Back to Back NASA Budget Hearings Today
National Aeronautics and Space Administration – Budget Hearing
House Appropriations Committee Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies
2:00 PM
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Hearing: An Overview of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Budget for Fiscal Year 2018
“The Committee on Science, Space, and Technology’s Subcommittee on Space will hold a hearing titled An Overview of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Budget for Fiscal Year 2018. The purpose of the hearing is to review the administration’s fiscal year 2018 (FY18) budget request for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Witness List: Mr. Robert M. Lightfoot.”
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Prepared statements: Chairman Smith, Ranking Member Johnson, Ranking Member Bera,
Subcommittee Chair Babin, Acting NASA Administrator Lightfoot
Maybe I don’t understand how to dance the Potamic two step but how can Lightfoot with any credibility state:NASA plans to launch an initial, uncrewed deep-space mission, Exploration Mission-1 (EM-1), in 2019. The mission will combine the new heavy-lift SLS with an uncrewed version of the Orion spacecraft on a mission to lunar orbit. A crewed mission, EM-2, will follow not later than 2023;
Given the tank damage issue is that really viable? Did anyone on the committee call him on this statement? Or does the committee care only that jobs are flowing to jsc, msfc and elsewhere than the truth about progress or lack there of? Doesn’t the American public deserve to know the real launch date or does NASA have to wait a certain amount of time between announcing schedule slips so the public confidence doesn’t completely erode away given recently jumped from 2017 to 2018 to 2019.
Are you saying that they shouldn’t make a best effort to establish dates, even if the dates slide?
no it was more of how/why do you keep repeating a date that has pretty much been OBE.
Setting dates and goals is fine, even when they are a little bit unrealistic. But the trick is to make them challenging but achievable. That can encourage people to try harder. Repeatedly stating a schedule, when everyone knows it’s impossible, doesn’t do that.
Not wanting to be argumentative – this is why I replied to Mr. Interbartolo as I did – but how do we know that the dates aren’t good?
“Because they’ve never met a date yet, duh!”
I guess. Missing these dates might speak to the difficulty of the job. Or poor management. Or something.
While I tend towards the latter explanation I’d also admit to having to data to back up the opinion. All I see is slipping dates.It’s very easy to assign motivation in the absence of facts, a behavior that most often reveals something about me rather than NASA.
You are right. I’m probably making assumptions about those deadline in the absence of facts. I guess my lack of confidence comes from the blythe way the delays have been reported. If they had been more open about admitting problems and describing the work they were doing to deal with those problems, I would be more confident. What they seem to be saying is, “don’t worry, everything is fine, but we’ll need another year and another few hundred million dollars.” That just does not inspire confidence.
Or if dates for these sorts of projects were expressed as a duration or window: “If everything goes perfectly, 20 months; based on previous experience, more likely 25 months; and if we have serious technical issues, 36 months”. And add a disclaimer about steady funding.