This is a few days old; but, still very relevant. Phil Plait of Bad Astronomy fame, comments on the way Congress is taking an axe to NASA's funding: Another Year Another Set of Bizarre Cuts to NASA's budget:
Every year, when NASA releases its White House budget request, I open the report with dread. Will it show that things are roughly the same as last year, or will there be more bad news, with slashes and cuts to vital programs?
And this year, like every other, I read it to find … both.
The Fiscal Year 2015 NASA budgetary request is hammered out by the White House with input from the space agency. It is a request; it's not final. Congress must put together its own budget, and then the two are thrown into a pit to see what can be agreed upon, what can be reconciled, and what compromises can be found. Think of it as a baseline for the actual budget which will hopefully be finalized later this year.
.............//snip
In these maddening economic times, small cuts can be considered victories. In 2014 NASA got a total of $17.646 billion. The 2015 request is for $17.460 billion, a reduction of $186 million dollars, or about a 1 percent cut. That could’ve been worse. As we’ll see, though, it’s where those cuts are going that are bad.
Some areas like Space Technology and Commercial Spaceflight will get increases:
Commercial Spaceflight will see an increase of more than $150 million to a total of $848 million. That includes buying launches from commercial companies like SpaceX, and I’m all for that. That comes with a $300 million reduction to the Exploration Systems Development, the category that includes developing the Orion crew capsule and the Space Launch System, the next-generation rocket. I am not a big fan of the SLS, since I don’t think it pushes boundaries like NASA should be doing; these types of capabilities may be better handled by private companies that can do so more cheaply, motivated by NASA funding (interestingly, former NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver has reportedly had similar doubts about SLS). This is a complex political football, though. Still, I have no doubt this will continue to get a large chunk of funding for the next few years.
This is an area I strongly agree with Phil (and fellow L-5/NSS alumnus Lori Garver) on: I really despise the proposed Space Launch System; it recycles older tech, like the solid rocket boosters that are required for any big NASA launcher since the Space Shuttle program. For a while, NASA engineers were allowed to propose new ideas, like liquid-fuel boosters based on the Space Shuttle Main Engine (SSME). But, since the early 80s, every time new missions were proposed, they were always some variant of what was called 'Shuttle-C' (for Cargo) or 'Shuttle-Z' or whatever. Always two SRBs on the side of a Shuttle External Tank, usually with an engine module derived from SSME's. The Space Launch System makes a few changes to the core concept; but, it's still based on SRB's.
Why am I so up in arms about the use of SRB's? It's not just that they're obsolescent, 1972 technology. I could defend use of the old, reliable F1 and J2 liquid rocket engines used on the Saturn 5. The SRB's are:
1) Inherently unreliable and dangerous. Read Dr. Richard Feynman's commentary on the Rogers Commission report, starting about the fourth paragraph.
2) They were a major driver of Space Shuttle cost. Simply stacking the SRB's at the Cape required about 6,000 man-hours.
The only reason for using solids on a crew-carrying vehicle was the influence of what G. Harry Stine called: "The Utah Connection." Utah is where Morton-Thiokol (now ATK), maker of the SRB's, is located. The Utah Connection is still powerful, witness NASA's addiction to SRB technology.
Let SpaceX and its competitors handle transport to the ISS and for future deep-space missions; let NASA fund cutting edge space technology. Let's go to the planets with 21st Century technology, not 1972 technology.