NASA Budget Action in the House
House Appropriators Propose Big Increase for Europa, SLS, Cut to Commercial Crew
“The House Appropriations Committee today released the draft FY2016 Commerce-Justice-Science (CJS) bill that will be marked up at subcommittee level on Thursday. It recommends the same total budget level for NASA as the President requested, but allocates the funding differently. Among the changes is a big increase for a robotic mission to Jupiter’s moon Europa, a favorite of subcommittee chairman Rep. John Culberson (R-TX) who has led successful efforts to add money for it in the past. The Space Launch System (SLS) also gets a boost, including funds for an “enhanced” upper stage, while the commercial crew program is funded below the request. … The commercial crew program, by contrast, would get $1.00 billion compared to the $1.24 billion request. That is still a significant increase over the $805 million provided for FY2015, but NASA insists that anything less than the request could mean renegotiating the fixed price contracts with SpaceX and Boeing.”
Cutting the request for Commercial Crew seems very unwise at this point, especially considering the recent Russian Progress failure. Had this happened on a manned Soyuz flight with a US astronaut on board, the country might have been in mourning for another astronaut death. Now is not the time to start cutting corners on Commercial Crew, in my opinion.
Jeff; your opinion is a fact.
I endorse everything you said except for one word. They are continuing, not starting, their history of cuts to Commercial Crew that have already delayed the first flights by 2 years and caused hundreds of millions of dollars additional payments to the Russians.
I just love watching the gnashing of teeth over loss of Govt pork for “commercial crew”.
You can pay the Russians cash or you can spend the money here in the US. Which would you rather do? I’d personally rather not send Russia more cash, considering their actions in Crimea/Ukraine.
Damn right.
Or you could just get NASA out of the hardware development cycle all-together and just buy services. Now that would be “commercial”. NASA doesn’t have insight/oversight into aircraft design, trains, or autos. They just purchase a seat or rent. If “commercial manned space” is real, there is no reason a similar model can’t work.
Commercial crew is *a lot* closer to what you describe than SLS/Orion. In other words, it’s a huge step in the right direction.
Since SLS got more money I would imagine there is no gnashing of teeth over the loss of government pork over at Boeing and the Orion porkwagon over at Lockheed Martin.
Probably not. Just the taxpayers stuck with another useless NASA mega-works program.
I am about as pro-SLS/Orion as you can get outside of Congress and I too think it is stupid to underfund commercial crew. Now especially is the time commercial crew needs full funding. We need to spend enough to keep SLS/Orion on track while making sure we get commercial crew online ASAP. (A much better option would have been following what the Space subcommittee did and keep SLS/Orion at the same level as last year and fully fund CC).
Hopefully when the Senate and the House confer on their versions the final product will fully fund Commercial Crew. I can see that happening given that Cruz and Rubio are running for President and would want to be seen as strong against Russia.
There haven’t been many warm and fuzzy interactions between the House and Senate of late, and I’m not counting on many happening in the future. Even though both chambers are run by the GOP now, rift still exists between the two.
I wonder what “renegotiating the fixed price contracts with SpaceX and Boeing” actually means? Probably a reduction in the number of flights.
No. Higher $’s for fewer kg’s but number of flights stay the same. Each respective business case was based on a minimum level of cargo delivery to recover investment costs. BUsiness 101 …
Quite frankly, the best model for ISS supply (cargo and crew) would be along the lines of a performance-based logistics contract. I doubt NASA knows what that is but a PBL would ultimately best serve both NASA and the commercial provider. Just saying …
Another Russion vehicle and a Mexican sattilite lost. Starting to look a bit like a trend. Wonder if this latest event will get Congress’ attention and a rethink on CC? Wonder but not holding my breath.
Cheers