SpacePolicyOnline.com has updated its fact sheet on NASA’s FY2013 budget request.  The new version includes information on the impact of the sequester on the agency’s FY2013 funding.

We have added a new table to the fact sheet, NASA’s FY2013 Budget Request, that shows the impact of the sequester on NASA’s current budget, which is dictated by the Continuing Resolution (CR) that is funding the government through March 27, 2013.  It also shows the difference between the sequester-adjusted amounts and what NASA requested for FY2013.  

The sequester will cut $896 million from NASA’s current spending level according to data in the Office of Management and Budget’s (OMB’s) March 1, 2013 sequester report to Congress.  OMB shows the cuts on an account-by-account basis, but does not total them.  An earlier report from OMB indicated that some NASA activities, especially in Cross Agency Support, are not subject to the sequester so it is not certain that totaling the numbers in OMB’s March 1 report yields NASA’s actual current funding level.   Until more precise data is made public by NASA or OMB, these are the best numbers available, however.

The budget situation for NASA and the rest of the government is complicated and fluid.   This fact sheet will be updated as events transpire in the coming weeks and months.   A new fact sheet will be created for the FY2014 budget request when it is submitted, currently expected around the third week of March.

 

Last night President Obama issued the sequestration order required under the 2011 Budget Control Act.   Unless an agreement is reached to end the sequester before FY2013 runs out, defense agencies will lose 7.8 percent of their FY2013 funding levels and non-defense agencies like NASA will lose 5 percent.  The cuts are applied to each budget account equally.

The White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) notified affected agencies that the President had issued the sequestration order in a memorandum and sent Congress a 70-page report detailing exactly how much must be cut from each budget account.  Some agencies have limited authority to transfer funds between accounts so the numbers are not absolute, but should be pretty close at the account level.   The cuts also are intended to be applied equally to “all programs, projects, and activities within a budget account,” but how strictly that phrase is interpreted could vary, thus it is not possible to say precisely how a particular NASA program will fare.

The federal government is currently operating under a Continuing Resolution (CR) that generally holds agencies to their FY2012 funding levels plus a 0.612 percent increase.   Those are the amounts to which the sequester applies and some activities are exempt.  According to the OMB report, NASA’s budget accounts will be cut a total of $896 million as follows (the figures are from the OMB report except for the totals, which were calculated by SpacePolicyOnline.com, and we must add a caveat that a September 2012 OMB report indicated that some activities, especially in Cross Agency Support, are not subject to the sequester and thus may not be shown here, which could affect the totals):

 

Impact of Sequester on NASA (in millions of dollars)
Account	Amount Subject to Sequester	Reduction Due to Sequester
Inspector Gen	39	2
Space Ops	4,247	212
Science	5,116	256
Cross Agency Support	3,012	151
Exploration	3,790	190
Aeronautics	573	29
Education	137	7
Construction, Env Compl & Remd	402	20
Space Technology	579	29
Sci, Sp, Tech Ed Trust Fund	1	*
TOTAL	17,896	896
Source:  OMB Report to the Congress on the Joint Committee Sequestration for FY2013, March 1, 2013. *denotes $500,000 or less **some activities (e.g. in Cross Agency Support) are exempt; amounts shown here are only what is subject to the sequester

 

At a congressional hearing on Wednesday, retired Lockheed Martin executive A. Thomas (Tom) Young characterized NASA as on a “declining trajectory” and called on Congress to pass a new NASA authorization act to reverse that trend.

Young is a highly respected NASA and industry veteran who is often called upon to chair advisory committees and analyses of organizational or technical failures.   Although his testimony covered a lot of ground, one target of his concern is the human spaceflight program.  A former chair of NASA’s space station advisory committee, Young said the International Space Station (ISS) is on a path to becoming a science and research failure, even though it is an engineering and diplomatic success.  He also said that he has changed his mind about the practicality of a human mission to an asteroid and now believes it should not be the next destination.

His testimony was part of a hearing on the recently reintroduced Space Leadership Preservation Act (SLPA).  He testified along with Elliot Pulham, CEO of The Space Foundation.  Both appeared to generally support the bill, though Young warned against unintended consequences.

Elliot Pulham, CEO of The Space Foundation, and Tom Young, Lockheed Martin (Ret.) testify at a February 27, 2013

hearing before the Space Subcommittee of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee.

Photo credit:  House Science, Space and Technology Committee

The Space Subcommittee of the House Science, Space and Technology (SS&T) Committee first heard from the two main sponsors of the bill, H.R. 823, Rep. John Culberson (R-TX) and Frank Wolf (R-VA).  They introduced the bill on Tuesday, a slightly revised version of legislation they originally introduced in the last Congress.  They want to restructure NASA so that it operates more like the National Science Foundation (NSF), with a Board of Directors and an administrator appointed for a fixed 6-year term.

The bill would create an 11 member Board of Directors that would recommend to the President three individuals to serve as Administrator, three as Deputy Administrator and three as Chief Financial Officer.   The President could choose to nominate individuals on those lists, though in this new version of the bill he is not required to do so.  Among its other duties, the Board would formulate a budget for the agency and send it to Congress and to the White House at the same time.  If the President’s budget request to Congress for NASA differs from the Board’s proposal, the President would be required to explain why.

Culberson and Wolf believe that this governance structure would make NASA less politicized, more professional, and provide stability.  Culberson’s position is that NASA does not get the funding it needs because the President does not request sufficient funds and Congress needs an “honest budget submission” that does not have to pass through the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB).  With such a budget submission in hand, Congress would then give NASA the money it needs, he contends.  Culberson is a member of the House Appropriations Commerce-Justice-Science subcommittee that funds NASA, of which Wolf is the chair.

Wolf focused on NASA’s lack of strategic direction, especially in human spaceflight, and believes this bill will solve that problem, arguing “I know that the NASA workforce and contractors are capable, but you can’t keep changing back and forth with concepts, ideas and administrators….”

Young did not voice opposition to the bill, but warned against unintended consequences.  As an example, he worries about the people who would comprise the Board.  In the bill, the President picks three of its members, the majority leader of the Senate picks three, the minority leader of the Senate picks one, the Speaker of the House picks three, and the minority leader of the House picks one.  Young joked that if he could pick them himself “I’d be totally satisfied,” but otherwise he worries it would become “a Board with an agenda.”   “I think there are people out there who can be the statesperson in that regard, but … the wrong board would be a disaster.”

Young also has strong views about what types of individuals should serve as Administrator and Deputy Administrator.  He argues the Administrator should have “superior executive leadership credentials” and the Deputy should have “extraordinary technical and space project implementation skills.”   He also thinks the Administrator should be allowed to choose the Deputy.

Pulham pointed out that his organization recently published a study (Pioneering:  Sustaining U.S. Leadership in Space) that made similar recommendations to what is in SLPA.  That report recommended a 5-year renewable term rather than a 6-year term for the NASA Administrator based on how the Navy’s nuclear reactor program is run, the “gold standard” for technical government programs, he said.

Pulham and Young also addressed broader issues than NASA’s governance structure, particularly the concerns that the agency’s long term goals and strategy are not apparent.

Pulham said that the National Aeronautics and Space Act, which created NASA in 1958 and has been amended many times, lists 26 strategic priorities for NASA:  “I would submit that if you have 26 priorities, you have no priorities.”    The Space Foundation report recommends focusing NASA on “pioneering” activities, which it defines as “1. being among those who first enter a region to open it for use and development by others; and 2. being one of a group that builds and prepares infrastructure precursors, in advance of others.”

Young laid out a list of eight challenges facing the agency:

• Maintaining NASA as the premier space organization
• Maintaining the capabilities of U.S. industry to be NASA’s partner
• Achieving balance between the NASA program and its budget
• Establishing a credible human spaceflight program
• Recognizing the importance of understanding dark matter and dark energy, searching for earth-like planets, returning samples from the surface of Mars, and expanding our climate knowledge, all as laid out in National Research Council Decadal Surveys
• Realizing the science and research potential of the International Space Station (ISS)
• Assuring sustainability of strategy and programs over many years and political cycles
• Depoliticizing the agency

Regarding human spaceflight, Young said that although initially he supported the idea of sending humans to an asteroid as announced by President Obama in 2010, he since has learned just how difficult a task that is.  He now believes there are only a few “practical” destinations – Earth’s moon, the moons of Mars, and Mars itself.   Asteroids and Lagrange points “can be steps” but are not “practical” and do not “inspire.”   He also offered strong views on the ISS program, calling it a diplomatic and technical success, but on a path to becoming a “science and research failure.”   Overall, Young characterized NASA and the U.S. civil space program as on “a declining trajectory” and urged Congress to pass a new NASA authorization act to reverse that trend.

The House committee and its Senate counterpart have both announced their intent to write a new NASA authorization bill this year.  The current law, the 2010 NASA Authorization Act, contains both policy provisions and funding authorization through the end of FY2013.  The policy provisions remain in force indefinitely, but if those committees want to recommend funding levels for the future, they will need to pass a new law.   Policy changes like that proposed in SLPA typically would be melded into such an authorization bill.

Appropriators, like Culberson and Wolf, are not required to follow authorization funding recommendations, but they are meant to be guided by them.   Policy is the province of the authorizing committees and since those two appropriators are seeking policy changes, it is easy to imagine them working closely together with the House SS&T committee.

How SLPA itself or provisions in a NASA authorization bill with the same intent would play in the Democratically-controlled Senate is an open question.   Rep. Donna Edwards (D-MD), ranking member of the House space subcommittee, and Rep. Suzanne Bonamici (D-OR) were the only two Democrats at the hearing.   Edwards politely raised many questions about the bill — pointing out, for example, that NASA and NSF are very different types of agencies, and although the NSF Director has a fixed 6-year term, the current director is leaving after only two-and-a-half years – but not did directly oppose it.  Bonamici’s questions were focused on STEM education.

Witness statements, a hearing charter, and a webcast of the hearing are available on the committee’s website.

UPDATE, February 27:   Additional differences between the old version and new version of the bill are identified in this update.

ORIGINAL STORY, February 26: A day before a hearing before the House Science, Space and Technology (HSS&T) Committee, a revised version of the Space Leadership Preservation Act has been introduced.

The text of the new bill, H.R. 823, is somewhat different from the version introduced in the last Congress.   Key changes are that:

• the NASA Administrator would be appointed for six years rather than 10;
• a new provision was added under which the Deputy Administrator could serve as Acting Administrator for no more than 45 days, after which the Associate Administrator would become Acting Administrator (the Deputy Administrator is a political appointee like the Administrator while the Associate Administrator is the top ranking civil servant in the agency — currently Lori Garver and Robert Lightfoot, respectively);
• the Board of Directors for NASA created by the bill would still recommend nominees for Administrator and Deputy Administrator, but instead of requiring (“shall”) the President to choose among them, the new bill makes it permissive (“may”) to choose among them;
• a provision in the old bill is omitted in the new bill that would have required the President to appoint a new administrator no later than 3 months after the list of nominees is provided by the Board of Directors; and
• a provision under which the Board of Directors could recommend removal of the Administrator for cause is expanded to include the Deputy Administrator and Chief Financial Officer.

The co-sponsors of the bill, Rep. John Culberson (R-TX) and Frank Wolf (R-VA), will testify before the Space Subcommittee of the HSS&T Committee tomorrow morning at 10:00 to explain what they hope the bill, if passed by the House and Senate and signed into law, would accomplish.

Wolf chairs the House Appropriations Commerce-Justice-Science subcommittee that funds NASA.  Culberson is a member of that subcommittee.

Correction:  An earlier version of this article incorrectly identified Rep. Wolf’s state.  He is, of course, from Virginia.