[FPSPACE] It's Happening....Aviation Week reports NASA budget beingslashed..in human spaceflight section significantly

[Charles Vick]

Welcome to the Carter administration smile and all

 

-----Original Message-----
From: fpspace-bounces at friends-partners.org
[mailto:fpspace-bounces at friends-partners.org] On Behalf Of Peter Pesavento
Sent: Sunday, May 03, 2009 6:45 PM
To: fpspace at friends-partners.org
Subject: [FPSPACE] It's Happening....Aviation Week reports NASA budget
beingslashed..in human spaceflight section significantly

 

http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/generic/story_generic.jsp?channel=awst
<http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/generic/story_generic.jsp?channel=awst&id=ne
ws/aw042709p2.xml&headline=NASA%20Budget%20Being%20Drafted%20Without%20a%20T
op-Level%20Advocate>
&id=news/aw042709p2.xml&headline=NASA%20Budget%20Being%20Drafted%20Without%2
0a%20Top-Level%20Advocate

 

 

 

$3.5 billlion USD to be slashed, and it appears at least two seats to be
pulled from the originally envisioned six-seats in the manned capsule.  Why
not just slash it to three, and find the original blue lines for Apollo?
The post 1967 fire-modification-design?  It worked tremendously well..

 

There are even suggestions by Aerospace Corp to maneuver the capsule to
Delta or Atlas rockets for the preferred launchers as well..rather than the
Ares rocket.

 

Why waste all of this reinventing the wheel stuff?  Saturn V/Apollo..just
update them..

 

Or is that entire Corporate Memory all gone now?  

 

Sorry, but I am irritated with all of this.

 

NASA Budget Being Drafted Without a Top-Level Advocate


Apr 26, 2009 

 

  

 

By Frank Morring, Jr. 


NASA plans to roll out its Fiscal 2010 budget the first week in May, amid
complaints that the White House staff is giving short shrift to the U.S.
space program. The space agency is struggling to make ends meet during the
difficult transition to the post-shuttle era.

Leading the charge is former Administrator Michael Griffin, who says the
White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has proposed cutting $3.5
billion from NASA's budget for developing next-generation human spacecraft
during the coming four years. That is just about what the U.S. space agency
intends to spend to get started on the vehicles it would need to return to
the Moon, a policy the Obama administration endorsed in February.

Meanwhile, engineers are "on the verge" of pulling two of the six seats
planned for the Orion capsule intended to succeed the space shuttle as the
route to space for U.S. astronauts. That move - meant to simplify what has
become a difficult design effort - comes amid reported findings by The
Aerospace Corp. that a shift to a human-rated evolved expendable launch
vehicle (EELV) - either an Atlas V or Delta IV - from NASA's in-house Ares I
crew launch vehicle could further simplify the transition to Orion.

So far the Obama administration has been mum on just how it plans to proceed
on these and other space-policy issues. No one has been named to replace
Griffin, who left office on Jan. 20, and no senior administration official
has yet been willing to discuss space-policy issues publicly. The budget
rollout is tentatively scheduled for the week of May 4, and it seems likely
acting administrator Christopher Scolese - a career civil servant - will
present it.

That lack of top-level attention drew fire from Griffin, who complained Apr.
17 as he received the National Space Club's Goddard Trophy that "work at the
staff level continues out of view of the nation's elected leadership,"
particularly in the case of the $3.5-billion exploration cut in the
"passback" from OMB to NASA.

"In a democracy, the proper purpose of the OMB is not to find a way to
create a Potemkin village at NASA," Griffin says. "The judgment as to
whether the stated goals are too costly, or not, is one to be made by the
nation's elected leadership, not career civil service staff."

The "stated goal" most likely to suffer if the passback figure winds up in
the fiscal 2010 budget for NASA's Constellation Program, which is developing
Orion, Ares I and the follow-on vehicles that would be needed to return to
the Moon by 2010, is a return to the Moon by 2020. President Barack Obama's
top-level Fiscal 2010 budget outline retains the lunar goal (AW&ST Mar. 2,
p. 30), but ongoing congressional pressure to minimize the "gap" between the
shuttle retirement next year and the first Orion flight makes the lunar
vehicles a more likely target for budget cutting if the $3.5-billion figure
stands in the detailed budget request to come.

"Our plan at present has us spending through 2014 in that range, that amount
of money, on the lunar program, so it would have an impact if we were also
told to hold the line on initial operating capability for Orion/Ares I,"
says Jeff Hanley, manager of the Constellation Program. "We have a pretty
rich understanding today of what it would take, so if that were one of the
guiding principles that came along with that kind of guidance, then the
impact would be the lunar program."

Constellation Program officials briefed the Obama transition team
extensively on its plans for Orion and Ares I and for the Ares V and Altair
vehicles that would be developed after them for the return to the Moon. And
Doug Cooke, associate administrator for the Exploration Systems Mission
Directorate (ESMD) that oversees the Constellation Program, says his office
has provided data "per the passback' process" that has been used in other
administrations.

"As in previous years, ultimate budget decisions will be made by the
administration," Cooke says.

 

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