Looming Crisis In Earth Observation
NASA Budget Would Be More of the Same … on the Surface, National Journal
“Unfortunately, the Committee has lost confidence in NOAA’s ability to control procurement costs or articulate reliable funding profiles. Therefore, we have taken the unprecedented step of transferring responsibility for building our Nation’s operational weather satellites from NOAA to NASA,” [Mikulski] said.”
U.S. could lose aging eyes in the sky, CNN
“Of 23 such satellites now aloft — carrying dozens of instruments that help weather forecasters produce storm warnings and measure pollution, ocean winds and sea levels — only six are expected to remain in operation by 2020, and efforts to replace them have stalled, the National Research Council reports.”
Satellites at risk, Washington Post
“The NRC proposes restoring NASA’s earth observation satellite funding to the level seen in the late 1990s — before President George W. Bush reprogrammed money from those satellites into things such as manned spaceflight to Mars. That level stands at about $2 billion.”
The American aerospace industry is in a brain drain induced free fall that will not change as cost overruns are not only tolerated, they are encouraged.
I am not certain as to the logic of moving satellite procurement from NOAA to NASA because NOAA has issues with costs – NASA has the same problem: James Webb Space Telescope being the most recent example. Â I suspect the net result will just be exchanging one whipping boy for another.
Same contractors, same problems…
I may be quite wrong about this, but it appears to me that NOAA is an agency that has floated along year after year with, on average, minimal attention paid to it by the overseers and the money people, and then suddenly, when someone finally notices that operating as per the status quo for years on end has eroded the agency’s effectiveness, someone decides to lower the boom and propose quick-fire, extreme changes. I find this very disappointing.
Only a rookie believes that anyone can walk into such a situation cold and suddenly “fix” the problems. Life just doesn’t work that way. The federal government, in all of its too many components, has long been guilty (in my opinion) of inappropriately micromanaging some agencies/departments while all but ignoring others, with no clear rationale as to why each agency/department has fallen into one extreme trap or the other.
The proper (effective) way to “manage” the various entities for which the federal government is responsible is almost the identical to how head office “manages” the divisions in a large company — mostly by insisting on and regularly monitoring properly prepared progress reports, and passing directions back down the lines only when necessary, but not delaying when it is necessary. In this way trends of concern (in relation to the big picture) are caught and corrected before they can become run-away major problems. The sooner you apply corrections to a deviation from your planning, the less correction is required, and therefore the sooner (and cheaper) you get back on plan (assuming that the people at the top are competent).
Political people, whether elected or appointed, need to give sufficient on-going attention to all of their responsibilities, not just those that are of personal interest or profit, or those that are currently in the news. Democratic government is all about balance and equal representation, not just playing up the favorites and the newsworthy.
The managers at NOAA are in this unfortunate position where they have been given little attention by their lords and masters at the federal government level and then quite suddenly they are under a microscope with their careers hanging in the balance. I consider this damn poor management by the federal government; rookie performance, at best. If I were running NOAA, or any agency/department that had been put into this same situation, I would stand tall in front of my political superiors and tell them straight out that, “this sort of tactic does not help; it only makes things worse. So, if you want to help, either manage me every day, or go away.” If that should backfire, then I’m out of a job, but at least everyone will be wondering why; what is the problem? If it doesn’t backfire, then things should get better for the agency/department by giving it a more balanced oversight and more ready access to the attention of my superiors when needed.
One man’s opinion.
Steve
NOAA is the typical bureaucratic agency…don’t rock the boat and keep the status quo and fly under the RADAR and Congress will leave it alone. If you asked the average American what is NOAA, you would most likely get a reference to the Bible. Mikulski has been drinking the NASA Kool Aid for years and it does not surprise me one bit that the EOS program was transferred to NASA without any chance for NOAA to fix the problem. NASA has enough issues with the JWST and do you think they will do any better? The politicos want NOAA to go away and back to their bureaucratic hole.Â
Will transferring more responsibility for NASA mean more money for NASA???
Other than covering the salaries of the civil servants who oversee this, technically, no.
America is losing the ability to solve its own issues. Its scary.
My overarching thought in the context of this article is the disturbing perception that spaceflight, space science, and the national space effort is hardly being discussed by this year’s crop of Congressional and Senate candidates. They are too busy yammering about unborn babies, warmongering, the health care bureaucracy , real or imagined debt, and the bogeyman in the White House.
Space is simply not much of an issue in the current election cycle, but should be. Any discussion of Satellite Slippage must include all the earth resources and weather sats , plus the GPS system Block III navsats which are a decade behind in modernization .
Moving satellite procurement from NOAA over to NASA seems more like shuffling the deck chairs on the Titanic after hitting the iceberg with the ship already listing badly. NASA seems in search of more missions ( any missions! ) on less money these days—a sense of agency purpose even —but this is not smart.
We simply cannot afford to let our satellites go fallow.
The U.S. (NOAA) estimates that it will cost 12.9 Billion dollars to make
TWO LEO birds:
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http://www.spacenews.com/ea…
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While ESA signs a deal to make SIX GEO birds for 1.8
Billion:
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http://www.spacenews.com/ea…
That is SEVEN times as much money for one THIRD the number of spacecraft.
So if we build a spacecraft it costs ~TWENTY FIVE TIMES more than ESA?
No wonder the U.S. is losing world market share in high-tech. We cost too much.
… and what does just ONE reconaissance/intelligence satellite built and launched for NRO/NSA cost ?  Those gargoyles are priced in increments of a billion $$$ per……… for what ? Since when does a false sense of security by a shadow government cabal trump a real need for earth resources data by 7.5 billion people ?