Kicking The Can Down the Road to The Moon And/Or Mars
Trump budget cuts funding for health, science, environment agencies, Washington Post
“President Trump once again is asking Congress to make major cuts to the budgets of science and health agencies while favoring research deemed essential to national security. The 2021 budget request delivered Monday to Congress includes a nearly 10 percent cut to Health and Human Services and a 26 percent cut to the Environmental Protection Agency. It asks for increases in funding for research on quantum computing and artificial intelligence, areas in which the United States competes with China. Trump also wants to grant NASA a multibillion-dollar boost to help the space agency put astronauts back on the moon. Trump budgets have repeatedly targeted agencies and programs that deal with science, health and the environment, but if tradition holds, the requested cuts have little chance of winning approval from the House of Representatives, which has the power of the purse and a Democratic majority.”
Keith’s note: Learning that the White House has singled NASA out for a substantial budget increase is always welcome news for the space community since it highlights the fact that space is important and space people think that space is important. Add in strong mention in the State of The Union address and at other high visibility events, a push for Space Force, and space folks certainly have a right to feel that there is new wind in their sails. One small problem: much of this is temporary. Alas, as has been the case in the past, large cuts in social services, education, science, and infrastructural budgets fall flat when they arrive at Congress. NASA stands out as a target by virtue of its large plus up while everyone else is getting cut back. Soon we’ll hear the old saws “why spend money in space when it is needed here on Earth” and “We already did the Moon thing 50 years ago”. As inspirational as this 12% increase is, the chances that it will actually happen are not very encouraging.
Today at the Space Foundation’s State of Space event, Rep. Kendra Horn, the lead proponent of the recent NASA Authorization Act that is making its way through Congress said that the 12% proposed increase in NASA’s budget is welcome, but that it does not address the $5-6 billion that she says that NASA has told her that they need every year to make the 2024 Artemis lunar landing to happen – and by the way where is NASA’s actual plan to do this? When asked about the interest in having actual private sector participation in Artemis as proposed by the White House, Horn said instead that making everyone NASA contractors is better – something her NASA Authorization Act strives to do. Add in the Act’s gutting of actual lunar utilization and exploration after the landings begin we’d be facing a Flags and Footprints 2.0 situation. Just as a huge NASA budget increase is going to be hard to sell to Congress against a backdrop of cuts elsewhere, spending any large amount of money on NASA – with or without a big increase – to go back and walk around on the Moon is going to be a hard sell as well when basic support services are on the chopping block.
When asked if she thought Artemis could survive the election and a possible change in the White House Horn replied that her authorization act had bipartisan support – so that was a good sign. We all saw what the Obama Administration did to the Bush Administration’s human spaceflight program plan when they took over and what happened to Obama’s space efforts when the Trump team took over. Horn referred to a certain amount of “whiplash” as being an integral part of what passes for space policy – and that this back and forth contributes to a lot of the problems we see in what NASA is doing or not doing at any given moment.
Now that I have served up a pile of negativity, lets look on the bright side. There is great interest – globally – in going back to the Moon – with both humans and robots, to do science and exploration, to both further national goals and conduct private sector projects. Oh yea Mars too. Alas, no one is exactly on the same page. Until we have an actual national strategy with goals, objectives, roles, and responsibilities clearly enumerated then this ad hoc, constantly pivoting approach is going to continue to stumble along. It takes more than short presidential directives or tedious, verbose NASA authorization Acts to make that happen. Barking orders and long wish lists chopped up into 4 year long bite size pieces won’t work. It never has. We’re just kicking the can down the road. Will someone please fix this? Thanks.
Kicking The Can Down the Road to Mars, 2015, earlier post
“And of course none of these Mars missions in the 2030s are in any budget – notional, proposed, or projected – that means anything to anyone actually working at NASA today. So it is hard to blame people who can’t give you a straight answer. Just look at what their management has given them to work with – and what the agency has had to work with in terms of guidance from Congress and the White House. Just in the past 10-12 years NASA has veered away from the shuttle towards the Moon, then away from the ISS to Mars and away from the Moon and back to ISS, and now back to Mars (and maybe the Moon) and also some boulder on an asteroid.”
The US government will continue to “kick the can down the road” until either the Chinese or SpaceX makes serious moves to land men on the Moon/Mars. Maybe then, the US government will pour money into NASA to get there for real.
If SpaceX is a few months from planting a Starship on the Moon after the #dearMoon flyby exclusion. Then NASA had ran out of time. No amount of money could remedied that fact.
11.5 months I was excited by the VP throwing the gauntlet down and challenging the agency to be bold and get to the Moon by 2024. Finally the engine of innovation was going to be relight and do great things. then the bureaucracy took hold and things moved really slow to get the BAA out and selection just slid to End of March/Early April (remember when it was supposed to be last October/November). couple all that government churn inside the agency with the House Boeing Bill and Moon 24 seemed vaporware and the flame sputtered dim. Between the SOTU mention and the 12% upper hope sprang eternal, but quickly subsided given all the negative nancys saying this is still dead on arrival given the other proposed cuts. will we ever get out of LEO? this seemed like the agency’s last best chance for it to be a NASA led adventure now as the flame dims again it seems more likely it will be NASA astronauts hitching a ride on some private venture or international expedition.
All budget arguments are mute. This is a very divisive election year. The Senate has its plan. The House has its plan. The President has his plan. But no changes will pass. In the end, the lame duck session of Congress will pass a continuing funding resolution and the President will sign it.
Are we still kicking the can down the road? I think there is reason to be optimistic:
1. In the earlier post from 2015, it was said “none of these Mars missions in the 2030s are in any budget”, well we do have a notional, proposed, projected Moon budget now, so that’s a plus. And there’s a plan accompany this budget, a good plan actually.
2. Obviously this budget request wouldn’t pass congress as it is, but it should also be noted that the funding increase of $21B for crewed lunar lander is entirely based on NASA’s own estimate, the actual cost would likely be much lower if NASA picks the right companies to form public private partnerships. Edgar Zapata estimated for an Altair class lander with LOI capability, the development cost would only be $4.3B to $7.7B if done with commercial/public private partnership. So even if congress slashes the budget increase significantly, we would still be in a good position to move forward, if NASA makes the right choice.
3. More importantly, the current FY2020 budget already included $744M for crewed landers, if you add in the ~$200M for CLPS, we have close to $1B invested towards lunar landers, that’s no small number especially when used in commercial/public private partnerships. Commercial Crew didn’t get this level of funding until 5 years after its inception. And if there’s a continuing resolution for FY2021, this level of funding will continue into 2021, and when applied to the right companies, it can make a difference.
Right now the most important thing, from a space policy point of view, is:
a. NASA needs to pick the right companies – the companies who can lower the cost significantly and willing to invest significant amount of their own money – to build crewed lunar landers.
b. Kendra Horn’s attempt to drag NASA back to the dark ages of cost-plus contracting needs to be defeated.
What kind of FY2021 budget can be passed is much less important comparing to the two items above.
Still pretty sure a $5-6 billion net inflation-adjusted increase on the top-line budget is never going to happen for NASA. Which means worrying about Artemis 2024 almost seems besides the point – when they don’t get the budget for it nor the lander, they’ll just default into Orion missions circling the Moon and maybe a space station in a lunar orbit that Orion can reach after ISS goes down in the late 2020s. They’ll try and put some “accomplishment” gloss on it – “First woman to circle the Moon! First time to circle the Moon for a week!”