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NASA Space Science

NASA Chief To Scientists on Budget Cuts: 'I Feel Your Pain' (arstechnica.com) 31

NASA chief Bill Nelson didn't mince words about the agency's budget crunch. "You can't put 10 pounds of potatoes in a five-pound sack," he told ArsTechnica in an interview, addressing $4.7 billion in cuts over two years.

To scientists fretting over axed missions, Nelson offered a frank "I feel your pain." The Mars Sample Return's ballooning $11 billion price tag and 2040 timeline forced a reset. "We pulled the plug," Nelson admitted, but he's banking on cheaper, creative alternatives emerging by year's end.

The moon rover Viper got the chop too, blowing its budget by 40%. "There comes a limit," Nelson said, defending the tough call. Viper lunar rover project was "running 40 percent over budget." He defended these decisions as necessary given the $2 billion cut to science funding alone. The cuts stem from the Fiscal Responsibility Act. Nelson expressed hope for a "reprieve" in fiscal year 2026, but noted uncertainty due to another looming debt ceiling issue.
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NASA Chief To Scientists on Budget Cuts: 'I Feel Your Pain'

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  • ...and continue funding the SLS
    I smell politics and stupidity

    • ...and continue funding the SLS I smell politics and stupidity

      That's been around for a while. From 2011 [competitivespace.org]:

      The Congress is assuming, in the face of numerous studies indicating otherwise, that the lowest-cost approach for the future is to continue the high-cost approach in which we've been engaged for the past half century. Note also that there are many heavy-lift concepts that do not employ solid rocket motors, and that the only thing for which they are "critical" is the maintenance of a jobs base in the state of Utah.

      • >The Congress is assuming ...that any change to the status quo is to be resisted, because the status quo put their asses in their current seats. It's a big, big pork barrel, they don't want to give up their share of it.

      • by HiThere ( 15173 )

        But those "concepts" are just that, concepts. They should be developed, and NASA should be a good place to do that...but it requires support in congress to happen.
        And, IIUC, the SLS is being funded mainly because of support in congress. So put the blame where it belongs.

        • by jacks smirking reven ( 909048 ) on Friday August 16, 2024 @12:45PM (#64711870)

          SLS is being funded mainly because of support in congress. So put the blame where it belongs.

          Exactly, it's not as though NASA can drop the program if they wanted to [arstechnica.com], I have to imagine if you asked the majority of NASA folks on the level they're at best tepid about SLS, especially since it's become a classic cost-plus boondoggle which just makes the agency look bad.

          Three things need to happen before SLS get cut; Artemis has to have at least one human mission to the moon and put some hardware for lunar gateway in place. That's sunk cost fallacy yes but it will still have to happen. I wouldn't even say people need to land but a slingshot and that will happen because it can happen. SLS as a rocket is actually quite good, it just costs way to much and takes way too long to build.

          Then Starship has to prove itself with a few successful launches and landings and signs of the design stabilizing. 2-4 years at best.

          Thrid is you have to have a Congress in place willing to cut it and without the first two they won't and with the right(wrong) group of people in Congress they may continue it anyways.

      • by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

        Note also that there are many heavy-lift concepts that do not employ solid rocket motors, and that the only thing for which they are "critical" is the maintenance of a jobs base in the state of Utah.

        And nukes.

    • by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      ...and continue funding the SLS
      I smell politics and stupidity

      That's because the SLS contractors are smart and spread out their construction over many states. Thus cutting SLS is basically going to hurt a lot more states.

      Most of the NASA science is done in a few locations, usually in partnership with a university of two. Cutting those means losing the support of a single state.

      If you can conjure up a project, make sure you can involve as many states as possible. Even if all you can do in Alaaka is "cold weat

      • by hey! ( 33014 )

        Part of this is the scale defense contractors have managed to achieve through mergers. In the 1960s there were at least seven different competitors who built fixed wing military aircraft for the US, and now there are three. The three remaining major contractors -- Lockheed, Boeing, and Northrop, are all major contractors on SLS, and they're all too big to fail.

  • Over the past decade, NASA has invested heavily in various projects involving Boeing. The most significant expenditures have been related to the Space Launch System (SLS) and the CST-100 Starliner projects.

    Space Launch System (SLS): Boeing has been the prime contractor for the SLS core stages, with contracts worth billions. For instance, NASA finalized a $3.2 billion contract in 2022 for the production of core and upper stages to support future Artemis missions. Overall, NASA ha

    • by necro81 ( 917438 )

      Since its inception, NASA has awarded Boeing around $4.8 billion for the Starliner under the Commercial Crew Program

      Though, in a rare moment of fiscal prudence, Commercial Crew was a fixed-cost contract. So the various overages and re-tests are on Boeing's dime.

  • SpaceX keeps crushing it compared to the old, entrenched aerospace industry. Could they pull off the two missions in listed here for less and in a shorter time frame?

    • by hey! ( 33014 )

      Almost certainly. Not because Musk is a genius rocket scientist, because he's not. It's because SpaceX is a throwback to the 1960s when aerospace companies weren't too big to fail. Back then if you didn't deliver someone else would get the business.

      Lockheed and Boeing aren't just too big to fail; they're too big to say no to. SLS was supposed to launch in five years, they took eleven, and during the project delay they continued to receive performance bonuses [spacenews.com] even as deadlines continued to slip, apparently i

  • The Pentagon never, ever, EVER goes without anything it wants. The banks either. Schools, science, hospitals, roads, drinking water? Yeah, let's compromise there. Makes total sense.
    • Take 1% of the military budget. They’ll survive.

    • by HiThere ( 15173 )

      I think you're a bit wrong there. I think it should be "The Pentagon never goes without anything its major contractors want". (The way you put it would actually have some justification, but I believe it's not what we've got.)

    • Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)

      by DesScorp ( 410532 )

      The Pentagon never, ever, EVER goes without anything it wants.

      The Pentagon has to give up things they want all the time. It's more the case that individual programs in the Pentagon are untouchable, usually for political reasons. The F-35 is example Primera Uno. It's the plane that ate the Air Force. Its cost has grown so much that not only are they buying fewer than the F-16's they're supposed to be replacing, it's also eating the budget for other aircraft that USAF needs in other missions. But Lockheed was clever in seeding production across 48 states, insuring polit

      • Turns out the F-16s are going to worldwide fleets of nations that no longer deal with Russia for surplus airframes and a supply of rebuilt turbines, so the USAF is outsourcing the light fighter dream that never really existed except for a few months in 1986. If it is a USAF or allied nation with the flag on the tail, the will of the united states is respected if replacement FRUs are going to be shoved into F16s around the world unless you have a unique relationship with Israel. That you can send a 80NM
    • Every couple of years 60 minutes does a piece on the absolute corruption that is military contracts. And no one really takes this on because 1. they want those sweet corporate board & lobbying jobs after the retire from govt. 2. Aforementioned corps and lobbyists will just wrap themselves in the flag.

      You propose to cut the littoral combat ship program? âoeYer a Russian commie.â

  • You can't put 10 pounds of potatoes in a five-pound sack,"

    Of course you can. Simple cubic packing is around 50% efficient.

    So, let's assume perfectly cubical potatoes in a flexible sack...

    • Or, if you simply compress the potatoes until they reach their electron degeneracy pressure, you could fit thousands of tons of them into a five-pound sack.

  • Peel them, boil them mash them and make some freeze-dried flakes. I'm fairly sure just about anything is more fast-paced, innovative and budget-minded than a NASA project. Outsource your next rover to Ukraine, they'll build you a better rover than you've ever had by stripping the nearest Tesla for parts. And it will have guns and AI. My wife is Ukrainian, so I should know XD

  • That when it comes to funding domestic agencies and problems that certainly need some attention we never seem to have the money ?
    ( The list of domestic issues / problems is quite lengthy so pick any you like )

    Yet, we can throw billions of dollars at Israel, Ukraine, or whomever needs an injection of Democracy without batting an eye. . .

On a clear disk you can seek forever. -- P. Denning

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