Political Commentary, Space

The Continuing Space Policy Failure

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John Logsdon is concerned about Congress’s seeming lack of urgency about Commercial Crew:

“We on the Columbia board in 2003 called the lack of a replacement for the shuttle a failure of national leadership, and that failure continues, as exemplified by the congressional unwillingness to adequately fund commercial crew,” he explained. “Congress seems to view it not as an urgent issue, which is very puzzling to me.”

Really? It’s “puzzling” to you? It puzzles me not at all. It just says that pork is more important than success in space, as has been the case for four decades.

3 thoughts on “The Continuing Space Policy Failure”

  2. You want to know why Congress spent a year halving the Administration’s request? Read:

    According to NASA program managers, the top program risk is inadequate budget; however, without an accurate NASA estimate of how much it will cost to develop and test a system, it is not possible to precisely know the program’s budgetary requirements or if there is a risk of underfunding. In this case, the difficulty is compounded by the fact that the vehicles are being developed by commercial entities, using nontraditional procurement strategies. It is not surprising that when NASA asked proposers on the second phase of the Commercial Crew Development (CCDev) Program for rough estimates of the funds needed to complete the development of a commercial crew system, it received a wide range of figures from the various companies. NASA is understandably reluctant to publicize the details of those estimates due to the proprietary nature of the figures in the ongoing competition. Nevertheless, it appears to the ASAP that the fiscal year (FY) 2012 funding level approved by Congress, which was less than half of what was requested by the Administration, will not allow commercial crew transportation to the ISS by 2016. In fact, if the new funding level continues into the future, it is the ASAP’s belief that the program is in jeopardy, thus extending the current lack of a U.S. human spaceflight capability and resulting in no alternative to reliance on Russia to obtain access to the ISS.

    Congress asks questions about how the eggheads plan to spend the money. The eggheads–not even, in fact…their bosses and bean counters–can’t be bothered to actually find out. Queue “independent” panel of so-called experts and statesmen so they can lament–in blissful, fully admitted ignorance–the perceived shortcomings of the budget process. It’s the same old song and dance, and you think people would be sick of it.

    John Logsdon isn’t concerned. When it comes to policy and budget, he’s lazy. He apes the concerns of equally lazy colleagues who delegate to their lazy staffs the oh-so-trying tasks of discovering zilch, conducting an office poll, and pulling conclusions out of a hat.

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