Transterrestrial Musings

Comments

Rand,
Alas I fear that that is a realistic possibility. That's the problem when commercial stuff is done as just an afterthought, that has no criticality to the main program (well other than freeing up enough money down the road to actually allow the program to move forward). Of course, I'm sure the lesson will take from this is that it's all the Democrat's faults, and that if only the glorious republicans had remained in office, the fundament flaws with how the VSE is being implemented wouldn't have endangered COTS....

~Jon

Posted by Jonathan Goff at December 14, 2006 08:12 AM

The Republicans had plenty of time to pass this budget.

Posted by Chris Riemer at December 14, 2006 08:47 AM

If they give NASA authority to wipe out earmarks and categories again, the squeeze might be on other items. It's tricky for Mike because Congress will want one thing, the Prez something else.

Posted by Sam Dinkin at December 14, 2006 10:32 AM

The continuing resolution has already gutted Advanced ECLSS work at AMES, JSC, and MSFC.

Posted by Joe Schmoe at December 14, 2006 10:37 AM

If COTS is touched at all (and it is too soon to confidently predict anything, since everything is in flux) is will be stretched out rather than eliminated.

Posted by Mark R Whittington at December 14, 2006 01:09 PM

If COTS is touched at all (and it is too soon to confidently predict anything, since everything is in flux) is will be stretched out rather than eliminated.

Yes, that will make it easy for RpK to raise money. They'll just tell the investors that NASA will give them the money sometime, who cares when?

Posted by Rand Simberg at December 14, 2006 01:17 PM

Rand - Indeed, Congress punting on the budget creates a mess, but stretching out is better than elimination. I, by the way, place a low probability on either option. COTS is too big a priority to the White House, as was proven the last time you suggested that it was doomed.

Posted by Mark R Whittington at December 14, 2006 01:20 PM

COTS is too big a priority to the White House, as was proven the last time you suggested that it was doomed.

That matters a lot more with a Republican congress than with a Democrat one. In fact, if it's viewed as a White House initiative, that could be a strike against it with the new rulers of the Hill.

Posted by Rand Simberg at December 14, 2006 01:25 PM

Rand - Who rules the Hill is itself in flux, as you know. Besides, using that logic, VSE would be on the death list, since it is an administration initiative, and we both know it has wide, bi partisan support. I can't predict how things are going to shake out, but I suspect that VSE and COTS survives very well. Everything else, though, is another matter.

Posted by Mark R Whittington at December 14, 2006 01:30 PM

Rand - Who rules the Hill is itself in flux, as you know.

Not the House.

Besides, using that logic, VSE would be on the death list, since it is an administration initiative, and we both know it has wide, bi partisan support.

Because unlike COTS, it represents a lot of pork to NASA centers.

Posted by Rand Simberg at December 14, 2006 01:38 PM

"Because unlike COTS, it represents a lot of pork to NASA centers."

Yep. Members of Congress are certainly disinterested in the jobs and money that commercial space would bring. I suppose that's why states are falling over themselves to encourage the construction of space ports.

Posted by Mark R. Whittington at December 14, 2006 01:49 PM

UNinterested, not DISinterested. If only Congress had the capacity to be truly disinterested.

To be slightly more serious for a moment, are not the state efforts, well, state efforts, ie the product of state legislatures rather than Congress? Or has there been some Federal involvement with them as well?

Posted by Jay Manifold at December 14, 2006 02:04 PM

Members of Congress are certainly disinterested in the jobs and money that commercial space would bring.

Their interest is largely confined to those things that have a high probability of bringing billions of dollars worth of jobs to their own districts.

Posted by Rand Simberg at December 14, 2006 02:04 PM

> Members of Congress are certainly disinterested in the jobs
> and money that commercial space would bring. I suppose that's why states
> are falling over themselves to encourage the construction of space ports.

Okay, who's going to explain the difference between state government and the US Congress to Mark? :-)

To quantify "falling over themselves," Mark's state appropriated less than a million dollars to support *three* commercial spaceport sites. It appropriated $7.5 million to help Lockheed bring a CEV factory to Texas.

There are two things Mark never complains about: how little money is spent to promote commercial space or how much is spent on government space. :-)

Posted by Edward Wright at December 14, 2006 02:56 PM

Okay, who's going to explain the difference between state government and the US Congress to Mark?

Not me--I will leave it to others. I myself grow weary of attempting to explain things to Mark.

Posted by Rand Simberg at December 14, 2006 02:59 PM

The article by Keith that you link to here is a polemical donkey screed against the "mess the current congress left." Obviously, Keith didn't notice that continuing resolutions are a necessary procedure when a lame duck Congress is in session. It happened in 1994 when the Dems got tossed out -- it happened here. Because it's impossible to come to a consensus on spending between the house and senate when the balance of power is in the middle of shifting.

The house knows that any attempt whatsoever to change spending up or down will be pyrric, and more damaging, immediately reversed after the new congress enters session.

The continuing resolution only goes through February 15th -- wait to see what the new congress will do before making snap judgements about how New Space is getting screwed again.

Posted by tom at December 14, 2006 03:03 PM

"wait to see what the new congress will do before making snap judgements about how New Space is getting screwed again."

Why? It's pretty clear, as Rand states, that New Space is getting screwed again, and it's the Democrats' fault.

Posted by Chris Riemer at December 14, 2006 04:04 PM

I don't see COTS in any trouble at this stage. It has garnered wide bipartisan support. It has been praised on the record by many prominent Democrat staffers in both the House and Senate that serve on oboth appropiation and science committees. Griffin also uses COTS as an example of NASA's innovative practices in almost every speech he gives. Losing it would be very embarrasing to both parties.

Milleneum Challenges on the other hand is likely to be at a high risk of being cut. I'd also throw in Red Planet Capital as an innovative NASA program that could *possibly* be in danger.

Posted by Ryan Z at December 14, 2006 04:08 PM

The larger picture is that the permanent human expansion into space will require a funding source more reliable than the annual appropriation of tax dollars. Maybe there are few good options today but figuring out how to develop non-taxpayer sourced revenue streams simply is a mission critical task if we wish to create the future NewSpacers dream about.

Posted by Bill White at December 14, 2006 04:55 PM

Tom and Ryan are quite right. Byrd and Obey saying that they will pass a continuingh resolution that lasts the entire fiscal year and they actually doing it are two different things. I can see lots of mischief to be made, especially in the Senate, come January. And that's even if Senator Johnson recovers.

Posted by Mark R. Whittington at December 14, 2006 05:06 PM

> The larger picture is that the permanent human expansion into space will require a funding source more
> reliable than the annual appropriation of tax dollars. Maybe there are few good options today but figuring
> out how to develop non-taxpayer sourced revenue streams simply is a mission critical tas

"Figuring out how to develop"? Economists figured such things out long ago.

Prizes. Tax incentives. Anchor tenancy. Property rights.

There's no shortage of ideas, Bill. Only a shortage of ideas that the Old Guard is willing to support.

You reject every solution, then you complain about the lack of a solution. There;s no reason these things couldn't be done -- if VSEers cared more about getting to the Moon than "protecting Shuttle jobs."

Posted by Edward Wright at December 14, 2006 08:35 PM

Edward, if you can close a business case without tax revenue then just do it. And until someone can do that, its all flags and footprints, anyway.

I read countless whines about how we'd be spacefaring if only NASA or Congress wasn't so stupid. Maybe that is true.

But people like Bigelow seem to be saying "I want to close a business case without taxpayer financed customers." Do that and you make NASA and the US Congress irrelevant. We need more thinking like that and less time spent fretting about how to light a fire under NASA's butt.

Posted by Bill White at December 14, 2006 09:02 PM

Bill

I am going to have to at least mostly go with Ed on this one. The U.S. military/industrial complex has become little more than its Soviet counterparts in terms of cost control and efficiency. A U.S. military officer recently related to me that in aggregate (look up the definition) the DoD's space programs are 23 billion dollars over budget and 78 years behind schedule. The FAR acquisition system is broken.

I am developing a theory about this and it centers on the demise of Hughes as the top defense contractor in the U.S. Back in that day Hughes as a company took many risks, putting up company money to build stuff for DoD and then sold it to them for really nice profits. This acted as a brake and a discipline to the other defense contractors not to overbid and underperform because Hughes could always be counted on to do it right. After Hughes, the contractors took over the company piece by piece and became fat and complacent. Just look at how bad Boeing has been in managing the old Hughes properties.

We have to find ways of breaking the current system and Ed's suggestions at least point in the right direction.

Dennis

Posted by Dennis Ray Wingo at December 15, 2006 08:39 AM

Dennis,
As a member of the military complex with experience in DOD space, I do take offense at your comparison between us and the Soviets.

I also think you're looking to the wrong cause to figure out why DOD space programs routinely go over budget. The primary cause is overpromising and underbudgeting. To wit, the myth arose in Congress in the mid 1990s that the government could do more and more in space with less, and budgets were set accordingly. We're now at the point where many of those bills are coming due, and of course nobody's happy because reality has rudely interrupted.

But that's what you get when Congress forces a burdensome and unrealistic bidding process desgined for MREs onto space systems development. In partcular,outlawing set-asides, like management reserve, that are wholly appropriate in the case of single-use technology. This is Congress's fault.

The secondary cause, is the unfortunate case of program managers who know from about day 5 into their job that their project is not going to come in at budget and deliberately (or due to inexperience) don't do anything until so much money is spent that it's impossible to shut down.

Posted by tom at December 15, 2006 01:20 PM

> To wit, the myth arose in Congress in the mid 1990s that the government
> could do more and more in space with less

Myth??? Tom, have you ever heard of DC-X, Clementine, or Lunar Prospector? The DARPA Grand Challenge? SpaceShip One? Project Gemini? The X-15?

I could go on. These aren't "myths," Tom, they're historical fact. It is not impossible to do it again. What man has done, man can do.

If you resent being compared to the Soviets, them stop acting like the Soviets.

Posted by Edward Wright at December 15, 2006 02:42 PM

One comment: fixed price contracts.

Get rid of cost-plus and save the country.

Posted by Aleta Jackson at December 15, 2006 02:52 PM

> Edward, if you can close a business case without tax revenue then
> just do it. And until someone can do that, its all flags and footprints, anyway.

More crocodile tears, Bill. There are plenty of policies you could support that would make it easier for companies to close business cases without tax revenues. Instead, all you do is call for the government to keep pouring more money into Apollo Redux.

Posted by Edward Wright at December 15, 2006 03:02 PM

Tom, at the height of its collectivist power, the Soviet Union had more competition among its design bureaus than our "private" aerospace industry does among major contractors today (and that was true even before the ULA merger).

Posted by Rand Simberg at December 15, 2006 03:04 PM

From where we stand today (ignoring missed opportunties in the past) I assert that the fastest route for deployment of low cost Earth-to-LEO transport would be for the US government to pay to deploy a few Bigelow style LEO hotels with free rooms for anyone who rides up there on made-in-America lift.

Fly Soyuz? You gotta pay list price.

It is kinda like a prize system.

Posted by Bill White at December 15, 2006 03:08 PM

Tax incentives? Sure, but you need revenue for tax incentives to work. Without gross income, zero gee - zero tax is meaningless. Nonetheless, I support that.

Property rights? US government cannot do that without a global diplomatic furball. Besides, as for the things with current value -- PGMs, LOX, He3, solar power -- those property rights already exist.

Prizes? Sure, I support more prizes.

Anchor tenants? Why? I'd be content voring to spend tax money to give Bigelow the whole facility.

What other ideas do I not support.

Posted by Bill White at December 15, 2006 03:13 PM

"More crocodile tears, Bill. There are plenty of policies you could support that would make it easier for companies to close business cases without tax revenues. Instead, all you do is call for the government to keep pouring more money into Apollo Redux."

And you are just as guilty of the opposite. Quit worrying about what ESAS is doing and build your rocketplane. At least the 800lb Gorillia is moving out of LEO.

I swear Ed, you would complain even if someone bought you a brand new rope to hang you with ;-)

Posted by Mike Puckett at December 15, 2006 05:43 PM

"Quit worrying about what ESAS is doing and build your rocketplane."

Ed has a rocketplane idea? Really? With all his hot air, I would have thought that he was into ballooning.

Posted by Steven Randall at December 15, 2006 06:18 PM

> Quit worrying about what ESAS is doing and build your rocketplane.

Sure, Mike, as soon as you stop picking my pocket to pay for ESAS.

Your attitude that taxpayers should shut up and let government employees waste money any way they choose is nothing less than un-American. Have you heard of "no taxation without representation"?

Believe it or not, it takes money to build rocketplanes. No one who invests that kind of money can afford to ignore what the government is doing, no matter how much you and Bill desire it.

> At least the 800lb Gorillia is moving out of LEO.

Really, Mike? NASA *is* doing this? Present tense? How many Gorillia (strange term for astronauts) is NASA moving out of LEO in 2006?

Or are you just overhyping NASA's viewgraphs and future plans as something that's already happening?

Posted by Edward Wright at December 17, 2006 01:26 PM

Dennis,

>As a member of the military complex with experience in DOD >space, I do take offense at your comparison between us and >the Soviets.

Sorry about that but your post just reinforces what the real issues are.

>I also think you're looking to the wrong cause to figure out why >DOD space programs routinely go over budget. The primary >cause is overpromising and underbudgeting. To wit, the myth >arose in Congress in the mid 1990s that the government could >do more and more in space with less, and budgets were set >accordingly. We're now at the point where many of those bills >are coming due, and of course nobody's happy because reality >has rudely interrupted.

Here is a thought question. If the services came out with an RFP for something like Space Based Radar and put the parameters around it that they did and then ALL of the bidders sent a one paragraph letter that said:

Sorry but the amount of funding provided in this procurement by the congress is clearly inadequate to do the job and we refuse to bid.

That is the solution to your first problem. Would the industry do this? Of course not, and therein is the problem. If the contractors had the moral fortitude to do this then they could solve the problem. They won't and they don't and therefore at least some of the blood is on their hands.

>But that's what you get when Congress forces a burdensome >and unrealistic bidding process desgined for MREs onto space >systems development. In partcular,outlawing set-asides, like >management reserve, that are wholly appropriate in the case of >single-use technology. This is Congress's fault.

Then refuse to bid. To do otherwise is to play into a falsehood and perpetuate a failed system. The congress has tried on many occasions (Leasat comes to mind) to reform the system but the contractors will not take the risks necessary to break the existing system. Why? Because inflating costs means inflating profits as the profits are a fixed percentage of these contracts. I know that this is a hard thing to do but the nation can no longer afford the status quo.

>The secondary cause, is the unfortunate case of program >managers who know from about day 5 into their job that their >project is not going to come in at budget and deliberately (or >due to inexperience) don't do anything until so much money is >spent that it's impossible to shut down.

Then they have a responsibility to go to the COTR and say so. The COTR of course will tell them to keep plugging and the lobbyists will say to the congress persons that everything is ok and poof, you end up with NPOESS.

Again, to meekly allow this to go forward is to foster a broken system.

Dennis

Posted by Dennis Ray Wingo at December 19, 2006 11:56 AM

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