Commercial Crew Schedule Analysis

[Steven Pietrobon]

There was one thing they had back then that we don't have today and it really set the pace - will.

That and 5% of the federal budget.

Peak NASA funding was in 1966 at $5,933M. The Federal Budget was $134.5B. So the actual peak value was 4.4%. The average percentage during the 1960's was 2.6%, about half of your 5% estimate.

http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/fed_spending_1966USbn

NASA gets roughly 1% of the federal budget.  Commercial Crew gets roughly 1/19th or ~5% of NASA's budget.  So Commercial Crew gets around 0.05% of the federal budget.  Put another way, 5% of the federal budget would be 100 times what Commercial Crew gets.

Current NASA budget is only 0.49% of the Federal Budget ($19.3B of $3,951.3B for 2016). The FY2017 NASA budget has Commercial Crew at 6.1% of the NASA budget ($1,184.8M of $19.4B) or 0.03% of the Federal Budget.

[pospa]

How about numbers to back up opinions?

Here you go.

[Garrett]

In 1963, project Mercury was finishing and project Gemini was in development. NASA's budget was roughly 2.3% of GDP.

NASA's budget in 1963 was $2,552M. US GDP was $650B, making NASA's budget only 0.39%, quite a bit less then your 2.3% value.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_of_NASA
http://www.multpl.com/us-gdp/table/by-year

Mea Culpa. I mixed up GDP and federal budget.
This forum is great for peer review :p

[Rocket Science]

Comparing the CC program to the 60's program(s) had less to do with numbers and more to do with a "national imperative"...

[BrightLight]

How about numbers to back up opinions?

Here you go.

Well done.
If money equals time - then with the 1.28 Billion shortfall one can expect roughly a 1.5 year delay in commercial crew from projected operational deployment, which seems about right for the progress made to date.

[RedLineTrain]

Good to remember that ten years ago, we had SpaceX on the hook for a crew capsule at an order of magnitude lower price than SpaceX is charging us today.

Dragon v2 is a Rolls Royce.

[Rocket Science]

Good to remember that ten years ago, we had SpaceX on the hook for a crew capsule at an order of magnitude lower price than SpaceX is charging us today.

Dragon v2 is a Rolls Royce.

Nah, the RR would be Orion...

[NaN]

How about numbers to back up opinions?

Here you go.

Source? I would like to find or generate a similar chart for Orion/CEV back to 2006 or so, but it's proving difficult to find appropriation numbers at that level of detail.

[SWGlassPit]

Comparing the CC program to the 60's program(s) had less to do with numbers and more to do with a "national imperative"...

Let us not also forget that in the 1960s, we knew next to nothing about space flight compared to what we know now.  As a result, 1960s programs were willing to accept a hell of a lot more risk than programs today.  Discussion of funding is meaningless without also attempting to do an apples-to-apples comparison of design requirements.  Design is much more constrained today.

[Rocket Science]

Comparing the CC program to the 60's program(s) had less to do with numbers and more to do with a "national imperative"...

Let us not also forget that in the 1960s, we knew next to nothing about space flight compared to what we know now.  As a result, 1960s programs were willing to accept a hell of a lot more risk than programs today.  Discussion of funding is meaningless without also attempting to do an apples-to-apples comparison of design requirements.  Design is much more constrained today.

Agree about the risk, we had "Go Fever" back then...

[joek]

Here you go.

Prior-year numbers should be updated.  Primary source up to FY2014 request is NASA’S Management of the Commercial Crew Program, IG-14-001, NASA OIG, Nov 2013.  It provides details and shows the impact of funding shortfalls, as shown below (the raw numbers don't tell much of the story).

[savuporo]

Summary

Gemini < Commercial crew << Orion

Soyuz = honeybadger

[pospa]

How about numbers to back up opinions?

Here you go.

Source?

I prepared this overview a year ago for our Czech kosmo-forum, so it will take me some time to re-find all original sources again. Right now I have at least one for you that covers period 2014 - 2020.
Slide 7 here: http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/files/NASA_FY2016_Summary_Briefing.pdf

If you find any mistake in my chart, I'm naturally open to modify it.


Edit:
OK, its not directly original source (got no time to search for it right now), but this overview from wiki can provide some clue for preceding years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commercial_Crew_Development#Funding_and_effect_on_schedule

"For the fiscal year (FY) 2011 budget, US$500 million was requested for the CCDev program, but Congress granted only $270 million.[17] For the FY 2012 budget, $850 million was requested but Congress approved a budget of $406 million, and as a result the first flight of CCDev was postponed from 2016 to 2017.[13] For the 2013 budget, 830 million was requested but Congress approved $488 million.[18] For the FY 2014 budget, $821 million was requested, Congress approved $696 million.[12][dated info][19] In FY 2015, NASA received $805 million from Congress for the CCDev program; 95% of the $848 million requested by the Obama administration and the largest annual amount since the beginning of the program."

[joek]

... For the FY 2014 budget, $821 million was requested, Congress approved $696 million. ...

Yes, but $171M of that $696M was held "pending the outcome for congressionally mandated studies on the value of the Commercial Crew program".  Again, the raw budget numbers don't tell much of the story. To quote again (emphasis added):

NASA’s first acquisition plan for developing the Commercial Crew Program anticipated the use of FAR-based contracts starting in late FY 2012 for the integration phase of development. During integration, NASA expected its partners to progress to a point where their system designs were mature. According to NASA officials, FY 2012 funding was insufficient to execute this plan. As a result, they continued to use funded Space Act Agreements to support the companies’ development efforts.

For subsequent budget requests beginning in FY 2012, the Office of Management and Budget reduced the Program’s annual appropriations request and created a “flat-line” budget profile by spreading funding evenly over subsequent fiscal years (see Table 3). Specifically, for FY 2013 Commercial Crew Program managers had to revise program schedules after their budget was reduced from the $830 million requested by the President to the $525 million appropriated by Congress.  Generally speaking, we determined that each year’s budget decrement has resulted in an additional year of schedule delay. Even if the Program receives its full budget request in future years, the cumulative difference between the Program’s initial budget requests and receipts over the life of the Program would be approximately $1.1 billion.

[joek]

I love when people say "certainly' when they don't have data. ...

As you picked that word out of my quote... to say otherwise would imply...
- SpaceX and Boeing would have been working without funds from NASA since early 2015; and/or
- SpaceX and Boeing would have been working on a word and handshake from NASA since early 2015.
...of which the probability of either is nil.  So yes, I am quite "certain" of what I stated.

[yg1968]

None of that has happened.

Source?  Certainly agreements must have been amended.  The milestone dates in the CCtCap contract are defunct, and the quoted funding is long gone--even accounting for the last published amendments (late 2014).  Unfortunately I can find no public record of subsequent amendments since.

Based on what we do know, there hasn't been any funding shortfall for any of the milestones. It's usually been the opposite, the milestones have moved to the right for technical, non-financial reasons. Part of the reason that there hasn't been a shortfall in funding is that NASA waited to make awards until it had a better idea of it's budget. Prior to CCtCap, NASA also used optional milestones in order to adjust the amount of the awards to its budget.

I love when people say "certainly' when they don't have data.  Seriously though...  Not to drag this debate on further I did want to point out some real data.  The delay in funding and then deciding CCtCAP, followed by the protest, did delay the project for both partners.  Milestones were not really adjusted at that time until there was some run time.  But there were impacts - from not being able to buy hardware to interface documents not being written (on the NASA side).  So the funding of commercial crew did, and is still rippling.  Now, funding should not be a major driver much further.  Requirement change and NASA way of doing things are now a big source of change and change on these tight schedules means delay.

Yes, there was a bit of delay because of the date of the CCtCap awards being pushed over by a couple of months but it wasn't a huge delay. NASA did not wait for the protest to be over to start funding CCtCap (they invoked an exception based on the urgency of funding for this program).  It was a bit of a delay for Boeing which had completed all of its CCiCap milestones on time but SpaceX hadn't yet finished its CCiCap milestones.

But you have a good point about the changing NASA requirements and it's a point that you have made in the past also. It's also one of the reason that I was against the move to FAR for certification.

[joek]

Yes, there was a bit of delay because of the date of the CCtCap awards being pushed over by a couple of months but it wasn't a huge delay. NASA did not wait for the protest to be over to start funding CCtCap (they invoked an exception based on the urgency of funding for this program).  It was a bit of a delay for Boeing which had completed all of its CCiCap milestones on time but SpaceX hadn't yet finished its CCiCap milestones.

But you have a good point about the changing NASA requirements and it's a point that you have made in the past also. It's also one of the reason that I was against the move to FAR for certification.

Based on NASA IG reports (among others), the damage was done by the time of CCtCap contract award--that is, there would be significant schedule shift to the right.  The only question was how much shift to the right.  Now that some recognize how much those past sins cost, they are complaining.

And as I recall we have had many discussions in the past about FAR vs. SAA with respect to CTS.  The short answer is that SAA's could not be used; NASA went as far as they could with SAA's, but when it came time for actual certification and subsequent crew missions, they were required to do it under FAR.  Same as COTS-CRS.

Not that more work could not have been performed under SAA's, but NASA had pretty much exhausted what could be legally accomplished with SAA's and reached a point of diminishing returns.  To continue work under SAA's would arguably have pushed back the time when actual FAR based acquisition of CTS operational missions could be contracted.

NASA was between a hard place and a rock.  Given a few years and adequate early CCDev-CTS funding, the more-work-under-SAA may have been appropriate.  Unfortunately NASA did not have that luxury.

[yg1968]

Congress was forcing NASA to transition to FAR. So in that sense, they had no choice. But CCiCap could have continued up until the first flight by exercising the optional milestones. I would have preferred maintaining CCiCap as long as possible. The parallel certification process could still have been under FAR but with a more hands off approach. Anyways, it's now water under the bridge.

[Robotbeat]

Right. Remember who makes the laws: Congress. So if you say, "NASA legally had to do FAR," this is just another way of blaming Congress.

[joek]

Right. Remember who makes the laws: Congress. So if you say, "NASA legally had to do FAR," this is just another way of blaming Congress.

Depends on which part of CCtCap you are referring to.  As yg1968 suggested:
- DDT&E -- Probably could be done under an SAA.[1][2]
- Certification -- Maybe could be done under an SAA (NASA IG said no).[2]
- Operational (post-certification) missions -- Could not be done under an SAA.

However, if those were split: (a) it would likely take longer; and (b) the contractor is not obligated to take the next step.

[1] edit: Add qualifier; depends on specifics or which parts of DDT&E per NASA IG.
[2] See:
NASA’S Management of the Commercial Crew Program, IG-14-001, NASA OIG, 13-Nov-2013
NASA’s Use of Space Act Agreements, IG-14-020, NASA OIG, 5-Jun-2014.