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NASA Spends 72 Cents of Every SLS Dollar On Overhead Costs, Says Report (arstechnica.com)
A new report published by the nonpartisan think tank Center for a New American Security shows us where a lot of NASA's money is being spent. The space agency has reportedly spent $19 billion on rockets -- first on Ares I and V, and now on the Space Launch System rocket -- and $13.9 billion on the Orion spacecraft. If all goes according to plan and NASA is able to fly its first crewed mission with the new vehicles in 2021, "the report estimates the agency will have spent $43 billion before that first flight, essentially a reprise of the Apollo 8 mission around the Moon," reports Ars Technica. "Just the development effort for SLS and Orion, which includes none of the expenses related to in-space activities or landing anywhere, are already nearly half that of the Apollo program." From the report: The new report argues that, given these high costs, NASA should turn over the construction of rockets and spacecraft to the private sector. It buttresses this argument with a remarkable claim about the "overhead" costs associated with the NASA-led programs. These costs entail the administration, management, and development costs paid directly to the space agency -- rather than funds spend on contractors actually building the space hardware. For Orion, according to the report, approximately 56 percent of the program's cost, has gone to NASA instead of the main contractor, Lockheed Martin, and others. For the SLS rocket and its predecessors, the estimated fraction of NASA-related costs is higher -- 72 percent. This means that only about $7 billion of the rocket's $19 billion has gone to the private sector companies, Boeing, Orbital ATK, Aeroject Rocketdyne, and others cutting metal. By comparison the report also estimates NASA's overhead costs for the commercial cargo and crew programs, in which SpaceX, Boeing, and Orbital ATK are developing and providing cargo and astronaut delivery systems for the International Space Station. With these programs, NASA has ceded some control to the private companies, allowing them to retain ownership of the vehicles and design them with other customers in mind as well. With such fixed-price contracts, the NASA overhead costs for these programs is just 14 percent, the report finds.
NASA is the easiest go to for pork barrel politics.
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Going into space is an incredibly front loaded type enterprise. They aren't opening a a dollar store, they are sending people in to one of the most hostile environments known to man. They say "Measure twice, cut once", but when you have the lives of people in your hands, you measure tens of thousands of times to make sure the final cutting won't accidentally kill them! And before you go and say Blue Origin and SpaceX are doing it so much cheaper, yes, but that is because they are standing on a mountain of research & technology courtesy NASA. R&D done by NASA has given us billions and billions of dollars in spin-off technologies over the years, and I am sure if you charted it out, your return on investment is pretty good.
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Obviously it sounds like a lot, but i haven't been able to find any source on what they define as overhead. I also have no idea how much the normal overhead is.
It sounds like any cost not going towards a private company is accounted as overhead. Surely NASA has expenses internally that wouldn't make sense to call overhead.
Well, I have never heard of Center for a New American Security before, so it would be reasonable to be skeptical about how non-partisan they are. Judging from the article alone, however, it appears that 'overhead' is anything that isn't passed on to external contractors, so potentially this could include any research that is done by NASA scientists. If this is the case, I don't think it is non-partisan at all - the position that only work done by external contractors is 'real work' is a highly biased one to start from, IMO, as it seems to dismiss the crucial value of fundamental research.
If it costs money to do something and you hand it over to the private sector it will cost money plus profit to make it therefore more. If the argument is that somehow the private sector magically has better management then improve the management and reduce the costs but that simply is not true. Better management always equals higher cost as they always charge more than they earn.
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I once worked at Rockwell-Collins, which had been a supplier for the Space Shuttle programme. When I arrived, they were very stringent about how we handled our time reporting and billing. Why? Because apparently before I got there they had just gotten heavy slapped down for exploiting cost-plus Shuttle contracts. Whenever any project went over budget, they just had employees credit their time to the Shuttle programme.
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In it's day Apollo 8 cost 20 billion dollars. In today's money that's about 110 billion dollars.
The SLS costing the about the same in today's money as Apollo 8 cost in 1968 dollars - is actually a MASSIVELY cheaper and more efficient project then. .
The argument is pretty flawed if you make such a silly mistake. Now let's consider the claim about amounts and where they go. Are these people seriously saying that ALL of what NASA does with their share is wasted effort ? Does NASA not have a stake in doing their own testing and validation - making sure that they get what they paid for and that their astronauts will be safe ? Outsourcing that seems seriously irresponsible but even if you DID the private sector companies would have to do the same tests. Maybe they COULD do it cheaper -but cheaper isn't the most important thing here, quality matters a lot more than price for this stuff.
Why exactly is it a bad thing if a large chunk of NASA's budget is spent on the parts NASA does ? Why are these people arguing that NASA should outsource more than they do ? NASA is the customer here - and this seems like a thinly veiled attempt to use politics to force the customer to buy more.
NASA is the dumbest thing to complain about in terms of cost anyway - as a fraction of the federal budget they are a blip. Seriously NASA has had it's funding cut so consistently for decades that, today, they are basically a rounding error on the budget.
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This is the epitome of news reporting these days.
Step one: gather information to report on something you don't understand (e.g. how to do a manned flight mission)
Step two: make assumptions about a detail you learned on a subject you don't understand (e.g. how to do a manned flight mission)
Step three: complain about money spent (Bonus points for calling out NASA and how successful private industry is)
Step four: compare the risk of two things that are just not relatable (the difference of risk between unmanned and manned flight is laughable)
Just to point out, there is a dedicated team at NASA focused on the safety of everyone involved. This is "overhead".
There are people for quality assurance. This is "overhead".
There are system engineers.
There are people who manage the process.
There are managers at the project level.
There are managers at the mission level.
Personnel managers.
Facility managers.
Security.
Independent reviews.
Do you really want to be known as the one who cut one of these pieces when a rocket carrying people blows up? I'm not saying that the private industry can't handle this. I'm sure they will some day. But to assume they won't be exponentially more expensive???
Look people. Space X saved millions of dollars by borrowing decades old lessons and in some cases even algorithms and hardware from what NASA accomplished. Maybe private is the future, but how can we be so arrogant as to assume that our current success is unrelated to the hard work of people for the better part of a century?
Step five: inflammatory news piece to get your name out there.
A lot of things in the defense budget are things that people rely on.
None that are things that have to be covered under the defense budget. Most of the defense budget is for personnel and for war fighting machines (purchase and operation).
Food subsidies at one point were covered through the defense budget for example
I'm not aware of this being true in my lifetime if ever. Citation please.
The GPS cluster maintenance and upgrades are paid out of the defense budget.
Doesn't mean it has to remain that way. Wouldn't be hard to put that into the budget for NOAA or NASA or NTSB or the Commerce Dept.
Originally the US interstate system was a defense project, though it's now funded through gasoline taxes.
The money for it never came out of the defense budget. The project did have defense implications but it ultimately was a civilian project that has been used almost entirely for civilian uses and funded by non-military dollars.
The defense budget covers a lot more than just war machines.
Let's not pretend that war machines and the people that operate them don't account for the vast majority of military spending.
After all, the Internet got its start as a DARPA project.
Which has fuck-all to do with the fact that our current military budget is bloated far beyond any reasonable defense needs.