Politicians Pledge To Work Together Until They Don't
Mikulski: President’s NASA Budget Request Just “Advisory,” Will Work to Get More, Space Policy Online
“Regarding Congress, she repeated that the key is to “change the tone to change the tide.” She wants civility restored to the process, with negotiations taking place “between each other and not in the press.” She cited the work she and her Republican ranking member, Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL), did with their House counterparts in December and January in reaching agreement on the FY2014 Consolidated Appropriations bill as an example of success.”
Space Subcommittee Chairman Says US-Russia Relations Require Tough Decisions
“If we are serious about once more launching American astronauts on American rockets from American soil, we must make tough decisions within NASA’s budget. Only when the budget has been stripped of costly and complex distractions will it once again reflect the priorities of the sole government agency tasked with space exploration.”
Yeah right. Actions speak for themselves.
My comment is pending over at this Space Policy Online blog post on Mikulski. I won’t rehash it here but just say that this is a good start. Senator Mikulski is ready to support the Science Mission Directorate. Mikulski called on the Space Community to help themselves and help her restore and even increase the funding levels.
Commander Dave Scott’s (Apollo 15) recent Masursky Lecture talked about synergy and a recent talk at Caltech describing the technology behind BICEP2 (the telescope that discovered the B-Mode polarization in the microwave background – remnants of the Inflation period of the Universe and gravitational waves) also described the synergy of 50 researchers that developed the incredible detector placed at the South Pole.
Synergy is what Senator Mikulski is calling for. Scientists and engineers and the space advocates such as ourselves must organize to create a voice that is heard, that describes the importance of NASA research and development. BICEP2 is a single instance among many technological breakthroughs that NASA delivers to our economy. It does give us an edge. SMD is one side of the coin, We must also address the problems in HEOMD that are constraining the whole NASA budget. (thank goodness I didn’t rehash)
No. I’m sorry, but no. You give SMD such a pass. It’s unbelievable that they, who birthed the JWST and let it metastasize into a monster until it was taken out of their hands, deserve the pass that you give them. It is SMD who pleads poverty, now that their monster threatens to devour everything else they would like to do. They are victims of their monster, and you want to let them off the hook for it? No. That’s sentimentality about “their story”. What a nice sentiment… but what about accountability for their failure?
You write the JWST off as a “one off”. It’s not. It’s the shape of things to come unless these budgetary wishlists are pulled kicking and screaming back to reality.
We call JWST a “Flagship” mission, but it’s really the cost of three Flagships. And it will not be the last. Tell me, when JWST fails after 5-10 years of operation and an successor asked for… no… demanded!… (ATLAST?) is it going to be a $2.5 billion NRO spy satellite derivative or is it going to be a $10 billion new design megaproject? Is it going to be a sensible and affordable development of existing technology, or another JWST-style vanity project that develops new technology that will never be used again?
Or let’s talk Mars. Does the Mars 2020 Rover have a purpose besides keeping the JPL robot factory open? It stinks of being busy-work, until better budgetary conditions make a $10 billion Mars Sample Return mission viable to ask for after 2020. When that comes, are we going to have a decade of hearing how “indispensable” it is to Mars Science and how we’d be killing Mars science if it is canceled when it’s budget doubles, then doubles again?
When are we going to Neptune again? Why do we have to wait until after 2030 to go to Uranus. After Cassini finally ends, is it going to be until the 2050s before we return to Saturn? How many multi-billion dollar space telescopes and Mars rovers and orbiters deemed unbelievably essential will be funded before Saturn’s second orbiter ever, Uranus and Neptune’s first orbiter ever, are approved and funded?
I mean, the implications are pretty clear. No more Mars Pathfinder or Mars Reconnisance Orbiter or Hubble-level programs. No “New Horizons” scale. Those are now too small. Programs costing as much as a Navy Destroyer are too small. No… everyone deserves their own program as much as an Aircraft Carrier. No mega-project left behind. Hence a barren slate, especially compared to the ESA. NASA doesn’t do efficient, cost effective programs at around a billion dollars or less going forward… it starts at what the MSL cost… and then goes from there.
And we’re supposed to say “yes, that’s okay.” because of sentimentality. Because of some nonsense about a story as if they are the only ones.
Well… you can do that. I prefer to look at who screwed up and make sure it doesn’t happen again by throwing them out of the building. No. SMD wears the JWST and the reputation that goes with it like a scarlet letter, for a very, very long time until it reforms itself.
Fundamentally, drain the swamp. Demand accountability. Fire the people who screwed up (I mean fire… don’t reshuffle). Find people who can do Mars Sample Return on $600 million and put them in charge and put a prohibition on even thinking about these meta-Flagship missions. At that point, I’ll give a care about story time with SMD. But until that point? I can think of a dozen things in and out of NASA more worthy of taxpayer dollars and care.
Last year, Congress capped the development funding for JSWT at ~8B which is step in the right direction. Perhaps JWST was low balled, but did anyone really believe the 12B HST could be replaced for a few billion? CxP was headed to the moon, so JWST servicing was not an option causing a much larger ground test program. For example the crewed JSC Chamber A had to be modified. Recall also that the departing 2008 Congress cut the 2009 JWST budget by 100M which resulted in a 1B increase, so should they be held accountable too for not providing a more optimal funding profile with margin? See Figures 5.3 and 5.6 in the link: http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/499…
Most want more programs and more efficiency with the “right” priority on worthiness. Is there a way to achieve this and keep folks employed too?
I do not wish to start a food fight over which missions are more deserved or which celestial bodies deserve more attention. The decision to continue funding JWST was the right decision after the reviews were done. The technology issues were resolvable and the failures of management were identified. The investment at the point of the review, was literally a big factor and question – wasting $billions or investing $billions more. It’s an economics problem that I would love to see the brightest economists evaluate. But it is really a socio-economics problem. I agree with you that NASA and other government agencies shuffle failed managers to other positions when they should be firing. The worst cases involved the Challenger and Columbia disasters. Engineers are laid off all the time for non-performance while managers surrounded by friends in management non-perform or fake it all the way to retirement. If NASA and Capitol Hill made the wrong decision on JWST, it is not too late to re-evaluate the project, independently, and make it a model for future project developments. It will be evaluated again by NASA and OIG but whether it is beyond checking i’s and T’s remains a question.
WFIRST must be made the example and required to conform to standards defined after the JWST and MSL catastrophes. Make it fixed cost without chance to ask for funds due to overruns and force them to design it under that constraint. If you are designing such a mission then you build a margin into your estimates.
The responsibility of interplanetary missions has lied largely with JPL and their contractors. APL and SWRI are deservedly alternatives to doing interplanetary and the competition is extremely valuable. MSL cost and overruns was an inside job at JPL. Failures involved middle managers but JPL upper management failed to oversee these managers so you saw Theisinger moved to MSL as well as middle managers changed. I would agree with you that Mars 2020 also must be made an example and set to high standards. Make this also fixed cost without chance of overruns. Do that now before they construct their design. Not to criticize Dr. Stone but he gave an insightful response on the Colbert Report. Dr. Ed Stone was asked by Steven Colbert, “do you ever get angry at the astronauts with their ticker tape parades” while planetary scientists “are humping it day and night to learn about the Solar neighborhood?”. Ed answered wryly, “No, we are having too much fun.” But they have also screwed up on several occasions – MO, MPL, MCO, MSL and someone could probably mention others. They are as accountable for mismanagement as HEOMD is. They have tried to learned from their lessons but what have they done, where is their transparency? If you give them Mars 2020, make the constraints hard.
We do need more compeition. I think there is comparison to be made between the DOD’s use and dependency on ULA EELV and JPL’s use of Lockheed Martin as prime contractor for interplanetary missions. New blood needs to be offered chances to prove themselves. LM does have outstanding HW and FSW just like ULA EELVs perform well, but there is a burgeoning number of new spacecraft developers that need their chance. Mature programs such as with LM naturally build overhead costs and without competition they are free to inflate the costs to favor their profits.
So I agree with you that SMD does carry “a scarlet letter” most specifically due to the recent MSL and JWST overruns. They do not deserve to be treated differently however, you do not throw SMD under the bus in favor of human spaceflight. The return on investment from SMD – scientific and technological far outweighs results from HEOMD. More accountability but not cuts in their allocations like we are seeing now. And there is no trade-off to be made between Federally funded basic research and development and funding of social or regulatory programs. We must have both if we are to be World competitive and leaders and also remain a system of “united” states. I’d like to see Keith chime in on this exchange with his 18+ years of watching NASA.
It would be an improvement if all NASA missions operated under fixed cost with penalties for delays. Besides being a story of mismanagement, JWST is an example of the problem that cost-plus is.
As for pledges about working together, that sounds nice, but I’m going to wait to see results before offering any praise.
As follow up to my comments on JWST, reference the Boozer TheSpaceReview article on Tito’s Huffington Post Op-Ed, http://thespacereview.com/a…. He refers to “Sunk Cost Fallacy” in his review of Tito’s support of SLS and Orion. Escalation of Commitment is the referenced Wiki page. This is completely relevant to the JWST project. I’m no expert in this field and do not know if there are credible formulas for setting thresholds. The problem is socioeconomic and consequently variables make thresholds hard to pin down but it would be worth trying.
How does that work? How is new tech developed when the road isn’t exactly clear?
Despite all the popular press it is still too early to say that bicep has discovered inflationary bmodes. The data needs to be vetted by the community. There are still sme issues need to be resolved. It will be unfortunate if all they are seeing is dust.
Yes, I’m well aware of the independent verification needed.
Palazzo speaks in ominous tones but doesn’t quite come out and say what he wants to cut. However my guess is he wants to cut … the program that is actually going to launch Americans from American soil.
Doesn’t Palazzo’s statement mean cut everything but SLS so we can explore? It as nothing to do with commercial crew. Right???
That was my first impression anyway.
Let’s see how much these Republicans controlling the House are Pro-American. Tomorrow will give some measure.
Consider Palazzo’s statement. What are these “costly & complex distractions”? Something in SMD? ISS? How about SLS and Orion? Or is he talking the Asteroid Initiative (A.I.)? A.I. is a few hundred million in the budget request; still just a concept. The cost and complexity lies in SLS and Orion and itts negative impact will be over ten more years if it continues. How Pro-American is Palazzo, Edwards and Smith because if they ignore SLS and Orion, allow their continued development, then choose to again short-change Commercial Crew funding, they undermine American enterprise, deliver more funds to Russia and continue to support Corporate America and just support their votes back home. SLS and Orion are pork barrel. Commercial Crew can solve a problem and represents the future to human spaceflight and exploration. NASA needs all of the allocation for CCP because the funds they hope for to achieve $1B funding for CCP, from elsewhere (meant to offset sequestration) looks to be DOA, will never materialize.
“Only when the budget has been stripped of costly and complex distractions”
What does that even mean?
Everything that doesn’t happen in your state is very complex to understand and horrendously costly.
“costly and complex distractions”
1. Commercial Crew – because if there is anything Republicans don’t like it is private enterprise, competition, and reduced cost.
2. Climate Research – Because the Earth is only 6000 years old, it has been getting colder for millions of years, and the cause of global warming is global warming research, which is a massive left wing conspiracy.
If you’re really bothered by Putin I have a modest suggestion…fund NASA appropriately to the impact it can have on the future of our children. Some where around 7/10 of a percent of the Fed Budget would get the job done.
OMG here we go again. NASA has adequate funding. The issue is the model they use for contracting those funds and the influence to those in Congress who support the old industrial space complex. To them it’s all about jobs, not flying hardware.
Only people like Musk have a chance of changing things by demonstrating beyond argument that there are more efficient ways of running a space business.
Cheers.
Neil
PS NASA didn’t even get 7/10% of the Fed Budget during Apollo years. IIRC budget sharply peaked in 1966 at about 4.5% and then steadily declining until today we sit at aroung 0.5% and relatively flat in absolute terms but declining in real terms for the last several years. Not likely to change given that most people (read voters) aren’t interested in what NASA is doing and the parlous state of the nation’s finances.
0.75%; not 7.5%. Then again that money would be better spent on NASA than other wastes of money I can think of.
Mikulski loves NASA.
Correction. Mikulski loves Goddard, where the Maryland votes are. She would not hesitate to gut the rest of NASA’s programs to keep JWST alive.