Is Charlie Bolden Going to Tell Congress "No Commercial Crew in 2017"?
The Commercial Spaceflight Federation Applauds Passage of Bill Providing Funding for Commercial Programs and Renewal of Government Risk-Sharing
“The bill funds NASA’s Commercial Crew Program at $696 million, a significant increase from FY13. “With this bill’s strong Commercial Crew funding, Congress has acknowledged the importance of quickly developing a U.S. system to carry American astronauts and reduce our dependence on aging Russian infrastructure,” said CSF President Michael Lopez-Alegria. “We applaud Congress for recognizing the importance of a robust U.S. space program and, in particular, an organic capability to provide human access to Low-Earth Orbit.”
Keith’s note: “strong Commercial Crew funding”? What CSF seems to not comprehend is the fact that the $696M in this budget is $125 million less than the $821M White House asked for in FY 2014. When you take into consideration that of this $696M, $171M is not being given to NASA anytime soon (unless they produce the ISS report that Congress requires), then NASA will only have $525M in FY 2014. $525M is $296M less than the White House asked for i.e. a one-third cut in what was requested.
In FY 2014 budget hearings last year Charlie Bolden was clear that if he did not get the $821M that the White House asked for in FY 2014 then having a commercial crew capability in 2017 was not going to happen. In addition, the NASA OIG noted in a report that previous cuts in commercial crew budgets have already forced a slip from 2015 to 2017. One would assume that future budget shortfalls would have a similar consequence.
No matter how you slice this, NASA is not getting the $821M that was the basis for the line in the sand drawn by Charlie Bolden last year with regard to the FY 2014 budget. Neither $696M or $525M is even close. If Bolden was accurate when he made these public statements, then as soon as the President signs this budget bill into law, NASA needs to be sending notification to Congress, per Bolden’s statement, that 2017 is off the table. If not, then you have to question whether NASA can back up any of its statements with regard to what it needs for large projects – SLS, JWST, etc.
NASA Chief:Commercial Crew Safe from Sequester, for Now, Space News
“If we aren’t able to get up to the $800 million level [FY 2014], then I will have to come back and officially notify the Congress that we cannot make 2017 for availability of commercial crew,” Bolden said at that hearing.”
NASA IG Warns on Commercial Crew as NASA Celebrates End of COTS, SpacePolicyOnline
“The OIG did not make any recommendations on the issue of unstable funding, but noted that for FY2011-2013, NASA received only 38 percent of its requested funding for the program, resulting in a delay from FY2015 to FY2017 of the first expected commercial crew flight. “The combination of a future flat-funded profile and lower-than-expected levels of funding over the past 3 years may delay the first crewed flight beyond 2017 and closer to 2020, the current expected end of the operational life of the ISS.” The report includes the following table showing NASA’s successive 5-year budget projections for the commercial crew program beginning in FY2009.”
– Charlie Bolden Has His Head In The Sand Again, earlier post
– Confusion on “Pretty Darn Good” Statement from OSTP, earlier post
– Commercial Crew Transportation Capability RFP Released, earlier post
– NASA OIG Report on Commercial Crew Program, earlier post
Could it also be that the Administration asked for more than it actually needed, knowing that Congress will almost always authorize significantly less than they ask for? Would seem to be an intelligent strategy.
In that case, they should’ve asked for more like $1B. Commercial crew is a bargain by any measure, I don’t think the administration is inflating the cost estimate that much. After all, the sum total of CCDev spending to date (across five companies and four years) is $1.5B, less than 6 months of SLS development costs.
If they did it is foolish. If they ask for a certain amount and say that there is a lower limit below which things cannot be done – and then, when they get a number below that limit, they still do that task anyway, their credibility will be zero.
“…their credibility will be zero.”
None Obama’s budgets have voted on by Dems, so it’s already zero.
“May 16, 2012, 08:30 pm
“A budget resolution based on President Obama’s 2013 budget failed to get any votes in the Senate on Wednesday.
In a 99-0 vote, all of the senators present rejected the president’s blueprint.
It’s the second year in a row the Senate has voted down Obama’s budget.
…
““For three years, Senate Democrats have refused to produce a budget, as
required by law,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said ina statement.”
Read more: http://thehill.com/blogs/fl…
A President of the United States presents a NON BINDING budget to congress, it ALWAYS gets a rewrite. And with the republicans in the house of no it is a lead pipe cinch NO budget of this president would ever see the light of day.
Actually it is the House that initiates spending. not sure what the Senator means.
My understanding is that historically this tactic is standard operating procedure for selling programs politically. Oversell the benefits and understate the long term costs. STS and Space Station are prime examples of this.
In this case the Administration knows Congress will be stingy, so why not use the reverse psychology?
Besides, NASA hasn’t ever had any credibility for budgeting, and Congress already knows this. And NASA has a long history of trying to make do with less than ideal funding. Congress is aware of this as well.
As long as you’re listing what Congress knows, let’s add that Congress knows how to make things fall their way while making it look like it was NASA’s fault that things didn’t go as supposedly planned. In other words, Congress knows how to fix the game while making someone else to blame.
it’s the problem of budgets by negotiation. if you get the budget you ask for, then the natural thing to do is to ask for more. the “rational” thing to do is to look at past performance and scale the budget/SoW accordingly.
but then of course what’s a budget for something you’ve never done before. you might keep contingency funds as a buffer.
a question about the James Webb project … are the overruns due to problems encountered doing somethng novel, or was the original budget a good number (and Congress are now paying for reduced budgets in the past) ? or is it inefficiency (due to external causes … manpowere turn-over being higher than expected …) or is it incompetence ?
Despite year over year increases in funding for Commercial Crew, each year has fallen short and has now delayed first flight from 2015 to 2017 and now likely 2018. The price of Soyuz seats went from $22M to now $71M for launches from 2016 onward. Ticket prices are $55M this year, $60M in 2016. About 3 American astronauts are launched per year – about $200M per year which has been the shortfall in Commercial Crew funding year over year. Congress is delaying US’s return-to-flight and effectively paying Russia the amount they short-changed Commercial Crew.
Reading the CSF website material and reference materials, my impression is that they would applaud any action that is taken by Congress and NASA. CSF is such a collection of industry players that whatever is decided is a benefit to one or more of their industry members. If the funding level had been less than the previous year, then yes, they would likely have expressed disappointment.
While they don’t spell it out, the intent of CSF is likely as lobbyists. There are likely issues in Washington or the halls of NASA HQ that all their members share the same view but I think the question of Commercial Crew funding is not one of them. So long as there was an increase from last year – which there is, CSF could hail it as a victory- “applaud Congress”. THIS IS NOT A VICTORY FOR COMMERCIAL CREW.
While they have undercut Commercial Crew funding, Nelson and Shelby and Brooks have protected their SLS and Orion. Fully funded and, in my opinion, destined to be canceled, SLS/Orion is not designed as an alternative to Commercial Crew. Responding to J.R. Bartlett, even if they asked for more than was needed, the fact is that the funding levels have delayed first flight two and now at least 3 years.
Where are you seeing year over year increases in Commercial Crew Funding???
Ref. Source – http://cnsnews.com/news/art…
Read it again. The program the author is referring to is not the CCP that is going to provide seats by commercial companies to the ISS. About the only thing right is that the Russians have adopted capitalism in pricing their Soyuz seats.
CCP has had every funding request cut by about a third since they started out.
Suggest you properly research the facts.
Cheers
I did not say that CCP is providing seats. I said that the shortfall in CCP funding, each year, has been equivalent to the cost of sending American astronauts to ISS on Soyuz. And I agree that funding allocated to CCP was less than requested by a third each year. The end result is that replacement of Soyuz flights with American commercial will take 3 years longer – 2015 to 2018. The money spent on 3 additional years of Soyuz flights is close to the shortfall American politicians have inflicted on Commercial Crew.
Commercial crew received 50 million in the stimulas, the President asked for 400 million.
Commercial crew received 250 in the first budget, the President requested 6 billion over 5 years.
Commercial crew received 406 million the next year, 890 requested.
Commercial crew received 550 million the next year, 850 million requested.
Commercial crew received 696 million this time and 821 million requested.
At play here are fundamental “beliefs” about how things should be done. Many people simply don’t “believe” that manned spaceflight is the domain of private enterprise, and that space is a sandbox for NATIONS to play in.
Nations have no choice in the matter, short of a total regulatory clampdown. Human spaceflight will be both by nations and commercial, real soon now. Robotic exploration will remain the domain of nations for a long time. Sure Planetary Resources will fly tiny telescopes in LEO and DSI has their Firefly to asteroids but it will take a lot more money to be profitable. And that’s prospecting and not exploration. Exploration that is derived from prospecting is not the way we want exploration to turn.
Not only that but the United States is just about ready to dominate the human space flight and LEO destination markets. Other governments will have to sooner or later, turn their Stalinist big government programs over to their commercial sectors. Let’s hope we grab the market share first.
Just my opinion but it is not about profits it is about aquiring assets to put on the books. When does the rock become the actual property of the mining company and when do they get to add the value of the rock into their account ledgers as an asset that they can sell, use as collateral for loans, sell the mineral rights to .. etc etc
We’re seeing the last big push for this now: their are congressmen that would rather see a foreign GOVERNMENT launch our astronauts than a private company in their own country! This will take many more years to die out, even though it is inevitable. There may even be a new round of regulatory crackdowns as you mention.
I recall Frank Borman doing a talk at the UofArizona in ’07ish, he refused to believe that SpaceX or any other private company would ever have the capability to do what the government space program could do (and this is when there was evidence to prove him wrong!). Remember, this isn’t about cost, facts or nationality, it’s about the BELIEF that only governments should be doing certain things. And beliefs die out when the people who believe them die out.
Want to bet? How long is such a report going to take to produce? Months, easily. We’re already three months into FY2014. Is it going to assume ISS operation is extended to 2024, which will make
a huge difference in the analysis? If it is, will it have to wait for
all the ISS partners to sign off on that extension, which could take
years?
And then of course, what assurances do we have that the House will accept the findings of the report? They can kick the can down the road all they want by saying they have to review the findings.
It will take NASA months to pull this together – by the time they do FY 2014 will be half over. Much of the data needed to do the report Congress has asked for is predicated upon decisions that foreign partners on the ISS program will not make for a year or more.
Attached is a sheet showing NASA budget breakdown for 2012, 2013 and 2014 plus a Pie Chart of 2014. From NASA data sheets & Omnibus Bill data.
2014. “Space Operations” will remain pegged at $3.778 Billion for the lifetime of ISS until 2024. Wording in the Omnibus warns NASA not to use creative accounting (robbing Peter to pay Paul) otherwise retributions will arrive in the 2015. JWST is the bane of Planetary Science and the rest of the Science allocation. But I am sure NASA management is ecstatic about having a budget 9 months (remaining fiscal year) rather than patchwork due to CRs.
Those tied to the specifics of the NASA budget, such as Planetary Science, Commercial Crew (CCDev) can rant and lament all they want over short-falls of 1, 2 or $300M. But until these interests do something about SLS and Orion, they will continue grabbing and clawing for the last $100 million. The stipulation that Keith Cowing clearly explains is insult to injury – it cuts CCDev 2014 to effectively $525M.
SLS and Orion development takes from CCDev and takes from Science and from Exploration R&D. Until the formula for Human Spaceflight is changed, that is, canceling SLS and Orion in favor of commercial vehicles, the rest of NASA will be cash starved. NASA “Science” advocates and those for CCDev are not nearly doing enough to change the path of Human Spaceflight. It will cost time and money and careers.
Curious table. Here is one since 2003, arranging items by similarity of purpose (operational, vs. development, etc.).
Nice graph. The cost of human spaceflight has been all about the vehicle since 1982, well since 1958. Bolden says that you gain efficiency by launching all your hardware and your astronauts on one big rocket. That’s crock. They are just trying to find justification for completing a white elephant. The better choice is to always launch humans separate from large payloads. That way a man-rated heavy lift launch vehicle is not needed. Join components in LEO. Fairing sizes: the difference between SLS and Falcon is negligible – 5 meter class.
When, not if, SLS and Orion are canceled, most the funds should remain in human spaceflight but the economics of lifting payload – human or hardware, is going to change dramatically in the next 10 years that is needed to do anything useful with SLS and Orion. We could do NASA very well by canceling SLS/Orion, shifting funds to commercial and redirecting the savings, realistically ~$1 Billion annually to Science and Exploration R&D. That would mean a lot of these programs.
I would like to see it shifted to commercial fuel depot and space based, reusable, gas n’ go vehicles.
I switched from sheet libre-office to ms-office and mucked up the darker blue. 2012 numbers are not viewable. Here is the sheet with the color corrected. FWIW.
Highly unlikely that Bolden will call Congress on this one. I’d re ken he has a hard time working out which shoe to put on which of his feet these days. He just seems more and more incompetent as time goes by.
Was the line drawn in the sand based on a plan to move forward on 1, 2, or all 3 current vehicles? Or did NASA keep their options open on this (i.e. they haven’t said what the plan is to move forward)? Can Bolden “back down” and say with that budget we can still move forward but on the higher risk path of only selecting 1 (if 2 was the presumed plan)?
If 1 was the presumed plan, why doesn’t he have the room to just say they will move forward and it may take longer? Was anything in the solicitation for the final phase based on the $800M number that they now have to go back a modify the RFP?
Does anyone see the irony in griping about govt funding for commercial space operators? If there is such a “market” and the operators feel they can make money, shouldn’t the commercial operators pony up the difference?
Did you come up with this, or are you just repeating something you saw on the internet without thinking about it?
I wasn’t trying to be snarky.
I was legitimately curious. It seems very difficult to justify the position that sending SpaceX seed money to meet govt requirements has been a waste.
The government is DEMANDING a service that currently does not exist. You DO understand that right?
Goto Ford motors or General motors… tell them you want them to build you a new transportation system on their dime… please record them laughing at you I want to hear it.
The demand for a non existant service is coming from the government, not the commercial sector .. yet. Their isn’t a commercial destination currently in LEO. Once there is a commercial destination and commercial services to take passengers to the commercial destination we will start to see the actual commercial demand.
since Bigelow Aerospace already has 7 signed MOU’s from 2nd and 3rd tier countries wanting a full up, manned, LEO based space program for 300 million a year.. you will see your commercial demand.
Ok so lets say that Orion and SLS are cancelled and funding is diverted to commercial operators; essentially that grounds the US to LEO for a long time. Outside of untried propellant depots there is no commercial market for BEO exploration. It would be considered the equivalent of industrial R&D done on overhead; something that US industries are loathe to do.
I think real human exploration will be done by government agencies for the foreseeable future.
Actually not, it frees up funding for space hardware we actually NEED going forward. Space based, reusable, gas n’ go vehicles and commercial fuel depots
Astronaut means space sailor. Lets have NASA build space ships that our American astronauts can actually fly to MULTIPLE destinations. Instead of being bogged down with 60 year old launch operations that should have been commercialized like ALL transportation systems.
actually we have moved propellants around on the ISS for a while and there is not an accredited space engineer that says fuel depots are the long pole in the tent. The problem is congress has 5 decades of a pork infrastructure in place and are not going to give it up without a fight.
Not in this case. Or rather, no, they should not be counted on to pony up ALL the money. Think of this as two extremes, which can also be thought of as paths.
One path for NASA in meeting a desire (like getting things to space) is to do what has been done more often than not. That is to develop, make, operate and “own” the system. The system is then used exclusively by the government. The work is done by contractors whose entire business case is built around winning a competition and providing the goods and/or services (develop, manufacture, launch, etc.)
The other extreme is, as you say, to await the commercial operators, waiting on them to “pony up”. The government would only come in once the commercial operator is up and running providing the service to others (non-government).
The problem with the first option, total ownership, occurs when incentives baked into such an approach drive industry and NASA to create unaffordable systems. The monopoly industry “winner”, for example, benefits from inefficiencies throughout, and in some cases the whole system gets driven by NASA award decisions other than NASA goals in exploration or science. Think SLS, Orion, etc.
The problem with the other extreme, awaiting wholly private players to mature and be available, is that it requires waiting for a system that may or may not meet, on a timeline that works or not, any NASA needs, as these were never conveyed or part of the private development in the first place.
So an approach is often espoused that goes down the middle. This was the COTS Cargo acquisition model. Co-invest with a bias to companies that mature plans for non-government business and also lay some of their own capital on the line. The benefits are many. First, real competition, by selecting this acquisition model for relatively mature capability (like rockets to LEO) likely to draw new entrants. Second, as the companies want private business, they have every incentive to make the manufacturing and operational outcome affordable, to assure the non-government business that will otherwise walk away. Third, the use of the system, and its costs, is amortized over many users, vs. just one owner. That again helps on operational affordability.
The later acquisition or “enabling economic growth” model is not new, as examples abound where the government found it more effective to enable non-government growth of a market, so as to later buy a small portion, rather than to do it all and own the whole (and likely smaller) market. (Think Air Mail, Rail, etc.). Even the pre-COTs Cargo model of EELV (by DoD) was an attempt at this (albeit, for certain reasons the resulting systems have not proven as affordable, and not at all competitive in commercial).
Like much of this administration, its just double speak. There is little “commercial” in commercial crew. They are just as susceptible to Government budget cuts as the rest of us “commercial” contractors.
A federal agency of the U.S. government,NASA, was ordered to procure a service that currently does not exist. In order to procure that service, and to insure that service was created to their specifications and the contractors would have the technical knowledge that NASA felt they would need, a fixed price, milestone based SAA was used instead of the more common FAR cost plus contracting. The contractors had to finance each milestone on their own dime and once NASA was satified they paid the contractor for achieving the milestone that was ordered.
You do understand that there is actually no commercial crew yet until the companies start their commercial services…. correct?
Right now these are commercial companies that are selling milestones ONLY and they not doing commercial business at all yet. Once the government has paid for the milestones THEY feel that the companies will need they award the last contract for flight testing. Once those flight tests are done and the FAA signs off then and ONLY then will commercial crew actually be commercial crew. Right now they are commercial companies being paid to do milestones, not commercial services.
And this is the way it has been done for a very, very long time. Even if you look no further than transportation systems, you’ll see that, in every case, the government subsidized, or outright paid for, the R&D, improvements and implementation of all of them, taking them from non-existence to working systems when there was a need or benefit or both. The tax payers, who are really paying for this, ultimately benefit from the investment.
There can be no commercial market until there is a working system/service, and there can be no working system/service until a large chunk of money is invested into creating it. Since the amount of money required is more than any commercial company can scrape off of its bottom line, only governments paying for development can bring new industries like this into existence.
From horses and blacksmiths to steam locomotives, automobiles and aircraft. The Federal government has ALWAYS played a hand in the creation and then use of that commercial transportation system and the general masses have always benefited and it was an intregal part of America having the largest economy in the solar system. …
And the masses get screwed over, with no plans to build highways to space all for the more educated,”where they build an imaginary giant un flyable rocket. The masses, ME are getting screwed. I’m just a Joe pubic that has read these posts for many years and I feel that our human space program is just a big damn Joke!!!!! Keith booted me once for saying its a joke. Well I have read little too convince me otherwise. The masses need a highway to future resources. Instead we get bull about expensive exploration. Told to pay billions for way out there science. When it boils down to the more well to do protecting their check!!!
Paul’s argument against SLS is bullet proof, yet few here agreed, proof most of you really don’t care. It’s all so sad!!!!!
What if we didn’t have a space program. What if it only flew imaginary rockets.
Isn’t that the direction we are headed????
Hey poor taxpayer, send us your money for our upper class jobs program and we will tell you how one day we will go to space!!
I’m tired of being ripped off!!!!!!
In economics that is called opportunity cost.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wik…
It is enough to make you cry when you add up the opportunity costs of the CONstellation program, SLS and MPCV/Orion to date. And know .. the pain doesn’t stop here, they want to fund that pork monster to nowhere for another decade!
OK guys, you’re not happy about the way things are. You know where the problems originate and propogate — with your Congress. So what are you prepared to do about it?
if all of us call Senator Nelson’s office in DC and complain about this it might have some effect.
Do you mean a “dam” joke or a “damn” joke? Personally I think SpaceX has at least a chance of significantly reducing the cost of human or unmanned launches, essential if it is ever to become truly commercial.
Damn
Fan is short for fanatic. ALWAYS? really? Every case? hardly never I would say if its truly commercial. Want an example? Sure. The term cost plus is over used and I am not sure understood. There are multiple forms of cost plus contracting and the other “commercial” contractors can and do lose money. The other “commercial” contractors do budget and spend their own IRAD money on the objective of building a better mousetrap and customers beating a path to their door. Here is one, its the story of the many not the few…
A P R O F I TA B L E P L A N E On the first day of June 1913, Allan Loughead’s wife Dorothy gave birth to their first child, a daughter named Flora. Allan’s family was now riding on the fate of an untested sea plane. It simply had to fly.
Two weeks after Flora’s birth, on June 15, Allan and Malcolm launched their Model G from a boat ramp near Fort Mason into the San Francisco Bay. Allan pushed the throttle. Soon, the plane was airborne. Lockheed’s first flight of the Model G was in the books.
Malcolm joined Allan for the second flight, soaring to an altitude of 300 feet over Alcatraz Island and Sausalito Bay, to the delight of onlookers.
But the challenges didn’t abate. When the plane was damaged months later, their anxious Alco investor seized it and placed it in storage. To earn enough money to repair it and buy it back, the Loughead brothers turned to their old day jobs as mechanics and tried panning for gold in California. Malcolm even served as an adviser for the single-plane air force of a revolutionary general in Mexico (where a Martin-built aircraft also saw service). It took more than a year, but the brothers recovered and repaired the craft just in time for the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition.
The international gathering was a huge success. The Lougheads sold flights to more than 600 people for the dizzying sum of $10 a ride, all without incident or injury. The Model G had now accomplished something truly innovative: It had turned a profit.
In 1916, the brothers moved near their mother in Santa Barbara, Calif., and established the Loughead Aircraft Manufacturing Company in a garage at 101 State St., mere blocks away from the waterfront.
Yes, every case, The introduction of roads.highways.canals.railroads.ports.airports.ponyexpress Name a transportation system that the government didn’t dump money into in the form of land grants, loans, subsidies. Hell we are still subsidizing in one way or another all major mass tranportation systems.
You can believe what you wish but the people actually involved with this would beg to differ.
If Congress is not happy with the report the funds will not be available to NASA. COngress needs to deem the report to be responsive to their request. You seem to think that this whole process is much easier than it actually is.
It is a roadblock intended to slow down commercial crew and get another year tacked onto SLS.
Can’t wait for Obama and his administration to be gone so we can get a space program that has the presidents support and leadership.
Is your primary goal the exploration of space (a relatively nonpartisan issue) or the advancement of a particular brand of politics? Several presidents have professed support for particular efforts in space (e.g. GW Bush/VSE, Reagan/NASP and Reagan/Station) and then failed to even provide adequate funding in their own budget requests.
It might be a strategy. Since the idea of commercial is to have the companies develop this on their own to the greatest extent possible, maybe the real goal is for NASA, the Administration and Congress to push the potential providers to develop as much on their own dime as possible. Cut the government cost. Maybe we should give them more credit than some of us thought?
I THINK THIS HOLE SLS THING SHOULD STOP CONGRESS U NEED TO FUND THE COMMERCIAL CREW I AM TRIED OF US FLYING IN THE RUSSIA SOYUZ US NEED IT’S ON ROCKETS BACK THIS HOLE THING IS BUSH FAULT GOT US FLYING WITH RUSSIA