Justin Kugler has some insight into the nature of the Senate NASA appropriations bill. He’s probably right that it’s the best we can do for now. The question is whether the House will have the sense to go along, or continue to bang its rattle and want its POR bottle back.
15 thoughts on “A Fragile Compromise”
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I’m undecided what would be better, the Senate bill or a CR.
The Senate compromise seems very close to what the DIRECT folks had expected the February 1st FY2011 budget roll out to look like.
Anyway, this passage is interesting:
Plain and simple, Senators Hutchison and Nelson quietly formed an alliance in the Senate and even more quietly pre-coordinated with the White House to come up with something that everyone can live with.
IMHO, part of the reason FY2011 (as announced) crashed so badly is that no one bothered to pre-coordinate the new plan with Congress.
It also appears Bolden might inwardly support heavy lift far more than has been apparent in public.
Does anyone have a link to an article or chart that shows a SDHLV actually fitting into the Senate budget and timeline?
I assume a side-mount Shuttle-C could be done, barely, but that config cannot grow to the 130-tons our Congressional Engineers have mandated from on-high.
but that config cannot grow to the 130-tons
Sure it can. These are politicians. All they have to do is redefine that 130t from payload to payload and structure. 🙂
Bill,
Do you honestly think that FY11 would’ve been better received if the White House had tried pre-coordinating it with Congress? I doubt it. The reason why it wasn’t well received is that it actually tried to turn our space program into something that provides net benefit to the country as a whole, instead of just being the Northern Alabama Spending Abomination. If they had started out from a less radical position, the net result of a “compromise” would’ve ended up looking more like the House Bill, not the Senate bill. Sure, NASA and the WH botched the rollout. But even if they had done the platonically ideal rollout they were always going to get pushback from those who had more to gain from maintaining the status quo than actually having NASA’s HSF program actually be relevant to our country.
~Jon
Jon,
What FY2011 needed were allies in Congress. For example, if various members from the California delegation had loudly supported FY2011 back in February, it would have been more difficult for Nelson & Hutchison to gather unanimous support for their Authorization Bill.
Also a Feinstein – Brownback alliance in support of FY2011 would not have been all that implausible, IMHO. However, Bolden & Garver failed to win over anyone in the Senate.
Anyway, keeping Congress off the critical path would appear to be the road forward.
There is an important clause in the language on heavy lift that leaves NASA an escape if it finds shuttle-derived components are impracticable.
That’s a very vague statement. “Impracticable” could have different meanings. Sure, like Shuttle-C or the Direct folks have shown, it’s technically feasible to put together an HLV out of Shuttle components. It would be expensive as hell but would an outrageous price alone make something “impracticable?” What would it take for them to find the design was impracticable?
Martijn Meijering Says:,
[[[I’m undecided what would be better, the Senate bill or a CR.]]]
The problem with a CR is you are gambling a new Congress will give you a better deal, and President Obama will agree to it. IF they take a opposition stance to the Administration you may get 2-3 CRs in a role with nothing in them for the new Commercial Crew program, just more money for the POR, Constellation to limp along. I.e. No Winners.
It also depends on what you think better means in this context. I expect very slow progress towards commercial development of space as long as NASA stays in the launch business, which is why I am so opposed to SDLV. Justin may be right that another non-SDLV HLV might be allowed under the new bill, but that isn’t a whole lot better as far as I’m concerned, because it still hurts the prospects for RLVs.
A CR might make it easier to get NASA out of the launch business, but money for commercial crew, even if it is only a little bit, could help too. I’m still undecided.
“It would be expensive as hell but would an outrageous price alone make something “impracticable?” What would it take for them to find the design was impracticable?”
I’d find it to be impracticable if it can’t meet the budget’s requirements and schedule given the bill’s funding.
I’m not sure why the bill’s requirements and schedule are so difficult. I’d think the Shuttle-derived HLV supporters would want to relax the specified capabilities (e.g.: mass delivered, crew launch) and schedule. That would make it easier to come up with a Shuttle-derived HLV that is practicable based on the bill’s specifications. At the same time, I’d think the FY2011 supporters would also want to relax the specified SDHLV capabilities and schedule so there’s some funding left over for commercial cargo and crew, exploration technology demonstrations, technology development, and robotic precursor missions to test things like resource prospecting and processing.
larry,
From what I heard, that language was intentionally vague to give NASA enough room to put its foot down if HLV was headed down a track that just isn’t going to work within the given budget and schedule.
I think Thomas raises a good point that we’ve been given a window of opportunity that probably isn’t worth missing. The Senate bill at least gives us something to work with. The House bill is a complete non-starter.
Is the compromise plan likely to survive beyond this administration?
And beyond this Congress, if that long?
Very interesting, this excerpt…
“For all the suggestions of his inability to lead, it was NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden who made the case for a heavy-lift vehicle and that was the carrot Hutchison and Nelson used to get the support from expected intransigents like Sen. Shelby,…”
I’ve been saying all along there was a lot more Hope than Change in the new Obama plan. This is just more evidence that the opponents of HLV were kidding themselves in the hopes they placed in the Obama plan. HLV has always been and remains central to the Obama plan for BEO manned flight.
Perhaps FY2011 was never more than a tool to get ATK to surrender Ares 1 in favor of a “more sensible” SD HLV.