Congressional Cooperation On NASA (For The Time Being)
A Good Day at House Science: Subcommittee Approves Bipartisan NASA Authorization Bill, AIP
“In less than a half-hour this morning the Space Subcommittee of the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee approved a bipartisan bill that would establish important policy for NASA. In contrast to last year’s markup of an authorization bill that stretched over five hours with many party line votes, the action this morning required just two voice votes, setting up this bill for action by the full committee.”
House Space Subcommittee Approves Bipartisan NASA Authorization Act
“The Space Subcommittee today approved the NASA Authorization Act of 2014 (H.R. 4412) with unanimous bipartisan support. The bill updates the previously committee-approved bill to reflect the funding agreement reached in the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2014. The Subcommittee also approved a bipartisan Palazzo-Edwards amendment that ensures sustainability of purpose and budget for high-priority NASA programs.”
OK, it looks like everyone gets a bone in this bill, although there will be a lot of complaining about the size of the bones for the various favorite programs I am sure.
ARM and Mars-flyby are still on the table, but apparently have to justify their existence to Congress before they will get further funding.
SLS/Orion are definitely still front and center, but hey, at least the bill says makes room for commercial crew and says in no uncertain terms to make use of them. I like how the use of US LV’s are mandated, be they SLS or commercial (about time!).
Overall, as one of the manifest destiny types, I like the concrete goal of humans on Mars and the call for NASA to produce a real roadmap of how to do it. The devil of course, will be in the details, and we’ll see how that plays out over time.
ARM and Mars-flyby have both been discredited as adding nothing from a scientific point of view and the fly-by has issues around both the science and the technology or lack thereof.
SLS/Orion is still a boondoggle. No funded missions. No vehicle reuse. Timeframes too long. No contribution to technology. To expensive to develop and operate and payload sizes not required by anyone.
Personally, I’d like to see the LV market in the U.S. opened up to full competition. Let AS build a pad or use an existing one and fly from U.S. soil. Let SpaceX compete properly. Make ULA compete or lose the business. I know it won’t happen but that’s the only way to get cheap launch other than simply relying on SpaceX.
What or who does AS stand for ????
Sorry mean’t ESA. Was getting ahead of myself thinking launch vehicles and put down AS Ariane Space ?? instead of ESA.
Cheers.
They praised themselves for the bipartisan effort and good. We need bipartisanship desperately. The critical change in the NASA bill is the “Exploration Roadmap” to be delivered to Congress by NASA within six months. Together with their stated agreement that the goal is Mars, the roadmap is to Mars. NASA needs to seize this as a golden opportunity.
The roadmap and any associated timeline must be uncoupled from a specific launch vehicle and capsule. Also the cost of executing what the roadmap calls for should be excluded. The roadmap needs to define the technological milestones and missions that are required. The roadmap is specifically for human spaceflight with links to robotic exploration such as was needed to reach the Moon. The roadmap does need to take into account constraints such as expected future funding levels and the capacity of future launch vehicles but it doesn’t need to fall into the role of supporting the situation involving SLS and Orion. Nonetheless, aside from the primary roadmap, variants in appendices, that consider certain choices such as SLS/Orion or Commercial, Chemical or SEP, can also be presented that do explain the expected cost and the timeline to achieve the roadmap goals or waypoints to Mars.
I agree that decoupling from a specific launch vehicle would be good, but don’t hold your breath. I suspect the purpose of the roadmap is to force the administration to support SLS/Orion, not to actually get to Mars.
Yes, I am very suspicious that the Republicans supporting the SLS and Orion pork barrel will require implementation of these projects as part of the long term Roadmap they are demanding.
SPACE ADVOCATES NEED TO DRAW THE LINE HERE AND NOT ALLOW THE ROADMAP TO DEFINE SLS/ORION AS A REQUIREMENT. It will likely take changes from the 2016 General Election to shut down SLS and Orion and set the engineers working on the right thing for the Roadmap. We might need to accept that but if we want to see NASA human spaceflight to become “the right stuff” – inspirational and Science Mission Directorate do even greater things, the Roadmap and SLS/Orion cannot be allowed to become coupled.
Producing a roadmap to Mars that does not use the SLS and Orion will be very controversial within NASA. Although such architectures do exist.
Low cost and soonest arrival roadmaps in the same document will give Congress a choice.
I agree. Within NASA there is a lack of any genuine dialog on SLS/Orion or indeed on NASA goals and strategies in general. In some cases this is due to a sense that “a change in leadership” is coming which will make everything right again. In other cases there is a sense that questioning authority is futile. At the top, management seems to be under the grip of a few members of Congress. Is there anything we can do to change this? At least Mr. Bolden was willing to tell them the truth in the last hearing.
You sum it up correctly. Eric Sterner : (Washington Post, Q&A, July 2011) “NASA as a whole” is kind of an oxymoron. It really does have a feudal organizational structure. Associate Administrators, usually responsible for budgetary management, are kind of like courtiers around the Administrator-king. Center Directors are something like Barons of old. It got so bad at one point that Dan Goldin–administrator in the 90s–felt compelled to launch a “One NASA” campaign.”
We don’t have money but we do have influential people – elites in the Sciences that could impact the budget decisions for NASA and much more than they do now.
We must anticipate that there will be technological developments or social ones (cooperation related) over 10 or 20 years. The Roadmap cannot be made so rigid that the most beneficial and cost effective cannot be utilized to accomplish the goals of the Roadmap. It is critical that NASA defines the Roadmap in general terms – vehicle capacities, mission durations, and so on. However, the House is going to force the issue by saying, hey, you have this capability – SLS/Orion, real soon now; start your Roadmap based on this capability.
The Roadmap can also lead to a backroom or unsaid ultimatum – “do as I say or else” from this Republican led House. The “else” could be the funding level for NASA and allocations within the budget.
To influence decisions you need to have a large organized group, money or “influential” people (or some combination) on your side. This research paper studied this problem: https://dl.dropboxuserconte… is to be published in Cambrige’s “Perspectives on Politics” next month. This is what I said earlier, you must get the leaders in NASA related science fields organized, working together to influence the NASA budget decisions. Mikulski called out for the same just last week.