Ed Weiler Says He Quit NASA Over Cuts to Mars Program, Science Insider
“The Mars program is one of the crown jewels of NASA,” says Ed Weiler. “In what irrational, Homer Simpson world would we single it out for disproportionate cuts?” Weiler’s resignation in September caught the space science community by surprise. But he says it was the culmination of a soul-sapping and ultimately unsuccessful battle with the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) on how to accommodate the rising cost of the James Webb Space Telescope within an overall agency budget being squeezed by efforts to reduce federal spending and shrink the deficit. “It all left a very bad taste,” Weiler told ScienceInsider this morning from his house in Vero Beach, Florida.”
Keith’s note: This is sadly hilarious. Of course Ed Weiler’s chronic inability to control James Webb Space Telecope’s costs is what led to this situation in the first place. So, I guess Ed Weiler quit to protest his own poor job performance, right? Ed also neglects to mention the large cost overrun and 2 year delay in MSL – also under his tenure. I guess that did not affect things either, right Ed?
I won’t deal with the question of Weiler’s performance on cost control, but there was something intriguing in the article.
That article does appear to confirm that the SMD cuts go disproportionately to the Mars program, whereas Weiler wanted a more across the board mix. OMB force that choice on NASA. If true, what the heck is OMB doing setting NASA science priorities as opposed to giving SMD an overall budget and letting NASA plus the science community figure it out? It sure doesn’t seem consistent with the Decadal Survey and other science advisory group priority lists.
One possibility is that someone at OMB doesn’t like Mars and/or some kind of informal lobbying that reached the relevant OMB people.
What might be more likely is this: OMB may have figured that if you do an across the board cut, all the missions still go forward, and since it’s politically tougher to kill a well-established program, in the future you end up with pressure to bust your budget caps to fund all those programs (which probably had cost increases due to the earlier delays/cuts). The Pentagon is well familiar with this phenomenon, sometimes called a “procurement bow wave”.
Therefore, better to kill something entirely so you’re sure that cost line is gone.
But why ExoMars? You’d think a flagship Jovian mission would be even easier to kill since it’s less far along, and doesn’t have the foreign policy angle (i.e., making the EU angry). With my OMB hat again, probably the Jovian (or other non-Mars flagship) isn’t spending enough money yet to be worthwhile. And, OMB may also figure that w/o ExoMars, we’re that much less likely to do Mars Sample Return anytime soon, and so if you kill the US share ExoMars you probably kill or greatly dealy a bunch of future, very expensive follow-on missions.
Big & small, OMB is getting into our knickers like you wouldn’t believe. On the small/petty side, they are telling how much money we can spend on travel. Since there is no cut to the bottom-line budget, this will not save the Govt money. In fact, it is costing us money because we are sending more contractors on travel as substitutes for civil servants and we have a lot of very highly paid people spending endless hours on non-productive travel exercises trying to fit into the OMB “box”. We have projects in launch campaign running out of travel “allocation” and projects with no allocation this year. Anyone ever try to manage a flight project with no travel money? This is micro-management at its worst and no one at HQ seems to be willing to do anything about it. It is also an election year stunt and we are the victims. Next is coming artificial controls on other admin expenses- (pencils, IT, etc.) What ever happened to the concept of giving a Project Manager their budget and holding them accountable for the RESULTS?
Does anyone know of a case in which OMB was made responsible for, and/or punished for a bad decision? Serious question.
Ultimately, we need people willing to take the body blows! Stand Tall! Find a Way! There are ways to get work done, no matter what. Find a Way!
Program management abilities and histories aside, when are our government officials and the public in general going to look at the bigger picture? Why does the space program constantly have to fight for every cent of its meager pittance of the US budget when the military out spends it by several orders of magnitude? What has the military done in the past 50 years to inspire and motivate children to study math, science and engineering? Nothing! If the space program had half their budget, this world would be a very different world, and most likely for the better.
In the other thread I asked for a name for the man responsible for the JWST exploding 400% in costs when the dollar inflated 15% in the same time. Is this that man? Is he under investigation? If not, why?
There’s been too much focus on sending unmanned vehicles to the surface of Mars, IMO. And there has been too little focus on sending unmanned vehicles to the surface of the moon’s of Mars (Phobos and Deimos) and to the surface of the Earth’s own moon, especially to the lunar poles.
The Moon and the moon’s of Mars have much more near term potential commercial value than the Martian surface. Plus exploiting resources on the moons of Mars could make landing humans on Mars a lot simpler and much more economical.
And the best way to really explore such a titanic new world is to establish a permanently manned base on the surface of Mars.
Marcel F. Williams
Frankly, this administration’s ambivalence to space in any form has always been painfully obvious to me. This goes beyond the average politicians benign contempt as a jobs program. I remember at the inaugural parade the lunar exploration vehicle prototype came dead last. The president stood there with the biggest grin on his face. I’ve often wondered what he was thinking at that time… perhaps… you people think you really going someplace. These people have never seen public spending project they didn’t like…uh… except for maybe any kind of space exploration. Looking back over the past 3 years it is almost impossible to be too pessimistic with this crowd.
Why are people surprised about this?
1) JWST has already eaten astrophysics
2) Now it’s eating the rest of SMD
3) The same Senator that saved JWST will not allow
Earth Science to be cut. (Also, the White House
cares more about Earth Science than Planetary Science.)
4) 1/2 of the cuts are coming out of personnel budgets,
but nobody is being RIFed… other programs are having to
absorb bodies and cut content.
The cancer is metastasizing.
I personally don’t have a problem with JWST and its cost overruns. It was probably miss priced in the beginning. What I do abhor is our government continually starting large, potentially “game changing” programs just because they are expensive and then blatantly waste all the time and money that had gone into the project thus far. A short list of just science related projects include the Super Collider, X-33, X-38, aero-spike engine and Constellation programs. We might still be the leaders in high energy physics or not be reliant on foreign launch services had these programs been carried through to fruition. Either finish a program, and cost it as correctly as possible, or don’t start it in the first place. Oh, and don’t cut other programs to cover your mistakes; hypocrisy at its highest!!
I teach public policy, so glad to hear somone else sees the same tea leaves. OMB may not share the same priorities as NASA but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a method to their madness.
“Everything that has come out of Obama’s OMB about NASA points to a
strategic choice to shrink the agency as much as possible.”
In truth, the majority of the rhetoric coming from both the left and the right is aiming at shrinking NASA. The recent backlash over Newt’s moon proposition should illustrate this point. In this atmosphere of austerity, it appears neither party would make NASA a priority.
“Why does the space program constantly have to fight for every cent of
its meager pittance of the US budget when the military out spends it by
several orders of magnitude?”
The media would have a field day with an official quote describing NASA’s budget as a pittance…
majority of the rhetoric coming from both the left and the
right is aiming at shrinking NASA
Because don’t desire it for what it does but instead what they can use it for. And to keep it from being used otherwise.
Bipartisanship here is “I’ll let you get yours if you’ll let me get mine”.
neither party would make NASA a priority
Because priority now means scoring on the other team. How does NASA fit there?
A narrow vision.
Yes. My opinion is Obama sees NASA as a “tool” to fund alternative “weapons systems”. So, at the same time he shrinks down DOD post Bush’s wars, he wants to leave no room for expansion in NASA.
Think the way he does things is to approach policy from a reasoned “what should we be doing now” approach, and when he gets reversed by Congress, he gives ground in a way that later causes the reversal to be undercut by historical forces – e.g. leaving his adversaries “on the wrong side of history”, as they attempt to force reality through an ideological (or pork) lens that cannot hold no matter who wins in the immediate. Shrewd.
I think FY2011 budget was an attempt to reset NASA without requiring a specific direction/mandate, because he didn’t know how much to save, and how to trim the “tool” aspect. Now he thinks he knows.
He let Congress fight for its favorite items – among them SLS and JWST (a too complicated project that needed a precursor to refine the approach decades ago before it was funded).
Now, planetary takes it on the jaw – partially due to its “support” for CxP/SLS (they’d have been shot by the other side if they’d not). Obama’s betting that sooner or later, SLS will be undercut by itself and/or impatience that expresses its aspirations under duress through “commercial” alternatives – e.g. “the right side of history”.
He knows that too much of NASA will be vulnerable to this use, and that like certain of those on the right that wish to shrink NASA for their own designs – he’s going to get there first. Ironically, with their assistance.
No one is treating NASA as it should be treated. Not even NASA itself. But it is a result of Pyrrhic politics
This is just one person’s opinion but as (Edward j. Weiler’s son) I will give it. My fathers life work was progressing the space program and nothing made him happier. Perhaps the blame should be focused more on the people force feeding said budget cuts and not the ones that merely regulate them.