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Obama's Impending NASA Decisions
eldavojohn writes "From delaying Project Constellation to an additional $2 billion in funding, Space.com looks at some immediate decisions the President Elect will have to make once he takes office in January. The biggest one will be the shuttle plan: do we retire the shuttle fleet or keep it on for more missions? If it is retired, we would have to rely on another country to bring our astronauts into space between 2010 and 2015 as a new fleet is built. Will Obama hold true on his $2 billion pledge to NASA?"
I hope Obama holds up to his $2 billion offer. I know there are other problems facing the USA but space exploration is not something we should ever stop.
...and one which is related to, but transcends, politics, is:
How can any grand initiative that takes longer than eight -- or four -- years to implement ever again be achieved?
I expect him to be as keep his NASA pledge as much as he kept his stance against telecom immunity and his pledge not to exceed public financing limits.
In other words, not at all.
He's a politician. I've never known a politician to follow through with their campaign promises.
How can we not not retire it? The shuttles are a huge money drain on NASA. If they were out of service NASA would have extra money to spend on more interesting things like developing better propulsion systems and better launch vehicles. Or better yet, let's let some of these budding space companies compete for building launch vehicles.
Is any of this really up to Obama? Isn't it Congress that decides where money is spent? Pretty sure that I took Civics in 8th grade and the Executive branch doesn't control all the cash. Unless Bush has changed all that in the last 8 years?
but do the astronauts do anything that cant be automated or done on earth?
I'm sure the same can be said of your job...
I think Obama will give NASA the $2 billion. It's a stimulus to the economy, something it badly needs. Now, I know that 90% of slashdot is libertarian, but Keynesian economics says that you do deficit spending in a recession. You both decrease taxes and increase spending, since the gov't can act as a employer of last resort (when everyone else is firing). There's no question that there's great waste when 10% of the population is unemployed (if that high unemploymentcomes to pass). You'll have millions of people not doing anything for the economy, just sitting at home and draining the government's social spending with nothing to show for it. The only way to quickly reduce that number is by government spending. No other way. He may even reverse Bush's decision to go to the Moon and instead go to Mars first. If he wants Florida in the bag in 2012, he probably will also extend the Shuttle for a couple years.
(Of course, the national debt will eventually overwhelm the tax base unless the flip-side of Keynesian economics is also followed: increase taxes and decrease spending during boom cycles.)
"We're considering continuing to use a vehicle that has a failure rate of 1-2% per flight?"
Just a reminder, the NASA space shuttle program is one of the most successful long term space programs ever. Remember - this IS rocket science. Seriously, look up some of the other space programs and you'll see some spectacular failures with nowhere near as many successes over the span of decades. The space shuttle program is an enormous success.
In the cold war NASA was bankrupting Russia and expressing USA's technical superiority... NASA's goals are much less interesting to many now - exploration, learning, and inspiring interest in understanding science and the unknown.
I love NASA and think it should be funded, but I'm a nerd... The cold war version of NASA was a lot easier for an entire nation to rally around and love.
Overclockers
To get them down, as in from a crippled Shuttle? Yes, it is.
A Shuttle crew is typically seven astronauts. Soyuz carries three. Launching with only a pilot, that's room for two rescued astronauts. To evacuate a Shuttle would need four Soyuz launches, in quick succession. And that's if and only if the Shuttle is in an orbit that the Russians can reach; Florida is a better launch site than Kazakhstan, receiving more of a boost from the Earth's rotation. And if the Russians can arrange for four rockets and four capsules to be ready to go before the Shuttle's air runs out. That's one hell of a tall order. Given a blank cheque, they might try to do it, but it would be such a rush job you'd likely end up with even more crippled spacecraft in orbit.
As for private enterprise? No chance. No private enterprise has ever launched a person into orbit. SpaceShip One was a major achievement for them, but didn't even reach Alan Shepard levels of spaceflight; a Gagarin is far beyond them.
This is why the last Hubble repair mission was a worry, and why a second orbiter was readied for launch if rescue were needed. If that Shuttle had taken Columbia-style damage on launch, it wouldn't have been safe to return to Earth, and it wouldn't have been able (from that orbit) to reach the space station either. The astronauts would have been be in deep trouble.
If you mean could the government write a cheque to a private firm to build them a spacecraft, yes, they could. I'm not convinced, however, that a private contractor would be much better than NASA - the same political demands would be placed upon them, and the chief advantage of a free market, competition leading to efficiency gains and low cost, is lost in a market consisting of one customer who makes one colossal order every few decades. NASA contracts out the actual building to private enterprise anyway, firms like Boeing and Lockheed Martin and Morton Thiokol.
And yes, they could buy Soyuz capsules as needed, and even engage the Russians to develop them an entire spaceflight system. That's what they did post-Columbia when the Shuttles were grounded. They'd probably get entirely acceptable results at a very low cost. US governments don't like to buy foreign hardware if they can avoid it, though - taxpayers don't like to see their money leaving the country. They prefer to distribute the pork to firms in crucial swing states.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
Don't forget NASA is one industry that puts a lot of money back into the US economy. Due to export controls and ITAR restrictions nearly every man hour is paid to a U.S. Citizen and nearly every part is built here. NASA farms out quite a bit of work to Universities so the next crop of engineers actually gets hands on experience in building equipment.
At a seminar I was at one NASA employee said that it takes over seven years after a student graduates before they are fully beneficial to the NASA program. If the student had hands on experience that number can be reduced to below three years. Many NASA employees are nearing retirement age and there already is a problem finding replacements. If you cut money now NASA won't/can't hire new employees to be trained by experienced personnel, Universities won't be able to fund new space projects so the students will not be fully prepared or trained to take over jobs once funding is returned, and those that are looking for jobs now will most likely go into private industry where their innovations and ideas will become the property of their employer and be lost to public enterprise.
So I'm for our government pouring money into NASA and rewarding a group that has been highly successful (recently). Why should they just be dumping money into failures (mortgage companies, banks, wallstreet, automotive).
Don't anthropomorphize computers. They *hate* that.
There is a problem with not expecting a budget to be spent. First is that under the current law, the government has to spend the money or give it back to the people. This mean that outside of some rainy day fund that the Feds have never bothers creating but states do, that excess revenue will have to be spent.
The second problem is in accounting. If they can't justify using less of their budget then their budget should be less. It really is that simple. If you ask for 10 million dollars and only spend 5, you have wasted the ability to either use that other 5 million or for some other department to effectivly use it. Then there is the issue of public trust, if agencies are purposely over funded to a point of surplus revenue, how do you expect to justify tax rates and collections?
The problem isn't with the laws, it is with the greedy department heads who think that wasting 20% of a budget that wasn't needed is appropriate just so they can hoard the same amounts the next year. My local school system used to have this problem of budget burning and we actually made a law declaring it a felony. All this did was cause the schools to waste money in other ways and now they claim they need levies and so on but the people don't trust them enough to pass them. Now I don't want to seem like I'm picking on schools, it's just that in my area, we actually attempted to address the budget problem with less then desirable results. Now there is some screwed up scheme where the state takes the property taxes that would go to schools normally and then gives it back at the end of the year in order to redistribute it to poorer districts where people moved away from for various reasons.
Unless you can say X happened that won't happen next year, then if you have a surplus in the budget, your budget is too big. It needs to be cut next year. X could be a number of things like some stage of something failed so the later portions of development wasn't spent or maybe something like, Y had a closeout sale and parts or supplies were obtained at 25% of normal costs but they are out of business now. There are a number of things like falling gas prices during on quarter or the lack of snow one year or whatever. The costs need to be justified and burning budgets should be a felony that disqualifies people from positions of public trust ever again. The people deserve a fair accounting of their money and a sense of it not being wasted because some department head is greedy or too ignorant to justify why they had a surplus that won't be the same case next year.
This year's NASA budget was $17.318 billion. Meanwhile, the military got $515.4 Billion.
One year's military budget would fund NASA for three decades. I think your priorities are as badly misplaced as our government's.
Meanwhile, we could do a lot of other things to balance the budget - like ending corporate welfare.
Free Martian Whores!
As for private enterprise? No chance. No private enterprise has ever launched a person into orbit. SpaceShip One was a major achievement for them, but didn't even reach Alan Shepard levels of spaceflight; a Gagarin is far beyond them.
Is there a reason you're mentioning SpaceShip One (which was never designed for orbital capability) while ignoring Falcon (which was)? Granted, Falcon didn't carry any people, but a claim that this capability "is far beyond them" is ridiculously false. Dragon should be ready to go by the time the shuttle retires.
If you mean could the government write a cheque to a private firm to build them a spacecraft, yes, they could.
And they already did. You seem to be treating an ongoing program, started years ago, as if it's a hypothetical...
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
Total NASA budget, FY 2009 - $17.6 billion
US federal budget, FY 2009 - $3.1 trillion
NASA budget as a percentage of federal budget - 0.568%
Even if you completely scrapped NASA, you're not going to make any useful difference.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
Actually, our being flat broke has very little to do with the space program, except that every dollar spent by the government is a dollar it either needs to tax us for, or borrow from someone (to later tax us for with interest).
Here's a chart I threw together a while back when having an argument with a friend of mine about NASA's budget and our general federal budget woes.
http://foofus.com/amuse/public/Fedspending-2008-linechart.jpg
Note how, if the NASA budget remained the same every year from now on, it would take approximately 47 years to spend as much as we threw away on the bank bailout this year. Also note how the "Interest on Debt" line is about 40 times NASA's budget.
I understand that we need to cut spending and balance our budget - hell, I DEMAND it of anyone I vote for - but NASA is an awfully popular whipping boy for "government spending" compared to the very small portion of our budget that is actually spent on basic science research, engineering, computing, space exploration, and protecting our planet from potential destruction by rogue asteroids.
(disclaimer: Yes, I DO work for NASA - but I'd feel this way even if I didn't!).
"It's hard to imagine for me that there are people out there who are not inspired by NASA's endeavors."
I'm incredibly inspired by NASA's current Mars exploration, discoveries coming out of the Hubble, etc. Can you imagine putting together a system that can fly to Mars, land on the surface, and drive around for years collecting data without ever getting to touch the thing after launch? Anything that works that brilliantly first try is awesome. Definitely inspiring.
The guys sucking up most of the budget while struggling to keep their toilet running in low Earth orbit? Not so much.
SpaceShip One has in fact flown with an astronaut. Dragon has not. Falcon is a rocket, not a crewed vehicle, and only the satellite launcher has reached orbit - Falcon 9 is still in ground testing. SpaceShip One is the current high water mark of private manned spaceflight, such as it is. At that end of the post, discussing present options for a shuttle rescue, neither is an option, because neither right now are remotely capable of the task.
And they already did. You seem to be treating an ongoing program, started years ago, as if it's a hypothetical...
At this end of the post, discussing options for Shuttle replacements, Dragon might be a competitor. I don't see, however, that the government have simply said 'we will pay you to build us a spacecraft'. SpaceX was founded with dotcom wealth. They've received contracts for launches from NASA and the USAF - but neither commit to any great funding. According to Wikipedia,
On May 2, 2005, SpaceX announced that it had been awarded an Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) contract for Responsive Small Spacelift (RSS) launch services by the United States Air Force, which could allow the Air Force to purchase up to $100,000,000 worth of launches from the company.[4] On April 22, 2008, NASA announced that it had awarded an IDIQ Launch Services contract to SpaceX for Falcon 1 and Falcon 9 launches. The contract will be worth between $20,000 and $1 billion, depending on the number of missions awarded. The contract covers launch services ordered by June 30, 2010, for launches through December 2012.
So NASA and the USAF have options to buy launches from SpaceX. Doesn't look like either have committed to any specifics, though. Orbit a Falcon 9 with a manned Dragon and bring it safely back to Earth and NASA may very well buy up all that billion dollars' worth and then some, but not before. Scaling up from one rocket to a cluster of rockets while maintaining man-rated reliability is a hard problem. Ask the engineers who built the N1.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
You're talking about funding Science for Science's sake... this is America - we pay $54M for Capt. Jack Sparrow to make a fourth appearance - get your priorities straight. The public is ready to pay for another Apollo 11 drama, they don't really understand what "exoplanet" means.
I actually agree with you. NASA has a lot of value to the country that people really do not see! There's lots of factors why, and NASA shares a little bit of the blame in that PR could be done a lot better - but overall it's been a constant problem that people don't see the end product of all their government-sponsored research dollars.
There's some good sites online though, that have lists of NASA Spinoff technology:
http://www.thespaceplace.com/nasa/spinoffs.html
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/nasalife/index.html
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=26661
I know I'm starting to sound like a shill at this point, but when you really believe in something, that's a risk you end up taking. :)