With Congress in recess for two weeks, the schedule for space policy aficionados is definitely light. For the coming week, we have only two events, both on Tuesday and both in Washington, D.C. For more information, see our calendar on the left menu, or click the links below.

Tuesday, March 30

• Marshall Institute Update on Space Exploration Policy and Programs, 8:30-10:30 am, Capitol Hill Club, 300 First Street, S.E.
• NASA Advisory Council Commercial Space Committee, 1:00-5:00 pm, NASA Headquarters

Just as everyone is wondering how much Ares I would cost, the same questions are being asked about commercial crew. The House Science and Technology Committee’s Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics released a letter from the Aerospace Corporation at yesterday’s hearing expounding on Aerospace’s role in assisting the Augustine Committee with its estimates of the cost for commercial crew capabilities.

The letter responds to questions posed by subcommittee chair Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ). In the letter, Aerospace stresses that the Augustine Committee hired it to “provide technical analyses as directed” and “We acknowledge that the Committee received information not known to Aerospace.” The 12-page response does not answer the question of how much commercial crew would cost, but illuminates the level of uncertainty.

The Augustine Committee report is often quoted as concluding that the cost to NASA of commercial crew would be about $5 billion. That figure is based on a $3 billion estimate by the committee of what it thought NASA would have to provide as an incentive to the private sector, but does not reflect the additional private capital that it expected to be provided by the companies themselves. Aerospace adjusted the committee’s estimate upward to $5 billion by adding $400 million for a demonstrator flight and minor modifications to an existing launch vehicle and then applying “historical cost growth” as it did for other estimates for NASA developments, according to the letter. However, Aerospace was not asked to validate the committee’s $3 billion figure, on which the higher estimate is based: “In fact, no verification could be performed given the Committee’s statement that this dollar amount was simply NASA’s portion of the total cost.” Aerospace said that to its knowledge the $3 billion “did not include all ground support/infrastructure costs.”

The upshot of the Aerospace letter is that although it has a reputation for providing solid, independent cost estimates, that was not its role in this case. The Augustine Committee was focused on macro-level questions, the letter says, and instructed Aerospace as to what analysis it wanted performed, which Aerospace completed on a compressed timeline. Aerospace representatives stressed that point repeatedly during public meetings of the Augustine committee: “…[O]ur only caveat was that these analyses were directed and developed to be used as guideposts for comparison among options. We do not claim them to be traditional independent analyses of all the elements of each program.”

Cost is at the heart of the issue over the Ares I launch vehicle and its Orion spacecraft versus commercial crew. If anyone wants to have an informed debate about the profound questions being posed about the future of the human space flight program, then publicly available, credible estimates for both Ares I and commercial crew are a sine qua non.

What might seem a simple question may not have a simple answer. How much would Ares I cost per year and per flight?

That is one of the key questions arising from congressional hearings on President Obama’s new plan for NASA. The President wants to cancel the entire Constellation program, of which Ares I is part. He proposes replacing Ares I as a launch vehicle for taking astronauts to low Earth orbit (LEO) with commercial alternatives in part because of anticipated cost savings. Thus, the cost of Ares I on an annual basis and per launch is a critical issue.

What little information is available in the public domain seems contradictory, although some of the confusion may be caused by exactly what is being counted in the total.

In testimony to the House Appropriations Commerce-Justice-Science subcommittee on Tuesday, NASA Administrator Bolden said that the Ares I would cost $4-4.5 billion a year, and $1.6 billion per flight.

The Augustine Committee report states that “When it begins operations, the Ares I and Orion would be a very expensive system for crew transport to low Earth orbit. Program estimates are that it would have a recurring cost of nearly $1 billion per flight, even with the fixed infrastructure costs being carried by Ares V. The issue is that the Orion is a very capable vehicle for exploration, but it has far more capability than needed for a taxi to low Earth orbit.” (page 90) So that estimate was not only for Ares I, but for the Orion crew capsule as well and seems more directed at Orion than Ares I. The report also said that Ares I would “cost $5-6 billion to develop assuming that all common costs are carried by the Ares V.” (emphasis in original, page 90).

At yesterday’s House Science and Technology subcommittee hearing, Doug Cooke, NASA Associate Administrator for Exploration Systems, confirmed that an estimate Representative Suzanne Kosmas (D-FL) said NASA provided last year – a marginal cost of $176 million per launch – was still a reasonable estimate.

Last November, NASA answered written questions from Congress about Ares I and Orion costs, a copy of which was obtained by SpacePolicyOnline.com. It explained that if there was only one Ares I/Orion flight in a given year, its cost would be $919 million. That figure represents both fixed costs ($781 million) and marginal costs ($138 million) for Ares I and Orion. That would be very close to the $1 billion cited by the Augustine Committee. However, for a second flight in the same year, the marginal cost would be $138 million, close to Representative Kosmas’ number. A third flight in that year would be another $138 million, and so on. Thus, whether a particular flight costs $1 billion or $138 million depends on how many launches there are per year.

As for what is included in calculating the fixed cost of $781 million, NASA’s answer stated that it “does not include costs associated with Ground Operations, Mission Operations, EVA and Program Integration elements, which are budgeted under their respective projects.” Hence, Administrator Bolden’s estimate of $1.6 billion per flight also could be correct if all costs are counted, but that cannot be determined from information currently available in the public domain.

The origin of the $4-4.5 billion annual cost for the Ares I program cited by Administrator Bolden remains unclear. The space shuttle program costs less than that – about $3 billion annually in recent years, although that again could be an issue of an apples to oranges comparison.

Considering how crucial these questions are, it can only be hoped that the Obama Administration will uphold its promise of transparency and make all of this information public, on an apples-to-apples basis, to enable a thoughtful debate over Ares I/Orion compared with commercial alternatives.

The Space Shuttle Discovery will launch on April 5 as planned according to NASA. The launch date was uncertain while NASA was troubleshooting a problem with a helium isolation valve in the Right Reaction Control System. Launch of the STS-131 mission is scheduled for 6:21 am EDT. The seven-person crew includes Japanese astronaut Naoko Yamazaki. For more details, see NASA’s space shuttle website.

Responding to a letter from Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA), ranking member of the House Appropriations Commerce-Justice-Science subcommittee, Norm Augustine clarified that canceling the Constellation program was not specifically one of the options his committee put forward last year. Mr. Augustine chaired a blue-ribbon committee established by NASA at the request of the White House to provide options for the human space flight program. The exchange of letters was made public by Rep. Wolf’s office today.

Mr. Augustine stressed that his committee was asked to develop options, not recommendations, and that the President’s proposal to cancel Constellation came closest the committee’s option 5B.

“As to the second matter you posed, the program contained in the FY11 et seq. federal budget was not one of the specific options contained in our panel’s report. It perhaps most closely approximates Option 5B; however, the difference in available funding, even though increased relative to the prior budget plan, obviously has to be considered. It could be argued that were one to decide to terminate the Ares I development (as is the case in Option 5B), and with the not unimportant exception of its impact on the Orion effort, that action is tantamount to canceling the entire Constellation program in its present form since work has barely begun on the Ares V and the Altair.”

At the time the President’s proposal to cancel Constellation was announced, the White House posted a letter from Mr. Augustine on the OSTP website that was similarly careful in its language, but was viewed by many as supporting the decision.

UPDATE: The new date for the hearing is April 22 at 10:00 am.

ORIGINAL STORY: Word is that the Senate Appropriations Commerce-Justice-Science subcommittee hearing on NASA that was scheduled for tomorrow (Thursday) has been postponed.

At a hearing before the House Appropriations Commerce-Justice-Science subcommittee this afternoon, Rep. John Culberson (R-TX) said that he knows of only one Member of Congress who supports President Obama’s new plan for NASA. He did not identify who that is, but Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) has publicly praised the President’s plan to rely on commercial space companies for human trips to low Earth orbit.

As has been true in other congressional hearings on NASA’s budget request, the vast majority of questions to NASA Administrator Bolden were about the decision to cancel the Constellation program. Brief mention was made of the $6 billion increase to the NASA budget over 5 years that is projected in the budget request, and there were a couple of questions about space science and aeronautics research, but Constellation and the future of the human space flight program dominated the hearing.

Several members asked about the costs associated with the Ares I and Ares 5 programs, some taking issue with what the Augustine Committee and NASA are now saying. Administrator Bolden said the Ares 1 would cost $4-4.5 billion per year to operate. Rep. Robert Aderholt (R-AL) held up a piece of paper that from his description appeared to be a response from NASA last year about how much an Ares 1 launch would cost. He said the answer was $1.3 billion for three flights per year. By contrast, Gen. Bolden said that when he asked how much it would cost for a single Ares 1 launch, he was told $1.6 billion, and that the annual operating costs would be $4-4.5 billion. He promised the Congressman an answer for the record explaining the discrepancies.

Extensive discussion about when a heavy lift launch vehicle (HLLV) would be available permeated the hearing. Gen. Bolden said that he hoped one could be available in 10 years or so.

In answer to questions from subcommittee chairman Rep. Alan Mollohan (D-WV), Gen. Bolden repeated his answer at other congressional hearings that the destination for human space flight is the Moon and Mars, but he could not put a date on when there would be human trips to Mars. He insisted that the United States is the leader in human space flight and will remain the leader through the International Space Station program. He also assured Chairman Mollohan that he was complying with language in the FY2010 Consolidated Appropropriations Act not to cancel any aspect of the Constellation program until Congress takes further action in a subsequent appropriations bill.