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."

Comments

Senator Kay Hutchinson, representing Texas

[elrous0]

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.

Re:Senator Kay Hutchinson, representing Texas

[DanielRavenNest]

In other words, "hands off my pork, dammit!".

Re:Senator Kay Hutchinson, representing Texas

[fatboy]

It is about "all that shit". No bucks, no Buck Rogers.

Re:Senator Kay Hutchinson, representing Texas

[elrous0]

Yeah, except it's the Republican senator in this case arguing for the government to build it. The Democrat President wants to privatize it.

That's how hypocrisy works with all politicians. And yes, "all" includes YOUR guy too.

Re:Senator Kay Hutchinson, representing Texas

[sneakyimp]

There were so many things backward about this I thought it was opposite day, not valentine's day: a Republican from Texas arguing for more spending by the federal government instead of privatization -- for science! WTF?

Thanks for bringing the facts.

Re:Senator Kay Hutchinson, representing Texas

[trongey]

In other words, "hands off my pork, dammit!".

Which is why we should only elect Jews and Muslims. They hate pork.

Re:Senator Kay Hutchinson, representing Texas

[TC Wilcox]

Both of the two major US political parties are mostly hypocritical. They just pander to different groups to get in power.

Re:Senator Kay Hutchinson, representing Texas

[pixelpusher220]

Since when have Dem's (or Obama) ever said the government is the only way to do things?

The GOP has been saying government is the entire problem with America since at least the Reagan era...

Re:Senator Kay Hutchinson, representing Texas

[Hoi Polloi]

The GOP has been saying government is the entire problem with America since at least the Reagan era...

Unless it is the FBI, CIA, military, TSA, corporate subsidies, etc.

Re:Senator Kay Hutchinson, representing Texas

[ArcherB]

In other words, "hands off my pork, dammit!".

Do you consider NASA to be pork? I mean, sure, if rocket parts is made in six different states and assembled in a seventh, then we are talking about pork. But that's not what we are talking about here. Do you think Mission Control is pork?

Re:Senator Kay Hutchinson, representing Texas

[ArcherB]

It is hypocritical coming from the party that say government is not good at *anything*, and that privatization is *always* the best route.

Republicans say "smaller" government, not "no" government. They also say that government is "inefficient", not "never" the best route.

If you don't want conservatives to say that liberals *always* do this that or the other or that all liberals are X, then don't do the same or else YOU are the one being hypocritical.

So, please, allow me, as a conservative to FTFY:

Government is usually inefficient compared to the private sector, but there are some things that private industries should not control. NASA and the military are two good examples.

Re:Senator Kay Hutchinson, representing Texas

[MightyYar]

They are almost exactly the same. The only things they uniformly disagree on are the "wedge issues" like gay marriage and abortion. Since most wedge issues (like abortion) are, as a practical matter, off the table and forever stuck in status quo - this makes them the same for all practical purposes. It's a team sport - which team are YOU on? LOL.

Re:Senator Kay Hutchinson, representing Texas

[hey!]

Well, look. The SLS program is projected to cost 18 billion in design costs through 2017, and an additional 23 billion to achieve four launches by 2025, with the full 130 metric ton capability coming some time after 2030.

Elon Musk says he can have a *150 MT* heavy launch vehicle ready in *five years* at *fixed price* of 2.5 billion, with a per-flight cost of around 300 million. And thus far SpaceX has shown it isn't just blowing smoke.

So why the heck are we taking only 175 million away from SLS? Why don't we give the private contractor *500 million a year* in return for a for a reasonable shot at getting the job done thirteen years sooner? Because this is not about getting job done. It's about keeping the spending on the program high for the indefinite future.

If SpaceX succeeded in building a heavy launch vehicle in five years for 2.5 billion, it's not going to be possible to even *pretend* to justify spending a couple of billion dollars per year over the next seven to twelve years on a system that will cost more to operate.

Re:Senator Kay Hutchinson, representing Texas

[ThePiMan2003]

Is it still not pork if we don't need the military base, but we want it in $SENATOR's home state so there is more cash in the area?

Re:Senator Kay Hutchinson, representing Texas

[DanielRavenNest]

Developing outer space for human habitation is useful. Requiring funding of an expensive launcher based on Space Shuttle technology, which is over 30 years old at this point, is pork.

Re:Senator Kay Hutchinson, representing Texas

[DanielRavenNest]

Do you think Mission Control is pork?

Actually, yes it is, and I say that as a contractor who worked at the Johnson Space Center for a while. The old mission control (pre-1995) was set up to only handle the Space Shuttle, and they had 602 civil service staff working there. The new mission control replaced all the old consoles with newer ones based on DEC alpha computers to run the displays, and was set up to run both the Shuttle and Space Station, which was going to fly a few years later. Know how many jobs there were in the new mission control? 602, exactly the same. They designed it on purpose to preserve civil service jobs. That is pork.

How many NASA centers were closed after the Apollo program ended, and NASA funding dropped by 2/3? Zero. Keeping those centers open, with an average of 400 support staff each (receptionists, the guys that mowed the lawns, etc) was more important than keeping the science and engineering people around. So the efficiency of the agency as a whole dropped dramatically. We are still paying that penalty today. They should have closed 2/3 of the centers, and cut overhead, but that would affect jobs in someone's district. You see the same resistance when it comes to military bases or post offices, anything that involves local jobs.

Re:Senator Kay Hutchinson, representing Texas

[yurtinus]

D'oh! Classic mistake.

You referred to Republican and Conservative like they're the same thing. Conservatives have a perfectly valid view of how government should work (small, local, and out of the way). Republicans want the same thing as Democrats do: a big powerful government that they can use to funnel money and business to their buddies. It's too bad that the conservative and liberal political philosophies have been aligned with the major political parties who have very little interest in following what they've co-opted.

Re:Senator Kay Hutchinson, representing Texas

[travbrad]

“The United States effectively has a one party system, the business party, with two factions, Republicans and Democrats” Noam Chomsky

Re:Senator Kay Hutchinson, representing Texas

[demachina]

Its not a "may have something". JSC is in Texas only because LBJ wanted it in Texas.

Sts a totally horrible idea to have so much geographic separation between the major centers involved in the manned space program, mainly Johnson, Kennedy and Marshall. As best I recall the horrible communication between Johnson and Kennedy was a direct contributor to the Columbia disaster.

I wouldn't be at all surprised if the Morton Thiokol team would have done a better job of stopping the Challenger launch if everyone had been sitting in the same room when they were trying to stop the launch.

Its a massive waste of precious time making everyone travel so much, it saps energy, it wastes money on travel expenses and duplicative administrative overhead running so many centers, it creates a bunch of feuding fiefdoms and turf wars, and its just devestating on effective communication.

Backup?

[0123456]

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.

Re:Backup?

[ModernGeek]

SLS isn't only a "backup". It will be the primary means of launching heavy materials and vehicles beyond orbit for deep space missions. It is only intended as a backup if the commercial services aren't able to provide a launch to the space station.

Granted, it is an expensive backup, but the commercial launch companies are proving themselves as we speak. Commercial access to a space station has been theorized since the 1960s when 2001: A Space Odyssey was released, now it's becoming a reality.

Re:Backup?

[FatLittleMonkey]

SLS isn't only a "backup". It will be the primary means of launching heavy materials and vehicles beyond orbit for deep space missions

What "heavy materials and vehicles"?

No such missions are funded. No such vehicles are funded.

"Backing up" commercial launches, at $1.5 billion per launch, is the only mission SLS has.

Re:Backup?

[TooMuchToDo]

Granted, it is an expensive backup, but the commercial launch companies are proving themselves as we speak.

Bullshit. SpaceX has already proven itself, as the only private company to orbit a vehicle. Falcon Heavy? Ahead of schedule. SLS? Still a dream.

Why are we giving the government more money to waste? Privatize what you can, aggressive fund R&D and not pork.

Re:Backup?

[Blackjax]

You're kidding yourself if you believe that the SLS is truly about fielding a rocket. There are very few people intimately familiar with the space industry (outside those with a vested interest in saying so) who believe it will ever fly. Massive NASA projects like this get canceled before completion, the history of the last 35 years has been almost completely consistent about this. The ISS is the sole exception and that squeaked past by the only the thinnest of margins despite bringing in international partners and using it as a means to keep certain kinds of technical talent in Russia legitimately gainfully employed in the decade following the fall of the USSR. The supporters of SLS know quite well it won't run to completion, but they don't support it for what it could do for US space capabilities, they do it because for however long they string it along, it means jobs in their districts, influx of capital to their districts, and it provides a way to funnel funds to particular contractors. Once it gets canceled, they just rig up a new project targeted to sound impressive to the sheeple in the general public who don't know enough about space to realize this but who are generally willing to support NASA.

Moreover the whole idea that heavy lift of some arbitrarily high size is 'required to do human exploration beyond LEO' is just the fig leaf they use as an excuse, banking on the fact that the general public will never doublecheck and find out that it is completely false. Heavy lift is not at all required. Don't believe me, have a listen to this NASA conference call on the subject:

Logistics and Operations versus Heavy Lift: Examining Approaches to Human Exploration in a Cost-Constrained Era
http://spirit.as.utexas.edu/~fiso/telecon/Akin_12-14-11/

If we need heavier lift than is available right now, we'll have the Falcon Heavy from SpaceX available in 2-3 years and I'd be willing to bet that the ULA could field the heavier versions of the Delta IV and Atlas V that they have on the drawing boards 3ish years after NASA commits to needing them. Neither of these options costs NASA tens of billions of dollars or a decade of work...which is precisely why congress doesn't like them.

NASA could be doing a lot of cool stuff in space both cheaper and sooner, but from a congressional standpoint that is not what NASA dollars are for.

Republicans for Big Government

[bit trollent]

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.

Re:Republicans for Big Government

[Nadaka]

Its a reference to their constant and unending desire to interfere with peoples sex lives.

Re:Republicans for Big Government

[Dhalka226]

It probably came from the West Wing episode The Portland Trip [s2.e07], and quite frankly it's more insightful that way.

As far as "play[ing] telephone," the air date of the episode in question was 11/15/2000, which looks like it predates Norquist's quote, the earliest date for which that I have found is mid 2001 with citations as far out as 2004. Perhaps Norquist was the one playing telephone. Or perhaps you're just playing "taking shots at people for no reason?"

Why Should NASA Develop a Commercial Rocket

[fortfive]

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.

Re:Why Should NASA Develop a Commercial Rocket

[FatLittleMonkey]

But I have not heard any sound justification for public funding of commercial development.

NASA has a space station, ISS, run jointly with international partners. With the end of the shuttle program, NASA has no ability to launch crew or equipment to the ISS, and must purchase flights on a foreign launcher. The cost of seats has increased sharply since NASA became dependent, and the reliability of the foreign launch vehicle has decreased sharply. Each time the foreign launcher is grounded for safety reasons, there's a risk that the ISS will have to be abandoned because there is no alternative vehicle, and their capsule cannot land in winter. And NASA has no control over them, or any way to enforce standards.

So NASA is spending less than a billion dollars on subsidising (but not fully funding) four US commercial crew launchers, and two cargo launchers. That enables them to bring forward the first commercial crew flights, and gives them a powerful guarantee that the commercial systems will meet NASA's requirements. Judging by SpaceX prices, this will, in the long term, at least halve the cost of launching US astronauts to the ISS compared to the foreign launcher.

Once developed, some of the commercial players may also carry tourist flights and non-NASA funded science flights. This creates a secondary market that, from NASA point of view, subsidises the continued development of launch capacity to NASA's benefit.

Importantly, if any of the four commercial players do not meet NASA's goals, they will not be paid.

By contrast, NASA is spending $3 billion per year on commercial contractors to build NASA's own SLS launcher and MPCV capsule. This will likely launch no more than twice per year at about $1.5 billion per launch, and carry no more than 4 astronauts per year. It is estimated to cost about $70 billion to develop, and launch crew no earlier than 2021, assuming it doesn't go over-schedule or over-budget. (Prior to its cancellation, the schedule of the previous program, Constellation, was slipping 1 year per year.)

All risks of this project are NASA's, all cost overruns come out of NASA's budget.

So the issue is which of these two approaches is the most cost effective way for NASA to fulfil it's goals on the limited budget it is given.

Advocates of Commercial Crew believe that being able to develop four new commercial carriers on a budget of $200 million per year each, is much more cost effective than developing one launcher on a budget of $3,000 million per year. Thus cancelling SLS and directing it's $3 billion per year budget to CCDev style goal-driven development will allow NASA to leverage a much greater capacity for BEO missions.

Hope that helps.

Re:Why Should NASA Develop a Commercial Rocket

[queazocotal]

I note that the development cost of SLS up to the first launch is $18B.
Assuming modest savings if you order that amount of SpaceX's Falcon Heavy, you can with the same money launch spacestation components for a station ten times the mass of ISS, ten times the mass of all the Apollo missions. and have room left over!

(Around 20000 tons)

Re:Why Should NASA Develop a Commercial Rocket

[k6mfw]

NASA should not develop a commercial rocket but do research and provide test facilities for commercial rocket companies. Like what its predecessor N.A.C.A did in the 20th century. They did not develop commercial airplanes but did research and provided test facilities for commercial (USA) airplane companies.

Useful publication for aero people is the NACA 1135 "Equations, tables, and charts for compressible flow" which was very tedious to compile from numerous flight tests and wind tunnel measurements, all done at government expense (private companies would either be too cheap to do this or keep it locked up from everyone), download the 12MB pdf here, http://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/BGH/Images/naca1135.pdf

But then there ain't much money in doing research ( the kind of work where "alchemists" and other assorted mad scientists do stuff that either nobody knows what they are doing or simply lack intellect to appreciate what they are doing).

Only some

[SuperKendall]

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?

Re:Only some

[bit trollent]

It's the blatant hypocrisy that kills me.

When it's time for government to help the country out of a recession or help the poor get into the middle class we're "all out of money"

Every time sensible policies come up for a vote, Republicans all vote in unison, "We can't afford it".

Bridges - we can't afford it. Schools - we can't afford it. Compasion - we can't afford it.

Every single Republican. Almost every single time.

Yet, when their campaign contributors or pet causes come up, all the rhetoric they used to sabotage the recovery goes out the window, and government is the only answer.

Re:Only some

[Myopic]

Yeah, only "some", such as 100% of Republicans ever elected to office.

I dare you -- dare you -- to tell me the last Republican President who cut the budget during his term in office. I dare you.

Republicans always, always grow the budget faster than Democrats. Always. Not just do they grow the government, they always grow it faster than Democrats.

But hey, you know, after 75 years of being lied to, maybe THIS TIME Republicans will pick a President who won't be a gigantic hypocrite. I doubt it, but hey, anything is possible.

Commercial development has one purpose only: SPEED

[robot256]

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.

Re:Commercial development has one purpose only: SP

[elrous0]

I don't know what Sen. Hutchison is smoking

She's on the pork. Stuff is worse than crack.

I may be misunderstanding this...

[roc97007]

...but shouldn't commercial spacecraft be backed up by other commercial spacecraft?

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.

Lets' not forget

[publiclurker]

who can marry who.

Re:Simple solution to make everyone happy

[queazocotal]

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.