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Budget

NASA FY 2019 Budget Proposal Released

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
February 12, 2018
Filed under ,
NASA FY 2019 Budget Proposal Released

Feb. 12 ‘State of NASA’ Events Highlight Agency Goals for Space Exploration
“Lightfoot will provide a “State of NASA” address to the agency’s workforce at 1 p.m. EST from Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. His remarks will air live on NASA Television and the agency’s website.”
– Watch live here: https://www.nasa.gov/live/
Acting Administrator Robert Lightfoot: State of NASA: Fiscal Year 2019 Budget, NASA
“It is my privilege today to present President Trump’s Fiscal Year 2019 budget request of $19.9 billion for NASA. It reflects the Administration’s confidence that through NASA leadership, America will lead the way back to the Moon and take the next giant leap from where we made that first small step nearly 50 years ago. This budget focuses NASA on its core exploration mission and reinforces the many ways that we return value to the U.S. through knowledge and discoveries, strengthening our economy and security, deepening partnerships with other nations, providing solutions to tough problems, and inspiring the next generation. It places NASA and the U.S. once again at the forefront of leading a global effort to advance humanity’s future in space, and draws on our nation’s great industrial base and capacity for innovation and exploration.”
NASA FY 2019 Budget Documents, Strategic Plans and Performance Reports
Detailed NASA FY 2019 Budget proposal, OMB
“The Budget proposes the termination of the Office of Education and its portfolio of programs and projects. Unobligated balances previously appropriated under this heading may be used to support close-out costs. Moving forward, a small team at NASA headquarters funded out of Agency Management and Operations will be accountable for strategic direction and coordination of the agency’s STEM engagement efforts.”
NASA FY 2019 Budget Estimates, NASA (pdf)
“Refocuses existing NASA activities towards exploration, by redirecting funding to innovative new programs and providing additional funding to support new public – private initiatives.”
“Proposes to end direct U.S. financial support for ISS in 2025, with a seamless transition to the use of future commercial capabilities.”
“Cancels WFIRST due to its significant cost and higher priorities within NASA. Increases funding for competed astrophysics missions and research.”
“Proposes to terminate NASA’s Office of Education, including its portfolio of grants and cooperative agreements and redirects funds to NASA’s core mission of exploration. NASA headquarters will continue to be accountable for strategic direction and coordination of the agency’s STEM engagement efforts.”

NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.

52 responses to “NASA FY 2019 Budget Proposal Released”

  1. cb450sc says:
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    The shots are starting to be fired across the bow of WFIRST.

    • ThomasLMatula says:
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      If I recall, this is one of the two space satellites that the NRO gave to NASA for free. Its seems hard to believe it is going to cost NASA over $3 billion to convert just one into a space telescope for IR use.

      • Michael Kaplan says:
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        …and your credentials to ascertain what WFIRST’s costs could be are??? ____________

        Didn’t WFIRST just complete a major review? Changes in scope we made and approved.

        What’s of note here is that for the 1st time ever, an approved, Decadal survey top science priority mission is slated for cancellation by a WH budget. Not surprising really with the lack of emphasis on science. Hard to believe that this won’t be ignored by the Hill.

        • fcrary says:
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          I don’t remember if it was Congress or the White House, but what about CRAF (Comet Rendezvous Asteroid Flyby.) It was cancelled in 1992. That was a flagship-level planetary mission, and a priority in the decadal survey. (Well, the equivalent. The formal structure of the decadal surveys wasn’t the same back then.)

          By the way, I don’t believe the coronagraph was a top decadal survey priority for WFIRST. At least, it wasn’t part of their vision for a dark energy mission. Developing a coronagraph for exoplanet observations may have been somewhere on their priority list, but I’m not sure it was near the top and I’m fairly sure it was not as part of what became WFIRST.

          • Michael Kaplan says:
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            Good memory! At that point in time, only the Astrophysics Community had a formalized Deacadl Survey process, but CRAF was high up in the Planetary Community’s set of priorities.

        • ThomasLMatula says:
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          And that is one of the basic problems that make NASA missions so expensive, as pointed out below, they are treated like Christmas Trees with new requirements being constantly added on. Each change requires changes elsewhere and these waves of changes ripple through the system, all adding more and more expense to it. By the time it all adds up its way over budget. One rule in cost control is to freeze your design and don’t unfreeze it unless a critical flaw is found. You will never be able to control costs if you are constantly changing everything.

          • Michael Kaplan says:
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            Can you share what WFIRST Level 1 requirements “creeped” that drove cost increases that drove cancellation? The recent external review helped NASA to deemphasize what was a tech demo to put the mission back in the cost box. It looks like the lack of any real inhouse science advice (MIA OSTP) just allowed an OMB appetite to cut science at NASA as it is doing across other agencies, e.g., EPA, DOE, etc. It has nothing to do what what you claim.

          • ThomasLMatula says:
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            FYI https://www.theatlantic.com

            Budget-Managing Tips, but for Space Telescopes

            NASA is scrambling to cut the growing cost of its latest big astronomy mission.

            “The estimated cost of WFIRST has ballooned steadily since astronomers proposed their preliminary designs for the mission in 2011, from less than $2 billion to more than $3 billion. NASA officially began working on WFIRST in February 2016, and staff has spent the months since looking for ways to reduce its price tag.”

            “The independent review board, however, says that figure is “not realistic for the scope, complexity, and expectations” of the mission, and suspects it’s going to cost more like $3.9 billion.

            The particulars of WFIRST’s budget are not publicly available, so it’s not known where exactly all the money is going. But the report attributes the growing cost to several decisions made by NASA, which have created a mission “more complex than probably anticipated.”

            After just 2 years of work WFIRST already has a cost overrun of nearly 100 percent. Yes, I know, they “promise” to keep the over run to only 50%, but no one believes them. WFIRST has all the appearance of being another JWT, eating up the NASA science budget for years with continued cost over runs. Better to learn the lesson of the JWT and pull the plug now after having wasted only a few hundred mission before WFIRST continued cost over runs push out other science missions. It will also send a message to the space science community they need to learn to stay in budget and not expect tax payers to just accept endless cost over runs.

            But like the SLS and Orion, Congress may well decide to keep the money flowing…

            I like astronomy and have been an amateur astronomer since a kid, but its time to start getting spending under control for these types of science ventures.

          • Michael Kaplan says:
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            Great reference with lots of knowledge of space program management. ? The reason given for WFIRST’s cancellation was NOT total mission cost but rather that the increases required. Note that ANY new project’s budget ramps up. So even it were implementable for $2B, it would have been cancelled because FY19 budget would have been higher than the FY18 level. So you’re missing the point. I guess that cancelling a top Decadal Survey priority is a small price to pay to pay for the border wall. BTW, no one expects this to cancellation to stick.

          • ThomasLMatula says:
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            LOL. NASA space science is getting a budget increase so the money is not going to a border wall, its going to fund other space missions. Tell me, which ones do you want to cut to pay for the cost over runs of the WFIRST?

            Also this is the same pattern that happened with the JWT. A blast from the past.

            https://www.space.com/12759

            NASA: James Webb Space Telescope to Now Cost $8.7 Billion
            By Dan Leone, Space News Writer |
            August 27, 2011 12:48am ET

            “The review panel, led by John Casani of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., said the JWST program would need cash infusions of $250 million in both 2011 and 2012 to be ready to launch by 2015 — a year later than NASA’s official launch date at the time. “

            And here is it 3 years later and it is still not flying. And its impact on astronomy at NASA…

            http://articles.latimes.com

            James Webb Space Telescope squeezing budget, NASA official says
            January 08, 2013

            “The talk comes as James Webb’s $8.8-billion price tag – up by $3.1 billion – has squeezed the astrophysics division’s budget, taking up
            more than expected by the priority-setting 2010 decadal survey of astronomy and astrophysics.

            Though NASA’s overall astrophysics budget is predicted to rise slightly in the coming years, the James Webb telescope is set to take up roughly half it by fiscal year 2014, Hertz said. Thus, the slice of money for all other astronomy and astrophysics missions has thinned somewhat.”

            And you are advocating a repeat of that? I know, this time it will be different – trust me…

            Astronomers have to learn that tax payers are not going to keep giving them a blank check for every shining toy they want. They need to be accurate in their budget estimates and stay within them. They haven’t with WFIRST. Its a wake up call they need.

          • fcrary says:
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            The problem is that the WFIRST Level 1 requirements came after much of the increase in scope. Did the original Design Reference Mission in 2011 include exoplanet studies using microlensing or a coronagraph? Or was it purely the dark energy mission the decadal survey made such a high priority?

          • Michael Kaplan says:
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            Way back when it was called JDEM, this mission was a more modest dark energy focused mission. NRO donated a primary mirror and the mission started to move forward. One could argue that there is no such thing as a “real increase in scope” until Level 1 requirements are set. After all, that’s the definition of Level 1 requirements, right? A coronagraph was added as a tech demo in part to pave the way for exoplanet characterization to follow-up on the explosion of exoplanet detections coming from the highly successful Kepler mission as well as from many ground-based observations.

            It’s important to keep in mind that NASA has been looking at corongraphs since the mid-90s under various names. I led studies of many of these concepts while we called the mission “Terrestrial Planet Finder.” A lot of technology development has been invested in this important tool for exoplanet characterization over the years.

            So the mission that used to be called JDEM became WFIRST was under study for quite awhile, not uncommon for Flagships. As we know, WFIRST — with the coronagraph tech demo — was endorsed by the last Decadal Survey as the next top priority flagship following JWST.

            So when the time in the deveopment of the WFIRST program to define it as a line item in the budget, Level 1 rerquirements were set and a tech demo coronagraph was included. To my knowledge, no one had ever tried to include a major tech demo as part of a Flagship mission before.

            Recently, there were concerns that tech demo requirements were manifesting cost increases to the mission so SMD management called for an external review to put WFIRST back into the cost box, a budget profile that had fit into prior budget PFPs, e.g., FY17 and FY18. These budgets showed WFIRST’s line item ramping up in FY 19, 20, etc, as would any normal development program ramp up. One can’t execute a space development program effficiently with a flat budget. To do so is wasting tax payer resources. So this notion that WFIRST grew out of control and had to be killed is sheer nonsense.

            In case no one else has noticed, there’s a real lack of expert science advice in the current administration. Where’s OSTP? So it’s not a surprise that a high priority science mission is proposed for cancellation. There’s also no permanent NASA Administrator either. In a more normal WH budget process, the cancellation of a Decadal Flagship mission would have resulted in a senior WH level discussion involving the NASA Administrator, OSTP and OMB. I doubt that any such discusion took place. So the reasons given for the cancellation appear pretty weak.

            If you want more info on what’s going on with WFIRST, go contact my friend Dave Spergel at Princeton. No doubt he and much of the astronomy community will be “informing Congress” about the damage this cancellation will cause and I’ll bet that the Congress will restore WFIRST.

          • fcrary says:
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            That’s interesting, especially since something similar has come up in the case of MSL/Curiosity. I just went through the Decadal Survey, and the WFIRST mission they envisioned was a 1.5 meter telescope, for dark energy and exoplanet microlensing and a $1.6 billion price tag (in FY10 dollars, so call it $2 billion in CY dollars.) I couldn’t find any hint of their considering a coronagraph to be part of it.

            WFIRST, at the time the Level 1 requirements were set, was a 2.4 meter telescope (thanks to the NRO “donation”) with a coronagraph and a $2.7 billion price tag. I think that’s CY dollars from a 2016 estimate.

            What’s interesting to me, and reminds me of the MSL/Curiosity mission, is that the mission described in the Decadal Survey is significantly different from the one described by the Level 1 requirements. Both the capabilities and price tag had increased. Although their concept of WFIRST was the Decadal Survey’s first priority, it isn’t obvious that the WFIRST baseline of 2016 would have been.

            In the same way, a planetary Decadal Survey made something called Mars Science Laboratory the highest priority, but at the time it lacked a sky crane and had an estimated cost of $600 million. If they had known it would expand in scope and cost (by over a factor of four in cost), would that have affected the Survey’s priorities?

            And, if the scope of a mission can expand substantially between the Decadal Survey and the formal start, is it still fair to say the newer version really is the Decadal’s first priority?

          • Michael Kaplan says:
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            Good question…except…I’m pretty certain that NASA Astrophysics went back to the NAS to ask that very question and I’ll bet you and I know what the answer to that question was.

          • fcrary says:
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            Interesting. I don’t remember NASA Planetary ever having every gone back to the NAS for revised or updated priorities. Even the mid-term reviews are couched more in terms of “are we doing what the last Decadal said?” For Curiosity, the usual response from headquarters was “Don’t complain about how much it’s costing; you’re the ones who said it was the highest priority.” Not, “Well, maybe we should go back to the NAS and ask them if they’re sure.”

        • Michael Spencer says:
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          I’m directing these comments to professional planetary scientists and astronomers as a group, and not to anyone here specifically.

          But this thread is populated by experienced and knowledgable scientists, a group that could surely answer a simple question:

          What can be said generally about uncontrollable space telescope budgets?

          Where does the interested and (semi-)informed citizen look for answers? I mean in the broad strokes – are custom designed instruments to blame, for instance? And here speaking to the profession: do you even know why costs aren’t accurately predicted?

          And the second question: as a group, scientists have conceived and launched a stunning fleet of instruments. Why haven’t the cost lessons been learned yet? How many instruments must fly before, as a group, costs are more predictable?

          Yes, yes, I know that each mission is individual, that there are politics, etc. But still: every mission is the sum total of parts, and each part has an accessible cost; a cost supported at least in part by history and experience. Some budget line items will be low, some will be high, and some will be precise.

          As a group, you are among the smartest people on the planet. The admiration you enjoy from the rest of us has been earned with hard work and results.

          So: WTF?

          • Michael Kaplan says:
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            A couple of observations to address your point, Michael.

            Accurately predicting development costs for systems that are significant advances over the state of the art is impossible. How accurate can one predict development costs? Statistical studies have shown a direct correlation between the percentage size of pre-development investment and percentage of cost overrun; meaning the more homework you do before, the smaller the cost overrun is likely to be. We used to call this “Gruhl’s rule, named after the former NASA Comptroller, Werner Gruhl. Here’s a reference that discusses this.

            https://medium.com/@dxsimmo….

            Gruhl’s rule indicates that if one would invest 10% of the projected development costs, one would expect cost overruns can be held to ~70%, applying this logic to WFIRST, one could conclude that until $200M to $300M was allocated to define based on a frozen set of Level 1 Requirements could one expect that implement a mission “promised” to cost $2B to $3B and expect it to actually cost $3.4B to $5.1B.

            So how can one do better? What if NASA chose to not take such large technological leaps for each mission? What if one were to take smaller steps in increased technological capability in each mission by using more flight-proven technology and systems? Note that NASA already does this in competed missions, e.g., Discovery, Explorers, and New Frontiers. But is one applies this logic to Flagship missions, it’s not clear that the results over time would be any better because it would take more missions to accomplish the same science. Science would also progress more slowly in the US and one could argue that the US would be slowly relinquishing its world scientific leadership status.

            Food for thought.

          • fcrary says:
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            70% growth even after a well-funded phase A still worries me, but this may argue for the approach planetary science has taken. After MSL, the 2013-2023 decadal survey was instructed to have concept studies (including cost estimates) of any missions they considered for the priority list. Essentially a pre-phase A study. Since that was done in a bit of a rush, PSD is now doing multiple concept studies in advance of the next decadal. And for Discovery and New Frontiers, the process is to select several (two to five) proposals and fund a full phase A study before selecting one or two for flight. It might not be a bad idea for astrophysics to fund phase A work on their top two or three priority missions before approving one for flight.

          • fcrary says:
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            I think planetary missions have done a reasonably good job recently, but it’s worth looking at the exceptions.

            The Discovery missions which got into real budget trouble have been the most ambitious. Dawn and MESSENGER had notable overruns, and they were basically trying to cram a full, broad-based mission into a Discovery-sized budget. Most other Discoveries have been focused on relatively limited goals. The most extreme cost overrun in this century may be MSL/Curiosity. I think that’s largely due to technology development of things like the sky crane landing system.

            And, in terms of technology development, that may be why planetary doesn’t (usually) see factor of two cost overruns. Missions can make dramatic improvements in what we know, using instruments that aren’t dramatically different from those which have flown before.

            The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter hasn’t been so successful because it’s HiRISE telescope is fantastic. It’s good, but not radically more capable than remote sensing or reconnaissance instruments flown on Earth orbiting satellites. What makes it special is that it’s in orbit around Mars. Similarly, the UV instrument on New Horizons, Alice, is from a long line of past, planetary missions (e.g. Rosetta/Alice, LRO/LAMP, Juno/UVS). There are differences, but not radical ones. So there isn’t much technical development risk.

            For astrophysics, things are different. The sky JWST or WFIRST would observe is the same sky past orbital telescopes have observed. To make radical better measurements, the instruments and telescope have to be radically different and better. That gets into things like segmented mirrors that have to unfold, new wavelength coverage, better resolution, etc. That’s inventing new things, and the cost tends to be uncertain.

            But I think planetary missions are also helped by the fact that most of them are cost capped. A mission’s scope and budget can be pretty elastic.

            Even when Level 1 goals are defined, they are a bit vague. Europa Clipper, for example, has “  Create a compositional map at <10 km resolution and covering >70% of the surface” as a Level 1 requirement. Given more resources (money), they could make that 5 km resolution over 90% of the surface. Composition is a bit vague. It could mean <0.1% abundance contaminants, or it could mean non-ice material present at the few percent level.

            Another example are missions which have been proposed (unsuccessfully) as both the Discovery and New Frontiers programs. That’s a tacit admission that similar science could be done well for half a billion or done better for a billion. There are also few limits on what might be good to spend money on, when it comes to testing and reliability. So, if the money is available, there’s going to be a case for spending it.

            With the Discovery and New Frontiers programs, there is a fixed total cost ($495 million for the next Discovery call). 25% of that must go to reserves, in case something unexpected goes wrong. The mission has to have a list of descope options (things they will drop to avoid going over budget.) If descoping isn’t enough, and they blow over the cost cap, they get to go through a formal review to see if they should be canceled. For the most part, that seems to have keep overruns from getting too excessive.

            Even for larger missions, Cassini’s budget was definitely out of control in 1992. The project was told to descope some things, handed a cost cap, and told they would be canceled if they blew it (another mission, CRAF, actually being canceled at the same time made this a credible threat.) That more-or-less put an end to Cassini cost overruns.

            I’m also concerned that the size of a mission makes cost growth more likely. Once it’s big enough, and seen as a once in a lifetime opportunity for everyone involved, people start pushing for as much capability as possible and as low risk as possible. That may drive up the cost of large missions more than small ones.

      • fcrary says:
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        I think it would be more accurate to say they got a free mirror from the NRO, not a complete telescope let alone a complete spacecraft. That mirror also required substantial modifications to make it usable for the pre-existing WFIRST mission. Then there was the addition of a coronagraph, which amounts to feature creep (especially once it started driving mission requirements.)

        • ThomasLMatula says:
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          If it made it more expensive why didn’t they just decide to not use it? Didn’t they do any cost benefit analysis between using it and making a new one?

          • fcrary says:
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            Well, clearly, they didn’t do an accurate cost benefit analysis. But I suspect they considered more than just cost. With the 2.4 meter mirror, WFIRST would be a more capable mission than with the originally planned 1.3 meter one. They may have expected a major improvement for a minor cost. But that’s not necessarily a good thing to do.

          • cb450sc says:
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            Well, it’s politically untenable. NRO unloads a couple mirrors they have lying around sucking up money to store (it’s very hard to dispose of excess government inventory, 9 times out of 10 you wind up warehousing it). NASA wants money. Congress “gifts” the mirrors. If NASA says “no thanks”, then Congress turns around and says “we offered you two free mirrors worth hundreds of millions of dollars, and you refused. Guess you aren’t as hard up as you claim.” Now they are an excuse to not budget any more money.

          • Michael Spencer says:
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            “Politically untenable” doesn’t make sense. Surely there was discussion amongst agencies about the utilization of this equipment, long before the announcement; during that time NASA could have simply said ‘no’.

          • fcrary says:
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            Actually, no. It might not have made the newspapers, but NRO offered the mirrors before NASA had any idea if they wanted them. Specifically, after the offer was made, NASA solicited input from the science community about how they might be able to use them. I personally liked the idea of a UV telescope, but that didn’t happen. The scientists who wanted to use it for WFIRST (then still JDEM, I think) made the best case for the benefits of using the donated hardware. In this context, benefits include capability, not cost.

      • cb450sc says:
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        That’s right, the “free” NRO mirror actually made the mission more expensive. Being handed a piece of hardware, instead of specifying the hardware you actually need, is not the right way to engineer anything. It’s also true that the larger mirror allowed for additional capability, which frankly the mission needed in light of Euclid. It’s not quite like JW in that feature creep is driving the cost of this program up. I actually think part of the problem is that everyone has realized that WFIRST is neither cheap, nor quick, and hence the only big mission in the pipe. Hence, it must become all things to all people. It’s a vicious cycle.

        But remember, this is descended from SNAP/JDEM and was intended to be much cheaper than it is; it was an “easy” mission that could fly pre-2020. I actually PI’d a proposal for the other mirror, and was practically laughed out of the room at the idea of such a mission coming in at over $1B.

  2. fuzed says:
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    This seems worrisome to me, but maybe there are good reasons: The Budget proposes to terminate five Earth Science missions: Radiation Budget Instrument (RBI);
    Plankton; Aerosol; Cloud; ocean Ecosystem (PACE); Orbiting Carbon Observatory-3 (OCO-3); Deep Space
    Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) Earth-viewing instruments; and Climate Absolute Radiance and Refractivity
    Observatory (CLARREO) Pathfinder. The missions would be terminated and National Aeronautics and
    Space Administration (NASA) funding would be prioritized toward supporting an innovative and sustainable
    program of exploration with commercial and international partners.

    • Michael Kaplan says:
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      Well, the lack of science input into the budget process (hello OSTP? anybody out there?) probablity eliminated some voices who would have highlighted the reasons not to cancel these high priority science missions.

      • George Purcell says:
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        It’s a swap from Earth Science to Planetary. This happens every time there is a D-to-R shift and the reverse when there is a R-to-D shift (MTPE, for example).

        • fcrary says:
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          And a big part of the growth in planetary seems to be lunar research. That also seems to be a Democratic to Republican administration thing.

          • Michael Kaplan says:
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            Obviously not following the last Planetary Decadal. 🙁

          • ThomasLMatula says:
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            The world has changed a lot since the last one was done in 2010. Maybe they need to do them more often.

          • Michael Kaplan says:
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            You’re right…1st WH that appears to not value science advice. Do some more H/W. You’ll see that each NASA Space Science discipline has mid-term reviews.

          • ThomasLMatula says:
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            Yea, sure… How soon you forget…

            https://www.space.com/14544

            “U.S. President Barack Obama will ask Congress for $17.7 billion for NASA for 2013, an amount that would leave the agency funded at its lowest level in four years, according to sources familiar with the forthcoming budget proposal.”

            “NASA’s planetary science division would shoulder a heavy share of the cut. Under the president’s proposal, its budget would drop from $1.5 billion to $1.2 billion, a 20 percent reduction.”

            “With no top line budget relief, the cost overruns on NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope weighed heavily on the agency’s planetary science division, sources said. “

            President Obama may have “talked” about liking science, but he had no problem with ignoring the advice of science advisors and cutting NASA’s budget for it…

          • Michael Kaplan says:
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            You mean Hillary wasn’t at fault? Where’s OSTP? Don’t deflect and change the subject. The subject is WFIRST cancellation by the Trump Administration’s proposed FY19 budget. This is the 1st WH to EVER cancel a Decadal top priority science mission. That’s going back a lot White Houses from both sides of the aisle. Not even counting the carnage over in Earth Science. How’s this MAGA?

          • ThomasLMatula says:
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            Given that the Democrats are stonewalling Rep. Bridenstine as NASA Administrator do you really think they would approve anyone President Trump would pick for OSTP?

            But seriously, why does it matter what party a person is? What happens to simply looking at the facts, and the facts are that the WFIRST already has serious cost over runs only 2 years since it started and there no evidence they will get any better in the future. Better to pull the plug when you are only a couple hundred million in the hole than wait until it’s a real disaster.

            Astronomers don’t need another budget eater like the JWT is. It’s ironic to think if that James Webb was still running NASA he would have probably pulled the plug on the telescope named after him.

          • Michael Kaplan says:
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            Given his choice of Dept. of Agriculture Chief Scientist, one wonders if he knows what the credentials should be of anyone who’s job is to provide science advice. BTW, last time I checked Marco Rubio isn’t a Democrat. If Rubio didn’t have an issue with Bridenstein, he’d be in, right? How about nominating someone who’s not a politician, or a politican who can treach across the aisle and earn Democratic support? Nahh….

          • ThomasLMatula says:
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            In the current environment in Washington it doesn’t matter who is nominated, they will be opposed. Just look how the left attach Bill Nye for simply attending the State of the Union as Rep. Bridenstine’s guest.

            Also don’t forget that the Congress Critters that feed on NASA pork won’t support anyone who they feel will threaten their pork flows. Pork of course coming far before party. Its why they want a scientist, because scientists are as addicted to the money that flows to them as the Congress Critters are to their pork flows (often the same thing). Which is of course is the reason so many scientists are screaming about money being taken from their pet science project at NASA, to return this thread to the topic.

          • Michael Kaplan says:
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            The data doesn’t support your contention. The rare well-qualified, non-conflicted nominees have been approved with support from both sides of the aisle. Conflicted, unqualified nominees don’t draw bipartisan support. Why is that such a surprise?

            Calling Decadal survey top priority projects “pet science projects” just shines a light on your perspective of the value of science to the country.

          • ThomasLMatula says:
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            The earlier generations of big science recognize their responsibilities to benefit the nation and spent money wisely. The current one seems to view themselves as entitled to government support, have contemp for the idea of nationalism and seem to think the only reason for a society to exist is to fund science. I guest they don’t read Dr. Bush’s essay anymore. 🙂

          • Michael Kaplan says:
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            I hate to burst your bubble, but pretty much every administration prior to the one that arrived on 1/20/2016 welcomed science advice and considered it a necessary input into making budget and policy decisions. This one has shown that it doesn’t and we’ll all suffer the consequences. I do believe that most scientists feel that their work has global as well as nationalistic benefits to humanity. That’s because modern science is a global enterprise. If we’re making measurements about the rise in methane emissions, it impacts EVERYONE on this planet. To view it through the nationalistic lens you seem to use misses the entire point of the purpose of science and is actually in conflict with the NASA Charter. Just about every science mission has major international partners. Why? To get more science/dollar for the US taxpayer. That’s spending money wisely. Every scientist is asking the same questions about Europa, rising sea levels here on Earth, the nature of dark matter, etc. I’m sorry if that doesn’t “jive” with your nationalistic views of the world. But that’s the reality of modern science.

          • ThomasLMatula says:
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            Thank you for illustrating well the disconnect. You show exactly how the modern generation of scientists and science advisor have completely forgotten why the Congress choose after WWII, when the National Debt to GDP ratio was much higher than today, to fund science in a big way. You should how, instead of the dog wagging the tail you now think the tail should be wagging the dog. How very sad.

            BTW the international element was added because of the Cold War.

          • Michael Spencer says:
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            It’s a WH that values advice from nobody other than itself. And that being the case, it’s a darn good thing that the President is so smart.

          • ThomasLMatula says:
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            Yes, how blasphemous for the King to not go to the high priests for advice, they will put a hex on him 🙂

            Seriously, there are 45 staffers still there, presumable doing something to earn their keep. Perhaps that is enough to cover everything. You don’t always need a figure head to get the work done in a bureaucracy.

            BTW, since you probably never read it, here is the report that launched the modern era of big government funded science.

            https://www.nsf.gov/about/h

            Note the justifications in the Introductions and recommendations for the NSF. Compare them to what you have been claiming about why science and WFRIST should be funded. To be specific, how will the discovery of dark matter effect the economy or national security? In short, what do the tax payers get for their money if they fund WFIRST?

            https://www.nsf.gov/about/h

          • Michael Spencer says:
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            “Compare them to what you have been claiming about why science and WFRIST should be funded. To be specific, how will the discovery of dark matter effect the economy or national security? In short, what do the tax payers get for their money if they fund WFIRST?”.

            I’ve not commented much on WFIRST. As to ‘what the taxpayers get’: that’s a tricky question that reminds me of ninth-graders in scoffing at the usability of Algebra. The ‘usability’ of what we usually call ‘pure science’ to differentiate the efforts from goal-driven research is completely unknown. We know this going in. It’s possible that useful tech will result, in ten or 50 years, but again we don’t fund this type of research based on expected findings.

            Or I suppose we could say that we fund it simply for the beauty of unexpected answers.

            (Aside: Cosmology is the King of the Sciences; it is an effort to unravel the deepest secrets of the universe, about which currently nearly nothing is known. Example? The preposterous term ‘dark energy’, standing in for ‘huh’? This view is widely shared by those in the field, those much smarter than me who wonder why Einstein and QE are so disparate, for instance. This inset meant to demean current efforts; quite the contrary. It’s only a few years that we’ve learned that the Milky Way is one of many, for instance. There are very big secrets to be prized from the universe. WFIRST is simply one tiny step).

          • ThomasLMatula says:
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            If astronomers regarded it as so important in 2010 then why was work not started on it until 2016? Seems to me if it was so critical they would have started on it sooner? Or was it delayed because of all of President’s Obama’s cuts to astronomy?

            https://www.space.com/39714

            “Since 2008, NASA’s astrophysics division’s budget has been consistently below what it was in 2008, with the steepest reduction occurring in 2010. Meanwhile, every other science division (such as heliophysics and planetary science) has seen an overall rise in budgets, compared with 2008 levels.”

            Funny how there were no complaints when President Obama’s budget cuts delayed it for years and gutted astronomy funding at NASA

          • fcrary says:
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            Unfortunately, some of that is about marketing.
            For over a century, there’s been a certain amount of tension between planetary scientists and “real” astronomers. I remember one pre-launch talk about Hubble, back when I was in college. The astronomer in question (a globular cluster dynamics expert) listed off the instruments HST would have, and mentioned that the “Wide Field and Planetary Camera” was just called that because it’s field of view was about the size of a planet. They wouldn’t, he said, waste time using it to look at planets.

            But historically, the public has liked the pictures of planets. They get more and better press coverage than galaxies or nebula (and definitely more than spectrograms…) Mars Reconnoissance Orbiter talking a picture of the MSL rover descending on its parachute has zero scientific content, but it’s really cool. Spectra which tell you something about dark matter or dark energy have lots of content, but they are hard to get people interested in. If you have to start with a paragraph on what dark matter is, you’re going to lose many people’s attention before you’ve even begun.

            So, yes, when it comes to budgets and public support, the more photogenic science does have an advantage.

          • fcrary says:
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            More frequent surveys, or the scope of the mid-term reviews, get argued about on a regular basis. The problem is that the decadal surveys tend to be much more political than many people imagine. There isn’t any real, objective way to say if (for example) a Mars Sample Return is “better science” than a Europa mission or a Neptune orbiter. People put a lot of time and effort into getting their own priorities listed as decadal survey priorities. Once they have that official blessing, they don’t want to lose before the mission in question is funded.

          • Carlos DelCastillo says:
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            Or the last Earth Science Decadal.

  3. Johnhouboltsmyspiritanimal says:
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    couple of take aways from what I heard:
    Never has the agency so gleefully presented a plan that wastes a generation of engineers

    SLS/Orion as sustainable exploration. You Keep Using That Word, I Do Not Think It Means What You Think It Means.

    One flight per year if that for 30 days of cislunar space by SLS/Orion. Tell me how that is routine exploration of the Moon.

    this strategic plan seems more about ignoring the boots on the moon request and just waiting out the clock until a perceived presidential change in 2020. while the moon is closer physically than Mars doesn’t mean it wont still take forever to get there with this lack of will and malaise towards any sense of urgency.

    Do we honestly believe this administration will abide by any lunar surface options that don’t achieve first footprints before end of 2024 (his second term)

  4. ejd1984 says:
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    “Trump’s budget request doesn’t actually affect WFIRST operations. In an email to WFIRST staff Monday, obtained by The Atlantic, Paul Hertz, the director of nasa’s astrophysics division, told everyone to keep working.“For the remainder of this year, while the Congress considers this proposal from the president, the WFIRST project will continue making progress with the FY 2018 budget allocation consistent with congressional direction,” Hertz wrote. “Maintaining progress against the existing plan is the only way to preserve nasa’s ability to deliver the mission on time and meet the established cost target, should Congress decide not to accept the president’s proposal to terminate WFIRST.”
    The Atlantic

    Odds are very favorable that Wfrist will be saved, it’s just a negotiating tactic.

    • ThomasLMatula says:
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      Maybe President Trump will be able to trade confirmation of Rep. Bridenstine for continuing to pour money into it. 🙂