NASA In Flux

STS-129 Launch last November. Only 5 more to go.

As I mentioned yesterday, it has been an…interesting…week here at NASA. President Obama’s proposed 2011 budget, introduced Monday, effectively instructed NASA to make an almost 180-degree turn from what it has been doing for the past 6 years…and you could make an argument that it represents a complete shift from what NASA has done for its entire existence.

First of all, a thought that has nothing to do with the change in direction, but with how it was announced. With the budget. No separate announcement championing shifting priorities in the United States’ spaceflight program; it was just thrown in with the federal budget. And from what I can tell, the high-level powers-that-be at NASA had little-to-no warning of the all of the major changes that budget proposal would entail. This means that they had no time to prepare, which means they have no idea how to answer all of the questions being asked of them by the thousands of NASA employees and contractors. If you need an example of how NOT to announce a major policy shift, this might be it.

So here’s are the three big highlights of the new budget promises, taken straight from the overview put together by NASA management, followed by my reactions, in order:

Top line increase of $6.0 billion over 5-years (FY 2011-15) compared to the FY 2010 Budget, for a total of $100 billion over five years.

Really? Well that’s great! More money is what we need! More money is what the Augustine Commission said NASA would need in order to successfully complete our new vehicle and rocket within a reasonable time period. Since the Constellation program was announced in 2004, with the intention of building a new space transportation system to carry American astronauts to the space station and beyond, the budget police have consistently stripped more and more money from the program, leading to delays and a decrease in both the technology used on the new vehicle and its performance capability. More money is great!

“Significant and sustained investment” in:

• Transformative technology development and flagship technology demonstrations to pursue new approaches to space exploration;
• Robotic precursor missions to multiple destinations in the solar system;
• Research and development on heavy-lift and propulsion technologies;
• U.S. commercial spaceflight capabilities;
• Future launch capabilities, including work on modernizing Kennedy Space Center after the retirement of the Shuttle;
• Extension and increased utilization of the International Space Station;
• Cross-cutting technology development aimed at improving NASA, other government, and commercial space capabilities;
• Accelerating the next wave of Climate change research and observations spacecraft;
• NextGen and green aviation; and
• Education, including focus on STEM.

Hmm. Ok…this seems pretty nebulous to me, but it all sounds good enough. I wonder what destinations are included in the robotic precursor missions? It’d be cool to go to an asteroid or something. And I’m glad to see that the ISS will be extended, since it’d really be a shame to abandon it in just a few years.

Cancellation of the Constellation program; and $600 million in FY 2011 to ensure the safe retirement of the Space Shuttle upon completion of the current manifest.

Wait. What? WHAT?!? Cancellation of the Constellation program? The whole thing? As in, no more new rocket, no more new spaceship? But what are we replacing it with? Will we build another vehicle? No? We’re just going to do all those nebulous, undefined things in the list above? And NASA will no longer have a vehicle of its own? But that’s…that’s…well, that’s something NASA has never done before. We have never not had either 1) our own vehicle flying or 2) the next vehicle in development. That feels like a punch in the stomach. Do we even care about exploring space anymore?

“Most important, we are not ending our ambitions to explore space. In order to explore new frontiers, we are launching a vigorous new technology development and test program that will pursue game-changing technology development that can take us further and faster and more affordably into space.”

But that’s just a bunch of political speak and cool-sounding words! Game-changing? Technology development? To me, this translates as “we have no clue what we’re going to do, but we’ll do something and call it game-changing.”

And so three days after the budget was introduced, morale at NASA has reached a new low. Many of my coworkers and friends are contractors, and will likely either lose their job or, at a minimum, need to relocate. Jose and I are both very lucky to be civil servants, and therefore cannot be laid off without an act of Congress, and yet our jobs have just completely changed. Jose’s entire job was working on the Orion vehicle being developed. But it is being developed no more. My job is to be a flight controller for the space shuttle and help develop operations concepts for Orion. The space shuttle only has 5 flights remaining before its retirement, and Orion, as previously mentioned, is dead in the water.

Despite the obvious career and life implications for myself, my husband, my friends, and my coworkers, here’s the thing: I’m not opposed to NASA providing financial and technical incentive to commercial space companies to independently develop new human-rated vehicles, in fact, I believe it’s in NASA’s best interest to help develop commercial space technology. At the moment, spaceflight is extremely expensive and there is little profit to be had; commercial entities are unlikely to push to develop human spaceflight capability without government assistance.

And, surprisingly, I’m not actually opposed to the cancellation of Constellation. It was a program that had many flaws, and while I do believe that we would have successfully developed a new vehicle to carry our astronauts into orbit, if the decision is that we are better off starting over, I accept that and even somewhat agree with it.

What I’m vehemently opposed to is the apparent complete lack of vision on the part of the administration with this proposal. While this is not “the end of human spaceflight,” as I’ve heard many moan, it does feel like the end of NASA as we have known it — in some ways good, but in others very bad. I’ve been saying for a while that NASA needs an overhaul, but this proposal only goes halfway. It shakes things up, but has no idea where they could or SHOULD land. It cancels the Constellation program, our future vehicle, and replaces it with….what? Because I don’t see an answer to that question. We are continuing the progression of Americans in space from Mercury to Gemini to Apollo to Space Shuttle to Space Station to…nothing. To NOTHING.

NASA, and JSC in particular, has 50 years of experience flying and operating MANNED space vehicles. There are plenty of other entities that have operated robots and satellites, but there is no one else in the country — heck, no one else in the entire western hemisphere! — that has this experience with sending real, live people into space. 50 years. Half a century. With the new direction, we seem to be poised on the brink of losing that, which is a fate I desperately hope to avoid. But I have not yet figured out what a NASA flight controller like me is supposed to do when there are no NASA vehicles to control. Perhaps I’ll eventually move on to be an operator for a commercial company. Perhaps NASA will end up operating the commercial vehicles.

But it seems most likely at this moment that when I finish my role as lead Rendezvous Officer for STS-133, the last space shuttle flight, my life in Mission Control will be over.