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NASA to Discuss FY2018 Budget Proposal, Provide Virtual Tours of Centers
“NASA will hold a series of events Tuesday, May 23, highlighting the agency’s Fiscal Year 2018 budget proposal, including a televised State of NASA address by acting Administrator Robert Lightfoot.”
Keith’s note: Earlier this year the White House put forth a budget that cut many things at NASA – thus allowing it to barely tread water. Then Congress responded and NASA’s budget picture dramatically improved – but only until 30 September 2017. Now the White House is issuing another budget proposal – this time for FY 2018. Once again the NASA budget is lacking in many ways. It also seeks to pick a fight with appropriators by eliminating the Europa missions that Rep. Culberson included – missions that NASA is required to conduct by law. We’ve seen this movie before.
NASA will be required to act in lock step with the White House and promote this latest budget request – even if it does damage to NASA programs. Right now NASA is hobbled by the lack of a confirmed Administrator with the top slots at the agency run by people in acting positions and some transition team holdovers. It is expected that Rep. Bridenstine will be nominated to head NASA within the coming days. Once he is confirmed (which may take a while due to ongoing White House distractions) Bridenstine is going to have to get a deputy with actual experience running a large, technically-oriented government R&D agency. He is also going to have to staff the 9th floor at NASA HQ with people who are similarly skilled – and not just rely upon 2016 campaign staffers who got a job simply as a reward for their loyalty.
The two budgets that the White House has submitted to Congress do little – if anything – to help NASA fund all of the things on its to-do list. To be certain, not cutting NASA earlier this year when other agencies were targeted for draconian cuts was an indication of some minimal support for NASA. However, the potential for NASA budget growth was all but non-existent. That said, the large programs NASA still wants to do i.e. SLS/Orion to Mars, the Lunar Gateway, etc. are increasingly underfunded and behind schedule.
Despite promises of a new breath of commercial space thinking in the way NASA does things, the presence of Newt Gingrich and Bob Walker in the wings has not made any noticeable change in NASA priorities – at least not yet. That may come when Scott Pace shows up for work at the National Space Council. But any coordinated policy formulation at the Space Council is going to take a long time to be translated into guidance for Administration budget requests.
In the mean time NASA is going to have to send its envoys to Congress to say that the President’s budget cuts are good while simultaneously explaining why it does not have the money for the things Congress has told NASA to do. This is going to happen across the Federal government. Congress already spurned the earlier FY 2017 budget request from the White House. Congress will almost certainly do the same thing with the request for FY 2018. When all is said and done NASA’s portfolio under the Trump Administration is going to look exactly like the Obama Administration’s portfolio: Strategically scattered, chronically inefficient, and woefully underfunded.
– Trump’s FY 2018 NASA Budget Is Not Huge, earlier post
– Bridenstine at NASA – and Pace at NSC – Expected Soon, earlier post
– Senators Reject Trump Push To Cut NASA Education, earlier post
– NASA’s Good Budget News Is Not Actually All That Good, earlier post
– Congress Pushes Back Against Trump Science Cuts, earlier post
– Trump’s NASA Budget Guts Earth Science and Totally Eliminates Education, earlier post