FY 2025 NASA Budget (March 11th)

[FinalFrontier]

Boeing'a troubles may force/accelerate some of the "hard choices" wrt SLS.
Still to early on that front to say for sure, but if the stock price and earnings are anything to go by...

The point of SLS was pork barrel funneling, more or less. What happens when the pork provider runs out of pork?
No more incentive.

We'll see what happens. There is too much politically in flux in a general sense to put a heavy emphasis on this budget. Election outcomes could result in a radically different budget next year. Or not.

[yg1968]

The parties already agreed to a certain level of spending for FY25 during the debt deal. This agreement is unlikely to change after the election. Usually, the appropriations bills are so far along that very little changes are likely to be made after the election. Having said that it is possible that the parties will come to an agreement on the FY25 Appropriations bills right after the election in November or December but before the new Congress is in place in January (i.e., during the lame-duck session). It seems unlikely to me that the parties will come to an agreement on the various FY25 Appropriations bills before the election.

[FinalFrontier]

The parties already agreed to a certain level of spending for FY25 during the debt deal. This agreement is unlikely to change after the election. Usually, the appropriations bills are so far along that very little changes after the election. Having said that it is possible that the parties will come to an agreement on the FY25 Appropriations bills right after the election in November or December but before the new Congress is in place in January. It seems unlikely to me that the parties will come to an agreement on the various FY25 Appropriations bills before the election.

Correct to clarify I meant that the long term choices reflected in this budget may not matter much because political change could change all of these in the subsequent budget (2026). Therefore don't get to hung up on the implications of this budget.
That and specific to SLS nobody knows right now what sort of position Boeing is going to be in a year from now let alone longer than that.

I supposed of Congress really wanted to keep SLS and something did happen you could source another lead core stage contractor but that seems unlikely.

For me the point of this budget is just more of what we already new. We really need Starship and New Glenn to succeed and get going, sooner is better. Otherwise it's going to be a no bucks no buck rodgers situation at some point again in the near future. Nasa IG reports back that up.

[deltaV]

SLS and Orion (and the BO HLS) are pure pork jobs programs.

BO HLS is NOT "pure pork". It provides NASA with redundancy in case SpaceX has trouble with the SpaceX HLS design's many technical risks. Those risks include cryogenic propellant transfer, Starship being ~5x larger than required potentially raising costs, and the fact that the only other reusable upper stage ever built, the shuttle, had massive cost and schedule overruns. Even if SpaceX HLS succeeds, a SpaceX monopoly, like any monopoly, would be unlikely to serve NASA's interests long term. BO HLS is affordably priced, only $3.4B, 18% more expensive than SpaceX HLS.

[edzieba]

SLS and Orion (and the BO HLS) are pure pork jobs programs.

BO HLS is NOT "pure pork". It provides NASA with redundancy in case SpaceX has trouble with the SpaceX HLS design's many technical risks.

It does no such thing. HLS is a lander programme, SLS is a launch vehicle, not a lander. Altair was cancelled two decades ago, and no further development has occurred.

[FinalFrontier]

SLS and Orion (and the BO HLS) are pure pork jobs programs.

BO HLS is NOT "pure pork". It provides NASA with redundancy in case SpaceX has trouble with the SpaceX HLS design's many technical risks.

It does no such thing. HLS is a lander programme, SLS is a launch vehicle, not a lander. Altair was cancelled two decades ago, and no further development has occurred.

I think deltav was referring only to the blue origin HLS proposal in his post not sure though. I almost wrote a large post about all the things SLS can't do until I re-read it.

But yes it goes without saying, SLS and Orion are 100% purely pork programs as they have very very limited capability in their current forms and production rates to do anything meaningful.
SLS can only (barely) send Orion to the moon and Orion can only orbit the moon and return to earth. Currently.

[DanClemmensen]

SLS and Orion (and the BO HLS) are pure pork jobs programs.

BO HLS is NOT "pure pork". It provides NASA with redundancy in case SpaceX has trouble with the SpaceX HLS design's many technical risks.

It does no such thing. HLS is a lander programme, SLS is a launch vehicle, not a lander. Altair was cancelled two decades ago, and no further development has occurred.

The legislative history is very clear: after NASA awarded only one HLS contract (to SpaceX), certain legislators were very upset. They passed new legislation directing NASA to award a second contract with the clear intent that it would go to BO. This is why I think of it as pork. Yes, it can be justified as a contingency design, but that is basically an after-the-fact rationalization.  (Note: based the Starliner fiasco I grant that an alternate development effort may be a good idea, but it had nothing whatoever to do with that legislative effort.)

If congress is really concerned with contingency risk mitigation, Why is there no push for an alternative to SLS/Orion?  I believe the failure risks for SLS/Orion are considerably higher than for Starship HLS, mostly because of the extremely low flight rate. But an SLS/Orion alternative would put the SLS/Orion pork at risk.

[joek]

...
I supposed of Congress really wanted to keep SLS and something did happen you could source another lead core stage contractor but that seems unlikely.
...

Probability of that is nil-zero. Boeing owns critical IP, which would require that someone (like NASA) would have to pay $$$ to obtain that IP in order to obtain another SLS provider. It sucks. SLS == Boeing, Orion == LM, they have NASA over a barrel, and NASA has no alternative other than to keep feeding them or shut them (and the pork) down.

[yg1968]

SLS and Orion (and the BO HLS) are pure pork jobs programs.

BO HLS is NOT "pure pork". It provides NASA with redundancy in case SpaceX has trouble with the SpaceX HLS design's many technical risks.

It does no such thing. HLS is a lander programme, SLS is a launch vehicle, not a lander. Altair was cancelled two decades ago, and no further development has occurred.

The legislative history is very clear: after NASA awarded only one HLS contract (to SpaceX), certain legislators were very upset. They passed new legislation directing NASA to award a second contract with the clear intent that it would go to BO. This is why I think of it as pork. Yes, it can be justified as a contingency design, but that is basically an after-the-fact rationalization.  (Note: based the Starliner fiasco I grant that an alternate development effort may be a good idea, but it had nothing whatoever to do with that legislative effort.)

If congress is really concerned with contingency risk mitigation, Why is there no push for an alternative to SLS/Orion?  I believe the failure risks for SLS/Orion are considerably higher than for Starship HLS, mostly because of the extremely low flight rate. But an SLS/Orion alternative would put the SLS/Orion pork at risk.

That is not really true. The 2022 NASA Authorization bill did not contain any provisions on HLS because of Bernie Saunders' opposition to such a provision (the $10B for HLS over 5 or 6 years provision was taken out in the final bill). There was a specific request for funding a second lander in certain Appropriations bills but NASA has generally requested enough funding for 2 landers in its budget requests anyways. There was no direction that the HLS funding should go to Blue either in the explanatory statements or in the reports to the various appropriations bills.

There is no contingency for SLS and Orion because they are government owned and we obviously can't afford a second government owned HLV and BLEO spacecraft. If SLS and Orion were to be replaced by a public-private partnership/service, there likely would be two providers.

[yg1968]

Space Budget Experts Warn FY2025 May Be Even Worse for NASA:
https://spacepolicyonline.com/news/space-budget-experts-warn-fy2025-may-be-even-worse-for-nasa/

https://twitter.com/SpcPlcyOnline/status/1774270158091026498

[yg1968]

https://twitter.com/SpcPlcyOnline/status/1777710132761162103

[deltaV]

Apparently NASA is now requesting $200M for MSR in '25 and "Planetary Decadal Future" is getting a $200M cut to balance the budget (https://spacepolicyonline.com/news/nasa-wants-new-ideas-fast-on-how-to-return-samples-from-mars-affordably/).

Edit: for later years MSR gets $100M with matching cuts in "Planetary Decadal Future".

[yg1968]

Nelson Defends Tough Choices in FY2025 Budget Request:
https://spacepolicyonline.com/news/nelson-defends-tough-choices-in-fy2025-budget-request/

https://twitter.com/SpcPlcyOnline/status/1780814374732452293

[yg1968]

Budget Hearing – Fiscal Year 2025 Request for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration

[yg1968]

https://twitter.com/housescience/status/1782863377775112504

[yg1968]

An Overview of the Budget Proposal for NASA for Fiscal Year 2025:

[yg1968]

Subcommittee House CJS Markup (which includes NASA) will be released on June 12th and the CJS Full Committee Markup on July 9th:

https://twitter.com/JenniferShutt/status/1791121447739338871

https://twitter.com/JenniferShutt/status/1791123768317755507

[yg1968]

A Review of the President’s Fiscal Year 2025 Budget Request for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and for the National Science Foundation:

https://www.appropriations.senate.gov/hearings/a-review-of-the-presidents-fiscal-year-2025-budget-request-for-the-national-aeronautics-and-space-administration-and-for-the-national-science-foundation

Archived webcast:
https://www.appropriations.senate.gov/hearings/watch?hearingid=4F2B3011-DA4A-38C0-5F30-34DE17DF92E2

[yg1968]

Senate CJS appropriators see Artemis as top NASA priority:
https://spacepolicyonline.com/news/senate-cjs-appropriators-see-artemis-as-top-nasa-priority/

https://twitter.com/SpcPlcyOnline/status/1793837938029330857

[yg1968]

https://twitter.com/SpcPlcyOnline/status/1799183897629962539