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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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
who can marry who.
Money isn't always good.
If you want cargo delivered economically, you don't pick a design based around making a supersized carbon fibre version of a Delorian.
You want a vehicle designed from the ground up to keep costs low.
NASA has historically been extremely bad at this, for many reasons.
I'd vastly prefer SLS be axed, a billion spent on a kick-ass party for Congress, and the rest spent on actually doing stuff as inexpensively as possible.
You can do a hell of a lot more commercially at this point.
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.
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?"
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).
NASA is like my wife; no matter how well funded it is, it will always be broke. It will also always starve out the real science (robotic missions) in favor of idiotic manned space flight which are basically engineering stunts, not science. There should be two separate agencies, one for manned and the other for robotic missions so that the manned pork cannot starve out the unmmaned.