House Passes NASA Authorization Bill 149
simonbp writes "The US House of Representatives has just passed the Senate version of the FY2011 NASA Authorization Act. This bill is a compromise between Obama's proposed budget and earlier House bills. It cancels Ares I in favor of commercially-operated crew transportation to ISS, adds technology development funds, and keeps a version of Orion and a new heavy-lift 'Space Launch System' to both be operational by 2016. The timing of this bill was crucial to keeping key NASA personnel and contractors from being laid off."
A constant problem in NASA (Score:5, Insightful)
The basic problem is this: Projects in NASA take longer than a president will be in office.
So presidents will announce some grand new space project that will take a decade. The next president, in the name of budget cuts, cuts the project. Then, in order to placate the pro-NASA folks, announces some other grand new space project that will take a decade. And of course the grand new space projects never get completed.
As far as the congressional representation, they're primary concern with NASA is directing as much of the activity as possible to their congressional districts. For instance, Ohio's representation will do their best to ensure that more work gets done at Glenn in Cleveland, while Texas's folks try to get the work done in Houston.
Keep NASA personal (Score:5, Insightful)
The timing of this bill was crucial to keeping key NASA personal and contractors from being laid off.
I've found that if you want to keep an organization personal, you can't have many contractors in it. Permanent employees tend to be more invested in the organization, which fosters a more personal culture. Contractors have a tendency to come and go, and act more like vendors than members.
Re:Budget or 'plan'? (Score:5, Insightful)
Political pandering. However, sometimes they make mistakes in the bills and particularly resourceful people actually manage to get things done in spite of the best efforts of Congress.
Unfortunately, for something more complex than some unmanned missions and face-saving missions to the ISS, we're probably going to need a new enemy and a new Space Race, and the terrorists aren't going to cut it. That or a hundred more years of incremental improvement to the point that orbital flight is so cheap we can do it without the government. Sad.
Re:Great (Score:3, Insightful)
Badastronomy blog on bill (Score:5, Insightful)
So, it looks like the GOP fought tooth and nail against privatizing spaceflight because they wanted to brink the pork home and more or less are dictating rocket design to NASA. Juicy bits here:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2010/09/30/congress-passes-nasa-authorization-bill-but-id-rather-watch-sausages-being-made/ [discovermagazine.com]
What really galled me, though, was that several Republicans blamed Obama for NASA's current mess, including Ralph Hall (R-TX, remember him?). This is grossly and demonstrably unfair and untrue. Rep. John Culberson (R-TX) hammered over and again the idea that Obama is trying to kill the manned space program. That is not true, and in fact the current situation (including the five year gap between the Shuttle and any follow-on rocket system) started in the Bush Administration. Constellation has been in trouble for some time, behind schedule and over-budget. I'm of the opinion that Obama's plan to defund Constellation does not kill the manned space program as Culberson said it will. I have written about this repeatedly: far from killing it, this new direction may save NASA from the mess it finds itself in right now.
What's weird is how Culberson used the bogeyman of Obama to try to gain sympathy for the bill, saying that a yes vote on the bill would stop Obama's plan to dismantle NASA. I find that odd, as much of the bill aligns with Obama's plan for NASA, including defunding Constellation and promoting a new rocket system*. Moreover, I want to point out that Obama's plan, and this bill, funds private space concerns (like SpaceX, which is preparing to launch its Falcon 9 rocket which will be man-rated and capable of flights to the space station). You'd think Republicans would support this, as they have a mantra of privatizing health care, social security, and so many other government efforts. However, many Republicans don't like private space companies. An exception I must note was Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), who spoke up about funding private space efforts and how important it is. On most issues he and I disagree strongly, but on this one we agree.
Re:Great (Score:4, Insightful)
>Do you see the problem here?
That we spend so much of our money killing brown people for no good reason? Seriously, Bush's decision to invade Iraq cost us Constellation. Blame him. At least we have all those WMDs to justify it. Oh wait.
This is a good thing (Score:2, Insightful)
The US space industry is at a critical juncture right now. The best crop of private space firms we've ever seen is out there now; from a funding standpoint, a technical maturity standpoint, and from a drive to make space routine & affordable standpoint. That being said, the government has the power to either foster them or chill the environment they are operating in and potentially kill them off (as has happened more than once in the past). For this industry to really take root and get strong enough to achieve routine & affordable space they need to get through this juncture where most people have difficulty seeing a future that is different from massive, expensive, apollo style nasa and to a place where they can see there is a realistic chance space can be more like the aircraft/airline industry. Investors don't invest significant money in long time horizon ventures that will pay back *if* the government doesn't compete with you *and* a market happens to materialize as expected. They want to see that someone else is already making money before the cash floodgates truly will open. These first few companies are crucial to demonstrating the business case for the rest.
Unfortunately, this means it is critical for the government to not directly compete with the fledgling industry (for things that industry can reasonably be expected to do) (the Ares and Orion programs for example) and for certain restrictions (like ITAR), which prevent the this industry from being competitive and being able to self fund things in the future, to be removed as impediments. If the government can also serve as an early anchor customer until the market demand for lower cost access to space kicks in, that is a bonus which helps to accelerate things. The president has already signalled his willingness to make sensible changes to ITAR, so now the other half of the equation needed for success is to kill the massive pork ridden constellation program and refocus nasa on doing real science and exploration again (and at the same time making it a customer for off the shelf industry provided products and services).
This bill does that. It's most significant contribution to a brighter future isn't what it funds (the Commercial Crew initiative for example) but what it does not fund (Constellation). Killing the most egregious pork siphon the NASA budget has ever seen is the first step in saner NASA budgets in future years. Did this budget do everything that should have been done to refocus NASA productively? Not by a long shot. You can read more about the downsides here:
http://restorethevision.blogspot.com/search/label/Not%20So%20Great%20Compromise [blogspot.com]
But it does do the one thing that sets the stage for a healthier trajectory going forward...it kills Constellation and clears the decks for a healthier trajectory to be set over the next few years. That much pork was not something congress wanted to part with lightly and had it managed to hang on to a significant portion of constellation, we may have been looking at another 30 years of nothing much happening just like the last 30, only in this case the impending budget crisis over social security would eventually squeeze the space program down to nothing.
So when evaluating this budget, look at it for what it will enable long term, not what the specific line items mean in the next year.
Re:Budget or 'plan'? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:A constant problem in NASA (Score:5, Insightful)
One day we'll invent this magical system of "getting things done outside of the government", but I guess until then, we'll be stuck with having the government run everything.
Doing things requires work. Work is made by people. People ask for money in exchange for their work. There are limited sources of money:
1 - Other people. Insufficient amounts unless you can make a very large number of individuals pay.
2 - Corporations. Wont't invest without a defined ROI, which isn't clear in pure space exploration.
3 - Governments.
So, as you sarcastically refer to non-government based financiation, are you implying you've got a ROI to offer to corporations? Or you have an idea to get a lot of people to donate money for space exploration.
If you have the answer to either of those, you're welcome to share it.
Re:Great (Score:1, Insightful)
That we spend so much of our money killing brown people for no good reason?
Strange. All the "brown people" you claim that we are killing were quite happy to see me when I was over there in camouflage. Maybe you should go over there and ask them if they think their lives and freedom fall under the "no good reason" category.
As for the money, the national debt has increased 4x in the past couple of years. I don't think the Iraq invasion was the problem. Maybe if they stopped spending money to reward groups that offer political support, they could easily triple NASA's funding and still come out ahead.
Re:Great (Score:4, Insightful)
>I don't think the Iraq invasion was the problem.
Cost of Iraq war 750 BILLION dollars. NASA's annual budget floats a bit under 20 billion. That's 30+ years of NASA, genius.
>Strange. All the "brown people" you claim that we are killing were quite happy to see me when I was over there in camouflage.
Loss of life: over 100+k CIVILIANS. Yes, the people there were happy to see you because they're alive and are afraid to piss off the guy with the gun. The angry ones, alas, are dead. If a military from a powerful country which killed all your leaders and 100k of your pals waltzed into your town, you'd grinning ear to ear too.
Re:Keep NASA personal (Score:3, Insightful)
They deliver much better results than someone who is on payroll and going to get a paycheck and benefits regardless of their performance (sure they can be fired, but its a lot less common). Not only that, but contractors carry a bunch of experience under their belt. They need to get on the project and stay on the project. For example, a NASA contractor may have 10 years experience with the Air Force and 10 years with NASA doing a bunch of diverse projects. Whereas a government employee might only have 20 years doing the same old job and a couple years away from the comfy pension.
Re:Great (Score:4, Insightful)
>That's $750 billion over eight years, and it's still less than what the government wasted on a single "stimulus" bill.
My point is that a war of lies cost us 750 billion dollars. That's a significant amount of money and the two wars as well as the tax cut have put this country into ruin. The stimulus is icing on the cake. Your Fox News talking points aren't convincing, sorry. Ignoring what was spent on these wars when discussing the federal budget is being disingenuous. It all comes from the same pool. I'm not even going to mention how defense spending, in general, is out of control and is why we can't have nice things.
>Constellation was still being funded through the Iraq war.
BECAUSE WE WERE DEFICIT SPENDING. It was not at all affordable. Can you grok the simple concept of not being able to spend money you don't have? Or what debt is? Constellation was a PR move by the Bush administration. If you can't pay for something without going deeply into debt you can't afford it.
>Let's see, if my leaders had ruined my country and raped my daughters, I think I welcome those 100,000 waltzers.
Because in this scenario you have the luxury of being alive. 100+ THOUSAND people died over Bush's cooked intelligence. This is something to be outraged about, not cavalierly justifying it as some kind of kindly humanitarian mission. I pity you if you believe that.
Re:A constant problem in NASA (Score:1, Insightful)
Then, after the ESA and other space agencies have done the same, the scientific divisions should join in a United Space Agency (with a different name, but you know what I mean).
I suppose we could call it: Starfleet.
Re:Great (Score:4, Insightful)
>Tax cuts INCREASED government receipts, not decreased them.
Unpaid tax cuts add to the deficit, period. You can theorize about external forces, but there's no proof that supply-side economics works. In fact, its highly controversial and assuming it does shows your bias.
>So tell me, why are still railing on Bush and not saying a word about the 4x increase in deficit spending AND NASA cuts?
Because they are 100% related. Constellation was never planned in an affordable way. Its a heavy spending Bush-era program that needed to be cut as its 100% unfeasible and the little progress that was made . The stimulus is outside the scope of criticism as I'm discussing Bush era programs and inhereted debt from the Bush years. Bush spent our surplus on a war of lies (no wmd's were found).
Don't think you conservatives can just get rid of the Bush years. You'll forever be wearing them as an albatross around your neck. His choice to enter the Iraq war and give out tax cuts he couldn't afford cost us a lot of nice things, not limited to NASA.
>I pity anyone who will take the ill informed word of The Daily Kos or Democrat Underground
I read neither site. I'm giving facts (deaths of civillians, real dollar cost) and you're giving me Bush-era propaganda "We freed them, dont ask about WMD" and Reagen-era supply-side economics bullshit. Again, I will reiterate my point. The Iraq war cost us 35 years of NASA's budget. We sold out future generations and current programs to pay for it.
Obama Philosophy Question (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Great (Score:3, Insightful)
Hey! We agree on something. So tell me, why are still railing on Bush and not saying a word about the 4x increase in deficit spending AND NASA cuts?
Because the increased deficit is being used to fix the wrongs so that the country can get back on track and in the end reduce the deficit. Before you criticise other people, take a look at yourself!