NASA Congressional Budget compromise $21B???

[sftommy]

I’ve gone through the White House proposal, the Senate proposal, and the House proposal and by my counts a vigorous, robust NASA funded to achieve comes to $21B a year for the next three years.

It is false economy to think one is making the “hard choices” in these budget proposals. Hard choices lead to shortcomings, frustrations, and failures. The benefits of a fully funded NASA are worth the investment. This could be the greatest decade in space flight, in technology development, in inspiration, in education!

NASA is America’s best high-tech driver; innovation is America’s best economic driver!

How do we convince Congress that funding the whole enchilada is in America’s greatest interest?

Write our congress people
Email our congress people
Harass our congress people

Get our kids to write, their school classes to write, the neighbors, anyone and everyone sympathetic to space flight. What happens in the next few weeks will either hamstring NASA for a decade or blossom space flight into something amazing!

 

[tanstaafl76]

It's a shame we're broke.

 

[rockett]

While I agree with sftommy in principal, I have to agree with tanstaafl76 in reality.

People have to have jobs and be productive to pay taxes. Otherwise, we are caught in the double-whammy of them not paying taxes and the rest of us helping them out. (Don't even get me started about how many jobs could have been funded out of the bonuses paid to the execs that we bailed out!)

And no blaming the wars either. Just think how bad unemployment would be if all those soldiers came home looking for work, and we no longer had to manufacture equipment for them anymore.

The bottom line is the bottom, and we are scraping it at present...

 

[menellom]

I'm with sftommy. Write your congressmen and suggest better options

 

[vulture4]

We need to be concerned with the NASA budget, but also with what NASA is spending tax dollars on. We are not "trapped in LEO" by technology, we have had the tech for manned lunar flight for 40 years. We are trapped in LEO by cost. Except for a few professionals, we are trapped on the ground by cost. If we could not afford to sustain Apollo, when Americans paid a much larger percentage of their income in taxes, what makes us think we can afford to indefinitely continue "Apollo on Steroids" now? If NASA goes forward with Constellation, what will it cost each year, and what will it produce? Will it produce practical benefits? Will it make it possible for large numbers of ordinary people to travel in space at a feasible cost? In thirty years, how many total missions will Constellation fly? At what total cost? How many people will go into space? Given the age of the Constellation technology now, does it make sense to continue to use it?

The Senate bill decimates R&D on new reusable and commercial ELV technologies that could finally make spaceflight practical, to pour billions into the resurgent Constellation program, now sustained by lobbyists who have proven more powerful than the President and the NASA Administrator combined.

 

[sftommy]

What if NASA were fully funded for it's missions?

I have plagiarized the WH, Senate and House spending proposals in pursuit of a legislative text that would fully fund NASA.

NASA for all proposals, by my calcs, would cost as follows:

FY-2011 $21,378,800,000
FY-2012 $21,138,985,000
FY-2013 $22,329,700,000

Most variation in Exploration and Space Operations.

Any compromise by Congress must, at the very least, start with this consideration of NASA being fully funded for the missions America has asked it’s representatives in the WH, Senate, and House to ensure it undertakes successfully.

 

[rcsplinters]

Were it up to me, I'd have absolutely no problem with a substantial funding lift for NASA. Realistically, I think its a hard sell as the politics involved is very harsh.

My thought, expressed to the very few that I know that might have the most meager of impacts is to totally pull any commercial product development from the NASA budget, save that for product or service purchase and technology transfer. I'm personally against any risk acceptance by the tax paying public on behalf private enterprise, particularly in a market where the number of customers can be counted on two hands. That said, there is a way to remove this burden from NASA while funneling such federal pork to risky startups. The federal government has bloated coffers of economic recovery money for the likes of GM, banks and other such mismanaged business endeavors. It seems that companies like SpaceX would be a more sound use of this money. It occurs to me that the risk of a meager few billion on Musk from these bloated funds is probably wiser than throwing 100's of billions to companies that should have been allowed to terminate. A further source of funding could be the tax breaks proposed by Shelby and others for risky space startups which would not be directly accountable by NASA.

These approaches would allow NASA to maximize its allocated funds to its own missions while other branches of the goverment decide whether to prop up Space X and other such risky ventures which are unable to attract private investment.

 

[DarkenedOne]

Were it up to me, I'd have absolutely no problem with a substantial funding lift for NASA. Realistically, I think its a hard sell as the politics involved is very harsh.

My thought, expressed to the very few that I know that might have the most meager of impacts is to totally pull any commercial product development from the NASA budget, save that for product or service purchase and technology transfer. I'm personally against any risk acceptance by the tax paying public on behalf private enterprise, particularly in a market where the number of customers can be counted on two hands. That said, there is a way to remove this burden from NASA while funneling such federal pork to risky startups. The federal government has bloated coffers of economic recovery money for the likes of GM, banks and other such mismanaged business endeavors. It seems that companies like SpaceX would be a more sound use of this money. It occurs to me that the risk of a meager few billion on Musk from these bloated funds is probably wiser than throwing 100's of billions to companies that should have been allowed to terminate. A further source of funding could be the tax breaks proposed by Shelby and others for risky space startups which would not be directly accountable by NASA.

These approaches would allow NASA to maximize its allocated funds to its own missions while other branches of the goverment decide whether to prop up Space X and other such risky ventures which are unable to attract private investment.

You know I believe in manned exploration program, and decent manned space program needs cheap, safe, and reliable access to LEO. This capability is the foundation of human spaceflight and is necessary for all of human spaceflight activities. It needs to be safe so that it does not get astronauts killed. It needs to be reliable in order to maintain outposts. It needs to be cheap so that we actually have money left over to actually spend on not so mundane hardware for human spaceflight like heavy-lift rockets, space stations, spaceship, landers, and planetary bases.

Now I would love if NASA was able to deliver such a capability, but they have proven in recent decades that they have been unable to. The Shuttle is neither cheap, nor reliable, nor safe. The only cheap, safe, and reliable access to space has been what we have bought commercially from the Russians with a rocket that was designed over 50 years ago.

Of course paying the Russians $50 million would be fine as far as exploration goes. Of course the US does not want to rely on its old nemesis for such a basic capability. NASA of course proposes the Ares I with an original estimated price of $24 billion now up to $40 billion in development cost proving once again as with the shuttle that NASA cannot do anything cost-effectively. Honestly $40 billion. The ISS with a 6 person crew working in 6 month shifts requires transportation of 12 people to and from the station per year. At the Russian asking price of $50 million that comes to $600 million a year. With the same $40 billion it would cost to develop Ares I we could man the space station for the next 66 years. Hell if we were even smarter and invested that $40 billion dollars, even at a very low interest rate we can pay the Russians to do it indefinitely.

Unfortunately SpaceX and Boeing with their capsules launched by commercial vehicles seem to be the only spacecraft up to the task. They seem to be the America's only hope of actually having a decent manned space program. If they are able to develop man-rated commercial crew vehicles for the few billion that they are asking for, and then they are able to sell it to NASA for prices competitive to that of the Soyuz, than NASA will final have the money it needs to develop heavy lift rockets and deep spaceship.

 

[sftommy]

My “Fully Funded NSA” exercise was a study independent of the merit of any position proposed.

The merits of each individual proposal have been made by their respective proponents and are compelling in each in their own right and many are highly debatable. Should each element be fully funded the result would be a National direction with purpose, and an innovative intent would firmly be planted in the American mind and probably in that of the rest of the world.

National security will be greatly enhanced by America developing all the space abilities it can. America has and must continue to define the peaceful development of space. We have it now by right of being first, and can strengthen that position by having the strongest LEO access ability in the world. If we do not, some nations have made it clear they will seek space development as the “tactical/strategic higher ground” and this is to our peril.

As a fiscal conservative, “commercial space” does have philosophical drawbacks (even to me), however the results of three years funding at the levels requested by this administration would help develop the infrastructure for an industry. Dare one even say “a new way of American life”?

Investment now, however bitter to some or even most, parallels the airplane or steam engine, each had a return on investment unimagined at the dawn of their centuries. It may take a half-century or more to get the common people in space, maybe less with Boeing on board now. At that same time this economic development will help curb it’s militarization.

It may be this Congress that is key for any of it to happen. The cost increase would seem marginal in light of the various bailout $$$ of this last recession, economies are cyclic.

Every dollar we spend on improving humanities access to space is a positive thing and enhances the possibility of this species long-term survival as well as being personally engaging for a multitude of us.

 

[orionrider]

You need to look at the big picture:

At $65 per US citizen, Nasa's budget is already HUGE, many would say 'disproportionate'.

Compare to other developed countries:

Japan ($2.5B = $20/citizen);
Russia ($2.5B = $18/citizen);
Europe ($5B = 10$/citizen);
China ($1.3B = $1/citizen);

That for a country in economic turmoil AND fighting two very expensive wars.
Frankly, it surprises me that Nasa still gets so much money. It says a lot about the vision of american leaders but I'm not sure it is sustainable in the long term.

 

[sftommy]

I would encourage no one to limit their dreams based upon anyone else's perceived "big picture" or to take such limits too seriously while pursuing them. Go Techies Go!!!

Early on NASA spread itself across the country to ensure Congress would be motivated to fund it. That planning has worked. America has proven itself over 50 years to find merit in funding levels that defy conventional statistical wisdoms, (NASA as % of GDP for instance looks much more palatable). America has reaped the benefits of those investments, the entire world has. Nobody steals Chinese technologies.

The people of America through their elected representative in the Presidency, the House and the Senate created this laundry list of notable goals. If they are to say NO to bits and pieces of it then that is a surrender of potential. The same potential I read in these threads every day. This would be the wrong track for America.

Space race with China would be an interesting motivator but DoD's report out today
http://www.spacepolicyonline.com/pages/ ... 202010.pdf
doesn't suggest that likely for another decade, although they do have a military program planning on how to knock out our satellites.

 

[aaron38]

And no blaming the wars either. Just think how bad unemployment would be if all those soldiers came home looking for work, and we no longer had to manufacture equipment for them anymore.

No I'll blame the wars. Think about how much productive work we could have accomplished, how much real production and real wealth could have been built if we'd given $1 Trillion to NASA instead of using it to blow up sand.

With the kind of money that we pissed away, we could have bases on the Moon and Mars, have opened the fronteir and have whole new rapid growth economies ahead of us.

Instead we have nothing, because we chose destruction over creation.

 

[sftommy]

Invest in peace not war, Thank you Aaron!

Here's the major variants details of my calcs for a FULLY FUNDED NASA budget (in Millions of $)
again all is as previously proposed except for HSF-asap(which needs little explanation):

‘                                                    2011             2012           2013
TOTAL REQUESTED 	                                 $21,378	      $21,038   	  $22,229 
			
 EXPLORATION 			
 A.  Multipurpose Crew Vehicle 	                    1,120 	         1,400 	       1,400 
 B.  Space Launch System 	                          1,631 	         2,650 	       2,650 
 C.  Exploration Technology Developement 	            652 	           776 	       1,060 
 D.  Human Related Research 	                         215               215 	         215 
 E. Commercial Cargo 	                                312               300 	         300 
 F.  Commercial Crew 	                                500 	         1,000 	       1,000 
 G.  HSF-asap - (Atlas or Delta) 	                     415 	          100             100 
 H.  Robotic Precursor 	                               125 	          506 	         700 
 I .  Constellation close-out & realignment 	        1,000 	           -   	         -   
			
			
 SPACE OPERATIONS 			
 A.  ISS Program  	                                 2,730             2,984 	      3,129 
 B.   ISS Program-Space life science                     75 	           100 	        100 
 C.  Space Shuttle and related activities 	         1,610 	            86 	         -   
 D.  Space & Flight Services	                         690 	           721 	        724 
 E.  Space & F. S.-Modernization 	                    429 	            50 	         50
 F.  Post Shuttle Work Force initiative                  -                 40             40

I'd rather see any more economic stimulus or bailouts go this route.
But there is a great deal to discuss in the "Full Funding Proposal".

 

[Yuri_Armstrong]

And no blaming the wars either. Just think how bad unemployment would be if all those soldiers came home looking for work, and we no longer had to manufacture equipment for them anymore.

No I'll blame the wars. Think about how much productive work we could have accomplished, how much real production and real wealth could have been built if we'd given $1 Trillion to NASA instead of using it to blow up sand.

With the kind of money that we pissed away, we could have bases on the Moon and Mars, have opened the fronteir and have whole new rapid growth economies ahead of us.

Instead we have nothing, because we chose destruction over creation.

Agreed, the wars have done much more harm than good.

I personally think that NASA should be receiving 10% of the total budget. This is a very high number but it would be very worth it so long as the money was spent effectively and responsibly. The bureacracy of NASA seems to have trouble with this as DarkenedOne said. The 1 trillion dollars and the 4000+ lives we lost did nothing to advance America's technology and economy. Imagine what that money could have done if it had been spent with NASA. We are moving at a snail's pace compared to the Mercury and Gemini programs of the 60's!

We all have a responsibilty to contact our congressmen and ask them to support the space program. It is perhaps the most important part of our budget and the tax dollars that go there really do matter. Let America stay ahead of the other countries and be the best explorer of space and researcher of science and technology.

 

[sftommy]

Just noticed that TN Rep Bart Gordon is going to retire this year, not seeking reelection.

Seeing what he'd do to NASA in the House bill
and his unwillingness to fund NASA for anything but another great big "maybe" rocket
and his playing the blame game (on Obama for changes Gordon made) before HR 5781 has even left his committee
and his making excuses for a future failure for a bill that hasn't yet left his committee
and his trying to force HR 5781 thru Congress purposefully avoiding dissenting discussion
but mostly for his own lack of vision and failure to pursue proper funding

America is ready to say "Goodbye Bart!"

If America and NASA have to wait two months to move beyond this obstructionist then so be it. Which raises the second question, can a funding bill for NASA be introduced to the House Floor without coming out of committee?