House Hearing on FY 2014 Budget
House Space Subcommittee Reviews NASA’s FY 2014 Budget Request
“Rep. Edwards: We need to take a careful look at how the resources requested match the program content included in the FY 2014 budget request. At the Full Committee hearing last week on the Fiscal Year 2014 budget request for Science Agencies, the President’s Science Adviser, Dr. Holdren, testified that ‘NASA has long had the problem of 20 lbs. of missions in a 10 Ib. budget, and they continue to.’ I share that concern.”
House Space Subcommittee Reviews NASA’s FY 2014 Budget Request
Chairman Palazzo: “I am committed to ensuring that our nation has a robust space program that will continue to lead the world for generations. I am concerned however that NASA has neglected Congressional funding priorities and been distracted by new and questionable missions that detract from our ultimate deep space exploration goals. These distractions also take up precious lines in the budget at a time when NASA can least afford it.”
Prepared Statements:
Rep. Lamar Smith
“The committee has seen little evidence that a current stated goal for NASA’s human spaceflight program–namely, to visit an asteroid by 2025–has been widely accepted as a compelling destination by NASA’s own workforce, by the nation as a whole, or by the international community. On the international front there appears to be continued enthusiasm for a mission to the Moon but not for an asteroid mission.”
Rep. Steven Palazzo
Rep. Donna Edwards
Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson
Charles Bolden
Sounds like the Congressional Committee is realising that SLS the world’s biggest rocket is also the world’s most expensive rocket.
This does not preclude SLS being used for a heavy lift job such as building a moon base but the total mission cost will have to be compared with other ways. The Committee members will have to be judges rather than advocates.
I don’t see any evidence from the remarks that the committee is prepared to be objective about practical applications and relative costs of the SLS vs EELVs. And indeed, if they were to be judges rather than advocates they’d be in the position of having to oppose their contributors: the contractors behind SLS that are based in their districts. They’re not going to get re-elected by being perceived as putting the national interest over that of their constituents.
Give them time. They have only just twigged that they or another committee is going to have to do some thinking.
Again, want to save 200 Mil, get rid of NASA KSC security folks (110 CS), and let the contractor (45 folks) do their job!
Bolden said they could only afford an asteroid mission on their budget. The moon would be three times the cost.
I wonder what’s swallowing up all of the money, so that they can only afford the cheap missions. Perhaps the Senate knows?
The Moon would be much more than 3 times he cost of the Asteroid mission.
Constellation was estimated to cost around $100 B. Optimistically say SLS and MPCV takes off half of that and $50B is enough to cover the development of a lunar lander, upgrades to the SLS and MPCV to support a lunar landing, and the operations cost for the mission…. The Keck study estimated the asteroid retrieval to be $2.6B (in my opinion it could even be much less). I don’t know how much the already planned Orion L1/L2 missions are, but let’s say they are $2.4B to get to Lunar orbit and make the asteroid mission an even $5B. That makes a single moon landing a factor of 10 more expensive than the asteroid mission. (and what if you do the Moon mission, adding an extra $2B to get an asteroid mission and a Moon mission is a great deal seems like a no brainer).
All of this just sounds like Republican Congressmen automatically being against anything the President likes. In this environment, I’m afraid we’re going to get stuck again with a mission that is more ambitious than our budget and we’ll end up with a pile of powerpoint slides and CGI animations and nothing in space.
I think you guys are still envisioning the old ways. The SAA for Bigelow to be a general contractor for private company executed programs (as opposed to NASA run programs) should make major changes in the cost estimates.
Which means the industry establishment (via Congress) will kill it before it has an opportunity to affect real change.
The same Congress that cuts funding and complains about program costs? The same Congress that is responsible for the “stewardship of America’s tax dollars”? The Same Congress whose Appropriations Committee yesterday tried to convince Bolden that NASA needed more money for SLS (but ignored every other NASA program)? You mean that self-serving, hypocritical Congress?
The NASA/Bigelow SAA is a potential major change in process by which NASA and the tax players both stand to gain, and costs can be significantly reduced — at no risk to the tax payers, since the oversight that Shelby questioned does exist, and can be written into any SAA (contract) to appropriate levels on a case by case basis.
This could serve as a positive model for changes in other government agencies by enacting legislation to allow it. And this concept is simple enough for anyone to understand after 60 seconds of explanation. If Congress kills it, for any reason, then I sincerely hope that the media and the American people will raise a major stink and force Congress to act intelligently — unless the American dream has changed and the goal now is to continue with the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer.
It seems to me that every year the concept of representative government recedes further and further into fantasy. The office of the President becomes more impotent and the Congress becomes more concerned with its own welfare rather than that of its constituents. And still the people stand in the sun eating grass.
It really makes my blood boil when I see remarks from the likes of Rep. Pallazo criticizing commercial crew and favoring SLS knowing that Northrop Gruumman and Lockheed Martin are his biggest campaing contributors. That and Stennis falls is in his district (J-2X and RS-25 development for SLS).
It’s amazing how much bias drivel comes from these people.
I think you’re making some mighty big assumptions about the program. It’s not going to be just a flags and palm prints mission. There is a lot of important stuff that can be learned, both science stuff and ISRU acquisition and processing stuff. In fact, it has the potential to be the first-ever mission that is not science and/or politics only.