NASA Transition Authorization Act Signed by President Trump
President Signs NASA Transition Authorization Act
“Today President Donald Trump signed the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Transition Authorization Act of 2017 into law. This bipartisan, bicameral legislation reaffirms Congress’ commitment to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and space science and exploration.”
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Potholes Trump Space In Trump Space Policy, earlier post
“[Trump’s] answers to Aerospace America’s questions align with comments he made during a campaign stop in Manchester, NH in November. There he offered what has become perhaps his most memorable remark about space exploration, that it is important, “but we have to fix our potholes.”
Sorry SLS haters – this is a great step forward to a real human exploration program. #Make NASA Even Greater!
I neither love nor hate the SLS. Please explain how it will provide practical benefits that exceed its cost.
When humans think with feelings and not facts, things get all muddled up.
That those on the left make decisions based on ‘feelings’ is a charge heard frequently from the right. It’s dismissive and self-aggrandizing at best.
And aside from the straw-man aspects of the charge, a couple of ‘feelings’ about SLS might be worth pointing out.
I feel that SLS has a very low launch rate and a very high cost-per-launch; I feel that $ many billions have been spent on the entire system to date. I feel that much-lower alternatives with very similar capabilities are coming online now, offered privately. I feel that SLS’ costs have already dwarfed STS. Operational costs, too, will similarly dwarf STS.
So don’t bother me about, you know, actual numbers. I’ve got my feelings.
The ability to launch large, complex integrated payloads is essential to human exploration and a number of other missions such as large space telescopes. If we really want to send people on exploration missions, it is a vital first step – that is worth a lot for humanity.
It’s difficult to see how something that is only going to launch twice a year is vital to human space exploration. It’s also difficult to see there ever being funding to launch it more than that, nevermind funding for those “large, complex integrated payloads” you mentioned.
We aren’t going to be able to afford more that one or two huge human space exploration vehicles a year anytime soon and we can only launch to Mars only about once every two years. SLS is a good start.
And going to Mars is only affordable if you build a reusuable transit vehicle which didn’t need SLS given it will be assembled in space. It also means you can do crew rotation in HEO not dragging 25klb of an entry vehicle to Mars and back. But go in believing staying the course while get you to Mars Before 2050
I’m still not clear on what those large, complex payloads are, or why we would be in a hurry to fly them. There is only one planetary missions I know of which has been studied in detail and which requires a SLS launch. That’s the Europa Lander. The study didn’t provide a cost estimate, but judging from the complexity and scaling from other missions, $5 billion or more would be a safe guess.
Is the scientific value of one super-flagship, which requires a SLS launch really greater than two “ordinary” flagship missions which can use other launch vehicles? Or five New Frontiers missions? Or _10_ Discovery missions? I find that hard to believe.
We can easily launch more than one Mars mission every 26 months. Counting both type I and II minimum energy trajectories, the time available for launches is two months or so. That’s adequate (just) for four launches every 26 months, not one. And that’s just from Florida. Two other launch complexes have sent successful mission to Mars (three if you are charitable and say the Russians have sent “successful” missions to Mars.) Orbital dynamics is not the bottleneck. Funding is. If the missions were large and complex enough to require a SLS, they could easily be so expensive we could only afford to fly one every decade.
That’s good to know. I’d thought there were two, very narrow “do or die” launch windows.
Well, it isn’t like you can launch any time in a two month window. So I guess I should clarify what I wrote.
There are actually two windows, one slightly before and one slightly after the classic Hohmann launch window (that’s due to the fact that Earth and Mars don’t orbit the Sun in exactly the same plane.)
The duration of those windows does depend on the spacecraft and the launch vehicle. If you wanted to send as much mass to Mars as possible, down to the last gram, the launch windows would be incredibly short. But nobody does that. The current practice is to have enough margin to allow for likely launch delays. That is generally between two and a few weeks.
The real, very short window you may be thinking of is the daily window. The current, and more efficient, practice is to launch directly to the transfer orbit. In the 1960s and 1970s, spacecraft were launched to a low Earth “parking” orbit, with a subsequent burn to get on a transfer orbit to Mars. That gave lots of flexibility in the exact time of the launch. These days, with more efficient injections, they go directly to the transfer orbit. That means that on any given day within the window, they have a very brief (as in minutes) window with a window.
The end result is that a Mars mission can launch during a few minute window on a given day, but that daily opportunity repeats, day after day for a few weeks. You don’t have the option of switching from the type I to type II window. But you can design the mission to either.
Those benefits aren’t unique to SLS as they also will be obtained by commercial vehicles that will fly sooner and probably cost much less to use.
Commercial vehicles need a commercial market – there is NO market for payloads that size but if those vehicles appear, they can be considered. As for sooner – we’ll see; recall Falcon Heavy was to fly in 2012.
And Orion was supposed to originally start test flights in 2008 so don’t act like Orion/SLS are the shining examples of keeping a schedule
When the Falcon Heavy becomes available is a bit of a moot point for scientific missions. There aren’t any in the works which could use it. From start to launch, designing and building the spacecraft would take over five years. So the Falcon Heavy schedule could slip by another four years, and it would still be ready before the payload.
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Need to make decisions so that there are funds for the payloads, otherwise revisit 2009.
No one would argue that an authorization bill, a president’s budget, and re-establishment of the space council are all positive things for the Agency, but at some point you have to do one or all of three things with the below consideration:
1. Reduce the cost of your procurements through innovative acquisition like commercial crew (comes with risk posture that is still uncertain who can go along). Also a problem when you are already down that path with SLS and Orion (and where much of your support comes from for the space budget in the first place)
2. Need international partnership which comes with its own headaches
3. Innovative procurements for landers and other HSF related payloads. (Hard to imagine an agency with a safety posture (lots of scars – perhaps rightly so) going with single string landers or Space X like development approaches to HSF moon/mars excursions.
Why do NRO payloads cost so much and the rockets cost so much? Criticality of the mission, lack of stomach for failure, and national priority. As much as I love HSF and for that matter NASA as a whole, it is hard to generate that it is more important than other things on a side by side basis. So I would say an almost flat budget is something to be thankful about and then try and figure out how to make a sand chart work that is an achievable space program.
Last, people upset with the potholes statement. Our economy does have something to do with our infrastructure. So maybe potholes are just representative of the problem, but without a strong infrastructure, a strong business base, a strong economy, there isn’t a NASA. Last time I checked these are our tax dollars at work. So whether Democrats or Republicans, we need a strong economy to support a space program. I am pretty certain of the major nations we still spend more on space than any other country by a substantial amount.
Decisions are being made as the AF reveals plans to ramp up to 48 launches per year at the Cape. 5-10 launches of 10-20mT with 2-4 smaller LVs of NASA payloads would go along way to reducing launch costs with flight rate, likely creating new markets. So on the sand chart, drop the launch costs to 1-2B/year, and shift the community to technology and missions.
>maybe potholes are just representative of the problem
I see Slate article, “Russia’s Space Program Is Struggling Mightily” with “Roscosmos has been beset with corruption, mismanagement, and crony capitalism” (looks like how many of US govt agencies are becoming) and thinking a weak US economy will put us in same situation.
While I understand your question, it’s really not possible to answer satisfactorily until there is some sort of context to frame the answer. If the US has no definite plan on how to proceed in space (and no, Powerpoint files out of the various centers, and hand waving from whatever administration is in power, don’t count), and there will no plan forthcoming, then its rather obvious that SLS is just a solution in search of a problem.
If we do get some sort of direction on how the nation wants to proceed in space for the short, medium and long term, then it should be easy to see how the SLS fits (or doesn’t). Having said that, it is certainly easy to believe that events will not proceed in such a logical manner.
That really struck my funny bone. SLS is the poster boy for hammers looking for nails.
And anyway, we do have a plan. It’s called ‘flexible path”! Just build the capabilities and by golly those durn scientific pointy-heads will be scrambling to get aboard. So, come on, you dreamers!
All of which ignores the simple fact that there are cheaper ways to do everything SLS is planned to do (a high-energy upper stage being a sticky point for SLS and for the low cost alternatives).
Its too bad such a law did not include a 10 or more year horizon on NASA’s budget so that it cannot be changed by every new administration or bound to the impossible and inefficient four year cycle, thus making the possibility of measurable advances more likely. And then we might actually be able to realize true advances in space exploration.
If you want such a long horizon you need to make NASA a government corporation with a controlled revenue stream, like a sewer district or waste water treatment facility.
So. From your comparison, are you saying that NASA is a irreplaceable and needed entity for the sustainability, care and operation of human society or…. what?
No, he’s saying stable funding on the time scale of a decade require independent funding (I.e. not part of the year-to-year federal budget.) I’m struggling to think of and federal examples, but at the state and local level, that isn’t too uncommon. I think there is a constitutional provision banning any military funding in this way, but that wouldn’t apply to NASA. Separate funding could include charging for commercial use of NASA facilities (e.g. LC 39A) and then letting NASA keep the money and spend it as they liked.
Yes. You need to structure NASA differently if you want a multi-year funding model. But as long as it’s an independent agency it won’t work. Water works and associated waste facilities pioneered this model of government organization in ancient Roman times. The models were revived when cities had the same sanitation problems in the 19th Century in the United States.
The Tennessee Valley Authority and Bonneville Power Administration come to mind as a federal examples. But Congress actually has a wide authority to create the type of organization they desire.
One big benefit is that under such a model NASA be able start to profit from the intellectual property they generate, patents and spinoff technology. It could also have more freedom for commercial partners as needed, think of PBS. For example insurance firms are major users of climate research to build better models for predicting risk. One could see them picking up some of the climate research the Trump Administration is cutting. And space advocates could actually donate to NASA the way folks donate to PBS, something that is not possible now.
True that, about space advocates. I’m not an American, but I’d love to donate to NASA if it was possible in any way. Now only if they had a plan to go somewhere……..
The benefit of which will depend on which ox you happen to be riding. Congressional oversight might be troublesome but it is essential, agree with decisions or not.
That’s an issue, but not a fundamental obstacle. The Federal Reserve (I finally thought of a federal example) operates without significant oversight. The members of the Board are appointed for 14 year term, and Congress can make them answer questions, but that’s about it. Neither Congress nor the President can give orders about how the Fed sets interest rates. This sort of thing requires carefully-considered structure, a specific charter, etc. In some cases (the military) the consequences of the organization getting out of hand are so potential harmful that real oversight is important. But for other things and if it’s done right, it isn’t an inherently bad idea.
Hmm. To be fair both examples you cite do benefit from regularized revenue.
On the other hand, and sneakiness aside, NASA doesn’t deal with regular and predictable work products. It is by its very nature an agency given rein over the cutting edge. This is both the source of the magic and the Achille’s Heal; the latter in the sense that dealing with the unknown will have unpredictable obstacles.
There is merit on the other hand to a predictable stream for certain large, mega year projects. SLS stands out as a candidate, as does Webb; but in the case of SLS, the project has been left in the dust by more nimble efforts outside NASA.
This is an inevitable result in my view.
Yes, I always felt its a shame NASA could never benefit from both the royalties on the intellectual property it generates and advertising from all the media activity it generates.
One could also see revenue streams from corporate sponsorship and private donations.
“Authorizations acts sometimes provide permanent appropriations.”[5]
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I think that Trump has confused ‘foxholes’ or ‘bomb craters’ with ‘potholes’ judging by his budget proposal.
But what’s the plan….where are we going…I know this action supports SLS…but to do what? No moon lander. certainly no $ to build a Mars ship or lander…..sooooo….?
The AF released plans to ramp up flight rate at the cape to 48 flights per year. Payloads required. Simply shift shuttle derived to technology and missions to asteroids and the Martian moons, first staging at L2 to demonstrate the long duration deep space transportation system with the goal of reuse cycling to Mars. It is quite the exciting future as the NASA mission mass helps reduce launch costs for new markets.
48 flights of what and by who….certainly not all NASA
Reuse cycling to Mars? Of what?
I wondered the same thing. In fact every day brings news of another country building a ‘spaceport’ (some suborbital, but still). Exactly how the capability is to be used isn’t clear.
Does this actually appropriate funds for NASA to spend, or is it still a budgetary authorization figure and the agency will continue to see continuing resolutions? I struggle with the difference between authorization, budget, and appropriation!
According to a reference glossary provided by the United States Senate, an authorization act is “A law that establishes or continues one or more Federal agencies or programs, establishes the terms and conditions under which they operate, authorizes the enactment of appropriations, and specifies how appropriated funds are to be used. Authorizations acts sometimes provide permanent appropriations.”[5] Authorization bills create, modify, and/or extend agencies, programs, and/or programs for a limited amount of time (by including an expiration date) or make them perpetual (without expiration date).[6][1] The bill may get specific about who the leaders of the program will be, what their specific responsibilities are, what reports must be filed with Congress, and so forth. Congress can place recommended funding levels for the agencies and programs they authorize in an authorization bill, but their recommendations are non-binding.[7] The recommendations can be for specific amounts in specific years for specific purposes, or it can be an unlimited amount (“such sums as may be necessary”) in a particular time period or indefinitely.[6] It is the appropriations bills that determine how much funding those agencies and programs will get.
Most authorization bills today are for multiple years, with the exception of defense and intelligence agency authorizations, which happen annually.[1] The defense authorization bills are referred to as the National Defense Authorization Act.
Authorization-appropriation process[edit]
Authorization bills are part of an authorization-appropriation process created by House and Senate rules governing spending.[6] The spending process has two steps. First, an authorization bill is enacted. Authorization bills “may create or continue an agency, program, or activity as well as authorize the subsequent enactment of appropriations.”[6] The second step is for an appropriations bill to be enacted. The appropriations bill provides the funding needed for the agency, program, or activity that was just authorized by the enacted authorization bill.[6] Agencies and programs must have been authorized before they can have funds appropriated to them according to the rules of the House and (to a lesser extent) the Senate.[4] The rules are meant “to ensure that substantive and financial issues are subjected to separate and independent analysis.”[8] However, these rules are often not followed.[8]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wi…
From having just read the actual bill (https://www.congress.gov/bi… I am left with a sense of.. well, who knows? Other than some top-level numbers, it’s pretty vague. Most of it could be described as “It is the sense of Congress that space is a good idea, so do some studies”. The most concrete statement in there is regarding SOFIA, which is literally just one line saying (paraphrased) “SOFIA may not be terminated this year.”
Earth science not mentioned, save for astro science being used as a fig leaf for learning origins of Earth.
ISS to be continued to 2024 or even beyond, unless its budget conflicts with road to Mars. SEP needed for human deep space, no mention of nuclear, save for radioisotope power, thermocouple or stirling, for robotic missions.
The highway pothole comment is the same old same old of having to fix every golddarned problem here on Earth before investing in space exploration. Grrrr…