Bill Nelson's Infrastructure Windfall Is Much Smaller Than Promised
House passes infrastructure bill with $1,115 Billion For NASA, Space Policy Online
“The House finally passed the second bill to address President Biden’s infrastructure agenda. This “human infrastructure” bill has $1.115 billion for NASA, far less than what NASA Administrator Bill Nelson once hoped for, but would be a significant boost for the agency on top of its regular appropriations nonetheless. The bill now goes to the Senate for consideration.”
Bill Nelson Says He’s Discovered A New Pile Of Money For NASA, earlier post
“Nelson decided that the way for NASA to get out of the fiscal mess it is in is to do a Hail Mary pass and dive into the new TBD Jobs Bill that the Administration is formulating and grab some dollars. He said “You can put $5.4 Billion into the jobs bill for the HLS that would be at the end of the day producing jobs. Another $200 million could go into that bill for spacesuits.” He went on to say “We can also put $585 million on nuclear thermal propulsion.”
Nelson then turned to another pot of forthcoming money – the multi-trillion dollar Infrastructure bill and said “Part of the jobs bill is infrastructure – there’s another $5.4 Billion. Look at NASA facilities in your state (congressman) – there is aging infrastructure.” Do the math. All told, it looks like he wants to raid the cookie jar for something like $10 – 11 billion. One would assume that OMB is on board with this plan.”
– NASA CFO Commentary On FY 2022 Budget Negotiations, earlier post
– Has Anyone Seen Bill Nelson’s NASA Budget Windfall?, earlier post
Given costly builds like KSC spent on the mobile launch platform how much does $1.1B for infrastructure really buy NASA? How many 50+ year old aging buildings can that fix? How many new builds like the JSC Moon and Mars big analog domes will get funded? Nelson failed to bring home the bacon for the agency for HLS and now this not a good start to his tenure.
$1,115.000.000.00 is a lot of bacon and it’s bacon that they did not have previously. This is how politics works – you have a starting position, and you negotiate what you can get in a compromise solution. If you got me an extra $1,115,000,000.00 to fund my projects, I’d say you were doing pretty well.
So a few buildings get a fresh coat of paint but the lunar lander program is still starved for funds. That’s still a big fail in my book.
There’s an easy solution right in front of Nelson‘s face and that is to put SLS and Orion out of their misery and thus free up $4.1 billion earmarked for every launch of that boondoggle.
NASA can then pay SpaceX a fraction of those billions to develop Starship to completely take over SLS’s role and use the rest to fund everything else at NASA.
Into the bargain, NASA will gain a vastly more capable launch system that could land 100 tons and 20 astronauts on the Moon and launch dozens of times per year making NASA’s goal of a sustainable presence on the Moon become a reality, rather than an empty promise.
I must have missed the part where NASA gets to determine its own budget and what projects get funded.
NASA can horse trade with the Congress. Kill SLS and Orion but still funnel lunar surface money to msfc and jsc. A robust cislunar transportation system like start ship means far more capacity for cargo and crew to the moon. And that cargo can be built as assembly line surface habs, rovers, infrastructure at michoud, msfc and JSC. The work can pivot from once a year SLS Orion mission to multiple missions a year building up a forward operating base at the south pole. The precious jobs Congress care about get redirected