Let's Go Back To The Moon With Less Money
NASA could see a 5 percent budget cut next year, official says, Houston Chronicle
“President Donald Trump is expected to propose a 5 percent cut to NASA’s budget next year, a decision that stands in stark contrast to the president’s pushed to return humans to the moon for the first time since 1972. The proposed cuts — part of sweeping cuts to non-defense discretionary spending in every agency — was disclosed in an article published online Monday by Russ Vought, acting head of the Office of Management and Budget. “It’s unfortunate that once again when everyone is getting excited about going back to the moon … that the announcement is on the heels of cuts for NASA,” said Keith Cowing, editor of NASA Watch, a website devoted to space news. “This is not the signal you would hope to see at an agency that is about to embark on a multi-decade program of returning to and exploring the moon. … “Again, NASA is caught making all these plans with faith-based projections where budgets will be,” Cowing said. “There’s nothing wrong with being optimistic, but at the end of the day, you can’t just click your heels three times and hope money falls out of the sky.”
But they had a higher budget this year. That’s so weird.
Not too weird. Assuming I’ve found the correct numbers, the President’s requested budget for FY19 was $19.9 billion. Congress actually (and eventually…) passed a $21.5 billion budget for FY19. Now is looks like Mr. Trump’s requested budget for FY20 may be $20.4 billion. Who knows what Congress will do this time?
But I agree with Keith that this budget profile, combined with a major return-to-the-Moon push, sends a mixed message. But Mr. Trump has made it clear that he doesn’t think the government (in general) uses its money efficiently. That’s probably part of where the reported 5% across the board cut is coming from. (In discretionary, non-defense spending.) Maybe he thinks NASA can do more with a bit less money by becoming more efficient.
Yes, and it should also be noted that Russ Vought never mentioned NASA specifically in the article he wrote, but simply stated that All agencies will be asked how they could “cut a nickel out of every dollar spent” by being more efficient. But nothing in that statement would prevent President Trump from giving NASA more money if they are able to make a case for it. So basically NASA should see it as a challenge to find more efficient ways to accomplish their mission. Given the success of COTS and CCP this gives actually Administrator Bridenstine an opening to propose similar programs for a lunar return in place of the Gateway on the grounds they would be more efficient.
I would hope someone, someone at OMB if not Mr. Trump, has thought about what that 5% cut would mean to each of the affected departments and agencies. And how that would affect their ability to do what the President has asked them to do. (They should also have considered what Congress has asked and what the public expects, but that might be asking too much.) Making the optimistic assumption that’s the case, whoever thought it over must have concluded NASA could do more with less. That’s probably true, but it’s a mixed message.
If not SpaceX, I wonder how much the Chinese will charge to land in the south polar basin by the time NASA is able to actually land there?
That would also take changing some laws about NASA working with the People’s Republic of China. But, despite the name and origins, the PRC does seem to be very good at doing business. Since they clearly aren’t idiots, they would charge as much as they thought NASA would pay and harvest as PR as they could.
Aside from the fact that I was being slightly sarcastic, the likelihood is that Musk will get there before either the Chinese or NASA…unless of course our own bureaucracy gets in the way!
It’s a position fairly easy to take, I think, that SX will get there first. SX lives in an entirely different world, and the moon effort serve as an example.
While NASA looks for lander ideas, for instance, SX’ approach involves the use of a single device – a rocket ship, in the old parlance – capable of landing, providing shelter, unloading large amounts of cargo, then departing; no part of this equipment is sacrificial, single use.
There are many problems with this general approach, of course, not the least of which involves refueling. The point is this: considering old problems in new ways can lead to very satisfactory results.
This nonsense recurs, from time to time, often with a new mask.
It is driven mostly by the insistence – no, a core belief, something like the Second Coming – by our friends on the right that government is by definition a huge pit of waste, abuse, and fraud; and that given this fact, why, demanding a mere 5% is nothing short of generous.
They could be right. In fact they probably ARE right, to some extent, as government is a defensibly messy enterprise not fairly compared to business.
But figuring the 95/05 line is the hell of it, of course.
It would be easy to make the case for more actual reusable hardware for space and only launched on commercial vehicles… but that would be a hard sell in space states that need their pork seal of approval.
Perhaps you are imagining space efforts characterized by very low flight rates.
The future, though, is similar to that of commercial airplanes, where hundreds of thousands of jobs are supported by the production of hundreds/thousands of airplanes annually. Jobs are the least of the police problems.
No more like no spending billions on a disposable SLS when something like Nautilus X makes more sense…
I know it’s not going to happen, and perhaps it’s wishful thinking, but maybe they could save that $1.1 billion by _not_ pursuing SLS, Orion and Lunar Outpost-Gateway.
Might even save a couple of nickels per dollar.
Well, let’s pick this apart and look at the pieces.
Going back to the Moon via the established NASA in-house vehicle development process is very obviously not happening, even with more money. Even with a LOT more money. I was directly involved in one aspect of NASA’s last attempt at a crewed lander, thus acquired a morbid fascination with the overall process, and it was a major part of the overall Constellation program’s fatal explosion to far beyond the available budget limits in the outyears.
Meanwhile SLS/Orion seems to me clear evidence that the in-house development process has not, ahem, gotten better.
The alternative then would seem to be, someone else develops the vehicles, via some different process. At which point, if NASA were to get serious about actually making that transition (and so far, for the obvious political reasons, they’re just nibbling around the edges) some serious money might be saved.
Enough to go back to the Moon despite a 5% overall budget cut? That is at least plausibly debatable. Though I’ll be the first to admit that getting there from here would take some serious political heavy lifting (so to speak.)
Elon Musk remains the best hope for getting humanity to the moon or Mars. NASA has had since 1973 to get a person out of low earth orbit. If you are relying on Orion then I would advise you not to hold your breath.
You worry too much, Keith.
1> You know that the President doesn’t make the budget, Congress does, and THIS disfunctional Congress isn’t going to. Funding for everything will be maintained at roughly current levels.
2>Trump is a negotiator who doesn’t request the price where he intends to land. He knows that Congress will raise it.
3>We no longer need NASA to lead Lunar exploration anyway. They will play a support role to commercial ventures and trade tech and support for rides and data like they did with the Israel lander. That doesn’t take an act of Congress or the President. I’m starting to think NASA likes it that way.
For those interested here is the original commentary by Russ Vought, and the paragraph everyone is discussing.
https://www.realclearpoliti…
Congress Must Join the President in Cutting Spending
COMMENTARY
“Recognizing the importance of controlling excessive spending, President Trump directed federal agencies to identify how they can cut a nickel out of every dollar they spend. Hard-working American families make these sorts of tough decisions everyday. The president believes Washington should be no different. The president’s 2020 budget will meet the target of a 5 percent reduction to non-defense discretionary spending, by means of one of the largest spending reductions in history. Within these constrained levels, agencies will still be able to provide investments in key national priorities.”
But that tax cuts for “job creators” though….Oh wait, this isn’t a political site…
What you are assuming is that the RIMS numbers are fixed in stone when they are not. Also actual experience of having to do with less money from budget cuts has shown me there are many ways to save money without impacting output. You just have to want to save money, which few folks worry about doing when it’s not their money being spent.
Wanting to save money is an important issue. From what I’ve seen, NASA projects cost, well, what NASA is willing to pay.
The current cost cap for a Discovery mission is about $490 million. So people propose $490 million missions. If the cap were $400 million, people would probably find a way to fit a very similar mission into that cost cap. If it were $550 million, they’d find some justifications for spending that much.
Another example came up at a workshop a couple weeks ago. There was some discussion about multi-spacecraft observations, should the NASA Europa Clipper and ESA JUICE spacecraft end up orbiting Jupiter at the same time. That wasn’t a new idea, and the consensus was maybe. But part of the discussion was what it would take. If it’s official, it would require expensive studies, new requirements, etc. If not, it might not happen, but some people could do a little, quite and inexpensive work behind the scenes to make sure it’s possible. Then just say, “Oh, by the way, we can also do X” after launch.
The workshop itself is another example, since it was in Iceland. That is, actually, mutually inconvenient for people coming from the US and Europe. But it was really there because they could get more people to attend a meeting in an exotic location. They could have saved money and had nearly as good a meeting in a cheap hotel next to the Boston airport.
And, even if this will irritate some of my colleagues, most research grants aren’t budgeted based on the intended work. NASA issues an AO, and it says roughly how much they plan to spend and how many proposals they plan to select. We all do the division, and say, “Oh, that’s going to be $150,000 per year on average,” and write a proposal to do about $150,000 per year of work.
Good points. And given the way government budgeting works you are expected to spend every dollar allocated. If you don’t you may get an audit to see why you didn’t spend it all.
And then there is how the grant budgets are done. I recall wanting to get a government grant to do a simple phone survey. The cost would be about $10,000 to hire a firm to administer it. Simple I thought. But after sitting down with the grant office to fill out the budget, and adding in university overhead, administrator/faculty salaries, computer time, etc., the grant budget came to over $30,000. It was insane what was being added in as expenses. I ended up just doing a simple mail survey for $2,500 on my own that I paid for out of my own money. It was also a lot faster.
“If you don’t you may get an audit to see why you didn’t spend it all.”
The purpose of the audit being – what? to learn why the original request was so far from the amount needed? Looking for more accuracy in the future?
“the grant budget came to over $30,000. It was insane what was being added in as expenses”
I’m not understanding your point here. Wouldn’t you, as the professional scientist, be expected to know about these ancillary, but defensible, expenses in the first place? Perhaps the phone survey was an incorrect modality for what was needed? Or, maybe you are saying that some of the expenses added by the grantor weren’t really part of the expenses.
The whole thing is confusing for sure; my brush with that world* was limited to about half a dozen grants in grad school, all successful.
* Did I mention that LSU Grad School has a department that does nothing but write grants and help the grad students? 🙂
Not spending all the money can cause all sorts of problems, and there can be good reasons for those problems. As you suggest, the funding agency might want to know why you proposed and were given more money than you actually needed. Or they might think that, since you overestimated last year’s costs, they can assume your estimate for next year is also going to be an overestimate, and save money by cutting your budget. And that might all be true. Or you might be acting responsibly, and asked for a little extra to cover unexpected problems which never actually came up. Or, inside your own organization, some manager might be upset that you could have billed the client more, and brought in more profits, and just didn’t. That’s practically stealing from your employer.
But that’s all about the whys. The practical result is that the estimated and actual costs are systematically different. If it wasn’t dollars, and was some sort of scientific measurement, I’d expect the actual number to be off from the correct and best estimate. But I’d expect, when you average over many cases, for the averages to be match. That’s not what happens with the cost of NASA programs. There are all sorts of factors, some for good reasons and some not, which make the actual cost systematically higher than the estimate.
What really annoys me is the fact that people in the field are actually trained to overspend. No one says it that way (except obnoxious people line me) but that’s what it amounts to.
NASA projects are required to have cost reserves, typically 30%. That’s reasonable, since things don’t always work out and there may be unexpected costs. Especially when you are doing something new and challenging. How and when those reserves are spent can be a difficult judgement call. It might be wise to spend some of the reserves early, to nip a potential problem in the bud. But you don’t want to spend too much, too soon, because you might need that money for a last minute problem.
What managers of NASA programs are both expected to do and often trained to do, is to spend the reserve down in a linear way (always having 30% on the money left to spend) which hits zero at launch.
What people don’t seem to realize is that this _guarantees_ every project will cost 130% of the original estimate. It’s almost an administrative prohibition on things ending up being cheaper and easier than originally expected.
And, since the original estimate for a mission’s cost is based on the actual cost of the previous, similar missions, there is a built in 30% per generation inflation. They originally thought it would cost $400 million to do it, they actually spent $520 million including reserves, so if you want to do it again, you have to plan on spending $520 million plus 30% reserves, for a total budget of $676 million. All of which will be spend if the project is managed in the approved manner.
In the case of your $10,000 proposal turning into $30,000, there are fixed cost inefficiencies. A government contract, _any_ government contract no matter how large or small, takes a certain amount of money just to move the paperwork around. Oddly, even the length of proposals is more-or-less fixed. For $500,000 over three year, your technical and management section is fifteen pages. For a $5 million proposal, it’s about twenty five pages. So the the time and effort going into a small proposal is disproportionately high. Your cost multiplier of three is a bit high, but $10,000 is also small enough I’d expect the cost multiplied to be a bit high.
I’ve heard project PIs, and even you, Dr. C., on how to cram as much science as possible into whatever money sack is available, and the frequent difficulties involved when forced to remove Instrument A, or Sensor B.
Isn’t it a bit more descriptive, and closer to reality, to note that scientists, like yourself, do whatever they can to maximize the return?
Yes, but… It’s a question of how and why the money is spent. For something like a New Horizons mission, NASA is very specifically saying they will pay up to a specified sum (about one billion but not a cent more) to make certain, specific measurements set out by the National Academies Decadal Survey. If NASA said they would only pay 75% as much, scientists would work like hell to get the same results for that much money. If NASA said 125%, they would find a way to spend it. And it might or might not be by accomplishing 25% more.
I know of people who came up with clever ideas to do the same thing for half a billion, and could not get a NASA center interested. Specifically because they didn’t see why they should waste their time and effort on _not_ getting as much money as they could.
I guess I don’t see it as maximizing the return. If NASA has $2.1 billion per year for planetary science, I definitely want to get as much done with that money as possible. I don’t think there are many people who would disagree. The problem comes when the money gets divided up. Then you do see people who want to use all of the money allocated to _their_ project, or propose projects which use the maximum NASA will fund. I rarely see people saying, “Well, if use less to get the same results, NASA will be able to support some other project as well.” In fact, I can think of one case where someone was reprimanded for saying something like that (in that case, about DSN antenna time, not dollars.)
NASA could easily return to the Moon permanently using less money if they a set of full-scale public-private programs were to be set up (aka “Lunar COTS”). However, that transportation system should use the Falcon Heavy-class of rockets (including New Glenn & Vulcan), be commercial end-to-end (i.e. not required to pass through the never-gonna-be-commercial Gateway), and use human-scale landers (starting with cargo delivery of power systems, telerobots, habitats, equipment, & supplies in the process of becoming human-rated). Reserve any SHLV for Mars and not the Moon.
Good idea! Let’s cut government spending at the same time that everyone knows a recession is very overdue (a risky statement, but still the economy has been humming for many years). Reduce spending has wrecked the British economy. There are many other examples.
The timing would be good since you not only get the recession out of the way but are able to blame the Democrats in Congress on causing it by their proposals for the Green New Deal. And if the Democrats don’t go with the 5% budget cuts you get to blame them for the increased in the national debt. If its heads, President Trump wins, if its tails, the Democrats lose. Both will be good for his campaign speeches.
That said the only declines I think NASA will see wil be from no longer paying the Russians for seats on the Soyuz and the transition of Commercial Crew from development funding to operational funds on a per seat basis. The rest will probably come from Earth Sciences where you know the Congress will restore them, again playing into the strategy above.
Taking the money away like the old fisherman in the GEICO commercial…
Seems like typical call of cutting the budget (that most people favor) which means cut others except my favorite agency. Of course actual cuts means less money a local congressperson brings back to the voters. Also less contracts awarded to companies. In some ways there has been cuts (EPA, State Dept) but the big agencies got an increase so whatever cuts made are about dismantling programs rather than saving money.
As far as NASA is concerned there needs to be compelling reason to go back to the moon, something most people can easily grasp and understand (not the usual suspects that post on NW). For me I see it as not much is lost because we were never going back to the moon anyway (no lander planned unless that program is hidden).
Let’s dispense with that “compelling” issue. There is no compelling reason to populate the moon.
That is to say, for the most part, there’s very little reason if you are wearing those funny glasses through which capitalism views Life, the Universe, and Everything.
If you are a sensible person, though, you will eschew all of that silly talk, largely by arm-chair capitalists, about “closing the business case;” and then you will reason that there are worthwhile activities citizens jointly fund.
One of these is the magic of exploration, of seeing what’s over the next hill; no other reason is needed.
A heart beats in every one of us.
Those weren’t the arguments that motived Prince Henry or Queen Isabella. They were driven by the desire for wealth and to spread Christianity. Somehow “Science, Curosity and Adventure” doesn’t seem as motivating as “God, Glory and Gold” was to the Age of Discovery. No wonder support for spending on space is a mile wide and an inch deep.
There are also less noble motives. In the “Age of Discovery” many sailors were motivated by, “We’ll let you out of jail if you sign on as an able seaman.” Later, many immigrants to the United States didn’t come because they liked it. They came because they really didn’t like where they were coming from. (Ok, that’s only half true. People may have immigrated from Ireland because of a famine or from eastern Europe because of religious persecution. But they did immigrate to the United States because it sounded like a better place than, say, one of the Solomon islands.) Overall and for most of the individuals involved, the destination didn’t have to be attractive. Just a better alternative than staying where they were.
True, on the level of the individual there are many motives. For example the Nina and Pinta were added to the fleet of Columbus because the noble family that owned them owned back taxes to the Spanish Crown and didn’t have the hard currency to pay them. So the Queen made them a offer they couldn’t refuse. And the captains and crews of those two ships just did what they were told to do.
The God, Glory and Gold referred to the motives of those paying the bills, in this case the King and Queen of Spain. Similar motives will be needed to finance space settlements by government, non-profits or investors.
In terms of today, would a sufficient number of scientists be motivated to move, with their families, to a 1G habitat orbiting Mars? And would the revenue generated from research grants, documenaries, tourism, etc., be sufficient to form the basis of its economy? Or would those scientists just decide not to go and just to do their work remotely from the comfort of Earth?
No, there are cases of emigration which have nothing to do with government policy, or “God, Glory and Gold.” At least, not intentionally. The famine in Ireland, around 1850, was not a matter of government policy (although the government did manage to make it worse.) The Highland clearance wasn’t deliberate government policy. Even the pogroms in eastern Europe and Russia weren’t exactly government policy. But all of them did cause a very large number of people to emigrate. And there are some places where people ended up living, due to government policy, which had very little to do with God, Glory or Gold. The European presence in places like Siberia, Australia, and parts of North America has a fair amount to do with transportation being more convenient than building and supporting prisons.
As far as scientists moving to a Mars orbital habitat goes, what do you mean by a significant number? If it were feasible, yes, I could imagine quite a few doing so. To be feasible, the cost would have to be low enough to be affordable. But that’s true of my colleagues in places like Fairbanks, Alaska or Kiruna, Sweden. Other than having a good university or research institute, there’s nothing work-related which makes them a good place to live. Actually, the Max Planck Institute for planetary science (Sonnensystemforschung) was in a tiny little town (Katlenburg-Lindau, with a population under 2000) for a very convoluted and outdated reason. They only moved to Goettingen in 2014.
I imagine living in Mars orbit would make attending conferences difficult, and academic institutions usually need some critical mass to really take off. But, overall, I think it the cost were within reason, yes, you could find a significant number of scientists interested in living in a Mars orbiting habitat. Not because the location was critical to their job, but for some other, perhaps personal, reason. The same would be true for any other sort of portable profession. It’s all about getting the cost down to something that isn’t insane, not about the local resources and place-specific industry.
Or just going somewhere new and different. A few weeks ago, I was at a workshop in Iceland. I have no idea why they held it there, and couldn’t justify billing it to any of my grants. So I paid out of my own pocket and treated it as a working vacation. That’s not exploration, and not really seeing what’s on the other side of the hill (someone’s already been there, so I can look up what’s on the other side of that hill…) But I just enjoy going places I’ve never, personally, been to before. And even going to places I have been to before, I enjoy not staying in the same place all the time.
In a strictly financial and practical sense, I think there are three issues involved in extraterrestrial colonies.
First, can people work there? Note that very few jobs in the United States involve local resources. The jobs in Silicon Valley and San Francisco do not depend on being near one of the best natural harbors on the West coast. The jobs in Colorado haven’t been about the mines for a long time.
Second, can people earn enough to afford the cost of living? That’s true today, but Mr. Musk seems obsessed with making it affordable in the future. Or, at least, as affordable as insanely expensive places like New York or Stockholm.
Third, do people want to live there? Not for the job opportunities or economic prospects. Is it a place they like to be? People can and do accept a high cost of living just to live where they can go surfing every weekend. Or rock climbing. Or whatever. Living on the Moon, in a closet-sided room, just so you can walk around on the surface for a few hours a week? I suspect a fairy large number of people would go for that.
The that’s just a suspicion, and it’s actually a big flaw in this congressional bill. It charges NASA with creating real, extraterrestrial colonies. What if I, and the Senators in question, are wrong? What if no one wants to go? How could NASA satisfy that mandate (without violating the Thirteenth Amendment)?