LIVE: Congressional Hearings into Obama's NASA Budget FY2011 - Feb 24-25 Part 2

[psloss]

If nothing gets changed within the next 3-4 months, it will be too late to have any chance of saving Shuttle at all.

And all the options like CxP and DIRECT are all relying on that workforce.   Once they're gone, all those options also evaporate.

You may be right, but to go back to Chris's question, there probably won't be very many hearings after the Spring.  There will be a few bills and a few votes in public later in the year and a lot of discussions in private, but we won't see much.

[jongoff]

Here's a question. Is there a danger that a political fightback against the FY2011 could result in months and months of hearings etc, which might leave us with a really bad situation of shuttle ending, CxP ending and the future plan bogged down with the lawmakers?

Absolutely.

That is what I started calling the "Garver Gambit" last month.

If nothing gets changed within the next 3-4 months, it will be too late to have any chance of saving Shuttle at all.

And all the options like CxP and DIRECT are all relying on that workforce.   Once they're gone, all those options also evaporate.

Congress is soon to go on Easter break.   Their year is also shortened by it being an election year.   The period in which these folk can actually "legislate" a change is rapidly shortening.   There are not very many days left for them to implement any real changes, so they better hurry.

Garver wins by default if they don't move quickly.   It is a brilliant strategic play on her part.   Is her opposition up to the challenge?   Only time will tell...

Ross.

Lori Garver? I must have missed the memo, but when did she become the bad person in all of this? That's why I was confused about Senator Vitter's attack on her.....as much as I wouldn't understand politics even if it slapped me in the face.

Yeah, this conspiracy theory mongering is kind of silly.  It's not like Lori Garver is the only person in NASA who thinks this is a good approach, or who likes R&D and commercial development.  Everyone I've heard of in the Obama administration that has anything to do with space policy (including OMB, OSTP, his political appointees at NASA, etc) has been pushing in this direction, as has large parts of the space-interested parts of the progressive movements (I have friends who fall under that category).  I've coauthored papers with people on the progressive side pushing for just this sort of thing.  Acting as though this is all Lori Garver's brainchild, and if we just kill the messenger this will all go away is naive.  Lori is more or less representative of the opinions I've seen everywhere in Obama's administration when it comes to space policy.  And quite frankly, space policy is probably the only area that I've actually been happy with Obama's performance so far.

~Jon

[kraisee]

Lori Garver? I must have missed the memo, but when did she become the bad person in all of this? That's why I was confused about Senator Vitter's attack on her.....as much as I wouldn't understand politics even if it slapped me in the face.

She's only trying to do what she thinks is right.   She doesn't believe in going back to the moon, never did.   And she is not a fan of any of the big defense contractors, even though they are where the wealth of experience is.   She would prefer to throw the whole lot out and replace them with Space-X style small companies and foreign partnerships (recall she is one of the central figures responsible for saving Space Station Freedom by bringing in International Partners).

She has been at the center of the negotiations, and while certainly not the only person in the room, she has been the main character in the evolution of these plans all the way from last year's transition team, through Augustine and to this politically explosive Budget Draft.

She isn't alone.   Alan Ladwig and George Whitesides are both centrally involved (transition team again).

John Holdren over at OSTP has been the senior White House/OMB guy in on this.

And Charlie Bolden seems to be saying all the right things to indicate he believe in this too, although reports vary as far as to say he's considering retiring from NASA already because this isn't what he signed up for.   I don't know which end of that spectrum is true though.   I guess we'll all see if/when he retires early.


President Obama has actually had very little input into this beyond a few high-level instructions.   By the accounts I've heard, he mostly wants increased education spending and to get rid of anything his predecessor started.   The rest is up to his advisers (listed above) to handle as they see fit.   They are the ones writing this, not the Oval.


Outside of that "inner circle" it becomes less clear who is involved.   One notable who I have noticed is all over this locally is Bob Cabana (KSC Director) who seems to be all-for getting rid of most of his own workforce right now.   If you talk to staff down here it almost sounds like there are a couple thousand people at KSC ready to lynch him already!

So no, Lori Garver isn't the only person behind this.   But she is a particularly central figure who has been leading this 'cabal' and crafting these decisions, plus speaking into the President's ear, for roughly a year longer than Bolden has even been in office.

There is no doubt at all that Lori was "in charge" until the Administrator was officially appointed -- she was given the authority of the President to do whatever she wanted until the time Bolden came into the picture   The only remaining question is exactly how much Bolden has taken charge after that point, and how much influence she still has today.   Excepting Bolden, her voice is still undoubtedly the loudest.

Ross.

[infocat13]

Ross,
a marine would not retire over this not this early...............
he will see this through I think.
he does seem naive when it comes to the legislature.
he will protect his budget and his commander in chief
perhaps a beneficial compromise with the executive and the legislative branch will be his achievement. 

[kraisee]

perhaps a beneficial compromise with the executive and the legislative branch will be his achievement. 

I sure hope that is his legacy.

The last Admin was too divisive.   We don't need another like that.

Ross.

[Lampyridae]

"You don't want seventh graders thinking about Mars? I don't agree with that." Vitter.

Bolden disagrees. Cites about them not caring about the LV.

Emphasis mine. I don't know many seventh graders who build models of the ISS but I literally know hundreds who build and fly model rockets. It's the rockets that grab their attention, not the photo-ops inside a station.

So, what do you think people will be flying on if we use commercial LEO taxis?  Giant balloons?  Huge rubber bands?  No it'll be rockets just the same.  Sure, DIRECT is bigger than Falcon 9 or Atlas V, but quite frankly I doubt most people outside of the hard core rocket nerds give a darn what shape the rocket is in that puts the people up.

~Jon

It's not the size of the rockets that I was addressing Jon, it's his off-the-wall view that *the kids* don't care about the rockets. That was about as unimaginative and uninformed a comment as could possibly have been made by the head of NASA. Whether it's a Jupiter, an Atlas, a Delta, a Soyuz, a Falcon, an Ariane, a Long March or an Honest John SAM, the point is that kids are fascinated by the *rockets*. They get just as big a kick out of watching an Atlas send a probe to Mars as they do watching a Saturn send astronauts to the moon. Give a kid a plastic model of Cassini and it will never get built. Give a kid a model rocket kit and he or she will be pestering you in no time to take them out to fly it.

You and I are much more focused on the missions that the rockets enable, but the kids are excited by the rockets, not the science. Most of them completely loose interest when you tell them about Cassini or Galleleo or any of the other science missions. It's the launch vehicles, not the math and science that excites the kids. It's the launch vehicles that grab and hold their attention and it's the launch vehicles that gradually, over time, turn them to math and science by the time they are in high school or college. To say on national television that kids are not excited by the launch vehicles just tells me that the man is totally out of touch with reality. This is a guy who is interested in exciting kids to pursue math and science? He doesn't want 7th graders to be thinking about Mars? What does he want them to think about instead? Calculus? Give me a break.

My observation was not about government HLV vs. Commercial CCDev. It was about the kids and his wrong-headed view of what will inspire them. Doing it his way will turn off an entire generation of kids, not inspire them.

The picture below says it all.

When I was a kid, the shuttle inspired me. I wanted the cutaway diagrams, the labels, the articles on silica tiles. I was fascinated by space station Freedom. I made an AG NERV design for a Mars ship and sent it to NASA.

Getting back a bunch of educational pamphlets (more like newsletters, they were quite detailed) and posters was the best thing ever.

Anybody who thinks anything else is just plain "boring" to kids is wrong. However, real space is not as inspiring to the vast majority of kids because there is no Harry Potter of space. Space being cool will only ever be a fad.

I didn't study hard at school because I thought I'd never get to be an astronaut (not being American). Now, with commercial spaceflight, I might actually get my wish, I just have to be insanely rich (for orbital) or just save hard (for suborbital). So, I've decided to make lots of money to go into space. How's that for inspiration?

[Namechange User]

No, we are not stuck.  We have a vehicle.

True, but a vehicle that at best can be strung out for another few years max, and only at extreme expense.  If you stretched it out to the max you could do without restarting the production lines all the way, you'd be talking about 3-4 extra flights over 5 years at the cost of around $12-13B.  Ie about $2B/flight.  And that isn't without risk.

I honestly think there are better balances of cost vs. risk that could be done than trying to keep Shuttle limping along for another five years.  For instance, if shuttle-class upmass is the big concern, my favorite proposed solution was the ULA Payload Bay Fairing.  The system is pretty low technical risk, with almost all of the technolgies at TRL 9, could provide shuttle-class upmass, and could probably be flying within a short period of time (since it doesn't need a new launcher, and can reuse a lot of systems from other projects).  I'd rather see a slight 1-2 flight shuttle stretchout and extra funding for something like this than trying to keep Shuttle going for another several years at such high costs.

Commercial, at best, is 3-4 years away for crew.  The current "plan" is not a plan and hopes and assumes with zero contingency.

It has a lot more contingency than the old plan did.  If it got funded, you would likely have at least three or four potential crew and cargo launch systems, on at least three different launchers (Boeing capsule and/or Dreamchaser on Atlas V, Cygnus on Taurus II, Dragon on Falcon 9).  Sure, it's possible that every single one of those could fail, but even if you assign a low success rate for each of them once you start talking that level of redundancy, the odds of them all failing seems pretty low.

As for the rest, I hate to say this Jon but that is simply looking through rose colored glasses.  General lists, not really what I would call specific, of when maybe we would like to see technologies developed but then having no definitive plan to use them is a strategic mistake.

Believe what you will.  From the limited amount I've seen of the various roadmapping activities going on at NASA it's getting a lot more thought than you seem to think. 

~Jon

Jon,

Relative to shuttle extension, thank you for being the expert.  It is not true that there would be massive restarts and clearly "massive expense" is relative.  No big surprise that instead you would terminate Shuttle, and ask ULA to *develop* a capability that duplicates perhaps some of the upmass but then does not account for the other capabilities, including crew.  As for risk, nothing is without risk and unless you can really speak to that, I would suggest you not try to use that as an arguement because it just looks like you're drinking the kool-aid.

As for contingencies, what you describe are multiple developments and it is still unclear how these partnerships will precisely work and how the market will support them *if* they ever make it to operational status and what that means for these companies long-term viability.  That is not a contingency.  There is no contingency for ISS operations, support and utilization and just instead sole sources everything to Russia for an unspecified amount of time and at unknown cost for an unknown amount of science that will be able to be performed. 

As for the final statement, the word *limited* obviously is key.

[Namechange User]

The bottom line is this, the NASA FY2011 budget is a mess. The majority of people know it, the minority don't. There are people who scream from both camps but it's always best to go with the facts you read and the facts from the committee hearings you watch.

The problem is that the previous plan was also a mess.  They had a plan that *they* were underfunding, and it was already a slow-motion trainwreck.  Sure, most of those Congresspeople who are supposed to be overseeing these programs didn't care so long as money kept flowing into their districts, but that doesn't paper over the fact that CxP was in serious trouble and everyone with eyes to see knew it.

This new plan isn't perfect, but it was at least a workable solution that matched ambitions with funding and provided a way to bump NASA onto a more favorable capability vs. cost curve than its on today.  Unless Congress can step up to its responsibilities and fund everything they want NASA to do, it behooves them to find a plan they are willing to afford.  And you could do far worse than something close to the President's proposal.  The fact that politicians who see NASA as a free way to provide favors to campaign contributors and to get jobs in their districts at the expense of the rest of the nation are not happy with this isn't surprising.

I don't expect this new plan to pass, just because it makes too much sense, and focuses more on giving the nation value than on giving value to the politicians who see NASA as their own plaything.  What I think is most likely to happen is for CxP to keep lurching forward Zombie-like until it's destroyed what's left of NASA's credibility, and even its defenders in Congress can't keep it from being cancelled.

~Jon

And a technology program with no planned uses of that technology makes sense?  And the same Congress that didn't fund NASA to what it was authorized when it actually had a mission, is now going to fund this.  That sounds like hope and assumption when in reality we have been down this technology development program road in the past and it failed.  It will be used as a government slush fund in the coming years no doubt.

[Namechange User]

Yeah, this conspiracy theory mongering is kind of silly.  It's not like Lori Garver is the only person in NASA who thinks this is a good approach, or who likes R&D and commercial development.  Everyone I've heard of in the Obama administration that has anything to do with space policy (including OMB, OSTP, his political appointees at NASA, etc) has been pushing in this direction, as has large parts of the space-interested parts of the progressive movements (I have friends who fall under that category).  I've coauthored papers with people on the progressive side pushing for just this sort of thing.  Acting as though this is all Lori Garver's brainchild, and if we just kill the messenger this will all go away is naive.  Lori is more or less representative of the opinions I've seen everywhere in Obama's administration when it comes to space policy.  And quite frankly, space policy is probably the only area that I've actually been happy with Obama's performance so far.

~Jon

While it is good you have co-authored more papers, I think suggesting that none of this is true and calling it a conspiracy theory shows your blind trust in this policy.  It just may have more truth to it than you want to believe.....

[psloss]

(There was an appropriations subcommittee hearing yesterday, but I haven't seen a webcast of that made available yet.)

No webcast links yet, but there's an article about this hearing:
http://www.spacenews.com/policy/100225-house-appropriators-grill-obama-science-adviser.html

[vt_hokie]

She's only trying to do what she thinks is right.   She doesn't believe in going back to the moon, never did. 

That is most unfortunate.

And she is not a fan of any of the big defense contractors, even though they are where the wealth of experience is.   She would prefer to throw the whole lot out and replace them with Space-X style small companies and foreign partnerships

That is also unfortunate, imo.  I'd be a lot more confident in something like DreamChaser if NASA gave one of the "big defense contractors" the contract to build it, rather than some upstart company with a shaky financial footing and zero history or experience in building such vehicles.

[jkumpire]

Just from what I have heard the last two days and read here, there is a basic question that has never been dealt with by Bolden, Garver, and NASA:

"Does President Obama and his Administration support HSF BEO?"

If he does, then he has to set a goal: Moon by 2020, with Mars to follow (for example). Moon 2030 is absurd, and that is a problem for them.

If he sets the goal, then most disagreements will go away. Because NASA's leadership will have come up with coherent ways to reach this goal, or come close to it. They will also have to show the Congress and other interested parties that the plan is a viable one.

Right now, the NASA plan is a no sale because there is no goal, and there is no commitment to HSF that can be demonstrated by the budget numbers and plans currently out there. Promises that unproven R&D $$ and unproven private enterprise $$ will lead to a new better HSF for all just cannot be sold in this environment. And if it can be sold, then the people who believe in the new direction have not found a way to convince a lot of people (me included fwiw) it's viable. 

In the post-Apollo debacle, when Von Braun and his sales job for NASA went up in smoke courtesy of the Congress, there were several viable options that were part of the picture which showed that HSF was not dead. SSP was the program chosen because it was the cheapest alternative, that pushed the tech envelope, and held the promise of continued civilian HSF. It was a shot in the dark, but solved the money and political problems of the time.

But, in the earliest days of NACA/NASA, it seemed pretty clear that humans could be lifted into space, without a massive new technological jump. The technology jump was largely a case of reliability; making sure that the changes we make to the current tech of the time would work. The other part of the equation was that as NASA and it's industrial/military contractors worked the tech, it would get better. 

We are in a new era, it seems to me. The Obama people want to roll the dice on new, unproven tech, or proven tech in new and untried ways. In reality, they are trying a new direction to use the old 1990's NASA "Faster, Better, Cheaper" idea to solve a new set of problems. They are selling the idea that they have the answers, and in their crystal ball, they will get us where we want to get to, we just are not sure how to get there, or where we want to go.

CxP/Direct and even EELV gets hit because it uses old tech and/or is too expensive, or does not go where we want it to go fast enough. But CxP/Direct is really like the old days of NASA; Believers say we can make this work, if we are willing to risk failure or be a little less cautious using a mix of old and new tech.

The Obama folks hold most of the cards and the high ground at this point, but they are in a mess because they are not really trusted that they care about HSF, unless it deals with AGW. How they sell they still want HSF BEO is the big problem they have to fix before their vision can be sustained. 

 

     

[nooneofconsequence]

The last Admin was too divisive.   We don't need another like that.

Yes. No one expects Bolden to be - not his style.

But many saw this in Griffin as a driven, decisive manager - good traits. Many still wish to overlook the terrible damage he did.

I'm glad that not everyone subscribes to the notion "the ends justifies the means".

For what its worth, my worries about him was about backbone. I've been pleasantly surprised at its tensile strength.

[psloss]

Well, I haven't seen any public confirmation of this yet, but 'bite me' doesn't really count as a fact or a leak.  (It would be more of a Ron Burgundy moment.)  If it's true (and I would think given the report there's an effort to track it down), it would be another example that style matters.

It is real.

Thanks for posting that -- the tweet is gone now and I didn't see it when I checked a few hours earlier...out of curiosity when did you screen shot that?

[dbhyslop]

We are in a new era, it seems to me. The Obama people want to roll the dice on new, unproven tech, or proven tech in new and untried ways. In reality, they are trying a new direction to use the old 1990's NASA "Faster, Better, Cheaper" idea to solve a new set of problems. They are selling the idea that they have the answers, and in their crystal ball, they will get us where we want to get to, we just are not sure how to get there, or where we want to go.

I'd modify this thought a little bit.  There are quite a few companies that seem to have the competence required to make a spacecraft.  Some of them are well established with little risk but perhaps higher cost--Boeing, Lockheed; others are less experienced companies that hope to offer cheaper or more innovative products at the expense of higher programmatic risk--Spacex, SpaceDev, etc.  The new plan seems to be to throw money at ALL of these people and get a few of these flying so that 1) all our eggs aren't in one basket and 2) they can sell their seats cheaper to third parties because NASA helped with dev costs.

You guys might have to help me on the numbers here, but we've spent what, about ten billion dollars on Constellation and we're still a good five or six years from having a simple capsule on a simple rocket to LEO?  That's putting our eggs in one basket.  For that kind of money and time you might have three or four commercial spacecraft flying, but if every single one was to fail I'm sure Orion would have, too.

[mars.is.wet]

Bolden seems more and more like a puppet after these past 2 days...

Did you think he was going to be a strong leader given his resume?

I like the guy, but he's clearly the guy picked to deliver the bad news.

[nooneofconsequence]

She's only trying to do what she thinks is right.   She doesn't believe in going back to the moon, never did. 

That is most unfortunate.

And she is not a fan of any of the big defense contractors, even though they are where the wealth of experience is.   She would prefer to throw the whole lot out and replace them with Space-X style small companies and foreign partnerships

That is also unfortunate, imo.  I'd be a lot more confident in something like DreamChaser if NASA gave one of the "big defense contractors" the contract to build it, rather than some upstart company with a shaky financial footing and zero history or experience in building such vehicles.

Listen. Many experiences good and bad with big and small aerospace companies, with the best/worst management, best/worst financial situation.

You cannot predict levels of success with any of them.

Watched Bernie Schwartz bet the farm on Skynet at Loral - great financials, great management ... suicidal decision. Need I bring up VentureStar.

FWIW, these guys are much better off than Kistler.

[mars.is.wet]

Here's a question. Is there a danger that a political fightback against the FY2011 could result in months and months of hearings etc, which might leave us with a really bad situation of shuttle ending, CxP ending and the future plan bogged down with the lawmakers?

Also, for our older members, are the current events comparable with anything in the past....I'm thinking Apollo to Shuttle, as much as I know that must have been very different?

Very much so Chris.

That is why it is SO dangerous to open up definitive decisions in a  democracy decisions to scrutiny.  Definitive decisions are so rare, that once the option space is opened up it is not only likely that our representatives may pick a worse alternative, but might posture so long as to make ANY decision irrelevant.

There are those that warned of this.  Policies that result in huge government acquisitions in a political world are incredibly fragile eggs ... they require support from all sides (including those that may not like eggs) or the slightest crack leads to them falling apart to nothing. 

Not a system I'm proud of, but one that repeats itself for NASA and other agencies. 

[Chris Bergin]

Here's my article surrounding the Hearings:

http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2010/02/ssp-balance-between-shuttle-legacy-hlv-advancement/

Specific thread, given there's info on the new HLV and other elements too:
http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=20657.0

[vt_hokie]

Watched Bernie Schwartz bet the farm on Skynet at Loral - great financials, great management ... suicidal decision. Need I bring up VentureStar.

Not sure what you mean by that...Schwartz certainly bet the farm on Globalstar, and then sold off much of the profitable Skynet business to Intelsat after Loral had amassed a hopeless amount of debt largely from Globalstar as I understood it.

FWW, these guys are much better off than Kistler.

I sure hope so!  I was actually assigned to work on the Kistler program briefly when I was with AlliedSignal in Teterboro...barely had time to move into my new cubicle before that work ground to a halt, and I got pushed over to another program!