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

[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

[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

[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.

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?

[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?

[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.

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: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.

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.