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

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."

Comments

Re:Auditing vessel's plans for a 3rd gender bathro

[pahles]

especially when you wear diapers.

Delayed due audit?!?!

[joao.cordeiro]

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...

Re:Delayed due audit?!?!

[khallow]

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.

Re:Bureaucracy vs Progress

[Opportunist]

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.

things NASA does and does not do well

[Anonymous Coward]

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.