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NASA's 'Journey To Mars' Initiative Might Be Delayed Due To Government Audit (natureworldnews.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the shields-are-down-captain dept.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Christian Science Monitor: NASA has taken bold steps toward crewed Mars exploration in recent years. But according to a new audit, the agency may be moving too hastily. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) expressed concerns this past week about the feasibility of NASA's Orion crew capsule and Space Launch System (SLS). In two government-requested audits, the GAO questioned NASA's ability to meet program deadlines, citing insufficient funding and internal management issues. According to the GAO, however, the agency's schedule just isn't realistic. By pushing for earlier launch dates, NASA is increasing the inherent risk of a deep space mission. NASA's budgeting practices are also scrutinized in GAO's audit. In September, the agency asked for $11.3 billion to prepare Orion for launch. "Ideally, if these programs go forward, NASA would be taking actions to reduce the risks we see now, which are being caused by management issues," says Cristina Chaplain, who led the GOA audit, in an interview with the Monitor. "They're going to face the technical issues no matter what. But they're exacerbating them with management concerns, like not having accurate cost estimates." The report adds: "NASA's 'Journey to Mars' initiative has been a source of both excitement and controversy. The Asteroid Redirect Mission, in which the agency will send four astronauts to redirect an asteroid into the moon's orbit, is slated to launch sometime in the next decade. The mission is designed to test new propulsion technology for future crewed Mars missions. In the 2030s, NASA hopes to send an Orion crew to the red planet. NASA plans to complete the first SLS launch in 2018. In the test mission, called Exploration Mission 1, the rocket will carry an empty Orion into orbit around the moon. In subsequent missions, SLS/Orion will launch with a full crew. NASA has scheduled Exploration Mission 2 for April 2023, but administrators hope to launch as early as 2021."

11 of 65 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Auditing vessel's plans for a 3rd gender bathro by Aighearach · · Score: 2

    Everything is unisex in space.

  2. Re:Auditing vessel's plans for a 3rd gender bathro by pahles · · Score: 4, Funny

    especially when you wear diapers.

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    Sig?
  3. Bureaucracy vs Progress by Required+Snark · · Score: 2

    If this sort of nonsense had gone on during the Apollo program we would have never put anyone in orbit in an Gemini or Apollo capsule, much less made it to the moon.

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    Why is Snark Required?
    1. Re:Bureaucracy vs Progress by Opportunist · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Today there are no Russians to 1up.

      Maybe we should wait for the Chinese to get their program up to speed, before that we probably won't get to see any funding for a decent space program.

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      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
    2. Re:Bureaucracy vs Progress by dunkelfalke · · Score: 2

      Not quite. RD-180 is more or less current, just a different version of what will be used in future Russian rockets. Soyuz engines, on the other hand, are much, much older.

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      "It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
    3. Re:Bureaucracy vs Progress by Opportunist · · Score: 2

      I know I write this every time someone comes along and laments that we didn't get anything out of the moon shots than bragging rights, proving we have the bigger dick and a few kilograms of moon rocks. We got so much more out of that.

      What people fail to see time and again is that a lot of stuff had to be done behind the scenes. The 60s were a decade of groundbreaking discoveries and advances in many different areas. Of course in metallurgy, electronics and computer science. We had to invent those things because without this would have been impossible, and no private enterprise has the money to simply pour millions if not billions into foundation research. But that's just the tip of the ice berg. We made incredible advances in management. Process management was pretty much invented during this time. The idea of milestones and how to manage huge, complex projects, how to split them up into manageable portions and how to gauge progress, all that and more was invented or at the very least refined in that era.

      Then there is the boost in economy and of course confidence in the country's power, something we could seriously use again. The US was in the middle of a war they were going to lose by the time Armstrong set that foot onto the moon, which was a traumatic experience for the country. What this country needed (and what it could really need today again) was something that everyone could stand behind, united and independent of any political stance, something you could be proud of because everyone had a part in it, from the men who set their foot onto the soil of the moon to the Kansas farmer who could picture himself as the one who fed all these people who made this possible.

      This is the true meaning of the moonshot. It's not some guy hopping about on an insignificant, dusty rock. It's what it meant to the country that made it possible for him to do this. The US economy was still going forward from the boost it got from that well into the 80s.

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      We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  4. Delayed due audit?!?! by joao.cordeiro · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The progress was delayed because of the lack of funding...... The audit only writes it down into paper.. The congress is directly responsable for the lack of funding and the need of such huge funding. GAO makes a great job and titles/articles like this are directed to slam their name into the trash...

    1. Re:Delayed due audit?!?! by Required+Snark · · Score: 2
      How do you kill a program that is already has budget troubles? Shut it down and do an audit. It's the bureaucratic way to eliminate something while pretending to be responsible.

      And how often have over budget military programs been halted because of money? It has happened, but it's very rare. Meanwhile, we got the B-2 at over $1 billion per copy and the F-35 which is "Three years behind schedule and some $200 billion over its original budget". The original projected cost was about half what has already been spent.

      So how does NASA's trouble compare to that? NASA's entire 2015 budget was $18.01 billion. So who is worse when it comes to being "responsible" about managing technical risk? Did anyone suggest shutting down the F-35 program while they decided what to do about escalating costs and slipping schedules?

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      Why is Snark Required?
    2. Re:Delayed due audit?!?! by khallow · · Score: 3, Interesting

      So who is worse when it comes to being "responsible" about managing technical risk? Did anyone suggest shutting down the F-35 program while they decided what to do about escalating costs and slipping schedules?

      So we should let a boondoggle continue just because the US military is even shittier at ending bad programs?

      My take on SLS is that it should have never existed in the first place and it's not too late to end it now. It serves no national interest and we don't need its capabilities; it's enormously expensive and the economics are crappy (particularly, low launch frequency); and it creates a conflict of interest between benefactors of the SLS and the future of a US presence in space.

      That last point bears elaboration. There is a long, seedy tradition of aerospace companies using the law and such to backstab and obstruct each other. Usually, it's relatively minor like a rocket being delayed for a few months by bogus concerns or getting kicked off an Air Force launch pad because some competitor wants to mess up one's launch tempo.

      But with a huge funding stream like SLS gets, that can fund a lot worse than mere bureaucratic obstruction. For example, NASA delayed commercial space launch by a decade by mandating that all US-origin payloads had to go up on the Space Shuttle back in roughly 1975 (which also had the effect of massively delaying US payloads until the policy was reversed in 1984. Read this report to get an idea of the crap NASA pulled back then.

      We don't need a repeat of that regressive failure. The obvious approach is to end the conflict of interest by defunding the SLS and the parasitic ex-Shuttle supply chain. Then there's no one left to care enough to prevent the US private industry from delivering heavy lift vehicles that will actually get used.

  5. Government Efficiency by Dunbal · · Score: 2

    Audit NASA, which has hardly any budget. Do not audit the Pentagon, where trillions disappear regularly.

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    Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
  6. things NASA does and does not do well by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    There is something NASA does very, very well. Deep space exploration. It is the premier organization on the planet for this, with by far the most impressive record. It is the only organization to send probes to the outer solar system. Something it started doing in the early 1970's) with Pioneer 10, the first Jupiter flyby. It operates the only Mars rovers. It has a better record at Mars landers than anyone else, by far. There have been a few brilliant successes by other organizations, but in terms of scale, it's very much "NASA", and then distantly, "everyone else" when it comes to solar system exploration.

    There is something NASA does NOT do well. Space trucking. It could contract with SpaceX for heavy launch at under 5% of what it's going to spend doing so itself. It could contract with ULA, who are highly reliable and currently reducing their own costs, although still pricer than SpaceX. Rather than the US govt dictating that 5-segment SRBs must be used because those are providing jobs in this congressional district, they could simply approach SpaceX, say, "this is the capability we want", and save billions of dollars.

    Let NASA do what it does better than anyone else in the world: deep space science. Get it out of the space-truck business, where it will never provide value for money. As it stands, SpaceX's own private effort to land humans on Mars is likely to beat NASA's on both budget and time, raising a lot of questions about just what happened.