Good Job, Congress

The zombie rocket continues:

At the root of the problem is a 70-word sentence inserted into the 2010 budget — by lawmakers seeking to protect Ares I jobs in their home states — that bars NASA from shutting down the program until Congress passed a new budget a year later.

That should have happened before the Oct. 1 start of the federal fiscal year.

But Congress never passed a 2011 budget and instead voted this month to extend the 2010 budget until March — so NASA still must abide by the 2010 language.

That means NASA and its contractors are required to keep building Ares I, even though Obama effectively killed it when he signed the new NASA plan that canceled the Constellation moon program begun under President George W. Bush.

“It would be nice if Congress did its work,” said John Logsdon, space expert at George Washington University. “I would not be surprised if there was a combination of frustration and anger [at NASA]. They want to get on carrying out a good space program.”

It doesn’t matter. Having a good space program hasn’t been politically important in over forty years.

[Update a while later]

More from Stephen Smith:

Perhaps the singular achievement by SpaceX with its December 8 launch and orbit of the Dragon spacecraft is to show what American engineering can still accomplish when freed of Congressional shenanigans.

Imagine what SpaceX, Orbital, Boeing or one of the other Commercial Crew Development applicants could do with that $500 million which will do nothing except keep on life-support a brain-dead government jobs program.

Imagine. It’s easy if you try.

10 thoughts on “Good Job, Congress”

  1. It will be interesting to see the position the Tea Party members elected take on NASA. Will they restore the Ares I just because President Obama is against it? Just cut the NASA funding completely? Or go with “Commercial” Crew?

    Meanwhile Bigelow Space and Virgin Galactic are waiting for the firms that are ready to move beyond NASA to a market based space strategy.

    Personally I think cutting NASA funding is best at this point as its “commercial” crew contracts are just siren calls that will lure entrepreneurial firms to their destruction. The sooner commercial destinations with NO NASA links are in orbit the better.

  2. Imagine what SpaceX, Orbital, Boeing or one of the other Commercial Crew Development applicants could do with that $500 million which will do nothing except keep on life-support a brain-dead government jobs program.

    According to a recent article, Musk reports that SpaceX has spend about $600 million to date to develop the Falcon 1, the Falcon 9, and the Dragon capsule. This includes development of all of the rocket engines (Merlin, Krestel, and Draco), vehicle structures, manufacturing facilities, launch facilities, mission control, software development, etc.

    Contrast that to the reported $500 million that NASA spent to build the launch pad tower for the Ares. Or the other $500 million or so to do the Ares I-X demo flight. Or the hundreds of millions spent on the Orion capsule, and so on.

  3. From what has been posted at NASA Spaceflight by one of the congessional aids involved in the process, this is not what congress thinks is happening.

    Is this another example of the Obama Administration intentionally “misintepreting” the intent (and even the letter) of the law inorder to do as much damage as possible?

    Or is it a a “questionable” news story?

    Time will tell.

  4. Sadly, if we just gave SpaceX $500 million, they would learn not to value it anymore than NASA does. I’m not saying they don’t deserve it. Rather, the argument isn’t that SpaceX would be better stewards of the money, but rather SpaceX does better with the funds they get because they don’t come from an entity that can otherwise print more money.

  5. I agree that simply giving SpaceX more money would end up making them just another government contractor. Unless you used other than “cost-plus” contracts, they’d likely end up being another Lockheed-Martin or Boeing.

    However, I do find it useful to compare SpaceX’s spending for their development to NASA spending. We could even use SpaceX’s spending as a unit of measurement, say $600 million = 1 SpaceX. Divide the government contract spending by $600 million to get how many private companies you could’ve funded from scratch for the same amount of money, e.g., $10 billion = 16.67 SpaceX.

  6. Leland, there are several other upsides.

    SpaceX is a lot easier to charge or sue.
    Burying inconvenient truths can be more difficult.
    Oversight has at least some chance of being truly independent.
    SpaceX might be able to fail in the marketplace without successful calls for bailouts.

  7. From what has been posted at NASA Spaceflight

    Whoa. I just now discovered their forum section. Guess I’m going to be spending some time there.

  8. “Whoa. I just now discovered their forum section. Guess I’m going to be spending some time there.”

    Yes, it is a good place to get all kinds of interesting information. Glad I was able (however accidentally) to put you on to it.

  9. A lovely side effect of the Democrats punting any decisions on the budget to the incoming Republicans.

    Obama could get some support from the Republicans for his NASA plans but if he or his surrogates begin their bargaining by calling them stupid, hillbillies, rednecks, anti-science, ect cooperation will be harder to accomplish.

  10. How’s the mortgage disaster, and drop in home values, going to be fixed if folks can not obtain a job? There are an enormous number of individuals that already lost their homes and many more will until the United States starts producing something more then debt. It’s time to adjust the free trade policies with China. For heavens sake, our biggest trade partner is a communist nation.

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