The two are not mutually exclusive; you’re mixing up two different things.

NASA sabotaged SEI because at the time, they had not launched even one piece of Space Station hardware and much of the 90-day study used Station-derived hardware. Alternative architectures proposed then (e.g., Lowell Wood’s inflatables) were dismissed out of hand (even though later, JSC developed Transhab, an inflatable hab module for deep space exploration.)

The low-balling of costs is a strategy undertaken to sell missions or programs that the agency wants. The increase in the agency’s portfolio is a chosen strategy to diversify and stay in business. This is fundamentally different from avoidance of a mission entirely.

One more point about “costs.” In the case of SEI, the money issue was only partly NASA’s fault — the commonly cited media cost number for SEI of $600 billion (for which see this) was the aggregate cost for a 30-year program, which in fact, would have been spent anyway. But NASA didn’t help matters any by devising an architecture whose purpose was mostly to “feed the beast” rather than develop new capabilities.

At that time, no architecture had been chosen so there was no basis for anything like a real program budget. What NASA did for the first two years of the VSE was to generate stacks of viewgraphs and institutional blither about “spiral development” and all that required was the existing organizational overhead. The only real mission hardware designed in that time period was LRO (which is a whole other story).

OMB has always acted as the executive brake on NASA while Congressional appropriations acts as the legislative brake. The agency was authorized to come up with an architecture to implement the VSE and they chose to come up with one that was already known to require more money than was expected.

My comment on “unfunded mandates” was specifically in relation to implementation of the Vision for Space Exploration. My point is that the VSE was supposed to be accomplished under the existing budget envelope from the beginning. In other words, NASA was tasked to construct a lunar return using the existing levels of money in the human spaceflight program. The way this was to happen was to 1) retire the Shuttle; and 2) complete ISS, followed by American withdrawal from ISS operations in ten years. The money freed up by this was to be used to build a CEV and return to the Moon.

NASA did submit a development program that would fit within the originally proposed budget when VSE was released. Then the Office of Management and Budget slashed some $15 billion from that budget over a five year period. Those funds were critically needed up front during the early development phase to iron out engineering problems before testing and construction began. Also, it is not realistic to not expect some hidden costs not forseen in the original budget.

This is a contentious topic, but it seems NASA’s stuck between a rock and a hard place when it comes to its funding and cost estimations.

For instance, in this post you’ve endorsed the popular opinion that NASA’s response to Bush 41’s SEI plan was tepid, because the agency’s cost estimations were too high. The cynical thinking goes that NASA thus deliberately sabotaged the 1989 plan to go back to the Moon and on to Mars.

But now you’re also saying that the real cause of NASA’s budgetary woes is that the agency’s cost estimates tend to be too low.

So which is it? I know this isn’t an apples-to-apples comparison; SEI was just one instance, and the damaging trend of low-balled cost estimates is very clear. But it seems that when NASA responds to ambitious mandates with more “realistic” (that is, rather expensive) cost estimates, the outcome is no better, and arguably even worse: Programs never get off the ground in the first place because of sticker-shock.

Surely we can all agree that space exploration is very expensive, and that more efforts need to be made, publicly and privately, to make getting out of Earth’s gravity well more affordable. The halcyon days of cheap, routine space exploration have not yet arrived. And so at present the case remains that, as the phrase goes, no bucks, no Buck Rogers.

I still think NASA is simply being asked, again and again, to do too much with too little. In this light, public statements by current and former agency officials that NASA needs more money are entirely appropriate and not necessarily just cynical machinations.

Thank you for the kind words.

My comment on “unfunded mandates” was specifically in relation to implementation of the Vision for Space Exploration. My point is that the VSE was supposed to be accomplished under the existing budget envelope from the beginning. In other words, NASA was tasked to construct a lunar return using the existing levels of money in the human spaceflight program. The way this was to happen was to 1) retire the Shuttle; and 2) complete ISS, followed by American withdrawal from ISS operations in ten years. The money freed up by this was to be used to build a CEV and return to the Moon.

As far as NASA’s “full plate” goes, every space mission and program that the agency is “assigned” by Congress and the White House gets specifically designated funds for their completion by the Congress. If there are shortfalls, it’s usually because the cost estimates for these missions have been low-balled.

But the way you’re poo-poo’ing the idea that NASA is the victim of unfunded mandates seems frankly disingenuous. As you have so clearly pointed out, the agency’s funding has been essentially static for the past 30 years. Yet you have entirely failed to mention that NASA’s mandated missions have *vastly* expanded since the days of Apollo, largely through acts of Congress and the President. The end result is that the agency is being asked to achieve a very ambitious and diverse dossier of tasks with a budget that realistically can support only a handful of them. It would be nice if you would acknowledge this obvious fact in your critiques of the agency and its requests for more funding.

But you also miss the essential point here. While NASA’s budget has been static or declining, NASA’s operational costs have increased virtually every year due to inflation, higher facilities costs, higher material costs, and higher labor costs. Since the budget did not increase, NASA was forced to cut programs and unable to meet many of its goals. While I support the VSE and ESAS, without an adequate raise in budget, it amounted to little more than an unfunded mandate.

The funding for NASA at the 0.5-1.0% level is in constant dollars. The level of inflation is already accounted for in such a reckoning. So my claim is valid: NASA has been funded at (more or less) a constant level since Apollo ended.

I know that this “unfunded mandate” charge is a common theme in the blogosphere in regard to the VSE but it is simply untrue. The VSE was specifically designed around the idea that the agency’s budget would NOT increase more than inflation. NASA was specifically told to craft an architecture doable within existing funding limits (the “sand chart”); this directive was ignored. So how is that an “unfunded mandate”?

That comment about Dr. Griffin was taken out of context. His point at the time was that NASA spent the last 37 years stuck in LEO spending the same amount of money that NASA received for the first decade developing the Apollo program and going to the Moon.

No, I did not take it out of context — that was exactly my point: what you do in space and how you do it is more important than how much you spend.

Please check out this Wikipedia link on NASA’s annual budget since 1958 and check out the nominal and adjusted 2007 columns. Clearly over the last 30 years there has been several declines in NASA’s budget. The differences become glaringly obvious when comparing the nominal budgets to the 2007 adjusted. The %G of Fed Budget column is also worth noting. As a percentage of federal budget, NASA’s budget is 10 times less today than it was in 1968.

But you also miss the essential point here. While NASA’s budget has been static or declining, NASA’s operational costs have increased virtually every year due to inflation, higher facilities costs, higher material costs, and higher labor costs. Since the budget did not increase, NASA was forced to cut programs and unable to meet many of its goals. While I support the VSE and ESAS, without an adequate raise in budget, it amounted to little more than an unfunded mandate.

That comment about Dr. Griffin was taken out of context. His point at the time was that NASA spent the last 37 years stuck in LEO spending the same amount of money that NASA received for the first decade developing the Apollo program and going to the Moon.

It has not declined — it has been static for the last 30 years. In aggregate, NASA has received the same cumulative amount of money in the last 30 years as it received to do the Apollo program (a point made by no less than Dr. Michael Griffin himself.)

You used the term “budgetary sinkhole” not me. My point is that if NASA is waiting for a significant increase in its budget before it implements the VSE, we can wait until Doomsday and end up with nothing. The current path is not affordable now nor is it sustainable in the future. Stay the course and we’ll get nothing, or at best, another 30 years in low Earth orbit.

Mark, I simply do not agree with this. It all depends on what your mission on the Moon is and how you approach it.

If we want the return to the Moon program to expand to create a lunar settlement, more money is definately required. Mind, that can be had through commercial (my preference) or internatioal (I suspect the administration’s preference) partnerships as well as increased appropriations.

Finally, I think that what will there is to put more money in th return to the Moon project depends on what Augustine 2.0 has to say. My take from how people on the hill are talking is much depends on what it recommends.

The thing I do not want to see is the practice NASA has done before when costs have becme an issue, which is to start jetisoning capability (already started) and stretching out the schedule. Both have had pernicious results when resorted to in the past.