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Odyssey and MER Budgets Cut
merman
post Mar 26 2008, 02:22 PM
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Thank you, everyone, for your support and help with this.

I don't think we'll know much solid wrt the '09 budget for several more months, since there will be ongoing discussions and jockeying through to October, probably.

I haven't heard any news on Odyssey.

Again, thank you all.
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elakdawalla
post Mar 26 2008, 03:45 PM
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My understanding from some Odyssey folks is that the letter to JPL that directed the cuts both to Odyssey and to MER has been rescinded; so this should represent a reprieve for Odyssey as well.

For those of you who don't read the Community Chit Chat forum, Alan Stern resigned yesterday. No reasons have been stated publicly, at least not that I've seen. <speculation on>One wonders whether the abrupt disavowal of the letter directing the Odyssey and MER cuts kicked his legs out from under him in his efforts to balance the budget, and he decided he couldn't continue to make positive change if he wasn't going to be permitted to make difficult funding decisions.<speculation off>

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JRehling
post Mar 26 2008, 05:43 PM
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Disclaimer: For about a month now, I've suspected that the Mars issue was going to blow up, although I didn't see this coming (which may not be "Mars" related). This had the feel of the kind of thing that would end up as a banned topic on the board, so I did a lot of my discussion off-board in e-mails with people. I've been surprised, even, that it hasn't become a heated topic.

I don't want to conflate the headlined topic (which AFAIK could be for ANY reason) with anything else, but I've been saying in back channels for a while that there was a war coming and that it was a curious time in which no one wanted to say there was a war coming. When you get slides from HQ calling the arguments of scientists "myths", it's clear that the war has started.

When we discuss certainly non-heated questions like whether Uranus or Neptune deserves the next mission to either of them, or when we see the slightly more heated question of whether a jovian mission should pay more attention to Io (et al) or Europa, what we're seeing is that prioritization is surfacing as a hot issue. That will not go away, and somehow, coming up with a means to address future prioritization requires a BIG organizational effort in NASA and the community. There's so much money involved, that as you have more "interested" parties, you'll start to run out of disinterested parties. And the way it's being done now has a "welcome to amateur hour" flavor to it. Should Mars get 50% of the planetary science budget or 20%? And why? These are huge questions that have been managed with caprice. The stated reasons on both sides are uncompelling ("This is the way it's usually been done" vs. "We owe it to the current grad students who want to base their careers around Mars.").

In the medium term, we may have a tense and strife-filled debate about Mars vs. everything else. Heads may roll, missions may be cancelled or delayed. But the real point isn't Mars. It's how to prioritize in general. In the Sixties, there was nothing to worry about. Only the Moon, Mars, and Venus were within range, and neither Venus nor Mars had ever been seen up close. Alternating opportunities between Venus and Mars with the Mariner program worked just fine and made no one unhappy. Even through the Voyagers, we were still giving the major objects a once-over. Mars got its starring moment with Viking, Venus was too inhospitable to invite the same thing there, and the giant planets got their orbiters. The peace ends as the initial reconnaissance ends.

Now we have several opportunities that are individually worthy of commanding more funding than they collectively can receive. Hence, we have a scarcity of precious resources, which is the cause of most wars. Allocating precious resources can take place by capricious fiat from smoke-filled rooms, or in an open (and inevitably political) process. Right now, there is no system. There has to be. That's the main issue right now. Mars is just an example of what will be fought over if the organizational structure for prioritization is not built up.
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Mariner9
post Mar 26 2008, 06:04 PM
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I agree that the debates have barely begun.

This is starting to remind me of the 200-2003 period when the Pluto mission was canceled, and Europa orbiter kept. Then people lobbied for the Pluto mission to be restored, and Europa was cut (many speculated this was done as a message to the community to stop the lobbying). Then Pluto was restored by lobbying from the science community and ultimately Congress, over the initial objections of the Administration.

I bring this up not to ignite debates about those particular events, but to demonstrate what happens when funds are limited, and not all worthy missions can fly. At the very least things get muddy, and often times get ugly.

An outer planets flagship and to a lesser extent Mars Sample Return have been bandied about for this entire decade.

Then the Fiscal 2009 budget proposal came out, with the Flagship finally started, new lunar missions show up almost out of the blue, MSR research started, and the dramatic cuts to the MEP.

I suspected the MEP cuts were going to bring things to a boil. And it looks to me like that is happening (wheather or not Alan's resignation was connected).
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djellison
post Mar 26 2008, 06:11 PM
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I've moved two posts that are about a broader issue than AS's resignation into this one where I think they are more appropriate.


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djellison
post Mar 26 2008, 06:33 PM
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Having done that - here's my thoughts.

Funding a Mars 'program' is , I think, not quite fair. The case in point is clear here. MSL has had budget issues. Now - to be fair, so did MER, but that's spent cash now. Why should the current budget growth of MSL reflect as a punishment on Odyssey and MER? I know 'life isn't fair' - but Odyssey and MER are big success stories, with more to come and the budget problems of another mission shouldn't impact that.

However, missions HAVE to be accountable. But, you can't exactly scrap a $1B mission when I'd imagine most (more than half I'd guess) of the cash is already spent. But neither can it spend without implications. And I just don't think it's fair to steal from the pockets of other missions currently flying. The only way I can see it really working is if there is an overrun- you then have to look at future missions, and rescope / descope / delay / cancel them. To look sideways and cull from current missions just doesn't seem right, and nor is it fair to clump together multiple missions ( i.e. Mars program, discovery program ) and punish others from that 'clump' for the errors on a different mission. Funding for extensions is hard. I've spoken to David Southwood in person about the struggle to fund new missions at ESA when MEX, VEX, XMM-Newton, integral, Cluster etc etc are all needing extended mission funds. And while new is always good, it's also criminal to cull an active, scientifically productive mission where all the risk is just about sunk and you KNOW what your extra money will get.

As for the argument of how much to spend on certain fields of interest - I think there's a certain level of bigger picture to be had there. Currently we can do 30cm/pixel, 4 Mbits orbiters at Mars, and (hopefully) 20km+ rovers with movie cameras and amazing laboratories. Part of me thinks that actually, whilst it's always true to say that the technology will be better tomorrow (like buying a new laptop for example) - targets such as Neptune and Uranus could do with a decade or two further development so that when we return there, we do so knowing it'll probably be the only trip for half a century, and it better be damn good as a result.

But whilst it would be nice to have a 'scheme' on how to fund, who to fund and when - such a system is basically the net result of scientific taste. Who's to say that the scientific calling of one body get's an 'A' over another body getting a 'B'. Guess what, the scientists with an interest in each will say each is the most important. And how much does our technically ability to investigate those sites play a role. I prefer TE over the other flagship missions. Why? Because I like Titan. That's just about it. Does it offer better science than the others? No. It's different science - and I don't think it's even possible to say what better is. It probably offers MORE science though. But then, we don't KNOW what the science if going to be. So, do we do the easiest mission? No - because half (imho) the benefit of these missions is the engineering progress they make - and a mission should be considered good for having engineering challenges that are good challenges, but manageable challenges (MPF for example).

Trying to manage all that, well, it'd be enough to make you quit your job.

Oops.


Doug
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blairf
post Mar 26 2008, 08:17 PM
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Following the resource allocation question to a natural conclusion leads to an uncomfortable place. If you have to choose between Titan, Io, Mars then why can't I throw into the mix some astronomy, or High Energy Physics, or developmental biology, or gene therapy or anti-malarials, or hospitals or.....

The free-market has its faults but is a good way of allocating resources - invisible hand etc. Absent that all you have is politics, which explains why academia seems to be the bitchiest world of work.

Budgets trundle along fine so long as all play the 'last year plus 5%' game, as soon as you have the full-blown debate then what usually happens is:

1 - Special interest group 1 makes its case
2 - Special interest group 2 makes its case
3 - Huge bun fight ensues with much blood spilt
4 - Higher outside authority called in to mediate
5 - Higher authority solicits opinion from further external special interest groups
6 - Second round of bun fight now fought at higher level
7 - Higher authority decides he's had enough and defunds special interest groups 1 and 2

Long story short, either planetary science moves into some form of free-market system (philanthropy?) or it has to broker a back room deal that avoids this debate getting toxic.
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vjkane
post Mar 26 2008, 09:07 PM
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I am deeply, deeply saddened by Alan's departure. Having watched many organizations fail for lack of leadership, I know that Alan was just such a leader. He is among a small, select group.

As for how we get out of this mess of feuding fiefdoms (whether or not that was the cause of Alan's departure), I'll share my perspective. In the mid-80s when planetary exploration in NASA was near death, the community put together a prioritized set of missions. (I'm traveling and can't just look in my library to give you the name of the report.) From that vision, Mars Observer, Cassini, CRAF (sadly cancelled), and the Discovery program was born. Since then, however, the big decisions seems to have come from administrator fiat. The Mars program with its faster, cheaper, and more failure prone mantra. Then the decision to do to MER's rather than one (at the expense of an American-French lander for Rosetta and other lost opportunities). The Europa orbiter has been a succession of on, off, on with stupidity written all over it, off again decision made by NASA administrators.

Alan (and I don't know what role other senior NASA administration played) attempted to set a new balance. The problem with management by decree is that it brings out all kinds of ugly politics because if you can apply enough pressure to the decision maker or get him/her replaced, you can change the decision without having to compromise with other stakeholders.

The astronomy world has developed a method to get beyond that process with its decadal studies. I hear that the internal politics can be brutal, but once the community decides, the community backs the priority list. The process certainly isn't perfect. The last decadal study grossly under estimated the cost of several of the high priority missions, especially JWST. (One way to avoid the hard decisions is to accept costs you know aren't real so everyone thinks their priorities are included. NASA is now putting more resources in cost estimations for these efforts to lessen this problem in the future.)

I think that the planetary program needs its own vetting of priorities by the community. (I seem to vaguely remember that such a process is under way or will start soon.) Unfortunately, the solar system has three expensive priority targets -- Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn -- along with a myriad of targets that get no where near the attention they should in a more perfect world (err, solar system). It is simply impossible to do 'A' level efforts (that a grade of A American style of grading for those used to the British system with its E, O, A (and my apologies if I mangled the British system)) for all these targets. The community needs to decide if we simply ignore some targets, rotate targets (which Alan was trying to do), or accept B and/or C level work for all of them. There is no right answer, but the planetary community needs to decide which is the one it can best live with. And then stand by it.


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Mariner9
post Mar 26 2008, 10:58 PM
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But there is a decadal study in the planetary world. The last such full report came out about five years ago, and the gist of its reccomendations have been followed.

It reccommended that mid-range missions be funded to cover tasks that Discovery was just not up to. (aka: New Fronteirs). First priority was a Kuiper belt mission, and Pluto was a good start since it was the largest Kuiper Belt object. Hence, New Fronteirs #1 - New Horizons Pluto Probe.

Second set of suggested missions was Jupiter Orbiter with probes, Comet sample return, Venus in-situ analysis, and Lunar Sample Return. New Fronteirs #2 was the Juno Orbiter. The Venus mission turned out to be technically too challenging, the Comet Sample Return was out of the budget range, but the Lunar Sample mission was the run-off canidate mission up against Juno.


The report suggested flying one flagship every decade, a New Frontiers every 3 years, a Discover mission every 18 months. It also said that if you could not fly them at that frequency due to budget limitations, you should keep the general ratio of missions as it was presented, and spread out the frequency.

What has evolved since then is a New Fronteirs every 5 years, Discovery every 3, and (cross your fingers) a flagship every decade.

So it seems to me that the planetary sciences community is already doing a farily good job with planning, and that NASA headquarters takes them seriously (even if not every reccomendation is followed).
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vjkane
post Mar 26 2008, 11:21 PM
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QUOTE (Mariner9 @ Mar 26 2008, 10:58 PM) *
But there is a decadal study in the planetary world. The last such full report came out about five years ago, ...
What has evolved since then is a New Fronteirs every 5 years, Discovery every 3, and (cross your fingers) a flagship every decade.

So it seems to me that the planetary sciences community is already doing a farily good job with planning, and that NASA headquarters takes them seriously (even if not every reccomendation is followed).

Greg,
Good catch! You're right, I had forgotten about that effort. However, it *excluded* any discussion of these priorities relative to Mars. That was missing piece that I was addressing. How much funding should go to each? The previous path (pre-FY09 budget proposal) favored Mars and precluded outer planet flagship missions. The new path enables an outer flagship at the cost of thrashing the well established Mars exploration program. So what I would like to see is the community combine priorities for the two programs. Both programs have done a great job within their spheres.

QUOTE (vjkane @ Mar 26 2008, 11:20 PM) *
Greg,
Good catch!

Whoops. Got confused as to who did the catching. My apologies!


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nprev
post Mar 28 2008, 03:32 PM
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QUOTE (JRehling @ Mar 26 2008, 10:43 AM) *
Now we have several opportunities that are individually worthy of commanding more funding than they collectively can receive. Hence, we have a scarcity of precious resources, which is the cause of most wars. Allocating precious resources can take place by capricious fiat from smoke-filled rooms, or in an open (and inevitably political) process. Right now, there is no system. There has to be. That's the main issue right now. Mars is just an example of what will be fought over if the organizational structure for prioritization is not built up.


JR, that was a terrific analysis, and I think you've made an important observation. I'm actually quite surprised that NASA doesn't have such a formalized prioritization/ranking process already, and oddly enough they might do well to look at how the DoD does it.

Brief description: There are twelve or so "combatant commands" (COCOMs) across DoD, which are administrative structures that divide responsibilty for military operations either geographically or functionally. (The NASA analog for this might be establishing evaluation offices for each major area: Venus/Mercury, Mars, Jupiter/Saturn, Uranus/Neptune, Pluto/KBOs, asteroids/comets, Earth/Moon/Sun). The COCOM commanders examine their mission areas and look for shortfalls in capabilities and emerging sustainment issues for current systems, and then derive a list of prioritized requirements. These are submitted to the Joint Requirements Oversight Committee (JROC) annually, which in turn generates a prioritized list of programs that ultimately become requests for funding.

The key here would be having a very balanced, and ideally impartial NASA JROC in terms of community representation and viewpoint. I'd recommend staffing the board with non-NASA affiliated academics with cross-cutting experience (Phil Stooke would be a good choice! smile.gif )

Anyhow, hope that wasn't boring, and I'm sure that I just reinvented the wheel except made it square this time... rolleyes.gif


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djellison
post Mar 28 2008, 08:04 PM
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Good words at NW

"While I have not agreed with all his decisions, I think that Alan Stern's tenure at SMD has been a huge boost to space science and his resignation is truly unfortunate. Also unfortunate, however, is the amount of misinformation being spread (often with the best intentions) by people without a full grasp of the facts.
For example, "Anonymous manager" used MER operations as an example of "overzealous spending", pointing out "a 75% reduction in productivity for a 20% budget cut" on a project with "300 individuals driving two rovers". The facts are the following: The proposed budget cut, that was to be applied to the remaining funds in FY08, was roughly 40%. One rover was to be cut back from the current standard 80% duty cycle (due to the way Mars time aligns with a standard work shift) to 60% (this does not include the fact that the rovers are not commanded on weekends), a 25% reduction. In addition, the second rover that was to be hibernated (not killed) still required weekly contacts and some minimum amount of engineering analysis and commanding to maintain its viability in the dynamic martian environment; let's say this is an 75% reduction. This still comes out to ~50% overall, more than a proportional 40%, but unfortunately project expenditures are never linear. As for the 300 people driving the rovers, total MER staffing (management, operations, IT support, data processing, etc.) at JPL is roughly 50 FTEs; the larger number quoted accounts for part-time individuals and the large science team, many of whom receive minimal funding.

It is fair to question the scientific usefulness and management efficiency of any mission, particularly those in their extended phases. MER undergoes detailed external (non-JPL) science and management reviews at least annually investigating these issues, and so far they have concluded that it represents an excellent science value for the expenditure and that the operations budget is lean and reasonable. Your opinion may vary.

There are many troubling issues with costs and overruns withing SMD, and many places (certainly including JPL!) where blame can be assigned. But while I welcome a spirited (no pun intended) discussion, I think we should try to avoid opinions masquerading as facts.

Anonymous MER staffer"


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JRehling
post Mar 28 2008, 09:07 PM
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The problem with a scarcity of resources is that it means that unfairness is a given. It's a question of what unfairness will happen, not if.

There's nothing about the existence of Europa/Titan that automatically makes the other one less interesting. But one of them is going to bump the other in the queue.

I have a fetishistic glee in momentarily considering the attention that X would get if it were the only other world in the solar system. If only Earth and Pallas, or only Earth and Uranus orbited Sol, there would be feverish interest in exploring this one other world. It would be contemplated with almost philosophical wonder. Literature would celebrate it as an alternate Earth. (This implicitly did happen with the Moon in the Sixties, when it became the only other world in clear focus.) When the many-ness of solar system worlds leads to inevitable decreases of attention to those places.

The problems with coming up with a mechanism for prioritization are:

1) A lack of disinterested parties. This is common in politics. The mayor has personal investments in X. The people who can best advise you on the oil business get paychecks from the oil business.

2) There is no real bottom line in space science. Pick any world you like, and I can depict a future for you in which we utterly ignore its exploration, for the benefit of exploring the other worlds, and there is no tangible consequence. (Until the day we have to move off-planet in massive space arks.)

If you have a clear set of guidelines, you can cut through #2. I don't think we see a lot of that out of NASA. That's the problem with the tenuous connection between political support and funding. Rah-rah stands that are "for" everything are the main alternative to apathy. But it doesn't drive prioritization.

If someone makes astrobiology very clearly the main purpose, or the #2 purpose, or the #12 purpose, of space exploration, then a lot of decisions get easy. As long as it's hazily defined, we'll have wars. Of course, it's not the only such issue, but one of the big ones now.
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gpurcell
post Mar 28 2008, 10:12 PM
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Unfortunately, there is no real solution to the budget fights except to let the fights occur. While a JROC-type approach sounds good in theory, in practice the military has a great deal more latitude to spread resources around. A specific command may not get a high-priority request filled this budget cycle, but they will be able to reapply again next fiscal year.

In the NASA context, on the other hand, the stakes are much higher. Losing a flagship decision means that community is shut out not for one or two fiscal years but rather for 15 to 20 fiscal years (remember the Cassini start was in 1988/1989) long enough that it ends careers, often before they begin. The losers of the Titan/Europa flagship mission realistically have to plan for a start date for a flagship mission to their planet in the 2025 range. And even then the losing "team" has to worry about losing two contests in a row and seeing a 30-40 year gap between mission starts.

Given that sobering scenario, nothing NASA can do will make all of the players even moderately happy.
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vjkane
post Mar 28 2008, 11:19 PM
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The process for prioritizing planetary missions really isn't that different than the process for prioritizing astronomy missions. There are as many camps in the astronomy world as there are in the planetary world. In many of the cases the camps in the planetary world aren't even between destinations as between measurement types. The guys (and gals!) who study samples have their own priorities and are the big pushers behind MSR. Then there are the guys who build remote sensing instruments vs. the guys who build in situ instruments. I talked with one very senior Mars scientist (I promised anonymity) and he says there's a big fight between those who want to delay MSR so we know better where to sample and those who just want samples (and funding) for their labs as soon as possible.

Politics are always messy. It can either be autocratic or democratic. There are proven processes, assuming you have good leaders (who are pushing the process, and not their own priorities), that can create consensus. There are already good processes within the Mars and the rest of the solar system communities. Those processes need to be merged.


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