NASA to Cut Back Scientific Missions Because of Budget Options

[Guest_AlexBlackwell_*]

NASA to Cut Back Scientific Missions Because of Budget
By DENNIS OVERBYE
The New York Times
March 1, 2006

[NMRguy]

The report looks pretty bleak. If I get this correct, the budget for Science, Aeronautics, and Exploration (ie. UnmannedSpaceflight) of FY2006 to FY2007 is slashed from $7.6b to $5.3b? A 30% reduction?! I just don't see the job market looking very inviting in the near future.

For you guys that have been in the field for a while and have a nice historical perspective, is this slashing as terrible as it seems? Does this sort of thing happen every decade, or has the LEO space excursion club hijacked the budget for the foreseeable future?

[Guest_AlexBlackwell_*]

Phil Plait (aka "The Bad Astronomer") has an interesting take on this in his blog.

[Stephen]

I do not have access to that that NY Times link, but at a guess I would say the VSE has struck again.

[rant mode]
Many on this board and out in the general science community probably cheered when it was announced that the VSE would be gobbling up the shuttle's budget after 2010. They probably shrugged their shoulders (or maybe muttered a "what do you expect?") when they learned that science on the ISS would be cut back even further to help pay for the Bush vision (eg "NASA's life science and microgravity science research programs have been decimated over the last two years and funding for ISS research has been cut back to the point where it is unclear exactly what use NASA intends to make of the ISS").

Yet one might equally have argued: once a cannibal, always a cannibal.

Now we find that it not just a matter of the VSE feeding off the shuttle, or even the ISS. Whole missions of a robotic sort are being cut or deferred, of which the latest casualty appears to be Dawn (as has been reported elsewhere on this board in the past day or so). Presumably it will not be the last.

If that keeps going on, the VSE will end up going down the same path as the ISS: eventually opposition will build to (if not focus on) the VSE itself, to the point where attempts may be made to wind it back too--and maybe (eventually) to wind it up--so as to try to give more money to space science and robotic missions in general. Indeed, that opposition is already growing, judging from such reports as this one in The Mercury News for March 2.

"Scientists who study the sun, moon, planets and stars on Thursday protested the Bush administration's plan to send humans back to the moon and on to Mars. They say the president's two-year-old Vision for Space Exploration program is gobbling up billions of dollars that they think could be better used for less expensive projects, including new telescopes and unmanned robots such as the twin rovers on Mars."

The VSE needs its own separate pot of money which does not require it to steal somebody else's. If it does not get that then it's hard to see it surviving long enough to send anybody to the Moon, much less to Mars. Sooner or later the cannibals will turn on it as well, and either "de-scope" it or ditch it, possibly to fund the latest in the long line of grandiloquent presidential space visions.
[/rant mode]

======
Stephen

[Guest_Richard Trigaux_*]

Everybody can do mistakes.

But persisting into mistakes against every evidences and against advice of everybody...

The shuttle and ISS are probably mistakes, although it was not obvious at the time when these projects were launched. So nobody is to blame.

But now it is more than obvious mistakes, it is mistakes which cost much to keep mistaking...

[djellison]

I'm not particularly up to speed on US politics and the way these budgets get approved or adjusted and so on..

What potential is there for the budget submitted to be changed before being signed off?

Doug

[edstrick]

Considerable Potential.
New Horizons is entirely the result of Congress rubbing NASA's nose in stuff Goldin's office wanted indecently buried.

[Guest_AlexBlackwell_*]

Scientists On Capitol Hill Decry NASA's Science Budget Request
By Jefferson Morris
Aerospace Daily & Defense Report
03/03/2006 09:39:43 AM

[Guest_BruceMoomaw_*]

At the Europa meeting, Ron Greeley told us: "I have been connected with NASA since 1967, and I have never seen the space science situation as bad as it currently is." The fact remains: Congress is NOT going to hike NASA's total budget any further, and they are justified in not doing so. The only rational solution is to eliminate Shuttle/Station.

[Guest_Richard Trigaux_*]

I quote Bruce here, but the reply is for everybody.

At the Europa meeting, Ron Greeley told us: "I have been connected with NASA since 1967, and I have never seen the space science situation as bad as it currently is." The fact remains: Congress is NOT going to hike NASA's total budget any further, and they are justified in not doing so. The only rational solution is to eliminate Shuttle/Station.

In Europe we have some experience of this situation. For instance the Concorde supersonic airliner was hailed everywhere as a great technology achievement, as a "must do", as the next mandatory step on modernism, progress, etc... until came the commercial release. And it was a spectacular flop. No matter the exact reasons, they can be summarized as "why to pay much more to do just a little bit more".
So we found ourselves with a marvel of technology, but realizing it was useless. What to do? Some clever guies had the correct idea: use the technology level to do something useful, something the people ask for. And it was the Airbus, much modest in scope, much less romantic, much less sci-fi, much more down-to-earth. But it was a success, and even a tremendous and unequaled success. Who even imagined that we could beat Boeing 30 years ago?
This story to tell that we must not do what we want must be done (in french we call this "ideological development") but what is needed to do. Not the Concorde, the Airbus. Not the shuttle/ISS, the... hey, I have some ideas, but I will give them to the NASA only if they ASK me and retain my name.

[Jyril]

With that logic, NASA should never started to build shuttle. They should have proceeded like the Russians using capsules and build simple space stations like Mir.

Well, Soviet Union did build Buran, which became even more spectacular flop than shuttle despite the fact it was technically superior in certain areas.

[djellison]

Soviet Union did build Buran, which became even more spectacular flop than shuttle despite

Buran was a victim of the politics and finances of the Soviet Union break up - it never had the chance to become a flop for reasons that might lie at the feet of its designers or managers.

Doug

[Guest_Richard Trigaux_*]

With that logic, NASA should never started to build shuttle. They should have proceeded like the Russians using capsules and build simple space stations like Mir.

Well, Soviet Union did build Buran, which became even more spectacular flop than shuttle despite the fact it was technically superior in certain areas.

Buran was not a flop: it is the country economy which collapsed, together with its political will. Without that unfortunate event, Buran would perhaps be still flying, eventually with more success that the US shuttle.

It is true that it was superior in some areas, for instance in robotics (automated landing)

Shuttle/ISS appear as a mistake TODAY, but where these projects were launched, they appeared as mandatory, and as THE solution for cheap occupation of space. Only after this was found not true. Of course, if at the epoch the NASA had extra-sensorial perceptions of the future, nobody would have engaged in the project.

European shuttle project Hermès came just at the juncture point: there was already many persons warning of a super-hight cost, and the agreement to start the project was difficult to obtain, and to the condition that the development would keep into the initial budget. This condition showed impossible to fulfill: only some months later, the bill was inflated of 30%, so the whole project was cancelled.

[Bob Shaw]

Buran was a victim of the politics and finances of the Soviet Union break up - it never had the chance to become a flop for reasons that might lie at the feet of its designers or managers.

Doug

Doug:

Indeed; and the Energia LV system is still flying, in the form of Zenit.

And as for the engines from the N-1, or the Zond circumlunar upper stage... ...or the Soyuz LV itself...

...it's actually astonishing how much sheer longevity the ex-Soviet designs have, compared to the (nominally) technically superior, short-production-run, high-unit-cost US efforts!

Shoulda stuck with the Saturn V!

Bob Shaw

[djellison]

Proven in the use of the RD180 in the Atlas 3 and 5

Doug