Posted on 04/23/2002 6:28:07 AM PDT by boris
O'Keefe 'Vision' Gets Tepid Hill Response
Aviation Week & Space Technology 04/22/02
author: Frank Morring, Jr.
NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe drew a limp salute at best when he ran his long-awaited vision for the space agency up the Capitol Hill flagpole, making it more likely that Congress will rewrite the Bush Administration's NASA spending request for Fiscal 2003 to reflect its own priorities.
Republican O'Keefe's plans drew a sharp rebuke last week from Rep. Tom DeLay of Texas, the No. 3 Republican leader in the House of Representatives. Other members were more restrained than DeLay, who lived up to his nickname of "the hammer" in blasting O'Keefe's vision as "timid and anemic," but experienced lawmakers on both sides of the aisle expressed dismay at the $15-billion spending request.
"I'm disappointed to see that the Administration did not choose to give this premier research and development agency a budget increase this year," said Rep. James T. Walsh (R-N.Y.), chairman of the House Appropriations subcommittee that funds NASA, at a hearing on Apr. 17 on NASA spending. "While NASA has been able to do more with less for many years, there comes a point where fat is no longer able to come out of the programs, and the meat is being lost. I fear that NASA is fast approaching this point if it has not already been passed."
MUCH OF THE CRITICISM in Walsh's subcommittee focused on the Administration's plans to stop construction on the International Space Station (ISS) at a point NASA calls "U.S. core complete," which will support the present three crewmembers but no additional crew. Lost in the backlash was O'Keefe's vision--outlined in a speech on Apr. 12 at Syracuse (N.Y.) University--of using NASA "to improve life here; to extend life to there; to find life beyond." Instead, members of the panel wanted to know how NASA planned to conduct meaningful scientific research on a truncated space station with a truncated crew.
"It almost sounds like you're reinventing the goals here, reinventing the justification for the station, and saying if we achieve core complete configuration that somehow that's a goal," said Rep. Alan B. Mollohan (D-W.Va.), the panel's ranking minority member. "It's a milestone, certainly, but it's a milestone to an end. It's not an end to itself. The end always has been, and is today, scientific research."
Newcomer O'Keefe inherited a $4.8-billion shortfall between what Congress has said it will spend on ISS and the agency's best estimate of what it will cost to complete the orbiting lab with habitation space and a U.S.-built lifeboat for a crew of seven. Testifying to the appropriations panel, he repeated his argument that so far the ISS project is on schedule to complete the larger facility even if there are no plans to do so after the core complete configuration is reached in 2004.
O'Keefe said NASA has spent the past 3 1/2 months conducting "a complete review" of the ISS program "to establish a cost estimate that we can look at that meets the core complete configuration and then assembly excursions thereafter.
"We'll look at variations of what's required," O'Keefe continued. "All the international partner requirements go along with that, so we'll have a full understanding of what's involved."
In addition, he noted, the agency has named an outside panel of top-ranked scientists to prioritize potential research on ISS, picking the science most likely to produce applications that can't be conducted on Earth. Although NASA has cut $1 billion from its station research budget to help cover the development shortfall, O'Keefe stressed that the panel--known as the Research Maximization and Prioritization Task Force (Remap)--was specifically instructed not to worry about the cost of research in an effort to make future ISS development "science-driven" rather than a budget exercise.
The plan to restructure the ISS science program, first proposed last year by an outside panel set up to advise NASA on how to deal with the funding shortfall, has drawn howls of protest from scientists who have an interest in using the microgravity environment on ISS to explore life and materials sciences and conduct engineering experiments. Larry DeLucas of the University of Alabama in Birmingham, who has grown protein crystals on the space shuttle and Russia's Mir, told the National Space Symposium in Colorado Springs this month that graduate students in the life sciences have started avoiding NASA funding because it is so unreliable.
DeLay, who as House majority whip is in a powerful position to influence debate on the NASA request, blasted O'Keefe and the Bush White House for ignoring congressional guidance on the ISS program, including a $40-million item in the current budget to continue work on the X-38 prototype for an ISS crew rescue vehicle. "Contrary to what the [Fiscal 2003] budget mistakenly says, this is not an earmark," DeLay said. "This was a policy decision by this committee to support a lifeboat on station to ensure a full-time crew of 6-7 people."
Instead, DeLay said, the funds are being used to terminate the X-38 program at Johnson Space Center, a move that "strikes at the very heart of the need to let science direct the agency." O'Keefe disagreed, saying "the attempt here is to try to leverage the mission requirement we have against a number of options we have, as opposed to selecting a specific single-purpose asset that would be dedicated to crew return."
While DeLay said O'Keefe's plans for human spaceflight "are only confirming my reservations" about the new administrator's suitability for his job, Mollohan said the Administration position on completing ISS would make it harder to defend the program on the House floor against an expected amendment killing it.
"I'm afraid with this budget continuing the recommendation for not doing the habitation module and the CRV, that they're going to say 'see, even NASA doesn't agree to go forward with the elements crucial to maintaining a seven-member crew, and therefore, a seven-member crew being a prerequisite for doing good science, they can't do good science,'" he said.
There was actually a justification for it? If I remember correctly, Klintoon championed it as a symbol of cooperation with the Russians. After that, no price was too great to pay for it's propaganda utility and any misuse of funds was overlooked.
The NASA budget is ~$15 billion. I believe they built one space shuttle to replace the Challenger. It is not possible to build any more, since the entire infrastructure of factories, suppliers, drawings, and tooling has been abandoned.
Instead, they do "studies". Lots and lots of studies. Never a decision--just another study. Or, if a decision should accidentally be reached, it will be cancelled after it reaches the 'hardware' stage. At the 'hardware' stage, it is inevitably discovered that finishing the hardware will cost more and take longer than previously estimated. So they pull the plug. Not to mention the horrible little gnome from Maryland who thinks NASA is her personal litterbox, and hence causes the Congress to--e.g.--redesign the ISS five times, beginning from scratch each time.
This fellow O'Keefe is the Grim Reaper. He should have been in a black hood with an axe in his PR photos. He has one job, and one job only--to slash and burn. I predict that within 5 years, the NASA budget will be ~$5 billion, i.e., one-third of the present budget.
NASA will consist of HQ, Kennedy, Houston, and Marshall...possibly Stennis. All of the other centers will be closed or combined with the remaining ones. Lewis (er, Glenn) will be forced to become part of Marshall, to their infinite dismay.
Incidentally, the deliberate destruction of the native U.S. aerospace business began under Jimmy Carter and was enthusiastically accelerated by Clinton. Soon we will not have the native know-how to build launch vehicles, rocket engines, etc. The Lockheed Atlas launcher is now dependent on an unreliable foreign source for engines. The Air Force demanded that the Russian engines be built in the U.S because we found such dependence intolerable. The Russians agreed. They were lying. Pratt & Whitney (licensee) agreed and said they'd build a new factory to make American-made engines. They were lying. They knew the Russians were lying. Both Pratt and the Russians lied to Lockheed, which knew they were lying. Lockheed, Pratt and the Russians lied to the Air Force, which knew they were lying. Everybody was sitting around the table, smiling, and playing "let's pretend" with U.S. national security being deliberately ignored. Now we have "Sea Launch" in which Boeing sells launches of a Russian launch vehicle from a sea-going platform. Same deal.
"Thanks for helping us 'win' the Cold War," they said to U.S. Aerospace workers. "Now be good and go over there and stand in the unemployment line while we buy hardware from the enemy." Most of the Russian hardware could not pass a critical design review in the West...
When I joined the Aerospace industry 27 years ago, I thought I was going to help put humans on Mars using nuclear thermal rocket engines. Right. Silly me.
Now we are "studying" bringing 1/2 kilogram (about a pound) of Mars dirt to Earth. Launch date: 2011, meaning roughly "the day after never." Cost: $2 billion. The most expensive pound of dirt in human history.
In short, the U.S. space program is dead. Only, like a dinosaur, the tiny brain in the tail doesn't know it's dead yet. Killed by lack of vision, lack of public support, and two hijacked airliners on 9/11.
--Boris
You still can. You just have to convince investors that it's worthwhile to do so rather than relying on coerced collections from taxpayers.
$15B is a staggering amount of money. However, when you're a government agency, you lack any means for rational economic calculus--$15B becomes chump change.
--Boris
Not, alas, me. I am old, tired, cynical, and sick. And disillusioned, as you may be able to detect.
--Boris
Or speaking if dyslexia hasn't intruded.
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