Charlie Bolden Has His Head In The Sand Again
NASA Receives Bi-Partisan Support for Budget, Exploration Plan
“This appropriations bill reaffirms support for the bi-partisan space exploration plan agreed to by the President and Congress. The bill keeps NASA’s deep space exploration program (the Space Launch System and Orion) on track and provides funding to formulate the agency’s Asteroid Redirect Mission, an important stepping stone on the path to Mars. The bill also provides funding for our plan to return American space launches to the U.S., ground-breaking scientific discoveries, game-changing technologies and cutting-edge research into cleaner and quieter airplanes. The $17.6 billion provided in this measure will continue to spur American innovation and keep the U.S. the world leader in space exploration.”
Keith’s note: Contrary to Charlie Bolden’s happy thoughts (he and Rich DalBello have been talking, it would seem), commercial space is strongly hampered by this bill while SLS and Orion are clearly the agency’s most important projects – even if they have no approved destination or funded payloads. Congress really does not like the Asteroid Redirect mission and has tried to kill it more than once. Congress has also has cut the new technologies needed to get humans to Mars and elsewhere, and has left the planetary program on a slow road to decline. But Charlie is happy.
– Confusion on “Pretty Darn Good” Statement from OSTP
It seems these days of low expectations is if get any money that’s considered success.
Bolden didn’t actually mention commercial spaceflight in his statement, unless we parse the rather awkward phrase “The bill also provides funding for our plan to return American space
launches to the U.S., ..” to mean “commercial crew.” It shouldn’t be a surprise, however, that CCDev isn’t interesting to Bolden.
I agree. Commercial Crew got screwed. Planetary Science also is hurting. Planetary Society lobbied Congress to maintain Planetary at $1.5B. They will be disappointed. Also Cross-Agency Support which delivers funds to each NASA Center for their individual operations got hit. Those funds for the Centers could have helped retain planetary scientists by making up some shortfalls; not now.
The big winner is SLS and Orion which makes NASA the big loser. Every dollar spent on SLS and Orion will eventually be lost. NASA will not be allowed to operate and maintain SLS and Orion once commercial alternatives are staring Washington legislators and NASA officials in the face.
Yes. His statement on Commercial Crew is hand waving. Commercial Crew got screwed – badly! (see Keith’s note – http://nasawatch.com/archiv… ).
Congress is protecting pork barrel spending in SLS and Orion. If Commercial Crew arrives on schedule, it is another stake through heart of Orion. SLS, too. Commercial Crew and COTS (cargo to ISS, etc.) is growing proof that NASA needs to get out of the conventional rocket making business.
So when Boeing gets Charlie’s handshake in September, you’ll know he always loved Commercial Crew 😉
I believe that would be a refrence to COTS and commercial cargo, which gave us the Falcon 9 and a 5 billion dollar backlog of launches with about 40 commercial launches on the manifest for the future.
Just more proof that Charlie Bolden never cared about the President’s priorities of commercial crew and technology. He went around Obama’s back to extend Orion and morph Ares to SLS and is the reason there was no understanding or support for the Administrations plan. No wonder this keeps happening. This old agenda will continue to set back space development.
Maybe all of you are right, but I don’t think so. If you think back to past events, perhaps you may conclude, like I have, that Bolden is simply rolling with what he can’t change. He did talk against SLS and for Commercial in the past, he even had to stand up to repeated attacks and insults from Congress, but there comes a point where you have to stop banging your head against the wall and just try to survive. I think he reached that point a while back.
Was Bolden behind this? I still wonder how it happened.Ironic now that Garver has come out against SLS.
I agree with Whitfield – Bolden just goes with the flow. Three long years remaining in his tenure. He can always take credit for the great SMD robotic missions of exploration; looks good on anyone’s record. But he is an ex-astronaut, friends that were lost on Challenger and Columbia. And he supports a rocket-to-nowhere – a lead-weight to NASA’s future and has overseen the underfunded Commercial Crew year over year. At times, he has been out-spoken but not consistent. It is a dysfunctional to give milk-toast statements to the public which only favors what Congress hands NASA at the end of the day.
Andrew. Shelby, Nelson and Hutchison were responsible for pulling Constellation from the grave in the form of SLS and Orion. They are protecting jobs in Huntsville, Houston and the Cape. SLS is a poorer version of the DIRECT concept that NASA engineers were plugging for during Constellation. These legislators are using SLS and Orion to save jobs – pork barrel behind the NASA banner. They lack the imagination to help NASA do it right. There is cutting edge work that Huntsville and Houston could do but these old men – Nelson and Shelby, don’t have the right-stuff to do what is best for NASA.
Of course he’s happy. They hired him to smile and promote NASA no matter what, not publicly complain like Michael Griffin.
I have no idea why the asteroid mission is getting so much attention despite opposition. Seriously, I don’t. Is there somebody in Obama’s coterie of people who really likes asteroid missions, or is this just Bolden?
The wording in the bill on ARM (asteroids) likely indicates that the fat cats of Washington dumping money in SLS and Orion recognize that their rocket-to-nowhere will need a destination to justify its use.
There is nothing wrong with an effective single-source. American SpaceX will have Falcon 9, Dragon and Falcon Heavy available five years before the first launch of astronauts on SLS/Orion. I think there is pragmatism included in Bolden’s glossing over of the budget. He will be long gone when the RP-1 hits the fan.
The worse case scenario is that ARM would be adopted by Congress to justify completion of SLS and Orion. This would permit maintaining SLS and Orion through the 2020s and cost a lot to NASA’s ability to do cutting-edge R&D. But the ARM concept could be revised to use the much cheaper commercial alternatives.
Omnibus bill: “While the ARM is still an emerging concept, NASA has not provided
Congress with satisfactory justification materials such as detailed cost
estimates or impacts to ongoing missions. The completion of significant
preliminary activities is needed to appropriately lay the groundwork
for the ARM prior to NASA and Congress making a long-term commitment to
this mission concept.”
A falcon heavy and dragon will do a human lunar flyby before SLS.orion
I don’t think either of those flights are being planned..
As many said here Elon should attempt a lunar fly by on the very first falcon heavy launch. Any way to test soft dragon moon landing this year?? just a test flight mind you no mission. Just to let the world know that you don’t need pork to go to the moon.
Flat is the new up is the mantra they have been beating into us for a few years.
True
I think it’s NASA Watch that has it’s head in the sand – look at the full budget not just commercial crew – which, by the way, is still getting 85% of it’s request. Yes that’s stupid and the study requirement doesn’t make sense this late in the game but what about $80M extra to keep alive the dream of a new big planetary mission to Europa? Or continued funding essentially at the President’s request for major priority programs like JWST, ISS, etc.
Flat was the new up – the recent trend has been DOWN; last year, NASA was down nearly $2B from it’s peak; this brings it almost back to $18B; in a time when deficit reduction mania continues to rule the budget, that’s progress; just ask NIH which is losing $1B. Yes, everyone has their favorite program they’d like to kill or fund more – but overall, this is pretty good!
the 80 million for europa is nothing but wages to keep people at their desks playing on facebook. It is not about producing anything real.
Then tell the people that they have 1 year to produce something useful. Suggestions on the managers desk by the end of the week.
won’t matter, congress wants 10 engineers to turn each bolt in their districts. No one is getting fired. That is why we have the nightmare SLS. The Vision for Space Exploration called for no new rockets and the end of the apollo way of doing things and it SPECIALLY stated that no more large ground crews. Those couple lines killed the VSE and brought us the ESAS. Congress doesn’t care what they are doing space wise. It is about high paying jobs in their district, and long term cost plus fixed fee development contracts for the centers and contractors.
That is why commercial space is so vitally important not only for human spaceflight but the insane policies driving NASA where output and productivity is no longer a part of the decision making process.
Because the outsiders, such as Congress, do not care what you are doing you can do something useful. It is still pork for their district.
I wish it will lead somewhere, but it won’t. No Mars 2020 Rover means putting an end to a reliable budgetary item that goes all the way back to Mars Pathfinder – the ongoing process of making bigger and better JPL robots.
Garver put it best:
“If you’re a Mars scientist, you want to keep having NASA fund your Mars missions and keep redoing, for instance, what we just did with Curiosity is now planned again for 2020, instead of what you could be doing, driving in a new direction on Europa,” she said.”
http://www.spacenews.com/ar…
I’ve long suspected what she pretty much just confirmed of Mars science. It’s bothered me for a while that no NASA Mars rover has had a biological activity kit or a drill that could go at least a meter under ground, the first European Rover, ExoMars, is doing that. In my field, computer science, we have unconfirmed hunches that are extremely likely to be true even if we don’t come out and say them, for example P almost certainly does not equal NP. Maybe the same is true of Mars science – that Mars is a barren, dead world and always has been despite water… but while tax payers will continue to fund the never ending search for signs of Martian biosignatures, they probably wouldn’t fund a straight forward program of study of Martian geology (with no regard for life).
Have we seen enough of Mars? Are we ready to put an end to the JPL Mars robot industry? To go somewhere else, especially Flagship mission level Europa, we probably have to in order to afford it. And we should not be afraid of that either. If after Pathfinder, the MERs, the MSL, Phoenix, INSIGHT, Exomars and all the orbiters, the strong hunch is that while Mars may have been habitable, life never arose there, we should stop exploring that planet and move on to new destinations. It is, after all, not going anywhere and Martain geology can wait. We will have been there enough.
Yes. Congress needs to keep out of forcing agenda on NASA. They are not smart enough, period. Sure, I don’t mind if they add wording to proceed with Europa mission concept development but don’t put a price tag on it. Let NASA (and NSF) choose what’s the best funding level.
It’s just more of the same endless turf battles. Everyone wants more.
SMD cries poverty even though JWST – although now it’s own budgetary item – was their program until 2012. It still counts. It’s their masterpiece. Just because it was taken out of their hands doesn’t mean suddenly they should have the spot in their budget JWST vacated filled. The combined $1.3 billion budget combined with SMD is perfectly fair. If they’re having regrets about the tough decisions this has forced, next time, don’t argue for the $8 billion space telescope. Your bed. Time to lay in it.
The Commercial Crew clique still swear up and down that Orion / SLS is going to be canceled despite regular examples of strong congressional support. They’re going to fly and keep flying, and people need to get use to it. At what point are these people going to get that they’ve made precisely zero progress in defunding, delaying or otherwise spoiling this thing since it was announced? Has the anti-SLS crowd actually had a single victory? Or is it all just gesture now? These things are harsh, but they need to be said, because 2017 is approaching quickly, so clearly it is going to happen, likely well before Falcon Heavy is launching anything really heavy.
Planetary Science asks for a 2020 Mars Rover of extremely dubious need, and then complains that it isn’t getting the budget it needs to go to locales. Are they ready for the day we don’t have a Mars rover or lander in the pipeline? Are they ready to put an end to the cottage industry of JPL Mars surface exploration in order to do other things? Because wanting to do both is… well… greedy. Other parts of NASA (and the government in general) all have things they want to spend money on. Is Mars more important than all the alternatives? Picking the 2020 Rover is a clear statement of “yes it is”. As far as public engagement goes for whatever that’s worse, compared to the MER rovers, MSL has been mostly a flop in the year since it landed.
Folks just forget fundamentally what a budget is. A budget is a list of priorities to be funded. That means things that are decided to be a priority get money. That doesn’t mean that ALL THINGS should get money. Some things are just not a priority. Planetary Science particularly… again, if they decide Mars 2020 should be their priority, money for that, but no money for other things.If they decide the contrary, then we stop going to Mars for a while to go other places (and that’s okay!) That’s the way it should be.
Yes the single victory was commercial crew. SLS was obviously the the price of allowing commercial crew to get funding.
In the stimulas the President asked for 400 million to start commercial crew, he got 50 million. Because everyone said he was going to cancel CONstellation. In the President’s first budget proposal he wanted 6 billion over 5 years to fully fund muliple players in commercial crew. He got one years funding of 250 million. The next year he proposed 850 million and got an increase to 406 million and Orion capsule pork was continued. Next he proposed 870 million and SLS was funded and commercial crew got an increase to 550 million.
The more pork for SLS and Orion the more funding for commercial crew. If the president would have refused on orion and SLS I would image congress would have made commercial crew a stillborn baby.
Obi Elon your my only hope!
I think Charlie knows that bitching about Congress is a losing proposition.
Here’s Eric’s take on it, not too different from the sentiment here,
http://blog.chron.com/scigu…
Maybe we should baseline that Charlie has no clue as a given, would make the need to address that element redundant
Have a read of his bio and resume sometime and maybe you won’t be so quick to judge harshly.
I’ve read his bio, I respect his service, but that does not mean that he is a great leader, I am not judging him, not my job, but at the end of the day what has he done to lead? He is a great Marine, maybe even a great Astronaut, great Administrator, not
You have to understand, the Administrator serves at the President’s pleasure. Bolden was the choice of Senator “monster rocket” Nelson from florida. The President wants to move towards commercial space, just like every President since Nixon. Nelson and the porkonauts in congress are against that and are trying to slow it down and erect as many roadblocks as possible. Bolden is not free to lead NASA in any direction other than what the Executive branch wants or what congress funds.
Between a rock and a hard place.
This always confuses me when people say it. The job is Administrator, which is not synonymous with “leader,” nor does it have the requirement for greatness. With the possible exception of James Webb (the man, not the telescope) there has never been a NASA Administrator who was a “great leader,” which is just fine, because that’s not what the job is. Yes, he’s at the top of the NASA managerial pyramid, but his job is still Administrator, i.e., an administrative position. He is there to implement the instructions of his political bosses, not to decide what those instruction should be. Yet many people continue to criticize him for not doing what his job isn’t. It’s the same as criticizing him for not being a great sculptor or a great plumber.
Consider that the NASA Administrator job has something fundamental in common with any other job — you can only have one boss or things fall apart. Anybody, from the lowest to the highest position, who has more than one boss, more than one person telling them what to do and setting their priorities, very quickly gets into conflicts and fails to accomplish all that is assigned to them; it’s an impossible situation and therefore some things don’t get done and other things don’t get done properly. The NASA Administrator, unfortunately, has a whole lot of bosses, and the results are perfectly predictable and totally beyond his/her control.
We need to have a lot of discussions. We’re very far from being able to go to Mars… further than a lot of people appreciate.
Do we have the technology yet of landing large objects on Mars? Skycrane doesn’t scale up much larger than it does for MSL, I thought. What is the alternative for something larger? I’m pretty sure pure parachute-and-retrorockets are insufficient for larger mass objects as well.
We haven’t yet had the conversation about building the Nuclear Reactor we’ll need to power and propel the Mars craft (however we intend to do that, also undefined). Project Prometheus? For all NASA’s gestures about the need to invest in technology, it died unceremoniously 9 years ago.
And then there is the bigger discussion of “maybe Mars should be a one way trip”.
The common thread here is we have decades of work to do. And with that in mind, why doesn’t ‘Mars 2020’ become ‘Mars 2032’, with a MER sized rover and a very narrow mission. Saying “we don’t know enough about Mars” in the broad sense will be true almost indefinetly. We could send MSL-class rovers all over the planet and they’d explore what, a total of a 50 mile radius each at various lattitudes, and cover what… a fraction of a percent of the surface of the planet? That’s a justification for a perpetual Mars Robotics program.
How about we do this a bit more sensibly, something along the lines of we have the MRO look for good, mid lattitude sites to put humans, and then we deploy a number of low cost, modest rovers or landers whose only purpose is to answer the narrow questions required to ascertain if the area is safe to land. The rovers could be somewhere between Sojourner and MERs so we can check out four or five sites. And then when the time comes, we land there.
That’s more purposeful as far as human exploration goes than more Martian Geology exploration with the Son of Curiosity. That science is interesting and important to be sure, but not $2 billion dollars interesting and important if it doesn’t lead to the next step. And what happens it’s likely successor, the “always 12 years away” Mars Sample Return becomes to the late 2020s what the JWST is to the mid 2010s? NASA’s “too big to fail” megaproject, as it invariably will when cost controls fail yet again? Let’s skip that tragedy and not do sample return at all. The first Astronauts, on their return mission, should bring samples back with them. We can delay gratification and the mega-price tag it will have, until they do.