Nasa Manned Spaceflight Funding, Can NASA afford manned spaceflight? Options

[mcaplinger]

DAWN is not that much overbudget.  Its a great mission that is being held hostage to NASA buget cuts. 

Do you have hard numbers on how much over budget they are, and what the budget of the Office of Space Science is to support overruns? I wouldn't be eager to see other science programs be raided to fund Dawn overruns, but that's what would likely happen.

I don't have any inside knowledge, but I don't think that a mission that was solid and under control would be told to stand down. Based on the available information, Dawn has had some serious developmental problems, and fairly or not there is some skepticism outside the project that the spacecraft is going to work. NASA is supposed to release the results of an independent evaluation at the end of this month, and I hope we see then what the issues are.

[nprev]

Thank you for a fair and honest appraisal of the Shuttle program, Bob.  Too many of us here are far to anxious to kill off manned spaceflight, under the delusion that doing so would result in an extra three or four unmanned flagship missions per year.  Thanks for speaking out for the factual situation in re manned spaceflight, and in re the Shuttle program.

-the other Doug

Agreed. If anything, the end of US manned spaceflight would in all likelihood have a negative impact on UMSF.

I can just see some Congressional representative picking up that ball & running with it during an election year..."we saved $XX billion per year by cutting the manned flights & nobody cared, let's save some more & cut out these expensive robots to Mars that only them weirdo liberal science types that believe in evolution care about! Ain't none of them in my district...besides, we need that money for more dairy subsidies!"

Far-fetched? I only wish that it were....

[edstrick]

I'm in about 90% agreement with Bob Shaw's two long posts a couple days ago, and most of the rest would be quibbles.

The current situation is somewhere between 1 to 1.5 billion dollars not in the budget that's needed to finish shuttle flights and get the bare minimally useful level of station assembly, and get the crew launch vehicle and crew exploration vehicle development ready for funding ramping up as the last 1 to 2 years of shuttle operations funding starts to really tail off. <ghods that's a run-on sentence!>

Griffin's whole point is once we can get rid of the albatross that's hanging around our necks and eating billions whether it flies or not, and transfer station supply activities to potentially much cheaper commercial providers..... then we can get into a pay-as-we-go basis at budget levels only modestly above current levels (corrected for inflation).

There's an awful lot during the pre-design stage <we're in that now> that can minimise later hardware costs per flight and operations costs per flight. Then once you start the real design work, every thing is in the details. I have no nope that Lockmart/Boeing big boys can unlearn their bad habits enough, but they can probably do a lot better then they have if managed properly from the customer's end.

(The EELV's are a vast improvent on both ends of the problem compared with Titan IV's and a modest improvement over Delta 2 and Atlas 1b and 2's, but not what they should have been.)

Ultimately, a cost limited flight rate depends on the cost of the hardware per flight, the cost of the staffing needed on a permanent basis to be able to fly at all, and the cost of the extra staffing to add more than the minimal number of flights per year. That middle one is where shuttle eats us alive, coming and going. The "Standing Army" problem, it's called.

We should be able to do the Griffin/Bush program for about a 50% increase in NASA's budget (continuing inflation corrected) over current levels, and that 50% includes the current shuttle-station gap of some 1 to 1.5 billion. NOT a 4x boost. That's the same arm-waving fiscal fantasy as the "Trillion dollars" quote that floated all over the mass media after the exploration vision announcement 2 years ago. That was extensively followed up on on The Space Review web site and was a combination of rabbit-out-of-the-hat numbers, tipsy arm-waving, and malice, and the perpetrators of the then widely repeated "as if authorative" number have never fessed up or retracted it (fat lot of good that would do).

<enough ranting for now!>

[djellison]

Bush *had* to have known, at least approximately, what NASA was going to ask for in re funding to make his Vision a reality.  Perhaps he simply felt that he had so much political capital built up that he could get whatever he asked for from Congress, for whatever reason.  I think perhaps that was an overly optimistic assessment of his own position...

-the other Doug

BUT - were we not told that it was going to cost about as much, growing a bit for inflation, as their current budget? I think we'd all have gone "huh" if GW had stood up there and gone "Scrap Shuttle, Back to Moon, $20B a year"

Manned Spaceflight is important long term, I share SS's desire to see Bootprints in this wheeltracks. I'm just not sure how we need to progress right now. ISS has to be finished to maintain any relationship between NASA and JAXA & ESA. You cant expect them to be involved in any future manned spaceflight programs if they get screwed over with the ISS. So that means we need STS to finish ISS which could easily be another 8 years. And with current funding, you cant expect to develop anything new while STS still flies. So we'll end up with a finished ISS and no way of getting to it except Soyuz whilst the SRB launchers + CEV is developed and that's going to be no less, imho, than 5 years. So we're talking > 2019 for CEV first flight. Then another 5 years for the lunar vehicle so perhaps 2024 for the lunar return.

Let's face it - this isnt the '60's any more. Developing a new spacecraft requires 25,000 middle managers, 14.5 miles of paperwork and wastes SOOoo much time.

ARhghg - I dont know what the hell they're going to do once the governmental bigwigs stop laughing at that budget graph. Why say 4x if it's not their best guess? Surely they know it'll just get thrown back in their faces. So what are they trying to do? Are they lying and infact it'll only cost, say, 1.5x, or are they genuine about that figure?

Doug

[Bob Shaw]

Doug:

The international ISS partners, bar Russia, have already been badly let down by the US. They built their kit, made their plans, and... ...nothing much. They too have, if not standing armies, then certainly a few battalions, and there's now a real move towards launching some of that kit aboard Proton. And I'll be amazed if ESA hasn't done some in-house stuff on the prospects of the ATV as an unpressurised delivery tug for already-built ISS components. Why should ESA, JAXA or the rest ever trust NASA again? NASA is like a recovering alcoholic, and we should cherish every day that NASA remains sober, while always being prepared for the day that NASA again falls of the waggon. It doesn't mean that anyone should extend NASA any credit, though!

Russia has, almost by chance, done quite well. They 'persuaded' NASA to fund them when there was no cash in their system at all, and have survived until now. The Russians are once again seriously talking about adding modules of their own to the ISS, and they have a decent little earner in the meantime as truck-drivers for NASA (more accurately, as Pizza-delivery guys on mopeds - Shuttle was the truck!). Add in a few space tourists, perhaps a lob round the Moon or two, and they're not far off being self-financing.

I wish all this were not so (and don't start me on Hubble!).

Bob Shaw

[djellison]

Why should ESA, JAXA or the rest ever trust NASA again?

I totally agree. NASA has to be seen to do everything it can to fullfill its obligations to them.

Put it this way. You hire a decorator to do your front room. You give him the new flooring, the paint. You come to see the finished work only to have the decorator hand you the unopened paint and the flooring and run out the door screaming. Would you use him again?


Doug

[dvandorn]

...that means we need STS to finish ISS which could easily be another 8 years.   And with current funding, you cant expect to develop anything new while STS still flies.  So we'll end up with a finished ISS and no way of getting to it except Soyuz whilst the SRB launchers + CEV is developed and that's going to be no less, imho, than 5 years. So we're talking > 2019 for CEV first flight. Then another 5 years for the lunar vehicle so perhaps 2024 for the lunar return.

The problem with that scenario, Doug, is that NASA is under a brick-wall deadline to retire the Shuttle fleet. Under their own rules, which had been stated *before* the loss of Columbia, if we're going to continue flying the Shuttle past 2010, the entire system (orbiters, ETs and SRBs, launch pads, ground support equipment, etc.) must be re-certified.

The re-certification process could involve the major rebuilding of various systems, and would definitely involve grounding the fleet for at least two to three years, while every orbiter and every piece of equipment is taken apart, evaluated, fixed up and put back together.

The alternative to this process, according to the NASA experts who fly the Shuttle, is either retiring the system entirely or expecting a *much* higher loss rate if the system is kept operational without such a re-certification.

NASA is *not* pushing for a Shuttle re-certification project. And Congress is very unlikely to vote for one if NASA is telling them it's the least attractive option. So, odds are *very* high it won't happen.

So -- the basis of the issue is that either the CEV gets flying by the end of the decade, or American manned space flight ends in 2010 and does not resume until the CEV *is* flying. The option of just flying Shuttles until 2014 and *then* beginning CEV development literally does not exist.

Now, just because CEV has *one* end goal of being a (relatively minor) component of a manned Mars mission does *not* mean that the loss at a later date of funding for such a Mars mission makes CEV development "money down the drain." CEV lets America continue ISS operations, and CEV-related development (such as heavier Shuttle-derived boosters, automated unmannned rendezvous and docking systems, and hibernation-mode operation of the CEV itself) will, by between 2012 and 2014, give the U.S. a set of capabilities quite similar to what the Shuttle fleet offers -- and at a (hopefully) lower operating cost.

I *do* believe that NASA is going to have to demonstrate an ability to operate CEV-based ISS missions at *significantly* lower cost than comparable Shuttle missions before Congress will fund actual hardware development for the LSAM, super-heavy boosters, and other elements of a renewed manned lunar program. And, following that, NASA will have to demonstrate an ability to fly manned lunar missions within a set cost cap before Congress will give them money to develop manned Mars hadrware.

And... as for *anyone* being surprised that NASA would need additional funds for mounting a manned Mars mission, all one has to do is look at the funding levels required for the various Mars mission plans out there today. The absolute cheapest is Zubrin's Mars Direct, and *that* one would cost a minimum of $100 billion in 1990 dollars. NASA's own Mars Reference Mission, as updated just a few years ago, calls for a minimum funding level over the course of the project of more than $400 billion! So, just because GWB told NASA to go to Mars on a *fraction* of $12 billion a year doesn't mean anyone, including GWB, had any reason to expect it could actually be done...

-the other Doug

[djellison]

The problem with that scenario, Doug, is that NASA is under a brick-wall deadline to retire the Shuttle fleet.  Under their own rules, which had been stated *before* the loss of Columbia, if we're going to continue flying the Shuttle past 2010, the entire system (orbiters, ETs and SRBs, launch pads, ground support equipment, etc.) must be re-certified.

Does anyone realistically expect the ISS to be finished in 4 years? I cant believe that for a minute to be honest. I'd be happy to be suprised and see it happen, but I doubt it.

So, just because GWB told NASA to go to Mars on a *fraction* of $12 billion a year doesn't mean anyone, including GWB, had any reason to expect it could actually be done...

-the other Doug

So what on earth was the point in the announcement then? Was it intentionally just a big fat lie? Who was he trying to kid? Himself? Congress? The US Public? To what end? Of course, he'll be out of Office just about the time when the bomb bursts. I guess his Dad did it, Regan did it - it must be written on the back of the Oval Office Toilet "dont forget to propose a new direction for space exploration without being prepared to pay for it"

Doug