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Congress Warns NASA About Shortchanging SLS/Orion For Commercial Crew
FleaPlus writes "NASA and the White House have officially released their FY2013 budget proposal, the first step of the Congressional budget process. As mentioned previously on Slashdot, the proposal decreases Mars science funding (including robotic Mars missions) down to $361M, arguably due in part to cost overruns by the Webb telescope. The proposal also lowers funding for the in-house SLS rocket and Orion capsule to $2.8B, while doubling funding for the ongoing competitive development of commercial crew rockets/vehicles to $830M. The ranking member of the Senate science committee, Sen. Hutchison (R-TX), expressed her frustration with 'cutting SLS and Orion to pay for commercial crew,' as it would allegedly make it impossible for SLS to act as a backup for the commercial vehicles."
Texas, home state of NASA's Johnson Space Center, much of NASA's manned space program, and about 12,000 NASA jobs. A state that, unlike its counterpart in Florida, is solidly red and at open war with the President. So surprise, surprise most of the NASA stuff the President wants to cut is in Texas, and the Texas Senators are fighting him on it. Relevant article on the subject.
Just thought I would point that out in case any of you are actually still naive enough to think this debate is about science, exploration, and all that shit.
In other news, Texas and Alaskan Senators say oil industry is "over-regulated," midwestern Senators defend corn subsidies, and Michigan Senators defend auto bailout.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Spending vast billions on a rocket which will only be a 'backup' for commercial launches makes as much sense as building a new aircraft the size of a C-5 Galaxy from scratch and maintaining a special airport it will fly from as a 'backup' in case NASA employees can't book a flight on a commercial airline.
It should be called RETARD - Redundant Expensive Terrible Alternative Rocked Device
They need a lesson from Neil Tyson on what NASA means to America`s future. Here it is:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQhNZENMG1o
In years past, we defeated them on our soil. Now, the fight to starve the robotic invaders of funding advances to the blue world itself:
KBREEL: Kay Bailey (R)'s Expensive Electoral Largesse
Wait.. so now Republicans are the ones pushing for government built spacecraft while Obama and the Democrats fund corporate space travel.
I thought Republicans wanted government to be just big enough to fit in your bedroom. When did building spaceships get added to the list of things Republicans think government should do instead of private industry?
I've got a feeling government contractors like Lockheed martin have given generous "campaign contributions" to every Republican politician pushing for government spacecraft construction, with government sized profit margins for their chosen defense contractors.
So, yet another case of a "cut cut cut" Republican who stands forthrightly to protect her district from cuts.
Move along, nothing to see here.
I'm all for funding NASA, so many good and not directly things have come from our space program, plus it's just darn cool. But I have not heard any sound justification for public funding of commercial development. This has happend many times in the pharmaceuticals industry, where public funded basic research provided excellent treatments which private firms then took over and distributed (profiting immensely), without giving back to public coffers. Also, I think this happened with broadband funding in the 90s.
Yes, some Republicans are for big government.
We already knew that from those that voted for the various stimulus packages.
The Tea Party is attempting to weed them out.
No real fiscal conservative thinks using NASA as a backup for the commercial entities makes prudent financial sense.
The thing is there are examples just like this across the nation from both Republicans and Democrats. Why are the Democrats not decried when they pull exactly the same stunts?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Fuck these pork loving congressional bastards. We don't need SLS at all. It makes absolutely no sense to spent all that money developing a launch system that's probably going to be more expensive and less reliable than what we can simply buy from the market.
Straight from the horse's mouth: The whole reason they want to increase the funding for commercial vehicles is so they can keep more than a couple competing companies in the running. The goal of course is to have multiple systems working in the end, which isn't going to happen if we start picking winners before they've even launched anything. Republicans should know that better than anyone, seeing how much they gloated over the Solyndra affair. The truth is that industry is much better equipped than the government to get something working and in orbit, given that all the underlying research has been done already, in order to get American astronauts back in American spacecraft as quickly as possible.
Plus, I don't know what Sen. Hutchison is smoking, but the part of SLS (also known as the "Senate Launch System") that remains funded is the smaller version of the rocket which is good for low Earth orbit--precisely the part that can be used as a backup to the commercial system(s). Hopefully cooler heads will prevail and the committee won't gut what's left of the Mars budget to fund their local firecracker factory.
Someday, these needy peoples might become the world saviors, it happens all the time in Hollywood movies.
I don't know what Sen. Hutchison is smoking
She's on the pork. Stuff is worse than crack.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
.... check out how long it has been since Congress has passed a budget...
Rather than fight over scraps of funding, increase NASA's budget to $23 billion and let them go at it. You cannot be honest in wanting a moon rocket on a shuttle budget.
Were I being snarky, I might point out that backing up, say, Virgin Galactic with Orion seems a lot like backing up Fedex Overnight with the US Post Office.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Yes! The SLS is a big waste of money, they should completely gut it, keep the small part of it that is actually useful, and use the rest to support other programs and/or commercial space flight. This is a rare time when I am happy with Obama's decisions. At least as I understand his space policy....
who can marry who.
The Obama administration claims to be for the middle class. That's the rhetoric anyway. But we are cutting 100,000 middle class jobs (Army and Marines), we are cutting science across the board (NASA, Science Grants, Education Grants).
I keep hoping that people wake up, and get rid of these corrupt politicians. But the TV keeps telling everyone how great they are since they own the media. Sheople are so disappointing.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
NASA is pork, it's just that you like it so you feel that you are entitled to that particular cut of piggie.
Looks like another tug in the Tug of War for the future of NASA happened again.
Problem is Webb been a problem brewing in the pot for years, if not longer. It maybe last of big legacy projects that was coming up to each budget. But it will be spectacular (provided it works right.). Depending on whom gets control of the government in 2013, we'll see if NASA will continue its experiment in commerical space taxi services.
Only thing is, Congress keeps swiving to politics with no direction. It wants SLS to keep big companies in the respective elective representative's states happy.
With the ISS up in orbit, NASA can't concentrate its financal resources with budget shrinking. I hope Webb doesn't continue to drain NASA's coffers too badly.
With reduction in budget to do deep space missions, there no point to the SLS. If we had a renewable, refuelable interplanetary spacecraft we could park in orbit where Astronauts could go up to when they get funded for mission to any place we'd want send them. Then everything would change. Only problem is Nasa can't get anything built without it be sabatoged by politics. Private space exploration is going be only way anything going be done with US's polarized political climate.
Money can buy all, not? Why the dispute?
Govt can sell their NASA's blueprints to e-Bay lords, not?
JCPM: if they told me that all has price then why can't from NASA's? "Dollar" was the authority over all things in U.S. and some overseas of the world
Been going on for years...cut cut cut, and NASA in the "old" days got it done. Now, I seriously doubt they could launch a bottle rocket without 10 meetings, a dozen redesigns, etc. John Glenn (or one of the original 7) said it best. "What do you think about when you're afraid, when you're just ready to launch?" The standard answer in the astronaut corps -- and I think everyone claims parentage -- is, "How do you think you'd feel if you knew you were on top of two million parts built by the lowest bidder in a government contract?"
NASA is intra-collapsed (too many pending projects) <-- more & more & more & .. until saturated that the U.S. budget can't cover it!.
NASA has now many things of its history that have become obsolete or unusable, and without exit for sale of their excesses's things. It's as a giant black hole in the NASA that is not recycled for the U.S. nation. NASA had much entering arrows, but none of exiting arrows for the U.S. market. It's as if NASA didn't provide "one dollar" of their obsolete technologies (paid by the U.S. govt) to the U.S. market.
NASA = Pluto's Cave Myth with a trash of non-for-sale unusable things inside.
JCPM: uncollapsing it could be an interesting idea, but downto what price? (it regards me to the brazilian coffee problem a century ago, and they should sorry when they have to remove some of their exceeded pending projects that won't be executed finally, or will be suspended temporally, cancelled or decommisioned)
Monday is the half century since John Glenn orbited the Earth. Fortunately John has Betty White genes and still with us after long career in public service. The sad thing is that John's career may bookend the US manned space program. He saw both the beginning and probably it end for along while.
So we sacrifice one of the most successful and promising scientific project of this century, to fund something that should be privately funded all the while wasting 2.8B on the SLS/Orion Flying Pork (except I doubt it will ever fly).