NASA's FY 11 Budget: Kicking The Can Down The Road

There are some good reporters here so their opinion has heft...however there is nothing concrete as to why the budget wont get passed. Just as I doubt a compromise is coming so I also bet NASA's budget gets passed pretty much as is.

The politics of the next few months in non space things should be fascinating.

Robert G. Oler

Any chance the space programs budget won't get be a casualty of all the bailouts.

It's hard to believe that congress would ever rubber stamp a plan with so little behind it. Given it's an election year, congress won't have the time or inclination to fight this battle now. The Republicans will wait for their gains, which is inevitable in a mid-term election, and pick it up next year. Where it'll get interesting is if President Obama were to play the impound control act of 1974 card. It will get interesting and it won't end up with the Obama space plan (nor Constellation as is). BEO exploration's time line is definitely taking a hit.

Kick it long enough, maybe Obama won't be president anymore and his plan will be moot.

It would be political suicide for any Democrat in Florida or Texas to support the President's space agenda.

And it will be difficult for Congress in general to support spending $100 billion over the next 5 years for NASA to build nothing and to go nowhere while shutting everything down-- unless that's been the President's agenda all along!

Marcel F. Williams

This is exactly why NASA should get out of building and flying HSF systems and missions, respectively.

There are so many politics involved in the content, funding flow, schedule, etc. that it is impossible, outside of a Russian threat and a dead presidents declaration, to sustain any kind of programmatic continuity, integrity, and efficiency wrt HSF development programs.

These are exactly the kinds of problems that deep pocketed capitalist, like Elon Musk, do not have to deal with; hence they can bring efficiency, continuity and integrity to their efforts.

The dysfunction between NASA, WH, Congress, OMB, OSTP strikes again! The losers: US taxpayers

FWIW, I think that a continued status quo due to a legislative gridlock is the worst of all possible worlds. My concern is that NASA's adminstrators will continue to act as if FY2011 has been passed and find that they can't convince the centres and project directors to do so, as their projects are all unchanged, according to the official budget.

You thus end up with the paper pushers in E-Street dilligently following the President's vision. Meanwhile, at KSC, JSC, MSFC and elsewhere, SSP and ISSP operations are continuing and CxP is still in developmental hell, slowly crawling towards an ever-more-distant IOC date.

“We have to let go of the past,” says Bolden, and “We also need to face the reality that the future will be different than the past.”

If there is one thing humans are not very good at, even if exhorted to do so by their boss and genuinely interested in ceding to his/her wishes, it is letting go of the past.

Indeed, the future often looks just like the past, only with different window dressing. Witness how Columbia accident root cause looked just like Challenger root cause, and this year’s upcoming ‘continuing resolution dysfunction’ which will negatively impact a NASA Administrators hopes and dreams, looks like very many episodes from the past - just ask Griffin, Golden, and O’Keefe.

Good luck General Bolden in reshaping humanities predilection to repeat the past.

http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1619/1

A really important article that everyone should read.

Thanks for posting this Miles. Seems like this article should get top billing on NASA Watch. (How about promoting this to the front page Keith?)

Seems to me that it would make more sense to redirect Constellation instead of canceling it. I would rather a continuing resolution occur to let the debate continue rather than rushing into another mistake.

The President could direct Constellation to reassess the architecture and missions with the resources (people, contractors) available now and under contract. If the right answer is to cancel portions of the program, so be it. It would be more cost effective to do that instead of blasting the whole program out of the water and starting over. We are smarter than this.

Pretty much predicted this in an earlier thread. And I am hardly "prescient" on this because the political writing on the wall is crystal clear. Obama has become a liability to his party's Reps and Sens in their effort to get re-elected. And you can paint this as "revolutionary" or "game changing" all you want, but that does not make it so. Moreover, anyone with just a passing interest would clearly interpret this plan (again, not looking at any details) as Obama ceding US technology dominance in space. Don't argue detailed facts, because most people don't go there. All they know is their perception of what it "smells like" from the basic proposal.

And while I am not usually one to cut Obama any slack, all space fanboys & girls need to understand there are many more important fish to fry. Border security in the face of rising attempts at terrorist attacks are priorities 1 and 2 for most Americans, with the economy right there in the mix, possibly even more important. Truly and honestly ask yourself this question (if you are a US citizen): Would you honestly want Obama to ignore those clearly higher priorities and expend political capital on NASA that should be applied to these more pressing problems? If you say yes, then clearly you do not have a grasp of what it takes to maintain and defend a free democracy that is in the condition ours is currently in. Or you are of the opposite political opinion of Obama and just want to see him play out his hand and fail. I don't like him, but he is my President, and I expect him to tackle the important jobs first. NASA is no longer important in the relative measure of more pressing issues.

Thanks for the reference material Miles. The gentleman has summed the problem perfectly.

Now I understand why many on this thread advocate letting go of the past. It's the only way one can look at Obama's plan and think that it is somehow new and improved. I'm sure these advocates think that the only reason there were failures in the past is that the right people weren't in charge.

"I also bet NASA's budget gets passed pretty much as is."

NASA has gone onto a CR, what, like 11 times in the past 12 years? What on earth makes you think the same thing isn't going to happen again - with the distraction of trench warfare in Congress on immigration, energy, and possibly also (in the Senate) on a Supreme Court nomination?

So ix-nay on the budget passing, at least before the election - and after the election will likely be a whole new ball-game.

Obama made the same mistake Bush did - dithered too long before taking a direction. Had Bush put Griffin in right away, Ares would be too far along now to stop. Had Obama put this forward in early '09, he might have had something now.

If the defenders of the NASA status quo manage to kill the Administration's plan, then the next order of business should be a full-court press to defund Constellation. It is going nowhere, developing no new technology, producing nothing of value, and killing the other valuable parts of NASA. Prune NASA HSF back to the ISS R&D effort and then restart from scratch. The nation will be better off without the dead weight of a $100 billion white elephant crushing the life out of NASA.

http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1619/1

A really important article that everyone should read.

Thank you Miles.

Bill Mueller

Under the spreading chestnut tree
I sold you and you sold me
There lie they, and here lie we
Under the spreading chestnut tree

SPACE INITIATIVE
January 14, 2004

President Bush announced plans Wednesday to develop a new spacecraft to send humans back to the moon as early as 2015.

Two experts debate whether the missions are the best use of science dollars

LORI GARVER: I'm very enthused about the initiative. This is what we should be doing with our space program. The space program is about so much more than science. I absolutely agree, we've been a great space science through the robotic program. But it is because we're going as a species that I think the public really can relate to this, and ultimately what has caused us a tremendous benefit.

the devil, as they say, is in the details -- but going back to the moon first is going to allow us to try a lot of this. It's also a natural progression out of a space program we've had for 30 years. We said the space station and shuttle were to support future exploration. We have experience, as do the Russians, with people in space for more than a year at a time. That is really helping us, and that data will continue until we send people back to the moon and to Mars.

RAY SUAREZ: Isn't this, as Lori Garver suggests, the logical next step?

ROBERT PARK: No, I think there are a lot of other logical next steps. But I'm glad that we're doing those things, and it will free up some money, money

LORI GARVER: one of the great things about the moon would be a lunar telescope on the far side of the moon. It is an ideal place.

LORI GARVER: But again, it's that inspiration that calls us to space, and by that it's not going to be just robots

LORI GARVER: I want my kids to have somebody who is more interesting to them. The first woman who goes to the moon -- we've never sent any women to the moon -- it's got to be more interesting than whether or not Britney Spears got married this weekend.

LORI GARVER: Ultimately, a lunar base as the president announced today is going to help us build new things, like a solar-powered satellite using lunar materials. That will potentially end our dependence on fossil fuels on this planet.

When they went to the moon the first time, we turned around and saw the Earth. One of the best things that came out of our lunar program was Earth Day, not to mention the microchip. These are things that would not have happened without humans involved, and we're just going to be going. I feel a sense of excitement today, and I believe that we have some political challenges, but this is the start of something very important, not only for this country, but for humanity.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/science/jan-june04/moon_01-14.html

The self-described "AstroMom" wants to promote the idea of space travel for the masses. "The space community, I think, really needs this," Garver said. "We've been talking about it forever. Let's just do it."

Garver, 40, will travel with funding from corporations that will likely advertise their names or their products.
http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-120433167.html

The Road Taken
December 1999
My focus did not turn to space until I worked for the John Glenn Presidential Committee in Washington, DC in 1984.

What first captured your imagination about space?
Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon when I was 8 years old. For me, space has always been another place for humanity to do business
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/extra/careers/road_garver.html

dancin in the moonlight, everybody's feelin warm and bright

Kicking the can down the road is exactly what it is and what has kept us in low earth orbit for the better part of half a century.

Strikes me that the best option at this point would be to morph the Orion CRV into the Orion crew transport launching on EELV. The Constellation funds could then be used to human rate the EELV, which would also benefit the commercial firms looking to use the EELVs for their launch systems. It would also give NASA system to balance the commercial ones eliminate the risk of only depending on commercial systems.

At the same time the commercial crew option could be advanced under COTS. If I recall COTS-D was to be human transport to the ISS.

This would also create a competitive environment to move forward with a "race" between government funded Orion/EELV (Constellation)and Commercial Crew (COTS-D) to see who ends the Human Space Launch (HSL) gap first.

Indeed, under a multiple CR, which may be the case until after the next Presidential election, this might be most viable option for at least moving forward. It might also be a compromise that is acceptable for everyone.

I believe NASA's reauthorization bill is also coming up in a few week for congress to dispose. It will be interesting to see what congress authorizes and does not authorize NASA to do and if the White House signs or vetoes the authorization bill. This may likely dictate if the FY11 NASA appropriations is passed or NASA goes under a CR.

> http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1619/1
> A really important article that everyone should read.

You can dress up that pro-government argument however you want. It still doesn't make sense. The NASA way can't be the only way to get a safe passenger vehicle.

Obviously Lori had not yet fallen for Barack at this time. Love the poem.

LoL, wonder what her next stand will be? (& it's Orwell's 1984)

@RC:
You can dress up that pro-government argument however you want. It still doesn't make sense. The NASA way can't be the only way to get a safe passenger vehicle.

actually, Yes We Can:
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/58855/title/Preventing_disastrous_offshore_spills_may_require_space-program_diligence

dancin in the moonlight, everybody's feelin warm and bright

By definition, if the money comes from the NASA budget, then it IS the NASA way. COTS, COTS-D, CCDEV, Obama's Bold New Plan, whatever name it goes under - are all funded out of the NASA budget and therefore are just more NASA programs.

If you truly want a human space flight program in the US that is not the NASA way, then you are going to have to find the funding for it outside the NASA budget. In other words, unless it is fully commercially funded, then it is not commercial space flight no matter how much you put the word 'commercial' in the name. On the other hand, if you really do have commercial funding, then it doesn't matter a flip what is or isn't in the NASA budget. They are certainly no impediment to any private space company.

Elon Musk talked a good game and even ponied up for awhile, but now Space X is just another money grubbing contractor. Same as Orbital, SpaceDev, and all the rest. To be sure they are willing to put their money in upfront for development, but they are still expecting to make their return on investment off Uncle Sam on the back end. The Obama plan does nothing to change the fact of where the money ultimately comes from.

If you want a true and serious private space program, talk to Rutan. He's not running off government money and is charging ahead just fine regardless of what NASA does.

> By definition, if the money comes from the NASA budget, then it IS the NASA way.

The new plan does things differently than the old plan. Perhaps wrangling the english language is too much for you.

If this comment regarding the decision by Congressman David Obey not to run is true then it looks like a CR for NASA is assured.

[[[There will be plenty of political fallout from the Obey retirement, but there may also be some substantive repercussions — the House might not be able to get the annual spending bills done.]]

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0510/36812_Page2.html#ixzz0n5jp9LTq

The full article is here.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0510/36812.html#ixzz0n4PUulaj