Planetary Society Is Living In An Alternate Budget Universe

1. This is like Man in the High Castle. Augustine said the exact same thing in 2009. NASA needs 3 billion more. Alternate reality. There was an article yesterday about getting to Mars in 2033 and that the 19 B dollar authorization bill was going to get NASA there. Without a major breakthrough in technology, cost out the number of heavy lifts, landers, ascent vehicles, etc. for a Mars Mission and tell us exactly how that is going to happen with the level of risk that is acceptable to the Government. NASA does need a destination that is unified and then be allowed to develop a plan that fits within a cost profile that fits for the next decade. It was done with ISS. Efficiencies are need. Changes are needed. A plan is needed. Simply talking ideas without real plans and numbers is a waste of everyone’s time and the road will continue to be pointless.

   1. ExNASA, in order for your ideas, your needs to be met, the adults in the room (adult is not age dependent) need to speak up. This, the adult conversation, seems to be an impossible thing to pull together, and has seemingly been impossible for many years now, maybe decades.

      1. I fear it won’t matter how much NASA “speaks up” as it will fall on deaf ears. Cuts will be needed to pay for what the Administration considers to be higher priorities.

   2. Augustine said the exact same thing in 2009. NASA needs 3 billion more.

      Actually, that’s not what he said. The Commission was de facto against Constellation because it would require $3b more, per year, every year- and they did not see that ever coming NASA’s way. Hence other options like flexible path, more support for commercial space development, etc.

      1. The Committee developed five alternatives for the Hu- man Spaceflight Program. In reviewing these, it found:
         • Human exploration beyond low-Earth orbit is not
         viable under the FY 2010 budget guideline.
         • Meaningful human exploration is possible under a
         less-constrained budget, ramping up to approximately
         $3 billion per year in real purchasing power above the
         FY 2010 guidance in total resources.
         • Funding at the increased level would allow either an
         exploration program to explore the Moon First or one
         that follows a Flexible Path of exploration. Either
         could produce results in a reasonable timeframe.

   3. No “breakthrough in technology is needed”. But you are absolutely right that “efficiencies are needed”. Throwing away the entire SLS stack after one mission is insanity.

      Unfortunately for SLS, we already know that refurbishing SRBs that have taken a dunk in sea water really doesn’t save any money. Reusing the core stage would be challenging without some fairly significant hardware changes no doubt resulting in a significant payload penalty. Reusing the upper stage would make some sense, if you just refueled it in LEO at a fuel depot (but it’s already late given that an “interim upper stage” will be used on EM-1, so reuse would have to come years later).

      SLS seems to be the albatross around NASA’s neck right now.

      1. “Throwing away the entire SLS stack after one mission is insanity.”
         True, but it is not designed to do anything else. I’m not sure it matters though, because if FH flies people to the moon next year for two or three (or even four) hundred K$ and SLS doesn’t for a billion, which bird’s neck will be on the stump? The reusability of FH is just the sauce for the goose.
         Mission shrinkage kills launchers.

         1. Did you mean “M$”, as in a few hundred million for SpaceX vs billion for SLS?

            1. They have only said that the cost would be “comparable” to Commercial Crew flights. The general number I threw out was admittedly my own wild-haired estimate based on the cost of the FH launch, Dragon, a week of ground support, and a lot of fudge. 😉

         2. NASA learned the wrong lesson from X-33 and initially set out to make Ares I and Ares V mostly disposable (there was some notion that the SRBs would be reused, but the space shuttle program proved that really doesn’t save any money). By the time that Ares V morphed into SLS, NASA dropped the idea of recovering the five segment SRBs.

            Huge, disposable, launch vehicles were unaffordable in the late 1960’s (Saturn V production was capped and never restarted because the politicians balked at the high cost) and they’re just as unaffordable today. SLS is a “dead man walking”.

            1. (Saturn V production was capped and never restarted because the politicians balked at the high cost)

               Given the relative simplicity of the SatV design, and hence assuming that most of the cost was up front development cost on that rushed time-table rather than ongoing manufacturing and launch-operations cost, it’s likely that the SatV would have cost less per-launch by the 1980s than the Shuttle did.

            2. “SatV would have cost less than the Shuttle”

               True, but not much of a compliment to either system.

            3. And something we couldn’t have known in advance, either, especially since the original Shuttle proposal was a smaller, possibly cheaper spacecraft.

               Politically, it would be a hard sell as well when all NASA was planning to do was fly to a space station after 1970. I can just imagine politicians asking why we were spending billions to “build moon rockets when we’re not going to the Moon”.

            4. Perhaps, especially if NASA consciously worked to reduce costs. But at the time Saturn V was beyond the point of being able to restart production and the space shuttle program was being sketched out, Congress was comparing the known high costs of Saturn V with the vaporware costs of the space shuttle.

               Unfortunately, the shuttle was sold to Congress by claiming it would make spaceflight routine and would be flying once per week (some 572 times from 1980 to 1991 according to a quick web search), it never came close to that. The shuttle also failed to live up to its predicted payload mass expectation, never launched from Vandenberg AFB, and etc.

               On balance, the space shuttle was a huge economic failure, but that doesn’t mean Saturn V wasn’t an economic failure too. There is a lesson not learned here for the Congress, assuming they care, which I doubt they do.

            5. “dead man walking”

               If the SLS fiasco could be summed in a few short and catchy words NASA would again be in the headlines as t was for very expensive hammers.

               I wonder how emblematic the SLS program is of government in general.

            6. So much for dead men walking Human Exploration actually gets $100M more in the FY18 PBR – so much for that.
               Huge, complex integrated payloads need big rockets but we don’t need enough of them to reuse them nor is there a commercial market. A sustainable exploration plan will use both SLS AND commercial – it does not need to be an either or situation.

            7. SLS is not sustainable economically. Furthermore, it’s not usable by a “real” exploration mission (e.g. manned mission to Mars) which would require more than a couple SLS launches.

               Furthermore, there is no money to develop “huge complex integrated payloads” for SLS. Because of this, once SLS/Orion starts flying roughly once or twice per year (which is the limit based on how fast they can be made, stacked, and launched), we’re going to be seeing a lot of “make work” missions for SLS/Orion.

            8. Of course SLS isn’t economically sustainable – there’s no commercial market. That’s EXACTLY why it needs to be a government owned program. And I think you are fundamentally wrong in your assessment that there will not be large integrated payloads.

               But that does not mean commercial systems won’t play a role; for a big Mars or lunar mission, SLS would only need to launch a few of the elements – most of the mass required will be consumables – propellant, water, oxygen, etc. Much of that may eventually come from the moon or asteroids but initially, commercial providers with their “economically sustainable” rockets will play a big role.

               Lastly, according to a 2005 study by Director of the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research at the University of Colorado, the average cost of a Shuttle mission that year was $1.3B; SLS launches are expected to cst about $1B a launch. If we could afford to own and operate the Space Shuttle and use it to launch big integrated systems like Hubble, Chandra and the elements of the international space station for thirty years, why is it that you think we won’t be able to afford SLS; its simply not true.

            9. I LOL-ed at the comparison of demonstrated shuttle costs versus “expected” SLS costs. The per flight cost of either vehicle depends greatly on the flight rate. Considering how badly NASA screwed up the space shuttle’s flight rate estimates and considering that SLS hasn’t flown once, I honestly put little faith in current “estimates” for SLS.

               As to affordability, Apollo/Saturn was killed due to its high cost. Skylab and ASTP were both flown with “leftover” launch vehicles since production of Saturn stages had ended years before. Without the space shuttle orbiters and refurbished SRBs as reusable assets, I would argue that it becomes as easy to kill SLS as it was to kill Saturn V. .

            10. True that SLS estimates may be off – the point is that we were able to afford Shuttle even though its average cost per mission was relatively high. The fact is, we are a far richer nation today than in 1972 when the Saturn V was cancelled; world bank data show US real GDP to be over eight times higher. Even though we chose not to keep Saturn V back then the decision today is not nearly as expensive relative to our national income.

            11. We could barely afford the Space Race in the 1960s. You’ve no doubt heard the Kennedy tape where Kennedy essentially tells the then NASA Administrator that the goal of the program is to beat the Soviet Union to the moon and that the US wouldn’t be wrecking the budget to do so otherwise.

                The state of the US economy has little to do with the political will to fund NASA. Most politicians don’t want to see significant increases in NASA’s budget, which is why NASA’s budget has been relatively stagnant for so long (when adjusted for inflation).

            12. Not true – we did Apollo while fighting the Vietnam war with half a million troops and we did all the great society programs too; we stopped because it was costly yes but mostly because once we beat the Soviets, it wasn’t enough of a priority to justify the cost. See earlier post on NASA’s budget prospects.

            13. I’m talking about the political will to fund it. Take a look at a graph of NASA spending over time. Look at the peak. Note that the peak is *before* a successful manned lunar landing. The evidence supports my assertion.

                https://en.wikipedia.org/wi…

            14. The Shuttle was a different bird. It was a national icon and a serious tech advancement. Alternatives were limited, comparably priced, and until IIS construction started were pushed aside in favor of support for Shuttle missions.
                Though I think SLS is a very advanced system, it LOOKS just like the cheaper ones that will fly more for less. SLS Mark 1 lifts more than FH, but how many lbs can multiple FHs lift for a $B?

            15. If you assume that NASA will never get more money than now, you can forget about a human exploration program. That’s what Augustine concluded in 2009 and the NRC in 2014 and it remains true today. If you wait past 2024 or 2028, ISS will end, freeing up several billion for development and once Orion and commercial crew is done, more development funding will also become available – much like ISS development money was freed up once the shuttle fleet was done. But to do exploration that way will take decades; NASA needs more.
                Commercial programs are not a substitute, they are a complement – and they will play a role in supporting Exploration like they do with ISS – but ultimately, there is no market for a Mars base except possibly governments and none for the moon unless we figure out how to make a viable He3 fusion reactor and need regality for fuel.
                NASA has gone up a bit in the past two Congressional cycles and Congress and now 3 Presidents in a row have agreed on Mars as a long term destination; more money is realistic over time.

            16. That sounds wonderful and thoughtful, JadedObs, until there is a commercial alternative with a much lower cost, much higher launch cadence (partly enabled by the low cost), comparable throw-weight, available five years before SLS hits it’s stride in 2022, and launching to SLS destinations four years before. At current development rates, there might even be more than just SpaceX Heavies flying it, and they might even be lifting LEO and Lunar space stations by then. With that level of launchability, “huge, complex” integrated payloads has no better ring to it than “modular, multi-sourced” integrated payloads.
                Of course, will SpaceX launch test it’s own SuperHeavy, ITS (660KLbs to LEO), in 2022? Probably not, but it’s something else that could pull feathers out of SLS’s tail.
                So it’s not quite “dead man walking”. 2018 is too close for EM-1 to do anything but fly, but we might end up nicknaming EM-1 Ares II-X.
                I bemoan the robotic Planetary Science opportunities that have to share their nest with that dying Cuckoo bird. 😉

            17. Yeah we’ll see – so far, SpaceX takes much longer to fly than they promise and based on leaked financials from the Wall St Journal, they aren’t flush with cash; I think it’s far more likely that there will be rainbow colored unicorns dancing in a flame trench than that a purely commercial development will supersede SLS.

            18. I read the same news that you do and I think you’re grossly under interpreting the wave. You’re basically saying that a Dragon V2, with crew, will not, under any stretch of even an overactive imagination, ride an FH to orbit and especially fly a moon loop, anytime before 2022…the currently planned EM-2, the first crewed SLS/Orion flight…5 whole big huge years, a half-decade, from now.

                I’m saying if all SpaceX facilities burned down today that they would still have time to rebuild everything and beat Orion around the moon if EM-2 remains Orion’s first crewed flight.

                Further, if NASA tries to crew EM-1, they’ll have to slip the launch date to 2019, and if they do, and if SpaceX has another launch failure between then and now, then yes crewed Orion will beat Dragon around the moon.

                Otherwise, Dragon will be the first spacecraft to return humanity to the moon…superseding Orion (but not NASA, because NASA will quietly help).

            19. Because NASA no longer has the fast-food moving culture it once had, nor does it control its own budget, nor is it allowed to structure its own development cycles or front-end initiatives. SpaceX (or any other commercial player), with the help of NASA on the back-end, has the ability to decide to do all of those things of they want.

2. They are just putting down a marker. Tradition is that NASA is managed by giving it too much to do

3. Ask for a modest increase to fight off a potential large cut? Interesting.

   I would imagine that the House and Senate will provide a ~17 Billion figure- with clear stipulations that Earth Science and perhaps efficient Aero be curtailed (obvious cut given Admin statements) -stretchy programs (JWST?) will surely become even further stretched.

   It’s assured that that Shelby and company will fight any spaceflight /jobs cuts down south.

   Shorthand- Blue/Purple state centers (Langley, Goddard, JPL) take the hit.

   1. Forgot Ames, did you ?

      1. And JPL may be safer since planetary missions get headlines and look impressive (well, some of them.) I suspect the details will involve an aspect of national prestige (making America great again) as well as spending money on congressionally-favored districts. Planetary science doesn’t, for the most part, impact political agendas and has a relatively low fraction of NASA’s budget.

   2. I very much doubt that JWST will be stretched … it seems on track for launch next yr and may be a singular success before a very long dry spell. However, WFIRST could certainly be slowed way down, and any mythical large-aperture space telescope to sit atop SLS will surely remain ‘under study’.

   3. Those (and Glenn and Ames) were the centers that would have benefitted under Obama’s original proposal to use the money saved by cancelling Constellation on an expanded space technology program.

4. Except that NASA is probably not seen by President Trump like those other agencies. He remembers it as a symbol of American greatness during Project Apollo as a kid. He might not even take notice of the climate research NASA does since that is usually associated with NOAA, Dept. of Energy, etc.

   But we will see in a few days…

   1. I doubt NASA will be spared cuts in the Administration’s proposed budget, but we shall see.

   2. And the Trump does not make the budget any more than Obama did. Congress does, and they horde their respective slices of the pie like I horde that plate of crispy bacon on a Saturday morning. 😉
      The President’s budget proposal is just that, a proposal, and Congress currently seems to want to spend more money (for themselves) for space industries (in their respective states).

5. I think the Society’s argument is absolutely right – expecting a cut and meekly accepting that it is inevitable will get you nothing from the budget process in Washington. Even if OMB puts a NASA cut in the President’s request DOES NOT mean it will happen nor that the space community should not fight back – that is exactly what every other budget target will do and throwing in the towel will only get you more cuts in the future. The same is true of layoffs.

   As the Planetary Society says, we should make the case for a more robust NASA budget to enable NASA to do more. This Administration does not seem to accept the status quo – so just spreading cuts uniformly is not likely their preferred answer; they have programs like EPA and the UN that will likely get severe cuts; others, like defense, will get increases. We should make the case that making NASA great is part of making America great and the amount needed – $1B more this year – is just 1.5% of the nondefense discretionary part of the budget; that much change can be easily absorbed IF space is a priority for this Administration. Whether it will be is not clear but cuts are not inevitable.

6. Ever since their first solar sail experiment was destroyed in an early SpaceX launch accident, The Planetary Society has seemed like it wears New Space nullifying blinders.
   NASA spending may go up and it may go down, as government politics ebb and flow, but it will never directly fund a space race like Apollo again. The Planetary Society is a great organization, and I like what they do, but they really need to move on and prepare for the face of space in the 2020s and 2030s.

   1. The Planetary Society lost two solar sail experiment but neither were launched on a SpaceX vehicle, both were on former Soviet missiles converted to launch vehicles.

      1. Had to go back and check…I do occasionally recall details incorrectly.

         NanosailD, August 2008, Falcon 1.
         https://en.m.wikipedia.org/…

7. Expect? No. But calling for it is harmless, and possibly beneficial.

   1. Asking for more than you expect to get can be a reasonable bargaining tactic. But it can hurt. If your initial position is totally unrealistic, people may just dismiss you and stop listening. Especially if you don’t make any concessions of your own (e.g. talking about how you can use the money more efficiently than you have in the past.) “Give us more, when everyone else is getting less, and we’ll keep spending it the way we always have,” isn’t a good way to be taken seriously.

8. I quit the Planetary Society years ago because they seemed to be against human exploration and incapable of seeing themselves as anything other than a cheerleader for NASA and against Space X.

   1. Perhaps you should take a moment and read the article.
      “Keep Mars as the goal” “Orbit Mars first” “Expand NASA’s Science Programs” “Increase NASA’s Budget”
      ====> “Embrace the commercial space industry” <===

      The reason to keep NASA is that is a significant amount of science and technology development in its future. The money skimmed off the top pays directly to taxes, health care, and local economies. It stabilizes the need for education and engineering driven by performance under demanding environments much like DOD national security programs but for ‘peaceful purposes’.

      It does matter ‘how you go’ given the budget. Yet rationale discussion is discarded for spin given to the hidden agenda: special interests and votes. If the funding is not directed at the Space Grand Challenges, then its been accomplished, which means to Mars and the asteroid belt and beyond. Quite the exciting future indeed. It takes macroeconomics to balance the funding distribution however: Cut 20M CEO pay to 1M, heaven forbid, and thats 40K job/10K Health for ~400 folks, or simply 2000 seniors with health care.

      We now return to reruns of the history channel, reality TV, and fake … rather, blatant lies.

   2. Same here

   3. yes, they are a cheerleader for NASA, and ESA, and JAXA, and anyone doing anything in space, as opposed to the grumbling and hand-wringing in here. Also, one of their bloggers posts fairly regularly and positively on Space-X, because they are clearing doing something about space. Also, I haven’t seen them as against human spaceflight for a decade – they are just for all space flight.

9. NASA needs to get on the public’s radar or it will face a death by a thousand budget cuts. This morning I was listening to a very popular entertainment podcast, the topic of space came up, and the host mentioned that the shuttle was still flying and everyone agreed. I almost did a spit take at my desk.

   We need a popular charismatic leader to sell the importance of NASA, bring on the Tyson!

10. It is almost as if they are…living on another planet. Hmmm…

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