NASA Attempts To Cut Back Constellation

FleaPlus writes "In a surprise move in the battle between NASA and certain members of Congress over NASA's future direction, NASA has told its contractors to cut back nearly $1 billion on this year's Ares/Constellation program, stating that the cutback is necessary to remain in compliance with federal spending laws requiring contractors to withhold contract termination costs. While complying with budgeting laws (and in line with NASA's desire to cancel Constellation), this move is also potentially in violation of a 2010 appropriations amendment by Sen. Shelby (R-AL) and Sen. Bennett (R-UT) which prohibits NASA from terminating any Constellation contracts. If NASA's move goes through, the biggest liability is $500M for ATK, the contractor who is/was responsible for the first stage of the Ares I medium-lift rocket."

Comments

RE: NASA to cut back on Constellation

[nopainogain]

Orion left holding pants up with no belt

Augh.

[Pojut]

It pisses me off to no end that we can afford to spend trillions of dollars killing each other, but we can't afford a few billion dollars exploring the universe around us.

What the fuck, people.

Re:Augh.

[flitty]

Well, more accurately, we can only support exploring the universe around us if we find a way for private companies to sell tickets.

Re:Augh.

[camperdave]

That is annoying, true. But what is more annoying is that these senators are clinging to this expensive program when there are cheaper, safer alternatives that would save jobs, and eliminate the necessity of going to the Russians and saying "Hey Ivan. Can you possibly give me a lift to the ISS?". They are clinging to this program simply because it brings money into their state. They are willing to sacrifice the US manned space flight program, the prestige of the nation for pork. I think Shelby in particular is in a position of conflict of interests. He controls how much money NASA gets AND he represents a state that is home to some major NASA contractors.

Re:Augh.

[Anonymous Coward]

First we need to prove that there are things to slaughter in outer space and then NASA funding will... increase greatly (should mod me for holding off using an obvious and terrible pun then)

Re:Augh.

[Pojut]

Actually, the money IS there. Getting rid of a single jet fighter program or, you know...getting the fuck out of the middle east...would be enough to pay for this.

Re:Augh.

[PopeRatzo]

It pisses me off to no end that we can afford to spend trillions of dollars killing each other, but we can't afford a few billion dollars exploring the universe around us.

It pisses me off that the decision over which program survives and which dies has more to do with which senator's district the plant that's going to build it resides in.

Re:Augh.

[morgauxo]

No, private companies are only selling tickets to LEO. There is a big difference between running circles around the world we have been on since pre-history and actually exploring another one.

Re:Augh.

[Pojut]

I 100% agree...but you will never see the "Defense Budget" getting fitted for a hair cut. Never. All in the name of "national security".

We need to do only two things right now: secure our homeland, and fight people out in deserts. Funding our military as if the Cold War were still in full swing is not just stupid, but irresponsible.

What's the point of spending trillions of dollars to defend your country if there's no country left to defend?

Re:Augh.

[morgauxo]

Constellation had a heavy lifter and plans to go to the moon. The cheaper alternatives end at the ISS. Is that the whole point of the space program now? Astronauts just sit in a can and look at the planet they just left for a while and then come back down? Choose a heavy lifter in 2015? Come on, that's just punting it to the next administration with no real plans to go anywhere.

Re:Augh.

[jollyreaper]

It pisses me off that the decision over which program survives and which dies has more to do with which senator's district the plant that's going to build it resides in.

What really gets me is that these are the same congressmen who will bleat and whine about out of control spending by Washington. The democrats park their cars outside of the adult bookstore and proudly brag about the porn they watch. the republicans park their trucks down the street and sneak in wearing a hat and sunglasses; on sunday morning they'll decry the filth-flarn-filth that they found in there.

If you look at the way the shuttle pork has been divvied up across the country it's absolutely disgusting. We can't have nice things because it costs too much to grease all the palms.

Re:Augh.

[camperdave]

The cheaper alternatives end at the ISS.

Boy are you misinformed! DIRECT's plan is for the Moon, Mars, and Near Earth Objects, with commercial craft doing ISS resupply. By making use of the current shuttle systems and infrastructure (as Constellation was *supposed* do do), they eliminate large chunks of costly development. There's no need to develop new engines when there's half a dozen SSMEs in stock and paid for, and an assembly line and trained workers already in place. There's no need to develop new solid boosters when there's already several in stock and an assembly line and trained workers already in place. There's no need to continually having to re-design the Orion crew capsule to make it light enough to fit on an anaemic ARES-I, a Jupiter 130 can carry two fully loaded Orions with payload capacity to spare.

Constellation would have cost $10billion for ARES-I and $25billion for ARES-V, $35Billion in total. DIRECT would have cost $8billion for the J-130 and $4billion for the upper stage to turn the J-130 into the J-246, a total of only $12Billion.

Re:Augh.

[Solandri]

but you will never see the "Defense Budget" getting fitted for a hair cut. Never. All in the name of "national security".

Scroll down to figure 1 and you will plainly see that defense spending is the budgetary item receiving the biggest cuts over the last 50 years. (Post-9/11 it's grown by about 35% as percent of GDP.)

Re:Augh.

[Pojut]

It pisses me off, too. Howzabout we stop spending money on killing people. Howzabout we just let them kill us for a change? Lemme know what u think. kthxbye.

Looking at the last 4 big, major wars we have been involved in (Vietnam, Desert Storm, Iraq, Afghanistan), nobody was killing us before we injected ourselves into the conflict.

Re:Augh.

[IndustrialComplex]

Insurance not doctors. Doctors get paid w/ public option either way. TBH I think many of them would prefer it.

Mostly I was making a point that the AMA has lobbied to create an extreme barrier for entry into healthcare. While for certain positions a high barrier to entry IS useful (oncology, surgeons, OBGYNs, etc) There are other areas in which a trained, but not a full MD would be required (Evaluating non-serious fractures, evaluating if something is a bacterial or viral infection, prescribing an antibiotic for an ingrown toenail)

There is a lot in which a doctor has to be 'in the loop'. That isn't to say that you don't need doctors, I'm just saying that you don't need doctors in all situations.

Nurse Practitioners generally fall into this category of not doctors, but qualified enough to handle a lot more than we currently let them. (it varies state to state, but on the whole, I don't think they are given enough responsibility)

Attention NASA and Congress:

[Skarecrow77]

I do not care whether it's Ares V, which doesn't really quite exist yet, the even more vaporware "new heavy lifter" that president Obama spoke of, or some weird hybrid that the nerds down in propulsion dynamics wrote up on the back of a napkin 2 or 3 years ago and havn't told you about yet...

But will you PLEASE get our monkey asses to Mars before I die?

I'd love to see the beginings of a manned Mars base (even, dare I dream, a colony?!), but at this point I'll take Neil Armstrong's grandson standing there holding a flag with 50 (or even 52) stars on it.

Pick a heavy lifter that can get the job done, put some intelligent technial people in charge of it, give them the money and resources to get it done, and LEAVE THEM ALONE for the next decade. Also, if it's absolutely necessary to get the job done again, I'm ok with you telling them that the russians (or maybe the chinese, the're more likely to believe that nowadays) are going to take over the world (scratch that, the galaxy) if they don't succeed.

That is all.

Re:Attention NASA and Congress:

[FleaPlus]

Pick a heavy lifter that can get the job done, put some intelligent technial people in charge of it, give them the money and resources to get it done, and LEAVE THEM ALONE for the next decade.

You don't need a heavy lifter for space exploration. In fact, it just eats up the funds you'd need for actual exploration. There's a reason that each of the times that a country has developed a heavy lift rocket in the past it's been canceled in a few years due to being far too expensive.

A better alternative is propellant depots, allowing you to use smaller, pre-existing launchers and refuel in space to get to where you want. Propellant depots play an important role in NASA's new plans:

http://selenianboondocks.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/Depot-Centric_Human_Spaceflight.pdf
http://nspires.nasaprs.com/external/viewrepositorydocument/cmdocumentid=230949/Section4.pdf

The German magic is gone

[AHuxley]

The decades of Nazi's Ageing in Southern Anonymity seems to be over.
You would think they would have passed on the 'how to keep your projects funded' secrets as well as engineering, medical and other useful data.

Re: NASA to cut back on Constellation

[Pojut]

This I agree with. I think NASA should be used as a governing body to be in charge of overall space operations (for now), but the private industry should be funded enough to do the research and build the vehicles. NASA shouldn't be gutted (on the contrary, I think its budget should still be increased), but its role needs to be looked at.

Not sure why you were modded down. Companies like Orbital (formally Fairchild) already build most of NASA's hardware anyway. Might as well make it official, know what I mean?

Overheard in Sen. Shelby's office

[schmidt349]

Screw you guys! I'm gonna build my own space launcher, with blackjack and hookers! In fact, forget the blackjack!

spacex

[strack]

with the successful launch of the falcon 9 recently, its a nail in the coffin of these really quite bad launch vehicles.

A billion dollars...

[Necron69]

Would have bought us two more SpaceX's and four more new rockets, based on what SpaceX has spent in their 8 years or so of existance.

NASA's Constellation program is a massive budget boondoggle.

Stick a fork in it....

Necron69

Re: NASA to cut back on Constellation

[pnewhook]

This is a great example of how NASA is trying to cut a wasteful program but is having its hands tied by Republican senators with solely their own selfish interests in mind and not caring about the usefulness of the end output. I can't remember the exact number but something like over 90% of the NASA budget is mandated of where it is spent by congress and the NASA administrator has no control over it. NASA has no choice but to be inefficient when saddled with restrictions like that.

NASA would be far more effective if it wasn't mandated by law to keep current contracts in place. Constellation was mandated by Bush, is completely unrealistic and unsustainable, and they are trying to terminate it which is what any fiscally responsible organization, public or private would do. However senators are passing stupid laws to prevent them from taking the right path. ,

Re: NASA to cut back on Constellation

[Skarecrow77]

You are correct except for your knee-jerk desire to place blame on a single party. BOTH parties pull as much pork money into their states as possible, and in this case as many of the NASA contracts are in states that tend to vote republican, it happens to be republican senators pushing this particular issue... but do some reading on the subject and you'll find that there are plenty of democrats in the same situation with NASA contracts in their states as well.

Polictics is politics. No matter what team you're on, you play the same game. Political parties matter about as much as uniform colors. You root for the burgandy and gold team, I root for the yellow and black team.