Senators Blast NASA and OMB Over Future Of ISS
Cruz, Nelson: Future of ISS Should be Determined by Emergence of a Viable and Proven Commercial Alternative and Needs of Our National Space Program
“While we have been strong proponents of the U.S. commercial space sector, prematurely ending direct U.S. Government funding of ISS could have disastrous consequences. The future of ISS should be determined by the emergence of a viable and proven commercial alternative and the needs of our national space program.” The Senators continued, “In fact, Congress specifically required that the transition plan include cost estimates for extending operations of the ISS to 2024, 2028, and 2030, and an evaluation of the feasible and preferred service life of the ISS through at least 2028 as a unique scientific, commercial, and space exploration related facility. P.L. 115-10 specifically required the NASA Administrator to deliver a report to Congress no later than December 1, 2017. As of today, that report has not been delivered to Congress as required by federal statute.”
Did NASA Deliver The ISS Transition Plan To Congress Required By Law? Update: No, earlier post
Well, this bears out two things I’ve been saying for a while.
Space tends to cut diagonally across the usual political divides. Thus it tends to be massively unproductive to drag current red-blue issues into space questions – that typically leads to useless wrangling among people who’d otherwise be effective allies.
And any initiative to move NASA from where it is now to a place where it’s once again doing significant new human deep space exploration will require some major-league top-level Congressional deal-making before it can even start working on the NASA institutional questions involved.
Pork always comes first in the swamp. The ISS will be a burden on NASA until it malfunctions and crashes to Earth, hopefully in a ocean.
Politics is the art of the possible.
And Station isn’t efficient, but it’s far from the least efficient major budget item within NASA HSF. There is at least something flying, returning some useful results.
True ‘dat, as the kids (used) to say.
And it doesn’t bother me- I’m willing to sacrifice a bit of efficiency in the name of inclusiveness, the existence of some kind of goal or purpose being presupposed.
I’ll be blunter, after sleeping on it, because I don’t think last night’s diplomatic answer gets the point across except to those who already understand it.
Translating this story to plain english (and yes, oversimplifying a bit), Florida and Texas are saying that Alabama’s plan to shut down ISS to fund a new cislunar station plus lunar missions, all (or mostly) to be flown with SLS, is a non-starter. Return to Go, do not collect Station’s $4 billion a year, not happening, try again.
On a pure political heft basis, the 600-lb and 800-lb gorillas have just told the 500-lb gorilla “don’t touch our bananas.”
In terms of perceived project effectiveness, the group that (very expensively) is flying safely and with ongoing positive results has just told the group that (very expensively) might eventually fly, somewhere, “back off.” (Leaving aside for now, see ongoing software issues, the nagging suspicion that “somewhere” might conceivably be sideways into downtown Orlando.)
Combine these two factors and the way to bet is clear. Cislunar exploration won’t happen out of the Station budget.
Thus circling back to my original (also diplomatic) point, that any new and significant NASA human deep space exploration will require first some inspired Congressional dealmaking.
Good analysis. It does appears the DSG pork isn’t being spread around enough.
Well, maybe they’ve finally learned something. Funny how that wasn’t their position at the end of Shuttle.
That is only because the ISS hasn’t killed anyone. There were folks advocating to keep the shuttle flying, but after two accidents there was no interest in it.
More importantly there were not more selling points for a large cargo carrier as ISS construction was complete. And it was an expensive taxi for just taking up people and relatively small hardware. And its operation as a satellite launch or repair platform was never fully realized, notwithstanding Hubble – which we could use future repair/refurbish flights to if we choose to keep it alive. Shuttle died because there was not long term plan, limited budget and no one ever decided to support next generation vehicles based on all the learning acquired from shuttle operations. And again we head down the road of one off vehicles without any plans for a version B.
“there was not long term plan”
Which pretty much characterizes much of what NASA does, at least in HSF.
But don’t blame NASA. Nobody has a clue about what to actually DO in space. Anywhere in space.
/hyperbole.
Wow…”…a viable and proven commercial alternative and the needs…” – they used three extremely interesting and useful words and concepts and all need objective measuring sticks; Viable, Proven and Needs.