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+--- Thread: House wants to roll back NASA to limbo of Obama era? Out of spite? (political style) (/thread-8094.html)
House wants to roll back NASA to limbo of Obama era? Out of spite? (political style) - C C - Jan 28, 2020
"Lawmakers also appear to like cost-plus contracts."
https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/01/house-bill-seeks-to-gut-nasas-artemis-plan-resurrect-journey-to-mars/
EXCERPT: . . . a US House of Representatives committee released H.R. 5666, an authorization act for NASA. Such bills are not required for an agency to function, and they do not directly provide funding—that comes from the appropriations committees in the House and Senate. Authorization bills provide a "sense" of Congress, however and indicate what legislators will be willing to fund in the coming years.
The big-picture takeaway from the bipartisan legislation is that it rejects the Artemis Program put forth by the Trump White House, which established the Moon as a cornerstone of human exploration for the next decade or two and as a place for NASA astronauts to learn the skills needed to expand toward Mars in the late 2030s and 2040s. Instead, the House advocates [...] astronauts make a few short visits to the Moon beginning in 2028 and then depart for a Mars orbit mission by 2033.
Whatever one might think about NASA's Artemis Program to land humans on the Moon by 2024, it attempted to learn from decades of space policy failure. [...] Moreover, Artemis recognized that spaceflight has changed in 50 years. The Artemis program included new players in the industry, such as SpaceX and Blue Origin ... NASA's plans, essentially, invited everyone to the table. Over time, the companies that provided the most reliable services at the lowest costs were likely to get more contracts. The Artemis Program also emphasized that NASA should be one of many customers, instead of the sole customer...
The House authorization act, which will now be considered in committee before going before the full House, rolls a lot of this back. [...] The net effect of this is to shut down all potential competition and cost savings for the lunar lander. It is particularly telling that there is only one company—Boeing—that has proposed building an integrated lunar lander ... With the House bill, legislators seem to be trying to take NASA's human exploration program and give it over to the Boeing Company, going back to an era of cost-plus contracting.
Some spaceflight advocates have cheered the legislation, as it refocuses NASA's human spaceflight priorities on Mars. More likely, the House legislation returns NASA to the nebulous "Journey to Mars" days of the Obama administration, which talked about sending humans to Mars in the 2030s without ever putting out concrete plans or providing the requisite funding. [...] Effectively, this probably would consign NASA to another decade of spending billions of dollars on "capabilities" such as the Space Launch System without actually sending astronauts anywhere beyond low-Earth orbit.
NASA's Advisory Council has been warmly supportive of the Artemis Plan proposed by the White House for a lot of the reasons described above—it provides the agency with a clear goal and timeline, involves both commercial and traditional aerospace, and moves ... to something more sustainable. The Commercial Spaceflight Federation [...] in a statement issued Sunday night: “As written, the NASA Authorization bill would not create a sustainable space exploration architecture and would instead set NASA up for failure by eliminating commercial participation and competition in key programs. As NASA and the White House have repeatedly stated, any sustainable space exploration effort must bring together the best of government and commercial industry to achieve a safe and affordable 21st century space enterprise."
And Homer Hickam, a former NASA engineer and the author of Rocket Boys, commented, "If this or anything like it is approved, I will resign from the National Space Council's User Advisory Group. After years of me and so many others urging NASA to get out of LEO and go back to the moon and this time to stay, it would be too much to bear to now watch at close range it being ruined by a Mars fantasy, probably while other nations make a lunar land rush." (MORE - details)
RE: House wants to roll back NASA to limbo of Obama era? Out of spite? (political style) - C C - Feb 1, 2020
Could a Mars Fantasy Ruin NASA’s Space Exploration?
https://slate.com/technology/2020/01/nasa-space-artemis-moon-mars-bill.html
EXCERPT: Last spring, Mike Pence called for NASA to return astronauts to the moon, pronto. NASA got to work. The program, eventually named Artemis [...] aims to land the first woman and next man on the moon by 2024. While the timeline has been called fanciful, Artemis has gained momentum in the past year and secured funding and partnerships. For the first time since Apollo 17 in 1972, a lunar landing seemed within reach.
But last Friday, House legislators introduced a bipartisan bill that effectively snubs Artemis. H.R. 5666, an authorization act for NASA, sparked immediate concern [...] If enacted, H.R. 5666 would move the lunar landing date to 2028 and shift the goal of human spaceflight to Mars. ... H.R. 5666 highlights the continued fixation on what some have called a Mars fantasy. It also shows just how hard launching people into space becomes when it’s left in the hands not of scientists, but of changing policymakers and administrations.
[...] While NASA’s Artemis program would aim to send humans to Mars in the late 2030s and 2040s, its current focus is lunar exploration and conducting “meaningful activities” on the moon, including establishing a base and extracting lunar resources. The idea is that sustained presence on the moon will become a bedrock for future exploration.
H.R. 5666 would scrap that notion for the sake of speed. Rep. Kendra Horn, a Democrat [...] said in a press release, “Americans should be the first to set foot on the Red Planet, and H.R. 5666 moves us closer to that goal...” The bill prohibits the possibility, for instance, of developing ways to mine the moon’s resources.
Since its introduction, H.R. 5666 has received widespread criticism [...] Although Artemis has been criticized for its rushed timeline, space policy experts ... have generally supported it for its concrete plans and attempts “to learn from decades of space policy failure...” Artemis allows for public-private commercial agreements and encourages competition for fixed-price contracts among companies ... H.R. 5666 ... would instead favor a government-owned lunar landing craft and cost-plus contracts exclusively with Boeing. ... it “set[s] NASA up for failure...”
And that doesn’t even get to what is perhaps the most concerning aspect of H.R. 5666. As more than a few critics have mentioned: Redirecting exploration to Mars by 2033 is simply unfeasible. The cost, risks, and necessary technological advances, according to a 2019 study by the Science and Technology Policy Institute, are too great. (MORE - details)
RE: House wants to roll back NASA to limbo of Obama era? Out of spite? (political style) - C C - Feb 6, 2020
Scientists Slam Congress's New Plan for NASA
https://gizmodo.com/scientists-slam-congresss-new-plan-for-nasa-1841432879
EXCERPT: . . . Bridenstine is not alone in his criticisms of the pending bill, as a number of scientists have spoken out against the bipartisan bill in its current form. In a letter published this past Friday, more than a dozen “concerned scientists” expressed their misgivings, some of which echoed Bridenstine’s comments.
The signers of the open letter included Jack Burns from the Department of Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences at the University of Colorado (CU) Boulder, Lillian Ostrach, a lunar scientist based in Arizona, and Bradley Jolliff from Washington University in St. Louis, among other scientists, mission planners, and engineers—some of whom were involved with the Apollo missions and some now involved with the Artemis lunar mission.
In the letter, the scientists said they have “grave concerns” about the bill and that revisions are necessary... (MORE)
RE: House wants to roll back NASA to limbo of Obama era? Out of spite? (political style) - Syne - Feb 6, 2020
House Democrats don't care, so long as they can spite anything Trump admin officials like.