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NASA Reconsiders DAWN Mission Cancellation
amstrad writes "Last month, NASA decided to cancel the DAWN mission to Ceres and Vesta citing 'technical difficulties' and 'budget overrun'. Monday, NASA released a statement reinstating the mission." From the article: "The decision to cancel Dawn was made March 2, 2006, after about $257 million already had been spent. An additional expenditure of about $14 million would have been required to terminate the project. The reinstatement resulted from a review process that is part of new management procedures established by NASA Administrator Michael Griffin. The process is intended to help ensure open debate and thorough evaluation of major decisions regarding space exploration and agency operations."
The article doesn't give details, but the statement "$257 million already had been spent. An additional expenditure of about $14 million would have been required to terminate the project. " probably does not mean they only needed to spend $14 million to complete the project. Most government contracts have a termination fee associated with it. If the government cancels the project early, the government pays the contractor to close up shop - dispose of unneeded material, severence pay for terminated workers, etc. etc.
The parent post is riddled with mistakes and is, frankly, wrong. Check out this chart and the associated data:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_Budget
For specifics, look at the numbers at the bottom.
>1) He cut NASA's budget by a third his first 3 years in office.
False, see the chart above.
>Not until we invaded Iraq did it recieve any re-funding, and even
>then the new funds were earmarked for use in military technologies -
>not NASA's area in the first place. NASA had to use that money to
>support launching of military satelites and whatnot.
False. NASA doesn't launch the vast majority of military satellites and hasn't in quite some time. The military buys launch vehicles from aerospace constractors like Boeing and Lock-Mart and they're launched from Air Force stations.
>To this day, NASA's budget is lessthan 80% of what it was when Bill
>Clinton left office. And that's 80% not adjusting for inflation or
>time, which means it's around 72% of what it was after adjustments.
False; see the chart above. While NASA's budget in 1996 dollars is still not as high as it was under the highest level of Clinton's era, it's still higher than it was the last few years of Clinton's tenure, including when he left office. If you look closely, you can see Clinton was the one who was cutting NASA down from the recent highs it enjoyed under the 4 years of Bush I. This was mostly Space Station cuts... taking Freedom, which was becoming way more expensive than anyone wanted to pay, and saddling us with the ugly albatross of the ISS.
I believe the CPI for the past few years has also been lower than projected, so NASA's budget has actually done even better, but I'm not 100% sure on that particular point.
Bruce
Not so. Rex Geveden is NASA Associate Administrator, NOT in charge of this mission. the truth is, Mary Cleave axed the mission foolishly - it had had some tech problems but they had been resolved before Cleave's decision, and the program was back on track.
The quote is NOT a manager promising a manager something to keep his project - the quote is an ADMINISTRATOR acknowledging that a lower-level administrator had made a decision that was not based on the data that the actual program manager had provided.
This space available.