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NASA's Competition For Dollars

Posted by Soulskill on from the all-about-the-benjamins dept.

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."

31 of 78 comments (clear)

  1. How Does SpaceX Do it? by HangingChad · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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
    1. Re: How Does SpaceX Do it? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

      No reason to send ppl to space? Wouldn't you like to leave this polluted rock behind? Last time I checked progress happen in iterations - not leap frogs. For that we should keep practicing, so not just few extremely apt ppl can do it - but everyone.

    2. Re: How Does SpaceX Do it? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      You're not "exploring", you're trying to fill the void of your boring life with imagery that makes no sense.

      Grow up.

      How come none of you ever wants to explore the center of the Earth or the bottom of the ocean?

    3. Re: How Does SpaceX Do it? by drolli · · Score: 1

      No. I am fine here. I like going on my bike to work trough a forest.

      No matter how bad environmental problem become, earth will still be better than anything which we could plan to reach. Fixing the problems here woll have a fraction of the cost whcih fixin them by flying away would have.

      Lets

    4. Re: How Does SpaceX Do it? by CrimsonAvenger · · Score: 2

      No matter how bad environmental problem become, earth will still be better than anything which we could plan to reach. Fixing the problems here woll have a fraction of the cost whcih fixin them by flying away would have.

      So, what's the plan for dealing with the Sun's inevitable transition to a red giant?

      Space is where we need to be for the long term. And when I say "long term", I don't mean "three or more Congressional election cycles"....

      --

      "I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
    5. Re:How Does SpaceX Do it? by Redbehrend · · Score: 1

      If that were true Disney along with many other companies wouldn't be around...

    6. Re:How Does SpaceX Do it? by khallow · · Score: 1

      Because NASA did all the heavy lifting half a century ago?

      No. Because SpaceX and similar companies are doing the heavy lifting now.

      We're already "exploring space" from our computer chairs. No one needs to go anywhere!!! The universe is billions of light years across, how does sending a few test pilots on the Moon for 45 minutes help at all?

      How does getting out of your house help you travel anywhere? Travel isn't a process of deciding to go somewhere and just magically end up there.

    7. Re: How Does SpaceX Do it? by khallow · · Score: 2

      Humans can and have figured out how to make waste into something valuable. So we are already better than cats in that respect. The sentiment you express is just another myth.

      Further, how do you expect people to learn how to do that sort of thing better? Living on Earth is soft in many ways, including a lack of need to not "waste" things. Such wouldn't be true in space.

      I'm reminded of the proverb, "necessity is the mother of invention". When someone needs to learn how to do something, they tend to do a better job of it than if the learning is optional or irrelevant.

    8. Re: How Does SpaceX Do it? by david_bonn · · Score: 2

      I sympathize, but then again I do not see large numbers of people moving to Antarctica or Greenland. Both of which are likely to be much, much nicer places to live in the short to medium term than anyplace on Mars is going to be on the same timeframe.

    9. Re:How Does SpaceX Do it? by khallow · · Score: 1

      NASA is not supposed to have vision

      Bullshit. The law authorizing NASA directs NASA at numerous points to plan and promote things that fall under "having vision". For example:

      Congress further declares that such activities shall be the responsibility of, and shall be directed by, a civilian agency exercising control over aeronautical and space activities sponsored by the United States

      he Administration seek and encourage, to the maximum extent possible, the fullest commercial use of space

      The development and operation of vehicles capable of carrying instruments, equipment, supplies, and living organisms through space.

      The establishment of long-range studies of the potential benefits to be gained from, the opportunities for, and the problems involved in the utilization of aeronautical and space activities for peaceful and scientific purposes.

      The most effective utilization of the scientific and engineering resources of the United States, with close cooperation among all interested agencies of the United States in order to avoid unnecessary duplication of effort, facilities, and equipment.

      Later on, there's:

      plan, direct, and conduct aeronautical and space activities;

      That's the vision mandate. It's worth remembering here that Congress isn't the experts on space exploration in the US government, NASA is supposed to be. Nor does Congress have responsibility for promoting and insuring that the US has viable and useful NASA activities. Once again, that's NASA's particular responsibility.

      NASA is an engineering and scientific agency (with an overlay of flags-and-footprints) and always has been, not an exploratory agency. They do not exist to feed the wet dreams and masturbation fantasies of the space fanboys.

      The above law also has numerous places where it directs NASA to do space exploration or to encourage space exploration by US private sources.

      What gets missed in all these clueless and misguided posts about "space fanboys", is that technology and the economics of space activities are progressing and getting into space need not stay as hard and as costly as it is now. Rather than merely decree without much thought that something is permanently impossible or unprofitable, it makes more sense to figure out what thresholds need to be crossed in order for an activity to be possible or profitable.

      Even with significant investment, that's unlikely to change for decades, maybe centuries.

      Decades is the usual shortest time frame discussed for this sort of thing anyway. You're not in disagreement with most "space fanboys" on that. I think it's a bit dishonest to downplay someone's ambitions as delusions and hallucinations while simultaneously admitting that the only real problem is that you think their estimates of time to achievements are mildly ambitious.

    10. Re:How Does SpaceX Do it? by DerekLyons · · Score: 1

      Bullshit. The law [nasa.gov] authorizing NASA directs NASA at numerous points to plan and promote things that fall under "having vision".

      Only if you're under the influence of sufficient drugs to be having hallucinations, or have a complete lack of understanding of the English language. Given your posting history and complete lack of connection to reality, it's hard to discern which is the case. (Not that it matters, as the end result is the same.)
       

      Decades is the usual shortest time frame discussed for this sort of thing anyway. You're not in disagreement with most "space fanboys" on that. I think it's a bit dishonest to downplay someone's ambitions as delusions and hallucinations while simultaneously admitting that the only real problem is that you think their estimates of time to achievements are mildly ambitious.

      Space fanboys never discuss time-frames, as that requires doing a painful thing that they never voluntarily do - which is deal with reality. (And estimation of time-to-achieve is hardly the only problem with their fantasies, err..., ambitions.)

    11. Re: How Does SpaceX Do it? by Areyoukiddingme · · Score: 1

      I sympathize, but then again I do not see large numbers of people moving to Antarctica or Greenland.

      I don't see large numbers of people moving to seasteading, which is a much closer analogue to space settlement.

      Having said that, I don't think any of the four destinations is any indication at all of the will present to move to such places. All four are very capital-intensive places to live, but with the massive concentration of wealth happening in the US and around the world, very few people with the will also have the capital to do anything about it. With respect to the fourth destination, space, only one person in the entire world has both the will and the capital: Elon Musk.

      There may be hundreds of thousands, even millions, who are willing to risk the frontier, but only a handful of them are suicidal about it. They're the ones who signed up for a one way trip to Mars. The rest are aware that it takes a significant amount of money to do such a thing, and they're aware they don't have that kind of money.

    12. Re:How Does SpaceX Do it? by khallow · · Score: 1

      Only if you're under the influence of sufficient drugs to be having hallucinations, or have a complete lack of understanding of the English language. Given your posting history and complete lack of connection to reality, it's hard to discern which is the case. (Not that it matters, as the end result is the same.)

      It's a good thing then that I actually quoted relevant parts of the law in question to address this very concern. That's the law as written - not my creative interpretation of reality or for that matter, your creative interpretation of reality.

      And if we approach this from a rational point of view, who is supposed to provide the vision for NASA's activities? Congress and US presidents don't have the ability and a host of many other distractions. Presidents can appoint informal special panels to do the vision thing, but those come and go. They aren't legally binding.

      Ultimately, it's NASA who has that job simply because no one in the US government has the right combination of competence and authority.

      My view is that NASA has for decades abandoned its primary duties as the organizer and planner for the exploration and development of space by the US. NASA should have resisted and redirected the whims of Congress rather than devolving into yet another government organization whose most important duty is to put the right names on the checks.

      Sure, it does some things in space. But I think we should have much higher expectations than that.

    13. Re:How Does SpaceX Do it? by khallow · · Score: 1

      So the POTUS decides who heads the execution of the activities (NASA, or DoD), which in effect means the POTUS sets the vision.

      That's fine, except the US President doesn't have the skills, experience, or time to set the vision. That's why Congress allotted funding for an agency to enable and implement the President's authority in this matter.

    14. Re:How Does SpaceX Do it? by khallow · · Score: 1

      He's supposed to have those skills, experience, and time.

      Of course, that isn't true. Even in some sort of ideal case, no one expects a leader to be a highly proficient expert in everything. The leader is expected to delegate his authority to subordinates who do have the necessary skills.

      There isn't any point to the rest of your post since I've already quoted for DerekLyons, the relevant quotes of the law.

    15. Re:How Does SpaceX Do it? by khallow · · Score: 1

      "Vision" is not just a leader making large scale or long term decisions. It's the ability to see in some metaphorical sense. The current state of NASA, as more a tool for distributing public funds than as a space exploration pioneer, is a choice made by leaders, but it isn't a result of vision.

      Sure, US presidents make the final choices and US congresses set the budget. Those parties have the control and final say over anything NASA does. But the only party with the vision in this mess is NASA. They're the only ones here who have the ability to evaluate the consequences of actions and determine ways to implement future goals. They also have the ability to steer the decision-making. If something remarkable is feasible, they can push for it.

      And as I noted earlier, that's an explicit job function of NASA in the law.

  2. Now the shuttle program has gone.. by DiamondGeezer · · Score: 1, Insightful

    ...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
    1. Re:Now the shuttle program has gone.. by CrimsonAvenger · · Score: 1
      Return on investment might be a bit better if we'd actually invested enough for it to be more than a glorified Skylab.

      They should have been adding a new habitable module to the thing every year, or every other year.

      Or more often.

      --

      "I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
  3. Acid Bucket Challenge by kelemvor4 · · Score: 4, Funny

    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.

    1. Re:Acid Bucket Challenge by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Couldn't we have some people, e.g. your average politician, do both?

  4. Priorities Changed - And People Got Suspicious by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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.

  5. Re:As long as Republicans rule this country... by olsmeister · · Score: 1

    I'm pretty sure the government is not diverting any money from NASA to try to prove intelligent design. Oh, there probably are a few in there that would like to, but it would be political suicide. (I like to think so, anyway.)

  6. You probably answered your own question... by Ecuador · · Score: 2

    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
  7. Space by tquasar · · Score: 1

    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.

  8. Re:America has a military space program by queazocotal · · Score: 1

    SLS is not expensive because it's so damn big.
    SLS is expensive because it's so damn expensive.

    It has been a goal for many in the space community to hit $1000/lb for space launchers.
    SLS will beat that.
    Unfortunately - in the wrong way - by exceeding it for the cost of the actual fuelled rocket on the ground.
    (At the flight rates that NASA is projecting - on the high end of likely for the first several flights).

    For the cost of the SLS program up to first launch, you can lift around 5500 tons to LED - using the published per-flight cost of Falcon Heavy.

  9. Re:Where the Money Goes by thrich81 · · Score: 2

    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?

  10. If the voters want a robust NASA by fustakrakich · · Score: 1

    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!”
  11. Re:Just Do Prizes by sillybilly · · Score: 1

    Living sustainably in space is a next huge step for humanity or even life on Earth through using humans, in the 4 billion years that life's been around on this planet, and of those, the first 3 billion mostly as single cellular.
    But when you talk to some people, as in a great dream and enthusiastic way, they are like, you wanna go to the Moon? We'll take you to the Moon, drop ya off with a can of gas, and see ya! Dude we don't have food on the table for some kids, and you wanna go to the Moon? and now I'm like yeah, and let's take some giraffes too.

  12. Disposable rovers by sir-gold · · Score: 1

    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.

  13. Re:Oh geez, is that all? by TheLink · · Score: 1

    Mars as the next step is a stupid idea. And that NASA also keeps suggest it as a next step proves to me how unworthy NASA is of funding. Same whenever they keep doing stupid studies on humans spending long periods in confined areas (they can always ask the nuclear submariners about it).

    The true next step for anyone serious in making actual progress in space tech is to build a space station with artificial gravity (tethers+counterweights or other).

    Once you have that you can test various animals (rats, food fish, humans) at Earth and Mars "g" concurrently to see how well they hold up for months in space.

    And if you succeed in making that tech practical and cheaper it means you don't actually have to go to Mars - you can colonize the asteroids.

    There's no actually much benefit going to Mars in the next few decades. The "g" is wrong, the pressure is wrong - you can't really use the tracts of land for farming without effectively building a "space station" on Mars (pressurization, shielding etc) - so there's little advantage over a space station with the disadvantage of not being able to pick your "g".

    --
  14. Money wasted on manned pork by Squidlips · · Score: 1

    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.