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Budget

NASA Budget Celebrations Will Be Short-Lived

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
January 17, 2014
Filed under , ,

Continued Victories for Planetary Exploration, Planetary Society
“The book is not closed on 2014. Now that NASA has its money, it has to spend it. It does this through its operating plan, where the agency can make minor adjustments to project funding based on programmatic needs. Last year NASA abused this process and tried to shift all additional money allocated for Planetary Science by Congress to unrelated projects. I feel that this is unlikely to happen again, but it’s something that we will be watching closely. I know it sounds crazy, but sometimes you have to ensure that NASA spends planetary money on planetary projects.”
The big problem with the “big win” for NASA’s exploration program budget, Houston Chronicle
“Sen. Bill Nelson, who chairs the Senate subcommittee that oversees NASA, and bills himself as “one of the leading architects of a plan to build a new monster rocket and crew capsule for deep space exploration,” said of the plan, “This is a big win.” NASA’s administrator, Charles Bolden, also praised the budget deal. This is the same Nelson who along with other congressional leaders and the White House agreed on a budget plan to fund and build the SLS and Orion during the summer of 2010 (see authorizing legislation). In that bill Congress called, for example, in fiscal year 2013 to fund the SLS rocket at a level of $2.64 billion. It received significantly less than that in fiscal year 2013. And one would presume funding along those lines, or more, would be needed as the SLS rocket program was building up toward a 2017 test launch. So what did the government give NASA in the new budget for fiscal year 2014? $1.6 billion.”
Keith’s note: Let’s see what the FY 2015 Budget looks like. Those projects that benefited from the FY 2014 budget may see different news in a few weeks. And some projects that did not benefit in FY 2014 may well do even worse in FY 2015. Alas, everyone seems to be parroting the buzz phrase “flat is the new up”. When your budget is supposed to be ramping up, “flat” is a budget cut folks.
Once the dust settles is will become clear that there is still not enough money for everything. Congress is going to fund SLS/Orion no matter what the White House or NASA wants them to do and they will raid commercial crew and technology budgets to do so. And when Congress realizes that even more money for SLS is needed it will go back and take more. The asteroid mission is one step away from dead as far as Congress is concerned. Commercial crew is substantially underfunded and will not be able to continue at NASA’s advertised pace of flying its first crew in 2017. And despite all of this, the space science crowd thinks that they are somehow immune from these pressures and should be given more money. They are in for a shock.

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

28 responses to “NASA Budget Celebrations Will Be Short-Lived”

  1. Anonymous says:
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    I still vividly remember an edition of a British TV program called “The Vision Thing” interviewing then NASA administrator Dan Goldin. It was Goldin being candid about where NASA should be and at one point tells the interviewer that he feared it would accept more and more political mediocrity in the future. Sadly that’s where the U.S. space program is today, for the most part, and the FY14 budget confirms it. I think Charlie Bolden (who I wish would be more candid) knows come the next election cycle his tenure is up so why rock the boat like Mike Griffin did?

    • Rocky J says:
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      Here is a link to some commentary on the discussion with Goldin – http://archive.thetablet.co… There isn’t a video archive readily available. BBC – jewel in the crown of what Brits give the World.

      Think of the term “administrator”. Goldin, Bolden, they walk a fine line between being administrator and expressing their personal ideas or those, by consensus, of immediate associates. One thing we need to hope for is that there’s an end to using astronauts as administrators; they lean too far towards administrating policy as good soldiers, IMO. I don’t know but maybe someday Bolden will write a memoir describing how he fought, behind closed doors with the White House and Congress, tooth and nail, for changes… but chose to maintain allegiance, expressed in public, to final decisions handed to him. Any opinion on that thought?

      Even before Goldin, NASA was already under political influence, never mind mediocrity. And it is primarily the human spaceflight (HSF) side of NASA that is effected. Politicians, thankfully, are too stupid to work through the details of decadal surveys to pick or modify robotic missions; most the time, i.e. always stupid but do meddle. But it is primarily the big spending projects of HSF that get their attention and ends up destroying any reasonable vision for human space flight. HSF spending, like right now, takes away or delays R&D and projects that make NASA outstanding.

      • Steve Whitfield says:
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        Once more, Rocky, I think you’re bang on in your assessment, proving once again that the squirrel is smarter than the moose (unless it is actually something in the hat).

        To take it a step further, I don’t think that Bolden could write a complete and accurate memoir without getting a lot of powerful people looking for his head. I wonder how many days he goes home and asks himself, Why do I bother.

        I see one big difference between Goldin and Bolden — I really believe that Bolden wants what’s best for NASA and America (he’s just mostly powerless to make it happen), whereas Goldin, relatively speaking, was mostly just looking out for Goldin.

        • Rocky J says:
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          I watched Rocky & Bullwinkle reruns but I actually preferred the demented Fractured Fairy Tales. “Stay wood kid, stay wood!” Gepetto said to Pinocchio …and what we should be hollering at SLS and Orion.

          • Steve Whitfield says:
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            Too bad that Congress people couldn’t be afixed with noses that grew when they were less than honest (but then again, they’d be forever tripping over one another).

        • Vladislaw says:
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          But Goldin did get rid of the red worm NASA logo… a crowning achievement.

      • Vladislaw says:
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        If anything I would think Bolden, who was Senator “monster rocket” Nelson’s choice for Administrator would be fighting for SLS behind closed doors. The Air force guy the President wanted for NASA administrator was pro commercial space, no wonder he didn’t get the job.

        • Rocky J says:
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          You are correct that Bolden was Nelson’s choice and its hard to imagine Bolden going against Nelson on this big ticket item, lots of jobs. I’m sure it still weighs heavy.

  2. Andrew_M_Swallow says:
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    “Exploration R&D” suffered a small cut. They asked for a big budget raise. This money is paying for things like Morpheus. I notice that AES have been issuing partnership requests this week.

    • Steve Whitfield says:
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      Do you interpret the AES partnership requests as them finally seeing the writing on the funding wall? Or are they perhaps trying to generate the appearance of more industry interest than currently exists in an attempt to “justify” revised requests?

      • Andrew_M_Swallow says:
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        They may just have decided that waiting for the third or fourth combined manned SLS/Orion will take too long. Some of their new technology can be used on unmanned missions.

  3. imredave says:
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    With the Space Technology Mission Directorates budget dropping from a final FY13 $614 million to a FY14 $576 million, I and my Technology Demonstration funded compatriots have stopped celebrating already

  4. John Kavanagh says:
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    NASA will spend $1.9 billion this year on SLS and related ground systems. Since SLS started in 2011 until SLS flies in 2017, NASA will spend ~$12 billion on SLS. In 2017 SLS will loft 70,000 kg to LEO.

    If NASA instead spent the SLS budget between 2011-2017 on existing commercial launches – such as ILS Proton or SpaceX Falcon 9 – it could instead have launched nearly 3,000,000 kg to LEO.

    Now THAT’s heavy lifting.

    Put another way, if NASA instead bought flights on Protons or Falcon 9s, it could launch 17 SLS-equivalent payload masses for the cost of 1 SLS flight – assuming an optimistic flight rate of 1/year for SLS with fully loaded costs of $5 billion / flight until 2030.

    • Steve Whitfield says:
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      And the difference in the multiplier effect seen by spreading those dollars around (instead of pumping them directly into a small number of states and companies) would probably do a lot more good for the American economy, the entire economy, than the SLS route.

    • ASFalcon13 says:
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      You know, I keep hearing how SLS/Orion and JWST keep stealing money from other programs, and that canceling them would free up money for Planetary, Astrophysics, Commercial Crew, or whatever you like.

      Here’s a thought, though…in our current budget environment, if those programs were to get cut, who says that any of the other programs would even see a dime of that money? Us space folks are a very small fish swimming around in a very large budgetary ocean, and Sequestration and deficit reduction are the order of the day right now – you know, that whole “flat is the new up!” thing? If SLS, Orion, and/or JWST were to get actually cut, isn’t it just as possible that some budget hawks see the freed up funds as a way to reduce spending, and just cut that money out of NASA entirely at the same time?

      I guess I say that the old saying holds true: Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it.

      • Rocky J says:
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        Shelby, Nelson, an assortment of congressmen, maybe Mikulski too (to protect JWST) will protect SLS & Orion funds. If the next president, Senate and House, cancel them, the funds are likely to find some way into alternative work. Pressure would exist to retain nearly all the funds within HSF (HEOMD), “retool” Hunstville & Houston after “the fall”. If not for SpaceX, there would be no choice but to build SLS and Orion. I think a strong case will remain to maintain NASA funding level but canceling will open a great opportunity to change course of HEOMD but also the risk that the change will be done half You-Know-What.

        • Vladislaw says:
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          I believe it will go into buying launches to support three domestic suppliers. Congressional members will want to protect these new vehicles, well they will want to protect the JOBS from those vehicles in their districts.

      • Michael Spencer says:
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        “Here’s a thought, though…in our current budget environment, if those programs were to get cut, who says that any of the other programs would even see a dime of that money?”

        Reminds me of the ‘peace dividend’ that never appeared after Viet Nam.

    • Rocky J says:
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      Hard to disagree with your estimates. I recently read a John Strickland article at SpaceReview (http://www.thespacereview.c…. I have stated a simple estimate of 1/4th the cost by using Falcon Heavy in place of SLS. Strickland’s estimates, more detailed, range from about 10 to 50 times more expensive if NASA uses SLS rather than this emerging commercial heavy lift.

      Spaceflightnow has a story that SpaceX just added a Japanese GEO satellite launch to its 2015 launch manifest. I checked the SpaeX manifest web page. That Japanese payload is not yet listed but at least one thing changed. The Falcon Heavy launch is listed 2nd on the manifest list for 2014. It was previously 2/3rds down the list. There are no monthly dates per year of manifest but they are clearly chronologically ordered. So, maybe we will see the launch of Heavy from Vandenberg in the Spring. As each piece of the Falcon family falls in place, questions and pressure will build on Gerstenmaier, Bolden.. should also on Nelson and Shelby.

    • Michael Spencer says:
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      True. I wonder about two things: if put to the senators and other SLS supporters, what would be the reaction? They don’t make these decisions in a vacuum; while criticism is warranted, they do know the facts. There is room for serious reporting here: “Senator, wouldn’t it be cheaper to use the private sector than it is to develop a new rocket?”

      Secondly, what exactly would those 3M kg BE? As things stand I don’t see any sort of mission even mentioned that needs that mass. Any program needing that up mass would consume a hell of a lot more $$ developing and operating the program than the cost of the damn rocket. Mars? Moon? Really??

      And look at Keith’s open-ended question about the Falcon. Lots of fun responses, few (no?) serious ideas, last time I checked.

      So, for all the talk about HSF, I don’t see any realistic ideas on the table about what we are doing in space. Zooming around in orbit with make-work on the station? (OK, hyperbole, but still).

      Where is the leadership? The ideas? We can’t even fund civilian alternatives in a time dominated by wrong-thinking politicians ‘wed’ to private industry!

      Where is the enabling tech to, say, mine astroids and give Earth’s economy a kick in the ass? Who knows how to re-fuel old sats and make some $$? Who is working on the machines that will be needed to work on the surface of the moon if we ever get there? Where is the creativity?

      As far as I can see, the space community has a sense of overwhelming entitlement but little to back it up.

      And that sense includes yours truly. I love space. We are in for a very difficult future.

      • DTARS says:
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        Where is the master plan the that ties our Space program to future demand. Isn’t that key problem? No current demand for Space resources? So isn’t it NASAs job to prepare earth for that future by making Spaceflight more affordable and Safer??

        Seems Chinese understand it better than us?

        My answer of me was because NASAs Job should be to affordably provide a way for us all to get Direct benefit from Space.

        • Vladislaw says:
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          The commercial sector has to be brought with every step of the way this time as we move outward.

          Actually, the Chinese are making the EXACT same mistake that has guided our Nation’s space efforts. They have it all tied up in big government space programs.

          As one chinese official said to then Administrator Griffin, how do you americans manage to keep getting funding for manned spaceflight. Apparent it is a hard sell in china also.

          Once we have commercial firms involved in not just obtaining a government contract, but profits being generated that are being plowed right back into the space sector.

          The federal government’s NASA budget devoted to human spaceflight will NEVER be enough to open up the space frontier. What it can do is prime the pump and act as the catalyst to create a mulitier effect in capital formation.

          http://en.wikipedia.org/wik

          Reading NASA’s mandate you would come away with the impression that maturing the TRL of space technology and then shoveling it into the private sector so that NASA can then obtain it off the shelf

          http://en.wikipedia.org/wik

          Thankfully the transistion is in full effect now and the tipping point is near.

      • DTARS says:
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        What would NASA do if they had the SLS Orion money??? Would they get us off this rock?? They have a plan??? I doubt it, probably just burn it up doing some other exploration bull, and burn it up with ridiculous mismanagement.

      • Vladislaw says:
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        There reaction would be same as always:
        Space is hard.
        Space is dangerous.
        That is congresspeak for we are going to put so much pork in this big “monster rocket” that space HAS to be hard and space HAS to be dangerous. Without those two memes .. well hell that means NASA shouldn’t be in the design, development, manufacture and operations side of space launches at all. Sir that is UNACCEPTABLE for my district.

  5. Spacetech says:
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    And no where in this budget do I see anything earmarked for extra infastructure repairs or maintenance. Sorry, but a vast majority of NASA buildings and test facilities are in very poor condition. Preventive maintenance practices are gone and have been gone for many years–the mindset is “run it till it fails”.
    NASA needs to take a time out from all of its activities and get its house in order…………..but that will never happen.