Senate panel proposes major NASA/NOAA budget changes
A Senate panel today proposed shifting the responsibility for building weather satellites from NOAA to NASA.
It is very unclear from this article why the Senate panel proposed this shift. They claim it will save money but I don’t see how.
What I can guess is that there is probably a turf war going on in Congress over this money. For example, shifting these weather satellites to NASA almost certainly means that the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland will get more money, which is almost certainly why Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-Maryland) is for it.
One thought however: NASA generally focuses on individual missions, not long term operational stuff like weather. I suspect it probably is not a good idea to give this work to NASA.
The same article above also outlined the panel’s proposals for other areas of NASA’s budget. To me, the key issue is the budget for commercial space. The White House requested $830 million. The Senate panel has instead proposed $525 million.
Though I (and others) expect the House might try to cut this number further, I actually am encouraged by this news. First of all, the program survives. I was worried by earlier hearings that Congress might try to kill the commercial space program. It is clear from these Senate proposals that they will not.
Second, it is probably better that these commercial companies don’t get as much from the government as the Obama administration wants. Too much money would almost certainly encourage waste. By having a short budgetary leash these new companies will be forced to find ways to do things more efficiently.
Having less money would also reduce their dependency on the government. Better they have to go out and find other customers to make a profit. Not only will that reduce the power the government has over them, it will encourage the development of a real industry, with real customers.
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“Second, it is probably better that these commercial companies don’t get as much from the government as the Obama administration wants.”
I totally agree with you, Bob. If you will remember, the last budget reduction for Commercial Crew was the primary reason given for staying with SAA rather than switching to FAR. As you no doubt know, the former offers less hindrances to vehicle development than the latter.
It is also likely that Obama got exactly what he wanted or close to it. You always start a negotiation by asking for more than you want.
If these numbers hold up, it will be interesting to see (in the oversight hearings) how this plays into calls for an earlier down select of “commercial” crew competitors.
Both Ralph Hall, in the House, and Hutchinson in the Senate want to leave office having secured the Texas JSC programs, and are, AFAIK, the biggest pushers for premature downselect. If there is only one “commercial competitor”, then it will be politically easy to argue that, “just in case something goes wrong” with that single spacecraft type, the MPCV should still be funded so that it will be there as Griffin’s original “backup”, and conveniently tested on a Delta IV Heavy.
This means that many in Houston will be rooting for these would-be Dragonslayers. Why? Dragon is the only real competition for MPCV in *both* LEO and BEO, especially when it docks in LEO with a BA-330, at a Propellant Depot, and they leave for the Earth/Moon L1 point together. That heat shield on the Dragon being able to take interplanetary re-entry speeds is something that really threatens a lot of rice bowls.
“Dragon is the only real competition for MPCV in *both* LEO and BEO, especially when it docks in LEO with a BA-330, at a Propellant Depot, and they leave for the Earth/Moon L1 point together. That heat shield on the Dragon being able to take interplanetary re-entry speeds is something that really threatens a lot of rice bowls.”
Wow. A lot of implicit assumptions there that not even Elon ($500 Thousand round trip tickets to Mars by 2030) Musk has been selling (at least not yet).
NOAA and NASA were already doing this together. It is my understanding that there was a severe overlap in management offices for both agencies. While NASA has had schedule and budget issues of their own, they have a better track record than the NOAA/NESDIS team, which according to senate/house testimony, has been severely warned for years to do better.