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NASA's Competition For Dollars
An anonymous reader writes: We often decry the state of funding to NASA. Its limited scope has kept us from returning to the moon for over four decades, maintained only a minimal presence in low-Earth orbit, and failed to develop a capable asteroid defense system. But why is funding such a problem? Jason Callahan, who has worked on several of NASA's annual budgets, says it's not just NASA's small percentage of the federal budget that keeps those projects on the back burner, but also competition for funding between different parts of NASA as well. "[NASA's activities include] space science, including aeronautics research (the first A in NASA), technology development, education, center and agency management, construction, maintenance, and the entire human spaceflight program. The total space science budget has rarely exceeded $5 billion, and has averaged just over half that amount. Remember that space science is more than just planetary: astrophysics, heliophysics, and Earth science are all funded in this number. Despite this, space science accounts for an average of 17 percent of NASA's total budget, though it has significant fluctuations. In the 1980s, space science was a mere 11½ percent of NASA's budget, but in the 2000s, it made up 27 percent."
Prize awards have high leverage on private investment. Moreover, prize awards aren't spent only for the desired returns -- thereby relegating risk management to the private sector where it belongs.
Oh, I forgot, NASA's money comes largely from political considerations about which districts get how much government pork.
Never mind.
Seastead this.
How can SpaceX come up with innovative rocket designs for a fraction of what it costs NASA? And they can produce those designs faster. SpaceX soft landed two boosters into the ocean, it would have taken NASA 10 years and $20 billion dollars to replicate that development.
I spent years in Titusville to cover the end of the shuttle program and walking away my opinion was that NASA is a flock of risk-adverse mid-managers flying in formation with a rusting theme park endless replaying clips of their glory days. There are some really good people there, some of them doing amazing things, but they're handicapped by a management structure that's too fat and doesn't have an aggressive vision for the future. NASA depends too much on contractors that can't produce anything on budget and there's no penalty for not performing. Some of that is political, not all their fault.
If we're going to explore space then we have to face the fact that it's unlikely we're going to get there with NASA as it exists today. And we have to find a way to fund that exploration so it's more insulated from politics. Otherwise we're stuck on this rock until a giant comet, asteroid or neutron star wanders by or we get fried by our own sun or a gamma ray burst.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
...perhaps NASA can do some serious exploration.
Except we still have the flying boondoggle from the Reagan administration, the ISS, sucking money away from exploration and giving it to the Russian government to launch and retrieve people and stuff from LEO for profit.
The return on investment for the ISS has been pathetic.
Tubby or not tubby. Fat is the question
the situation will not improve so NASA is just wasting time complaining. They should instead start working on a plan to be more effective with the crumbs that they are given.
They should create an acid bucket challenge. Participants would get challenged to dump a bottle of hydrochloric acid on their heads or donate to NASA.
This is entirely due to a matter of federal government policy. When President Kennedy made his famous speech to declare his intent to put a man on the moon, he made a massive change to state funding. His intent was to kick-start the U.S. economy by pouring a huge amount of tax dollars back into the US economy by giving it to NASA as the primary recipient at the "top" of a spending pyramid. The idea was that NASA would then award contracts to lots of other companies, who in turn would generate more work with tertiary companies, thus pouring all that tax money back into circulation as seed funding. Part of the reasoning was that the scientific developments driven would then flow out into the broader economy, powering the US forwards. It was pretty successful in that regard. And, of course, those who owned or held shares in those primary contractors did very well out of things. Thanks NASA...
More recently, public perception has changed. The broader population has come to view (perceived) profligate spending with much more suspicion. Yet still the federal government wants to spend trillions of inflation-adjusted tax dollars. Now, a more sophisticated, educated population might look at ever-increasing NASA spending, and those trillions being spent, and call time. So what can the government spend all this money on in a way that people won't cry foul?
The answer that seems to have been chosen is defense spending. Make people frightened and then tell them you need to spend money in order to make them safe, and they aren't going to complain too loudly. So now, instead of spending "surplus" wealth on the advancement of humanity through exploration and research, it's being spent on the NSA, the military-industrial complex, and wars. To keep people safe.
This might sound completely and totally far-fetched... but the evidence is there in black and white. And while you're looking at the evidence, compare the cost of projects like Skylab and the Apollo program [in inflation-adjusted dollars] with what it cost Burt Rutan to develop Space-Ship One, or for Bigelow Aerospace to develop their inflatable station technology, or for Elon Musk to develop Space-X. Oh - someone is bound to read this and challenge the comparison, claiming that these relatively recent companies are only able to develop such rapid advancements based on the earlier work done by NASA in the 1960s and 1970s. But that's not quite true... Take, for example, the development of the Arianne program by the European Space Agency and see just how expensive the "government spending" model can still be if you want it to be...
This would entirely be the land of make believe, but just imagine what NASA could have achieved by today if it had continued to receive sponsorship and support at the same level as it did for the Apollo program... I'm guessing: permanent basis on the moon and Mars; several advanced Outer Planet models; experiments in Space Mining; orbiting Solar Arrays; the list goes on.
If you are a contractor that can get a huge contract and can get paid even more for delays and cost overruns, what is your incentive for delivering quickly and cheaply? Plus the various limitations of having to source stuff off every state that has abusive (or others would say competent) congressmen, plus all the middle management and red tape and there you go.
People like to point out how SpaceX et al. are benefiting of all the NASA research, however that is not relevant to the question of why NASA itself can't source cheaply NOW.
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
Is there a lack of science classes in the education system? There was a science lab in my seventh grade school, a better one in high school. The teacher should have been working at a college but must have liked working with teen students. Mr. Munson was a genius and the students who could keep up with his work as he filled the room with algebra and geometry equations got a once in a lifetime opportunity to test their limits, no slackers.
President Obama is a DEMOCRAT, and his guys Holdren (his science advisor who wanted to "save the planet" by sneaking human-sterilizing drugs into the drinking water) and Bolden (his NASA administrator and the only guy in Washington who cries as often as John Boehner) are running NASA.
The U.S. Senate is run by Harry Reid (Democrat of Nevada) who is THE reason the congress "does nothing". The House has voted on something like 350 bills and sent them to the Senate, where Harry Reid protects his Democrat senators and Democrat president from having to be accountable for votes/signatures/vetos by simply stuffing those bills into his desk and never even allowing them to be debated. The House Republicans have little reason to consider any bills sent to them by the Senate when the Senate Democrats are refusing to even debate 300+ House bills.... if those House bills are so bad, then why don't the Democrats debate them and then vote them down???? (hint: many are good bills that the Democrats oppose but do not want to have to explain their "NO" votes to the voters).
The Republicans have only held the White House for 8 of the past 22 years.
The Republicans have only held the Senate for 16 of the past 48 years (4 of the most-recent 14)
The Republicans have only held the US House of Representatives for 16 of the past 44 years (10 of the most-recent 14)
And... because some DNC-drone always screeches about the 2008 meltdown, let me remind everybody that in 2007 and 2008 the Republicans did, indeed, have the White House (George W Bush) but Harry Reid and his Democrats were running the Senate and Nancy Pelosi and her Democrats were running the House of Representatives... so if Obama is not to blame for things now because the GOP has the House, then Bush is not to blame for the 2008 meltdown because the Democrats had BOTH the House AND the Senate. Democrats do NOT get to have it both ways of issues of responsibility.
NOT "intelligent design" or even "creationism" NEITHER of which get any federal dollars. It's studies of why lesbians are fat (an actual funded study) why gay men in Brazil troll gay bars (another actual funded study), why gay men do not use condoms often enough (there have been a pile of these studies fully-funded) the infamous "shrimp on treadmills", and an enourmous pile of "green energy" and "global warming" claptrap.... ANYTHING that will make Obama's supporters get a thrill up their legs (see: Chris Matthews, one of NBC's numerous career Democrats pretending to be unbiased journalists and analysts)
It would be nice to get all the left-wing politics out and return the government to funding the really cool science it used to fund like: trips to the moon, nuclear rocket engines, studies of manned flights to mars and venus, nuclear power, supersonic airliners, mag-lev trains, etc.
"We often decry the state of funding to NASA. Its limited scope has kept us from returning to the moon for over four decades, maintained only a minimal presence in low-Earth orbit, and failed to develop a capable asteroid defense system"
Wow, what a list. I'm surprised it doesn't include unicorn hunts and panda mating.
> returning to the moon for over four decades
Why?
> minimal presence in low-Earth orbit
Sure, so we can spend all our time learning what happens to people in LEO.
> failed to develop a capable asteroid defense system
Nor do we have an alien defense system, which is exactly as likely to be needed.
We need to go to Mars. Permanently. There is no other manned mission.
The US military puts most of the stuff into space. The US military demands extremely reliable, and consequently reliable, rockets to put their payloads into orbit.... The Atlas V and Delta IV have had 70!!! consecutive successful launches. SpaceX makes its money by sending cheap, middle income nation satellites into orbit, and cheap supplies to the ISS. They are different markets of payload.
Rogozin has suggested America kill the Atlas V, and I think it should happen.
The DC-X was run for ~$50 million. If Congress was willing to put up the money, work on the DC-X could have continued. The SLS is expensive, in part, because it is so damn big.
NASA has an identity crisis. What is NASA today?
The reality is that the vast majority of new ventures in the scope of human history were based on economic, political, or military gain. Any big events not based on that tend to backfire, or at least take a back burner to more pressing needs.
NASA's purpose, despite some perception of a hard push towards pure science, was in reality about political and military power: military because of the dual nature use of the technology developed by NASA, and political because of the global perception of which method, capitalism or communism, were the more profitable methods. Now that the Cold War is over, and no one can deny that Capitalism trumped Communism, and that the US is now the only superpower with global reach, what purpose does NASA serve? All of NASA's budget issues can be traced to this key concept: What is NASA for now? Pure science/engineering isn't good enough, because no one's going to fund it.
NASA needs to claim a mission now, like studying and reversing/controlling global warming, or a massive reduction in energy cost through developed fusion power combined with Helium-3 harvesting on the moon. Something like that. But pure science, robots exploring the planets, that's secondary stuff.
It looks like he meant to say 7.5% of NASA's budget, or about $1 Billion a year. It also appears much of that money is spent on studies also done by other agencies, a duplication of effort.
75% is the correct number
I don't know what 'presentation' you saw but it is bullshit. At least for FY13 (http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/outreach/022212_budget_charts.pdf) the Human Exploration and Operations (formerly known as 'Manned') percentage of NASA's budget was 45%. Its hard to argue how human operations in space (mostly ISS related) is in any way "directed at climate change". The remaining 55% includes all the planetary missions and astrophysics which again can't be called 'climate change'. Where is the 75% directed at climate change?
They will elect the politicians who will make it happen. If not, then NASA will spend the rest of its existence looking for lost change in the couch.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
It costs an absolute fortune to sent something to another planet (regardless of weight), so why does NASA spend so much time and money designing and building rovers that are only expected to last 3-6 months?
It's like a person complaining about having a food budget that is too small, when they buy nothing but high-price, pre-packaged, ready-to-eat meals.
Back in 2010, NASA administrator Charles Bolden said President Obama gave him three priorities: "When I became the NASA administrator -- or before I became the NASA administrator -- he [President Obama] charged me with three things. One was he wanted me to help re-inspire children to want to get into science and math, he wanted me to expand our international relationships, and third, and perhaps foremost, he wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science ... and math and engineering"
None of these is actually about doing space exploration.
Reagan proposed an AMERICAN space station (which he called "Freedom"), which would certainly have hosted visitors from allied nations like Britain, Canada, Japan, etc but it was to be 100% American built-and-operated with all the benefits of the jobs and the tech and development going to American workers.
The Bush(41) administration largely neglected it (like everything else the entitled functionary who just did not "get the whole vision thing" was in charge of)
The Clinton administration completely perverted the thing - they brought the Russians on-board as a "partner" in order to employ their aerospace workers (supposedly to keep them from going to work arming dictators around the globe). Apparently, the Clinton team did not give a damn about the American aerospace workers who would be losing their jobs (not just from the loss of space station work, but also from his massive post-cold war defense cuts) ... and even less so as the construction of many "American" segments were farmed-out to Italy. The first hint of trouble was that tha name had to be changed; "Freedom" was unacceptable to the Russians, so Gore's people wanted it re-named "Alpha" (and for a brief period it WAS referred to as "International Space Station Alpha") The word "Alpha" was quickly dropped from the name. As the Russians fell-behind on their part, an American propulsion and control module was built but by the time it was nearing completion the Russians finally launched theirs; this US module is sitting under tarps in some Navy lab where it was being tested and the ISS is now completely dependent upon Russia for propulsion and flight control - a situation Reagan would have TOTALLY opposed.
Now that Bush43 and Obama have tag-teamed to make the US fully dependent upon Russia to get to a Station the Americans paid most of the costs to build abd with is NOT called an "American" station but rather the "International" station, there is simply NO rational way to blame the mess on Reagan; that makes about the same sense as blaming it on Kennedy since HE was the one who put US manned spaceflight into high-gear, or on Eisenhower since he started NASA.
The real excitement and discoveries are all the result of unmanned missions such as the Voyager, Cassini, New Horizons, MRO, etc. missions (and the fabulously successful rovers). Manned spaceflight is just pork for Congressionally-powerful districts with no scientific return. The SLS (called the Rocket to Nowhere), the Orion capsule, the old shuttles, and the ISS are/have burned billions and do nothing for science....and they endanger astronauts. The problem is that NASA is run by ex-flyboys and the districts that build their toys want the pork to keep coming. Bolden is a shill for the manned space lobby--it is fairly disgraceful how he has tried to kill planetary science.