NASA Think Tank to be Shut Down

Matthew Sparkes writes "NASA will likely shut down its Institute for Advanced Concepts, which funds research into futuristic ideas in spaceflight and aeronautics. The move highlights the budget problems the agency is facing as it struggles to retire the space shuttles and develop a replacement. The institute receives $4 million per year from NASA, whose annual budget is $17 billion. Most of that is used to fund research into innovative technologies; recent grants include the conceptual development of spacecraft that could surf the solar system on magnetic fields, motion-sensitive spacesuits that could generate power and tiny, spherical robots that could explore Mars."

Can somebody give us a list...

[ivan256]

...of recent technologies they've come up with that have made it into practical use?

I see the value of research for research's sake, but you've got to come up with things that have a practical use once in a while, even if by accident, otherwise that value goes away...

I'm not saying this lab hasn't come up with such things, but if they have, what are they and why aren't some of them listed in the story summary?

I live outside the USA - please help me understand

[tezza]

Can some helpful person explain how the NASA budget [wikipedia.org] is drawn up? The wikipedia article covers the facts and outcomes, and not the political angles.


I guess I'm asking:

* where the money is going instead? To different NASA projects or to other state projects outside [stable economy]

* is there less money overall? [shrinking economy]

* is the budget determined by the President or the Senate?

* how frequently are these budgets determined? - how soon could all this budget shrinking really be turned around?

* is there consensus on the role of NASA, or is there variation between Democrats and Republicans?

* if there had been less spent on Defense [say Iraq war], would that have been allocatable to NASA? Sometimes budgets are drawn from several pools... e.g. Road Tax in Australia is only spent on roads.

Re:% of $17B/yr That is Wasted?

[BoRegardless]

"Erm, let me think... IRAQ!" Well IRAQ is not funded out of NASA but that has lots more than $170m/yr wasted you are right.

The irony of war, waste and lost lives, is that the technologies which have been developed in Iraq & Afganistan by the U.S. & its allies from surveillance, guidance, sensors, weapons, language analysis, tactics and human psychology of urban conflict have resulted in abilities and knowledge which will help the industrialized world immensely in being able to find, monitor, stop and minimize potential conflicts through this century.

Learning and applying the lessons and equipment early will save countless dollars and lives ultimately, against a medieval set of ideas based on forced conversion not of just people to their religion, but indeed also the conversion of the entire worlds law and governmental systems to Sharia law.

Defending your and my independence from forced thoughts, religions and governments is necessary, though necessarily "messy" & costly at times.

Re:I live outside the USA - please help me underst

[aengblom]

In short, NASA is faced with a slightly declining budget (not in actual dollars, but in dollars when accounting for inflation) at least partially because of tightening budgets in the U.S. due to rising costs across government and Bush's tax cuts. Recently, the Republicans were both big on tax cuts and big on spending (which IMO was a key to their political success), but the public is finally starting to catch on and demand some sort of responsibility. (I'm not gonna say Democrats would have been particularly better for NASA... only that they were not in power and fairly irrelevant in recent years.) More importantly for NASA, however, is that the agency has been tasked with very expensive priorities to go to the Moon/Mars within its current budget, which means other programs are experiencing cuts.

Iraq spending is obviously a major constraint as well, since it's a bit pricey, although that hasn't really been handled within the normal budget process.

The budget process is long, ugly and usually late, but begins with a proposal by the President, which is then mixed and mashed up by the Congress to meet its fancy. Both the House and Senate then consider the budget and negotiate a final budget, which is sent to the President, who can either sign it or veto it. Inevitably, they miss the deadline and pass a resolution to continue operating the government at previous years' budget levels for a few months before actually passing a bill. Essentially this means all the agencies spend most of the year fretting about how much money they have and not figuring out how best to spend it.

The agencies will also, of course, lobby the government for larger budgets and even threaten to do something crazy like cut an important but very small ... say $4 million ... program that nobody in their right mind would cut... showing to Congress just how tight their budget is. (Not that this is necessarily a bluff or that this program is actually important... they could be spending $4 million on monkeys and typewriters for all I know.)

The above concept appears in local government budgets as the "cut the fire department budget."

Re:I live outside the USA - please help me underst

[Anonymous Coward]

* where the money is going instead? To different NASA projects or to other state projects outside [stable economy]

From your link it seems like NASA's budget has remained steady. Most of the problems lie within NASA itself, which is bleeding massive amounts of money on ISS & Shuttle programs.

* is there less money overall? [shrinking economy]

The US economy is still growing, however, the rising cost of debt, the war in Iraq, and Social Security are putting massive pressure on the government budget

* is the budget determined by the President or the Senate?

Both

* how frequently are these budgets determined? - how soon could all this budget shrinking really be turned around?

Typically a yearly budget, but they can be adjusted constantly throughout the year.

* is there consensus on the role of NASA, or is there variation between Democrats and Republicans?

I don't think there is even consensus within NASA on what their role is.

if there had been less spent on Defense [say Iraq war], would that have been allocatable to NASA? Sometimes budgets are drawn from several pools... e.g. Road Tax in Australia is only spent on roads.

Probably not. The Iraq war is being funded by additional requests beyond the normal budget (funded by debt). I think the better question to ask is why NASA needs more money.

Re:Not Exactly

[DerekLyons]

As an aerospace engineer, I'm glad they are reverting to the apollo 'stack' concept. It is safer than the shuttle, in theory,

An aerospace engineer should be aware that while the stack concept removes some failure modes that the Shuttle has - it adds several of it's very own. Starting right at launch, the LES can fail when needed. When you start the re-entry phase, you face the problem of dropping off the parts no longer needed. (You can either drop too early, or fail to drop on time. The Soyuz has had both happen.) Parachutes can fail to deploy and have no backups, and your landing braking system (rockets or airbags, NASA hasn't decided between them) can fail to operate. (Soyuz has had its braking rockets fail at least twice.) There are also the risks of landing off-target. (Again, something that has happened to Soyuz on multiple occasions.)
 
 

let's face it - the shuttle never reached its full potential as a 'space truck': dropping off and retrieving satellites. It only really efficiently used the payload bay during the construction (and continued construction) of ISS.

An aerospace engineer should be more cognizant of aerospace history. The Shuttle was intended from day one as the service vehicle for a space station. As the original Shuttle tended station was cancelled in 1972 - all the satellite/SpaceHab/etc... missions moved from being secondary missions to being primary placeholders while NASA waited for Congress to authorize a station.
 
 

The new system will compartmentalize equiptment from people, allowing for better scaling and efficiency. And better failure modes, using existing hardware with a proven track record (and failure modes that have been documented and corrected).

An aerospace engineer should be cognizant of well.. aerospace engineering.
 
There is no reason other than emotion to compartmentalize people and cargo. None. A rocket that cannot be trusted with people shouldn't be trusted with billion dollar cargoes. (And vice versa.) Furthermore - using two different boosters decreases efficiency as it requires duplicated ground support resources and many more warm bodies. Furthermore it increases costs and reduces safety by decreasing the flights rates for each booster. It would be considerably cheaper and safer to use just the Porklauncher V, ballasting it when used for crew launches, than the current plan. However, the current plan - by it's mandate to preserve jobs, is forbidden by law to be cheaper, safer, and more efficient.
 
Equally - the Porklauncher I and V have never used proven hardware, from day one the hardware required significant modifications. They not only don't have a track record - they introduce new failure modes. (For example, the Porklauncher I requires a roll control package. The Porklauncher V requires large amounts of new structure, and redesigning the amount of structure it 'reuses'.) This problem has only grown worse as the program is progessing, the amount of commonality decreases with each iteration of the design. (Current NASA thinking indicates that an entirely new SRM may be required - using 5 segments vice the current 4, for example.)