government (in this case NASA) has less money, then they can’t buy, so the sequester doesn’t affect them any differently.

  14. Steve Whitfield says:
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    I don’t see it that way.  At some point you can no longer keep deferring the problem into the future; that only grows the problem.  If an economically intelligent compromise is not reached soon, it may be necessary to bite the bullet and enact the sequester in hopes that it will force political hands.  And at some point, if the situation persists, then the message that goes out to the public is that their elected representatives don’t care about the welfare of their constituents, but only about “winning.”  That could get ugly, and things are perhaps already approaching that point.