Over at Space Politics in comments, in response the moonwalker editorial yesterday, “Major Tom” once again lays out the numbers:
“… funding originally projected for carrying out the Vision didn’t materialize either in presidential budget requests in later years of the Bush Administration or in the appropriations bills passed by Congress.”
Although it has been promulgated elsewhere, including the Augustine Committee, this statement is not true. The truth is the exact opposite — NASA’s Exploration Systems Mission Directorate received $2.4 billion (17%) more than what was promised in the FY 2005 VSE budget.
Here’s the FY 2005 runout for Exploration Systems when the VSE was released:
FY05 $ 1,782M
FY06 $ 2,579M
FY07 $ 2,941M
FY08 $ 2,809M
FY09 $ 3,313MTotal $13,424M
And here’s what was actually approved for Exploration Systems in the operating plan for each fiscal year, plus Recovery Act funding in FY10:
FY05 $ 2,685M
FY06 $ 3,050M
FY07 $ 2,870M
FY08 $ 3,299M
FY09 $ 3,506M
Rec. $ 400MTotal $15,810M
When you subtract the latter from the former, Exploration Systems received the following increases over the FY 2005 VSE budget:
FY05 $ 903M
FY06 $ 471M
FY07 $ -71M
FY08 $ 490M
FY09 $ 193M
Rec. $ 400MTotal $2,386M
In every fiscal year with the exception of FY07, Exploration Systems received hundreds of millions of dollars more than what was promised in the FY 2005 VSE budget.
In total, Exploration Systems received nearly $2.4 billion more than what was promised in the FY 2005 VSE budget.
It is simply not true that Exploration Systems failed to develop Ares I, Orion, and the rest of Constellation on time due to budget cutbacks. The opposite is the truth — Ares I, Orion, and Constellation failed despite a 17% increase in the Exploration Systems budget.
Here’s the links in case anyone wants to check the numbers for themselves:
It’s the myth that will not die. Not only was the funding increased, but Griffin raided other budgets to feed the Ares monster.
[Friday morning update]
“Major Tom” has come clarifications, from the same thread at Space Politics:
I have read on many occasions that Dr. Griffin also took funds from other accounts like earth sciences etc.
Do the numbers you provide also take into account those shifts in priorities that took place during this time period?
Yes.
There are two ways to increase the budget for Exploration Systems (or any other program) from the FY05 (or any other) baseline:
1) Get the White House to request and Congress to appropriate more funding in subsequent fiscal years than what was in the baseline for the program.
2) After a new fiscal year is appropriated, get OMB and congressional appropriations staff to approve changes in the operating plan for that fiscal year to shift funds from other programs to the program in question.
The numbers in my prior post incorporate both because they’re taken from the actual spending for the fiscal year in question two years after that fiscal year was over. So it doesn’t matter whether the increase came from a larger appropriations for the program or an operating plan shift — both get reflected in the actual spending totals.
I think there’s a lot of confusion over whether NASA as a whole got as much funding as was promised in the VSE versus whether Exploration Systems got as much funding as was promised in the VSE. There’s no doubt that the Bush II White House and both Democrat- and Republican-controlled Congresses failed to meet the promises made for NASA’s overall budget in the VSE. However, if you dive in and and check the details underneath the agency total, it’s also clear that Exploration Systems got $2.4 billion (17%) more than what was promised in the VSE. Given who was Administrator during this time (Mike Griffin) and his top priorities (Ares/Orion/Constellation), this is not surprising.
To your point, because the overall NASA budget wasn’t keeping up with VSE promises (i.e., no new money was being added to the NASA topline), this $2.4 billion increase for Exploration Systems came largely at the expense of other NASA programs. (The one exception is the $400 million that Exploration Systems received from the Recovery Act in FY10.) This resulted in a one-two punch to other NASA programs. Not only did their budgets have to be reduced so that the total NASA budget could come down from the VSE profile, the budgets for these other programs had to be cut even further to provide for the $2 billion increase in Exploration Systems. I don’t recall all the hits during this time, but off the top of my head: the Mars Exploration Program was cut in half, aeronautics was nearly cut in half, life and microgravity sciences was eliminated except for research supporting astronauts, and nuclear power and propulsion was practically eliminated, among other things. I know Earth Science hit a nadir during this time, but I don’t know the percentages.
[Bumped]
Ares was the worst part of the constellation program. I don’t know why NASA insists on using solid rocket boosters (I do know, they want to keep ATK happy). They are heavier, they cannot be shut off, when they explode they throw heavy chunks of metal, and they force you to carry a much more powerful abort system. Viewing this in the light of SpaceX just makes me ill. They have build a clean sheet rocket, engine and capsule for 800 million. NASA spent tens of billions and have so far flown one Ares I test that was not fully successful. We could be in deep space by now if we stopped pouring our money down rat holes.
The thing to remember is, the vehicle development cost prediction model that NASA used recently to project Falcon 9 development costs (if done NASA business-as-usual) at over ten times the actual NASA-verified SpaceX figure of $390 million, seems to lowball actual recent NASA vehicle development costs by an additional factor of two to three (or more.)
Which is a pretty good explanation of why Constellation, despite an almost 18% increase over planned baseline for those five years, nevertheless slipped schedule at close to one year per year over that time.
NASA admits to costs of ten times over best commercial practice, but has actual major project costs of twenty to thirty times BCP, or more. (It’s not just launchers either – look at the Webb Telescope.)
I would call this a strong indication that the parts of NASA that ostensibly do major space systems engineering are broken badly enough that the best course is to quietly pension them off, while setting up new greenfield operations, far smaller and less hidebound, to run any actual space exploration projects the country decides to undertake.
In this light, Shuttle’s retirement is a once-in-a-generation opportunity. One the Congress seems determined to avoid taking, alas.
The truth is the exact opposite — NASA’s Exploration Systems Mission Directorate received $2.4 billion (17%) more than what was promised in the FY 2005 VSE budget.
But everyone knew that what was promised in the 2005 VSE budget was just the beginning.
Bush himself said, “This [budget] is only a beginning. Future funding decisions will be guided by the progress that we make in achieving these goals.”
That statement is sort of a Rorschach test for space funding. It doesn’t *necessarily* imply a blank check for future needs but could easily be interpreted that way, especially coming from one of the biggest spenders in US history.
The problem with open-ended promises is that no matter how much you do, people who think you should have done more will still feel you’ve broken your promise.
It wasn’t just Ares, and it wasn’t just SRBs, alas. Some of Orion’s problems were related to the use of SRBs, true, but it was having weight and cost problems on its own too. And you can’t blame the Altair lander’s cost and schedule problems on SRBs at all. (On fixing Ares 5’s size too early too small, yes, but that’s an organizational problem.)
I think trying to blame NASA’s problems on any one bad decision is avoiding the issue: The basic organizations tasked with making these decisions are broken – their costs are out of control, their schedules also, and they chronically make laughably, obviously bad decisions.
Those links don’t work, but they work if you add www. before nasa.gov.
Just FWI, the numbers Rand gives includes Constellation and a line item called “Advanced Capabilities” and therefore looks like it may be misleading when analysing shortfalls for the Constellation program.
Major Tom is a link machine.
Um, Griffin was on The Space Show recently, CONFIRMING HIMSELF that he received all the funding he ever asked for, and more.
I wonder where the myth started? I specifically remember the Augustine committee referring to Constellation as “over budget and behind schedule”. That said, I also remember people asking how something can be both over budget and underfunded. Perhaps that’s where the myth started.
Here’s a thought-experiment to illustrate their current dysfunction. Suppose the Shuttle SRB had been developed and fully tested back in the late 1950’s when we mistakenly thought H-bombs would be huge, leaving us with a bunch of unused 2.8 million-lbf solid boosters with solid upper stages.
Based on the performance of the MX as an orbital launcher, a three or four stage, all-solid Shuttle SRB should deliver about 22,000 lbs to LEO. Once given the task, how long would it have taken the early NASA or the Air Force to turn it into a manned system, and how much would it have cost?
I’m guessing two or three years and not that much extra.
It was over budget and behind schedule compared to when the program was sold. it was underfunded compared to what they had, at that time, decided they’d need to finish and operate it.
@Roll Tide: Certainly agree that large solids have large drawbacks, and would add inability to test fire, hazards associated with handling them since they are loaded from the time of manufacture, costs of same (they’re heavy). It’s not true they can’t be shut down, though. Just open a vent: pressure drops, flame out. That trick is used on ICBM for trajectory control. It tends to violent, though. That’s why Shuttle SRBs don’t have this feature, but with a crew capsule on top that might not be such an issue. I believe Titan III-M SRMs for MOL had vented nose caps for thrust termination.
@George Turner: Thinking along those lines, I find it telling that even the originator of large, segmented solids, the USAF, has abandoned them (as in EELVs don’t use them).
It’s easy to fall in to thinking solids are either wonderful or awful. In reality, they’re just one tool in the toolbox with pros and cons compared to other options.
The real shift over time is that when the U.S. was mass-producing solid ICBMs, solids were an inexpensive way to make a first stage. Now that we’re not, they’re not.
I think I can explain how something can be overfunded and underfunded at the same time. All you have to do is think like a bureaucrat. Yes, NASA received 17% more money than they requested over the 5 year period. However, compared to the magnitude of overruns on all their other programs, a mere 17% can be considered underfunding. Historically, the figure is more like 100% additional.
This is the same mindset that calls a budget increase year after year but less than you wanted a “cut.”
Just typing this makes me feel dirty.