Ars Technica: NASA scrambles to cut ISS activity after Trump budget—its options are not great [May 7]QuoteCutting crews down to sizeThe real eye-catching proposal in NASA's options is reducing the crew size from four to three.Typically, Crew Dragon missions carry two NASA astronauts, one Roscosmos cosmonaut, and an international partner astronaut. Therefore, although it appears that NASA would only be cutting its crew size by 25 percent, in reality, it would be cutting the number of NASA astronauts on Crew Dragon missions by 50 percent. Overall, this would lead to an approximately one-third decline in science conducted by the space station. (This is because there are usually three NASA astronauts on station: two from Dragon and one on each Soyuz flight.)It's difficult to see how this would result in enormous cost savings. Yes, NASA would need to send marginally fewer cargo missions to keep fewer astronauts supplied. And there would be some reduction in training costs. But it seems kind of nuts to spend decades and more than $100 billion building an orbital laboratory, putting all of this effort into developing commercial vehicles to supply the station and enlarge its crew, establishing a rigorous training program to ensure maximum science is done and then to say, well, actually we don't want to use it.NASA has not publicly announced the astronauts who will fly on Crew-12 next year, but according to sources, it has already assigned veteran astronaut Jessica Meir and newcomer Jack Hathaway, a former US Navy fighter pilot who joined NASA's astronaut corps in 2021. If these changes go through, presumably one of these two would be removed from the mission.
Cutting crews down to sizeThe real eye-catching proposal in NASA's options is reducing the crew size from four to three.Typically, Crew Dragon missions carry two NASA astronauts, one Roscosmos cosmonaut, and an international partner astronaut. Therefore, although it appears that NASA would only be cutting its crew size by 25 percent, in reality, it would be cutting the number of NASA astronauts on Crew Dragon missions by 50 percent. Overall, this would lead to an approximately one-third decline in science conducted by the space station. (This is because there are usually three NASA astronauts on station: two from Dragon and one on each Soyuz flight.)It's difficult to see how this would result in enormous cost savings. Yes, NASA would need to send marginally fewer cargo missions to keep fewer astronauts supplied. And there would be some reduction in training costs. But it seems kind of nuts to spend decades and more than $100 billion building an orbital laboratory, putting all of this effort into developing commercial vehicles to supply the station and enlarge its crew, establishing a rigorous training program to ensure maximum science is done and then to say, well, actually we don't want to use it.NASA has not publicly announced the astronauts who will fly on Crew-12 next year, but according to sources, it has already assigned veteran astronaut Jessica Meir and newcomer Jack Hathaway, a former US Navy fighter pilot who joined NASA's astronaut corps in 2021. If these changes go through, presumably one of these two would be removed from the mission.
Ars Technica: NASA scrambles to cut ISS activity after Trump budget—its options are not great [May 7]
However, Ars understands that the changes contemplated above were being implemented before the president's budget was released.
The International Space Station is facing a $1 billion budget shortfall – separate from President Donald Trump's plans to further cut funding – that will require dropping the number of NASA astronauts on the orbiting platform.NASA funding for the space station program is projected to be $1 billion short of previously approved budgets through fiscal 2029, ISS Program Manager Dana Weigel said Tuesday morning in an email reviewed by the Houston Chronicle. Addressing this shortfall will require the agency to have three crew members on the station instead of four starting next year, dropping the station’s overall crew to six people, as Russia will continue flying three cosmonauts. ...These changes are separate from last week’s White House budget request to cut $500 million, roughly a third of the station’s estimated operating budget, in fiscal 2026. Weigel said in the email that the president’s budget request will go through Congress and then NASA’s appropriated funds “will dictate any additional ISS reductions.”
To me, if this gets enacted, it would dramatically hurt all other commercial providers (other than SpaceX). If you need less logistics, then the case for CST-100, Cygnus, DreamChaser all get even harder. And they aren't great now.This has implications for CLD, where you are trying to build a low earth ecosystem, but your only choice for cargo and crew is SpaceX. Might be good in the short term and lower cost, but you are completely dependent on SpaceX into the future.
Quote from: jarmumd on 05/07/2025 09:20 pmTo me, if this gets enacted, it would dramatically hurt all other commercial providers (other than SpaceX). If you need less logistics, then the case for CST-100, Cygnus, DreamChaser all get even harder. And they aren't great now.This has implications for CLD, where you are trying to build a low earth ecosystem, but your only choice for cargo and crew is SpaceX. Might be good in the short term and lower cost, but you are completely dependent on SpaceX into the future.If I was being cynical, I might say that this was intentional.
One way to save money on ISS would be to cancel Starliner immediately. The cost to NASA of maintaining the Starliner program is not huge, but it's not trivial either. This would also allow a further reduction in the astronaut corps beyond the reduction based on reducing the number of astronauts per mission or the number of missions.
Quote from: DanClemmensen on 05/10/2025 02:22 pmOne way to save money on ISS would be to cancel Starliner immediately. The cost to NASA of maintaining the Starliner program is not huge, but it's not trivial either. This would also allow a further reduction in the astronaut corps beyond the reduction based on reducing the number of astronauts per mission or the number of missions. It would end up costing them a lot more than it saved them for political reasons.
The Russians are shifting from 6-month Soyuz missions to 8-month missions. THis of course included the US astronaut on the Soyuz crew. Has NASA considered shifting to 8-month CCP missions? I know the nominal CCP design duration is max 210 days, but NASA made a one-time decision to extend Crew-8 to max 240 days, and that decision was made under duress while the mission was in progress. They now have the time to make a more deliberate decision.
