Hearing on NASA's Budget and Exploration
Hearing: Impact of President’s Budget on Deep Space Exploration
“October 9, 2015 10:15 a.m. ET: The Subcommittee on Space will hold a hearing on the impact of the president’s budget on programs being built for a trip to Mars and other deep space destinations. Witnesses will discuss NASA’s plans for future major tests and milestones of the Space Launch System (SLS) and Orion crew vehicle, as well as how the administration’s budget request affects these programs.”
– Archived webcast
– Statement of Dan Dumbacher
– Statement by Doug Cooke
– Hearing Examines Impact of President’s Budget on Deep Space Exploration
– Committee on Science, Space, and Technology’s Subcommittee on Space Discusses Deep Space Exploration
– Hearing charter
“On August 27, 2014, NASA announced a one year slip of EM-1, the first launch of SLS, from 2017 to 2018. This announcement was made despite numerous statements from NASA officials to Congress that the program was on schedule and that no additional funding was needed. Last month, NASA made a similar announcement about the Orion, pushing the launch readiness date for Exploration Mission-2 (EM-2) back two years to no later than 20237 from an original date of 2021.”
Odd that the only witnesses are Doug Cooke and Dan Dumbacher. There are apparently no witnesses from NASA or the Administration. Or Commercial Crew. Or SpaceX, Boeing or Blue Origin.
Well, Mr. Cooke is a consultant for Boeing…..
Why are these things called hearings anyways? They talk, but nobody listens. Maybe just be honest and call them congressional talkings.
Or maybe they hear but don’t listen or something
It is nothing but Kabuki theater
“pushing the launch readiness date for Exploration Mission-2 (EM-2) back two years to no later than 20237 from an original date of 2021.” …
a record reschedule of 18216 years …
the show was a farce..
rb 1957 you need edit like 20237+18216 it should be 2037 and 2018 need corrected like now. Also Doug Cooke and Dan Dumbacher lie about SLS Rocket launch cost 500 million a launch when really 4 billion a launch.
Some math-
SLS “launch” costs are best treated as the cost of a first launch, the total yearly budget, divided by 1. This is including most of ground ops (don’t forget the KSC folk), and some portion of mission ops (don’t forget the JSC folk), otherwise what you have is a manufacturing unit cost through DD250 of core stages, boosters, etc. What is being asked though is “launch” costs not “up to delivery at KSC” costs.
Then if launching twice, it’s the above yearly budget, plus a delta cost for the increment in costs of that 2nd launch, divided by two, and so on.
Be clear – LAUNCH costs include ground and mission ops. Further, it includes all the procurement (contractor) dollars AND the government management dollars. That yields numbers comparable to buying a launch as a service, as a “launch service” is inclusive at the procurement level of all these things. (A slight remaining difference in nature is that when buying a launch service the government management is typically a small fraction of what it is versus in the SLS cost-plus / DD250 / government property approach).
For SLS, all this math will get you to about $1B per “launch” for two launches a year. This does NOT include Orion or payloads of course. It is recurring only, forgetting about non-recurring development.
Adding a larger upper stage, and some uncertainty in the apportionment of JSC mission ops (i.e., after ISS ends, ALL JSC Ops could end up assignable to SLS), likely gets you into WELL over $1B per LAUNCH for 2 SLS/Year. This is a conservative figure as costs have only to go up by most indications so far, to reach the 2 a year launch rate.
Remember, the costs going up bite into any ability to reach 2 or 3 launches a year in the first place, as any money added to SLS to make specific costs (costs per launch) better normally has to come out of somewhere else in NASA, making any increase in money for SLS increasingly difficult – as you piss off increasing numbers of people who’s lunch money you’re after.
And add to this the payload- not a launch cost but still a budget item; payloads requiring SLS will be big and heavy with lengthy design/construction leads.
The subcommittee should be focused on one thing. And that is trying to raise NASA’s budget by $6 billion/yr or at a minimum $3 billion. If they want a moon/mars program then they need to pony up the cash and quit complaining.
numbers_guy101 I disagree with your comment SLS launch 1 2018, 1 2021, and 1 2023 doesn’t add up as 1 billion a launch. Talking about total development cost started 2011-2023+VAB+Ground operation and launch pad development cost exclude Orion development cost. I think result 2 billion per launch cost more realistic and believable. rb1957 still have not edited your comment 2 errors i mention on 4 days ago please fix it very soon as possible , Thank You.
“…despite numerous statements from NASA officials to Congress that the program was on schedule and that no additional funding was needed…”
Actually, they said that more funding would not impact the timeline. SLS/Orion is adequately funded to the point that more money won’t help. Commercial Crew, however, is being starved by a Congress that wants it to die…or at least suffer enough budget-induced delays that SLS/Orion can overtake it and some future ISS crew transport system (maybe SLS plus cargo or minus boosters) can arise out of that infrastructure. Either that or down-select to one provider that they can control and feed political power off of.