Slashdot Mirror
House Representatives Working On NASA Reform Bill
MarkWhittington writes with good and bad news about NASA's future budgets. From the article: "Rep. John Culberson, along with Rep. Frank Wolf, are developing a bill that will attempt to rationalize NASA's budget process and provide some long term continuity in its administration. First, a NASA administrator would be named to a ten year term. The intent is to provide some continuity in the way the space agency is run and to remove it, as much as possible, from the vagaries of politics. Second, NASA funding would be placed on a multi-year rather than annual cycle. This is of particular importance to the space agency because the majority of its high level projects take several years to run their course. If funding were fixed for a number of years, the theory goes, money could be spent more efficiently. NASA planners would know how much they have to spend four or so years going forward and would not have to worry about being cut off at the knees by Congressional appropriators year after year."
But is it more than political grandstanding in an election year? There might be a few problems: NASA could get stuck with a bad administrator, multi-year budgets might be a bit unconstitutional, etc.
NASA Reform
Imagination reborn
Bureaucratic stubble
From features shorn
Burma Shave
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
If we can go 3 years with no Federal budget whatsoever and count it as "constitutional", I'm pretty sure we can finagle a multi-year budget or two.
..that NASA could get stuck wirg low levels of appropriations for years at a time. Sigh.
Silence is a state of mime.
If funding were fixed for a number of years, the theory goes, money could be spent more efficiently.
I can't figure out if this would encourage or discourage the "Gotta spend every penny this year or we'll lose the money permanently for all future years" behavior.
If a multi-year budget means you get $30M for a project, in total, spread across the entire project, then you don't have the headache of spending exactly 3 mil each year for a decade so it discourages wasteful spending at the end of the year. On the other hand if multi-year budget means that $3M is set in stone for all eternity then it encourages wasteful spending.
Since wasteful spending = votes I'm going to guess it is designed to increase waste.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Is a drop in the bucket.
The top 5 defense contractors all have larger revenues than NASA's entire budget. The US Army spent more on air conditioning tents and trailers in Iraq than NASA's entire annual budget.
Want to fix NASA's budget? Actually give them one.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
Stop the wars and spend 1% of what is spent on wars on NASA instead.
You can't handle the truth.
NASA has proposed reorganizing themselves as the "United Earth Directorate" and absorbing all legacy governments.
Good luck in 2012 America.
*ALL* those bastards care about is politics.
I wouldn't count on much of anything more substantive than renaming post offices to get through Congress for the foreseeable future.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
What happens if there is a higher than nominal inflation period in the interim time between the new longer budget cycle decision points? Could that be factored into the equation?
The purpose of existence is to make money.
If you do that they'll get out of space completely and do something else that turns a profit.
"Run X like a business" is simplistic bullshit unless the goal is to make money supplying something someone needs.
Oh great.
Sorry... when you think there is ONE system that works in all cases, you're the member of a cult.
Government agencies are not businesses. I have no problem with them getting other streams of income, but "the market" is not God. Not everything worth doing is going to make a profit, and when you start letting "the market" determine what is good for space exploration, you are at best going to have areas not explored and at worst dead astronauts.
Do you *really* think that the Republicans are not part of that problem.
Second, NASA funding would be placed on a multi-year rather than annual cycle.
It seems they have already been on that kind of funding for about 4 years now, seeing as Congress has failed in their Constitutional duty to pass a budget for 4 years...
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
Lots of it happening on both sides this summer. It'll dry up in a few months and most will go back to the golf games and fact-finding trips to the Caribbean.
...with a business model... ...with goods and services... ...and other sorts of incomes... ...like Patent Royalties on all the great discoveries they've made.
Add a CEO with bonuses and a golden-parachute (fake CV-es and imaginary diplomas are a bonus). Sprinkle with some creative accounting Enron style and dust copiously with patent suits (like Apple/Samsung/Oracle). Some patent/copyright trolling (maybe following the SCO model?) for a special flavour.
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
Is this going to have a rider mandating Faith Based Space Exploration?
If the administrator position were for a nominal 7-10 year term and had the authority to hire his successor at any time, it would make more sense.
The very best way to fix NASA is to privatize the budget amn management function entirely off-budget from the government and fund the government portion with a "block grant" to the NGO.
The entire problem with NASA is being married to Federal government rules and procedures.
JJ
The FBI actually needs this more than anyone else. It's a little known fact that the FBI is the only federal agency that has no charter-defined enforcement authority; all enforcement authority comes from the Attorney General. That means that they live and die in their latitude to investigate federal crimes by politics.
What we need is the FBI to receive a well defined grant of authority from Congress and to make them an independent agency unaccountable to the President. There is precedent for this; the US Marshals Service, until a few decades ago, didn't report to the President. It reported to the federal judiciary.
-First, a NASA administrator would be named to a ten year term. The intent is to provide some continuity in the way the space agency is run and to remove it, as
much as possible, from the vagaries of politics.
GOOD.
-Second, NASA funding would be placed on a multi-year rather than annual cycle. This is of particular importance to the space agency because the majority of its high level projects take several years to run their course. If funding were fixed for a number of years, the theory goes, money could be spent more efficiently. NASA planners would know how much they have to spend four or so years going forward and would not have to worry about being cut off at the knees by Congressional appropriators year after year."
EXTREMELY GOOD.
-But is it more than political grandstanding in an election year?
POSSIBLE. But that doesn't mean it shouldn't happen
-NASA could get stuck with a bad administrator
As a part of the executive branch, the president himself has oversight. Also, very unlikely; you dont get picked to run nasa if you're a bad manager
-multi-year budgets might be a bit unconstitutional
On what grounds?
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
So, make a clause in the multi-year contract that if the Administrator sucks and isn't doing his job, fire his ass and take the next guy in line.
Why should these positions be any different than any other employment?
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
Congresses idea of 'Reform' - cut spending on anything not related to the military, and give the money to the rich people as a tax cut.
No, they really aren't. http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/apr/20/three-years-and-no-senate-budget/?page=all
You can't fix your car with broken tools.
I like traffic lights
The CIA has had the same problem, actually--I have heard complaints from their people that the single biggest problem they had was the single-year budget process, and that multi-year budgeting would make their planning much, much, much easier.
-- IANAL, this isn't legal advice, and definitely isn't legal advice for you. Also, Squee!
OF course they aren't! They passed a budget in the house that donated 50 trillion dollars to Goldman Sachs, KBR, and their local constituents; paid for by closing the FDA, NEA, EPA, CMS, SSI, cancelling all first amendment rights for workers to peaceably assemble into unions, zeroing all taxes on people who make more than a million dollars, Iraqi Oil, etc.
It's entirely the Senate Democrats' fault for voting against it, instead of just rolling over and accepting whatever the Republicans dish out.
It's hard to take an author seriously if he rates growth of MBAs as progress in society.
If NASA changed their focus from exploring the Cosmos to searching for God, they would have no trouble getting multi-year funding.
Stop the wars and spend 1% of what is spent on wars on NASA instead.
you wouldn't spend even 1% of that on nasa, you would give it all back as tax breaks to the wealthiest in the country. don't sugar coat your agenda.
Beyond the fact that the sponsoring congressmen are Republicans? Oh.... I'm sorry, I guess we weren't supposed to know that.
Putting them on multi-year funding is how you turn NASA into the Department of Commerce, it is NOT how you go to Mars. The fact that NASA has to justify their spending each year, and stand before Congress to defend their programmatic problems or sucesses IS A GOOD THING. The only problem with their budget is the fact that their numbers are fairly small and THE DIRECTION THEY ARE GIVEN FROM THE EXECUTIVE CHANGES TOO OFTEN. $18 billion per year is plenty to put humans on mars, but NASA has become bloated and civil-servanty. It's time to trim the fat, return to the roots of rocket-engineering, and pool the money into a single project.
I swear they give me mod points to shut me up.
the fud is strong with this one
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
roman_mir's sock puppet is taking part in this discussion. he openly admits to puppetry to push his agenda.
So long as you split the NASA launch departments from the NASA science departments it could work, and is essentially what we're moving to anyway. The science is still funded through congress, they shop around for the rocket that does the job they need for the cost and risk they like.
But there is an easy dividing line for a first pass approximation: public goods. Have the government do what is non-rivalrous and non-excludeable, such as pure research, while the private sector is left to do everything else. So in the case of space exploration, it's likely true that early rocketry (until we go the ability to reliably loft satellites), early manned space, the Apollo program, the development of the Space Shuttle and the various planetary science missions could not or would not have been done by private industry. It's equally true that developing the engineering and science that we have developed through the space program, and releasing them into the public domain, would be public goods, in the same way that all basic science and engineering research are. (Knowledge is a public good.)
That said, there's no reason for the government now to be funding commercial satellite launches, development of commercial launchers (except to the extent that it meets their own needs to get into orbit), anything in LEO, etc. NASA should be pushing towards long-duration, high-risk deep space manned missions, continued planetary science missions, and engineering and technology development. We're kind of stuck with the space station now that we have put so much into it, and that means that we need to fund a way to get there without relying on the Russians, but that's a short-term problem.
Unfortunately, though, I don't think NASA still has the entreprenurial culture to do the high-risk deep space manned stuff, which means that what's left (once the space station is done) should basically be planetary exploration and technology development. The time for commercial exploitation of the Earth-Moon system is come, and the reality is that the rest of the solar system will likely be exploited commercially starting in a few decades, simply because government will not assume the inherent risks in doing so.
-- Two men say they're Jesus. One of them must be wrong. - Dire Straits
Move all of Nasa's office and administrative staff to cheaper office locations. States such as Mississippi and Montana offer much lower salaries as well as cost of living. Incidentally they are also both "red" states. In fact it appears that all of the 10 lowest paid states are all red.
There is or can be built a machine that can simulate any physical object. -Church-Turing principle
> "Run X like a business" is simplistic bullshit unless the goal is to make money supplying something someone needs.
So you agree then, the goal is not something we need?
In which case good sense would imply they should atleast TRY to turn a profit? and not be funded with taxpayer money that could go to solve more basic and funamental NEEDS right now anyway... until there is excess in which case 'extra-cirricular' programs like this could add value.
Not everything worth doing is going to make a profit, and when you start letting "the market" determine what is good for space exploration, you are at best going to have areas not explored and at worst dead astronauts.
The market demands an 80 hour work week for slave wages. Great for the guys on Wall Street. Not so much for the workers.
The only thing worse than a Democrat is a Republican.
I think you are looking at this from the wrong angle. They can pull in billions and still fail at their mission. All of that money would just flow back into Congress (whether this is right or wrong is another debate entirely).
You can't have a product to sell unless you have sane means of effectively generating that product.
If I'm running a lemonade stand and my only investor demands that I buy their hydroponic lemons from Alaska and I can only use beet sugar from North Dakota my business is going to have some serious issues. This is the real problem, not licensing on mattresses.
This incompetent Congress can't do anything beneficial. Does anybody think that a Congress where a huge faction are only 1 step away from flat earthers SHOULD reform anything at NASA? As reasonable as some of these ideas sound they can't get past this Congress without idiocy.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Please sign this petition to support their efforts.
http://wh.gov/gVU2
Although I'm hopeful about the concept, I'm suspicious until the full text of the bill is released. Considering the proponents of the bill, I wouldn't be surprised if this ends up being a thinly-veiled way to protect particular pork projects, worded in such a way that it could only be used to keep projects like SLS from being cancelled while being of limited applicability to other NASA projects. After all, after the Falcon Heavy starts launching, locking SLS into a multi-year procurement contract is probably going to be the only way to keep money funneling towards SLS contractors.
Also, from what I've been able to read online so far, NASA (along with the DOD and Coast Guard) already have some multi-year procurement capability, bit can't use it where there's significant technical risk. With NASA technical risk usually means cost-plus contracts, and cost-plus contracts combined with multi-year procurement is potentially very bad, depending on how the bill is worded.
It is the Aeronautics and Space Administration.
You have it completely backwards.
The budget has always been a searingly-hot political issue. It has been one of the country's major political problems for half a century, and especially since the early/mid 1980s. It's just happens to be a hot political issue where the Republicans and Democrats aren't distinguished from one another. (Just because something is bipartison, doesn't mean it's not political.)
And that is still the case; the Rs and Ds basically agree that the government should use its powers to funnel the country's resources away from the citizenry to the corporations who fund the campaigns. Budget deficits will usually be a part of that overall program.
The reason for the "hoo-haw" of the last couple years, is that Republicans are desperate for a personality "wedge issue" because people have little political reason to vote one way or another between those two parties. Without political distinction, voters tend to vote for the better personality, and Obama totally creams any Republican when it comes to that. Obama is probably the coolest president since Teddy Roosevelt.
So the Rs wear the small-budget costume (as long as it never comes to actual politics). It's non- political; it's marketing. People just like to call marketing "politics" because acknowledging the triteness would hurt their pride too much. "My party is for a responsible budget!"
Perhaps with an extended budget NASA will no longer feel political pressure to peddle their snake oil CAGW hysteria. It's pretty sad that in a short 40+ years NASA went from moon landings to backing University research papers that speculate that we will all be destroyed by aliens because of CAGW!
Robert Goddard developed liquid fueled rocket engines with private capital. And all but two of the great telescopes of the 19th and early 20th centuries were built with private money. SpaceX, of course, was seeded with private money. Though I think we'd agree that Elon Musk couldn't have raised enough capital to get SpaceX to where it is now without NASA's help, we might disagree as to why such capital is so hard to come by.
I also agree with you that NASA (the agency) effectively lacks the will to explore. And I would argue, as Robert Zubrin does, that it's because they prioritize safety above mission success. Safety is critically important. But if safety is your primary goal, it's always safer not to fly the mission.
But back to why I think private companies can't raise enough capital for risky endeavors. Feel free to label me a Paul-bot, but in my opinion the root problem is that the federal reserve fixes the price of money, depreciates the currency, and allows a small group of banker cronies to skim the difference between the market rate for money and the artificial fed rate. It's hardly a market economy if the market for money is rigged by the government. The banks have now siphoned a majority share of our economy's free capital. And since they didn't earn it anyway, they gamble with it. But if you look historically at the U.S. when private citizens controlled most of the capital, they did in fact make risky investments and achieve great things. I don't think capitalism is our problem, I think it's the solution to our corporate welfare-ism. But we can't have effective capitalism until we have sound money.
This video contains some interesting history about commercial space development:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLAg5Y0kZVc
This article is silly. Before a project is even started Systems Engineers map out time and personnel resources, along with dependencies, for any modern aerospace project. This includes contingencies and failures in technology readiness levels. If timescales could be truncated without significant detriment to success or loss of life, then they would be. Let’s not pretend every wishful armchair engineer knows more about the challenges of space missions than the people who actually do it.
How many maiden flights of any of the aircraft you mentioned were straight into the battlefield at the most critical moments in battle – NONE.
If space missions go wrong, people can die or you have loss of payload, if military projects go wrong, oh wait
Comparing challenges like autonomously navigating in hypersonic regimes through relatively unknown atmospheric conditions on distant planets, and landing with unprecedented accuracy – to consumer technologies? This is a joke right?
The Verse by the Side of the Road
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
What "the market" represents is doing things in a financially sustainable way that people support with their actual money, rather than just moral support. "The market" means you have to convince people, rather than taking their money by fiat. "The market" means having the right to say no.
So, yeah...having the right to say no, and require that I be convinced...I'm a member of that cult, though I do realize that there are free rider problems and stuff like that. But I want space privatized not because I believe that its a waste of money, but because in my experience everything that government everything touches turns to sh*t. I'm ready for private space travel to do what it did for private aviation.
If your bitterest enemies are people who hack the heads off civilians, then I would say you're doing something right.
United States Postal Service.
New Economic Perspectives
We haven't had a Federal budget in 1200 days, so why should there be a worry about multi-year budgets being unconstitutional? We're 4 years into unconstitutionality already...
By the taping of my glasses, something geeky this way passes
Personally, I don't think NASA (or any government agency) should be turning a profit. The purpose of government should be to do things the private sector can't, won't, or shouldn't. If the activity is profitable, chances are it can be done by private industry.
NASA exists to further fundamental research and exploration (which sometimes results in profitable creations). Private enterprises don't like to conduct fundamental research because there is not always a clear path to something useful and it costs a lot of money with little expectation of immediate gains. So, government steps in and provides this unprofitable, but necessary, service.
I don't think you and I are disagreeing. I was only pointing out that if you want to create a dividing line beyond which government investment is pointless, and it should all be left to the market, public goods is a good place to start. I was not arguing that the market cannot provide at least some public goods.
-- Two men say they're Jesus. One of them must be wrong. - Dire Straits