House Passes NASA Authorization Bill

simonbp writes "The US House of Representatives has just passed the Senate version of the FY2011 NASA Authorization Act. This bill is a compromise between Obama's proposed budget and earlier House bills. It cancels Ares I in favor of commercially-operated crew transportation to ISS, adds technology development funds, and keeps a version of Orion and a new heavy-lift 'Space Launch System' to both be operational by 2016. The timing of this bill was crucial to keeping key NASA personnel and contractors from being laid off."

Comments

Budget or 'plan'?

[MozeeToby]

So does this bill include a realistic budget to actually accomplish these goals or is it just "oh yeah, we support NASA 100%" political pandering? Last version of the bill I read about included keeping the shuttle program going with no additional launches and no additional funding, just moving money from some other NASA program and pay people who won't be doing any real work.

Re:Budget or 'plan'?

[tnk1]

Political pandering. However, sometimes they make mistakes in the bills and particularly resourceful people actually manage to get things done in spite of the best efforts of Congress.

Unfortunately, for something more complex than some unmanned missions and face-saving missions to the ISS, we're probably going to need a new enemy and a new Space Race, and the terrorists aren't going to cut it. That or a hundred more years of incremental improvement to the point that orbital flight is so cheap we can do it without the government. Sad.

Re:Budget or 'plan'?

[strack]

ok. i need to put a end to this. a launch loop is fucking ridiculous. you dont realize how difficult a problem it is to have 1000km of cable flying around in magnetic suspension in a vacuum at mach 25. and cornering at mach 25. and then hanging things off it to launch. nothings impossible, but this is really fucking close. and will end up a hell of a lot more expensive than conventional rockets. the nuclear rocket would be nice, if people werent such pussies about nuclear material on a rocket. the laser rocket design that heats up hydrogen with lasers from the ground with a heat exchanger is quite the excellent idea. most of the advantages of the nuclear approach with none of the political queasiness. i personally like the idea of the rail launched scramjet first stage that flys back, with a reusable second stage that launches when the scramjet stage reaches the edge of the envelope.

A constant problem in NASA

[dkleinsc]

The basic problem is this: Projects in NASA take longer than a president will be in office.

So presidents will announce some grand new space project that will take a decade. The next president, in the name of budget cuts, cuts the project. Then, in order to placate the pro-NASA folks, announces some other grand new space project that will take a decade. And of course the grand new space projects never get completed.

As far as the congressional representation, they're primary concern with NASA is directing as much of the activity as possible to their congressional districts. For instance, Ohio's representation will do their best to ensure that more work gets done at Glenn in Cleveland, while Texas's folks try to get the work done in Houston.

Re:A constant problem in NASA

[Thanshin]

The basic problem is this: Projects in NASA take longer than a president will be in office.

The basic problem is that commercial (practical uses) and scientific (pure investigation) exploration shouldn't be tied. Furthermore, space exploration/investigation shouldn't be tied to a government.

NASA should separate into practical and scientific. Then, after the ESA and other space agencies have done the same, the scientific divisions should join in a United Space Agency (with a different name, but you know what I mean).

Re:A constant problem in NASA

[JeffSpudrinski]

There were only two reasons that the USA reached the moon:

1) the president that announced the initiative had been popular and was assasinated. That happening made him a national hero and they did it for his legacy. Saying anything negative about JF Kennedy was politically unpopular in the 1960's, and no politician wanted to be the one accused of causing NASA to not reach the moon by 1970.
2) the "space race" against the Russians. Once the race had been "won", there wasn't any emphasis on continuing...no matter how valuable the science and research was.

The public lost interest. If it hadn't been for the drama of Apollo 13, the project would never have made it to 17 missions. It's a shame the program ended since those astronauts are/were among the bravest and smartest people alive.

Just my $0.02.

-JJS

Re:A constant problem in NASA

[Thanshin]

One day we'll invent this magical system of "getting things done outside of the government", but I guess until then, we'll be stuck with having the government run everything.

Doing things requires work. Work is made by people. People ask for money in exchange for their work. There are limited sources of money:

1 - Other people. Insufficient amounts unless you can make a very large number of individuals pay.

2 - Corporations. Wont't invest without a defined ROI, which isn't clear in pure space exploration.

3 - Governments.

So, as you sarcastically refer to non-government based financiation, are you implying you've got a ROI to offer to corporations? Or you have an idea to get a lot of people to donate money for space exploration.

If you have the answer to either of those, you're welcome to share it.

Keep NASA personal

[zero_out]

The timing of this bill was crucial to keeping key NASA personal and contractors from being laid off.

I've found that if you want to keep an organization personal, you can't have many contractors in it. Permanent employees tend to be more invested in the organization, which fosters a more personal culture. Contractors have a tendency to come and go, and act more like vendors than members.

Great

[Low Ranked Craig]

Nasa gets less that 1% of the budget, while Medicare, Social Security and Welfare get 57%, Defense gets 19% and the interest on the debt is 5%.

Do you see the problem here?

Re:Great

[wjousts]

Nope. Different things cost different amounts of money. I don't see throwing 57% of the budget at NASA being a good idea either.

Re:Great

[Thanshin]

Nasa gets less that 1% of the budget, while Medicare, Social Security and Welfare get 57%, Defense gets 19% and the interest on the debt is 5%.

Do you see the problem here?

Yes. Someone should've played more Civilization.

With 19% in Defense USA should've invaded at the very least his own continent. And 1% in research isn't going to get them to Alpha Centauri any time soon.

Lower research to 0%, lower all health to 5% (no need for so much pop anyway) move everything else to defense and go for the domination victory before the japanese start deploying giant robots.

Re:Great

[gad_zuki!]

>Do you see the problem here?

That we spend so much of our money killing brown people for no good reason? Seriously, Bush's decision to invade Iraq cost us Constellation. Blame him. At least we have all those WMDs to justify it. Oh wait.

Re:Great

[wjousts]

Oh come on. Clearly the US has been going for a culture victory since it built the Hollywood wonder.

Re:Great

[gad_zuki!]

>I don't think the Iraq invasion was the problem.

Cost of Iraq war 750 BILLION dollars. NASA's annual budget floats a bit under 20 billion. That's 30+ years of NASA, genius.

>Strange. All the "brown people" you claim that we are killing were quite happy to see me when I was over there in camouflage.

Loss of life: over 100+k CIVILIANS. Yes, the people there were happy to see you because they're alive and are afraid to piss off the guy with the gun. The angry ones, alas, are dead. If a military from a powerful country which killed all your leaders and 100k of your pals waltzed into your town, you'd grinning ear to ear too.

Re:Great

[gad_zuki!]

>That's $750 billion over eight years, and it's still less than what the government wasted on a single "stimulus" bill.

My point is that a war of lies cost us 750 billion dollars. That's a significant amount of money and the two wars as well as the tax cut have put this country into ruin. The stimulus is icing on the cake. Your Fox News talking points aren't convincing, sorry. Ignoring what was spent on these wars when discussing the federal budget is being disingenuous. It all comes from the same pool. I'm not even going to mention how defense spending, in general, is out of control and is why we can't have nice things.

>Constellation was still being funded through the Iraq war.

BECAUSE WE WERE DEFICIT SPENDING. It was not at all affordable. Can you grok the simple concept of not being able to spend money you don't have? Or what debt is? Constellation was a PR move by the Bush administration. If you can't pay for something without going deeply into debt you can't afford it.

>Let's see, if my leaders had ruined my country and raped my daughters, I think I welcome those 100,000 waltzers.

Because in this scenario you have the luxury of being alive. 100+ THOUSAND people died over Bush's cooked intelligence. This is something to be outraged about, not cavalierly justifying it as some kind of kindly humanitarian mission. I pity you if you believe that.

Re:Great

[hey!]

See a problem? I do. You're lumping welfare and social security together. That makes no sense; not only are they very different programs, they are financially different animals.

It also misleadingly suggests that half our budget is going to welfare queens. That is simply not possible. The total budget of Administration for Families and Children (otherwise known as welfare) for 2011 is 17.48 billion, which is actually less than the 18.7 billion outlay in the fiscal year for NASA.

Medicaid is a big program, but still nowhere near 50% of the budget. For FY 2011, the Medicaid budget is 297 billion. Medicare is even bigger at 491 billion. If you added up Medicaid, Medicare and welfare, you still less than the money spent on defense, so these can hardly break the 50% of the budget mark.

To do that, you have to add social security into the mix, but that's inherently misleading from a budget balancing standpoint. Social Security brings in income. A *lot* of income. In fact it runs a surplus. To get an accurate picture, you have to look at both the expense *and* income side.

Here are the top sources of income in the US budget (in billions of dollars):

Individual Income Taxes: 1,121 or 43.7%.
Social Security(payroll) Taxes: 934 or 36.4%.
Corporate Income Taxes: 297 or 11.6%.
Excise Taxes: 80 or 3.12%.
Federal Reserve Deposits:79 or 3.08%.
Customs Duties:29 or 1.13%.
Estate Taxes: 24 or 0.94%.
Everything Else (roughly): 10 or 0.39%.

See the problem? Since Social Security expenditures are 730 billion, if you waved a magic wand and made that program disappear, you'd add 204 billion dollar to the budget deficit. That's on the same order of magnitude as *all corporate taxes* added up. It's fairly safe to say that without the Social Security surplus, there wouldn't be 18+ billion dollars lying around to spend on NASA.

If we had a sensible approach to this, we'd set social security to one side and offset the cash influx with the expected liability for future payments. Then we'd invest the surplus in an instrument that paid interest, the goal being to ensure the cash flow remains balanced over the lifetime of the bulk of the people in the system.

But we don't do that. Instead we wring our hands about an entirely foreseeable and manageable problem, then take the money that could deal with that problem, the working man's 204 billion dollar contribution to deficit reduction, and throw into things that don't benefit him. But to truthful if we did manage the social security surplus responsibly, there probably wouldn't be money for NASA under that scenario either.

Now it *is* a politically conceivable scenario to get rid of Social Security and Medicaid (the notion of Medicare going away is fantasy). The 200 billion in surplus lost would be more than offset by 297 reduction in outlays. But if you think that anything like a proportionate share of that 97 billion dollars is going back into your pocket, you're either dreaming, or a member of a very small group of very wealthy people. So in that scenario, the working guy loses the programs that provide him security against tough times, but the programs that benefit the wealthy aren't going anywhere.

Re:Great

[gad_zuki!]

>Tax cuts INCREASED government receipts, not decreased them.

Unpaid tax cuts add to the deficit, period. You can theorize about external forces, but there's no proof that supply-side economics works. In fact, its highly controversial and assuming it does shows your bias.

>So tell me, why are still railing on Bush and not saying a word about the 4x increase in deficit spending AND NASA cuts?

Because they are 100% related. Constellation was never planned in an affordable way. Its a heavy spending Bush-era program that needed to be cut as its 100% unfeasible and the little progress that was made . The stimulus is outside the scope of criticism as I'm discussing Bush era programs and inhereted debt from the Bush years. Bush spent our surplus on a war of lies (no wmd's were found).

Don't think you conservatives can just get rid of the Bush years. You'll forever be wearing them as an albatross around your neck. His choice to enter the Iraq war and give out tax cuts he couldn't afford cost us a lot of nice things, not limited to NASA.

>I pity anyone who will take the ill informed word of The Daily Kos or Democrat Underground

I read neither site. I'm giving facts (deaths of civillians, real dollar cost) and you're giving me Bush-era propaganda "We freed them, dont ask about WMD" and Reagen-era supply-side economics bullshit. Again, I will reiterate my point. The Iraq war cost us 35 years of NASA's budget. We sold out future generations and current programs to pay for it.

Badastronomy blog on bill

[gad_zuki!]

So, it looks like the GOP fought tooth and nail against privatizing spaceflight because they wanted to brink the pork home and more or less are dictating rocket design to NASA. Juicy bits here:

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2010/09/30/congress-passes-nasa-authorization-bill-but-id-rather-watch-sausages-being-made/

What really galled me, though, was that several Republicans blamed Obama for NASA's current mess, including Ralph Hall (R-TX, remember him?). This is grossly and demonstrably unfair and untrue. Rep. John Culberson (R-TX) hammered over and again the idea that Obama is trying to kill the manned space program. That is not true, and in fact the current situation (including the five year gap between the Shuttle and any follow-on rocket system) started in the Bush Administration. Constellation has been in trouble for some time, behind schedule and over-budget. I'm of the opinion that Obama's plan to defund Constellation does not kill the manned space program as Culberson said it will. I have written about this repeatedly: far from killing it, this new direction may save NASA from the mess it finds itself in right now.

What's weird is how Culberson used the bogeyman of Obama to try to gain sympathy for the bill, saying that a yes vote on the bill would stop Obama's plan to dismantle NASA. I find that odd, as much of the bill aligns with Obama's plan for NASA, including defunding Constellation and promoting a new rocket system*. Moreover, I want to point out that Obama's plan, and this bill, funds private space concerns (like SpaceX, which is preparing to launch its Falcon 9 rocket which will be man-rated and capable of flights to the space station). You'd think Republicans would support this, as they have a mantra of privatizing health care, social security, and so many other government efforts. However, many Republicans don't like private space companies. An exception I must note was Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), who spoke up about funding private space efforts and how important it is. On most issues he and I disagree strongly, but on this one we agree.

Re:NASA is dead

[gad_zuki!]

Pardon me, but from the timestamp on your comment its obvious that you didn't read shit about this bill before posting some inflammatory garbage that only helps bring down the SNR here.

The facts are the NASA was dying under Bush. Constellation was 100% unaffordable and on top of that falling behind with delays and budget overruns. Neither Clinton or Bush properly planned for the post space shuttle era. Obama is now tasked to keep NASA alive via privatization of easy launches to the ISS and building a new capsule and rocket for an asteroid mission 15 years from now. Its not 1967. Private industry can handle lofting meatbags to the ISS. Government should be doing what private industry can't.

This bill is a very interesting look into how our times have changed. Yes, it would be nice if it had more money attached to it, but we kinda spent our cash on tax cuts for the rich and two wars under Bush. You can't have nice things if you keep going into debt over war and cuts for people who don't need them.