----- Original Message ----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, November 08, 2001 12:26 PM Subject: Clinton ISS Policies Largely Caused ISS Cost Overruns Click here: http://www.spaceref.com/docs/NASA/ISS/imce_appdx.pdf -Section 3.3 of this Young ISS Commission Apendix states that the budget caps placed on the ISS by the Clinton Administration largely caused the present ISS cost overruns. Rick L. Sterling ____________________________________ WRONG! Section 3.3 -- like the rest of the Young Report -- says flatly that NASA (in this case, Dan Goldin) deliberately deceived the Clinton Administration (as it had deceived the Reagan and Bush Sr. Administrations) about what the Station as a whole would cost -- and that it did so by "meeting" Clinton's yearly cost caps by simply delaying Station expenses which it knew all along would be necessary into the future, until it finally became impossible to conceal them any longer. This is exactly what NASA had done previously with the Shuttle -- and, from NASA's point of view, both projects weren't "failures". They were brilliantly successful at doing what NASA intended both the Shuttle and the Station to do from the start: defraud the taxpayers for decades before the deceptions were finally discovered. As science journalist Daniel S. Greenberg says, from the start NASA's cost estimate for the Station was "sucker bait for gullible Congressmen". Nowhere does the Young report blame Clinton: its blame is focused entirely on NASA, and on NASA's deliberate (not accidental) deceptions. But let me quote Section 3.3 of the Report in its entirety (it's very short): "Perhaps the single greatest factor in the cost growth of the ISS program has been NASA's culture to manage the program in its annual budgets. A the time that the Clinton Administration and Congress approved the redesigned Space Station [which, as the rest of the Report says, they would never have done if Goldin hadn't falsely assured them that his redesign would vastly cut its cost], annual budget caps of $2.1 billion were levied on the program as a means to control costs. In general, such caps establishing level annual funding on a major program are counterproductive to controlling total program cost. Total cost and schedule became variables as NASA's focus became one of executing the program within the annual budgets. Additional funding was requested and provided for the Russian Program Assurance and Crew Return Vehicle; however, program content was continually slipped to the right (and outside the 5-year budget windows) to stay within the annual budget caps. "Various budget exercises and shifting of resources have been employed to maintain the annual budget caps. In the period from Fiscal Year 1995 through FY 2001, $966 million in O&S [Operations and Support] funding and $980 million in research funding were transferred to development within the ISS budget line (based on the FY 2000 budget structure and the initial funding levels provided in the FY 95 budget). In 2000, Congress enacted a new cap of $25 billion. This cap is on the accumulated annual funding since FY 94 until the year when the funding for development is less than 5% of that year's budget. At the same time, the ISS budget was restructured and the 'Operations Capability and Construction' line was moved from development to operations. The estimated cost for this budget line in the FY 01 budget through FY 05 was $878 million. Finally, the FY 01 budget transferred out-year funding of the Crew Return Vehicle totalling $765 million from the ISS budget line in the Human Space Flight appropriation to a line in the Science, Aeronautics and Technology appropriation. Both of these budget exercises are clearly associated with the new cap of $25 billion." Now let me quote the first paragraph of Section 3.5 of the report ("Budget Summary"): "In summary, the original cost estimate was extremely optimistic. Administator Goldin's management style of 'better, faster, cheaper' permeated the program's redesign. Every element of the Station was pushed during the redesign phase to reduce costs. Content that was removed during redesign has fought its way back into the program." [The Report goes into great detail on the latter fact.] This Report places the blame for the whole fiasco squarely on NASA's shoulders -- and, as it points out, NASA's bookkeeping is still being kept so deliberately sloppy to cover up the scheme that the Young Committee has no real idea how much more the Station will end up costing than its current minimal estimate of the cost overrun. (For one thing, it points out in Section 5.1.3 that it now looks as though even NASA's estimate that a 3-man Station crew can do a piddling 20 hours per week of science research is a serious overestimate.) Sure, if earlier Administrations had given NASA humongously more money to play with, the Station would have been built to the capacity that NASA promised -- but then, if NASA had been honest about the cost of the Station, the thing would never have been funded in the first place. But read the whole (quite brief and concise) Young Report for yourselves: www.spaceref.com/docs/NASA/ISS/imce.pdf www.spaceref.com/docs/NASA/ISS/imce_appdx.pdf As for possible more economical designs for a Station, there were at least two superb pieces on the subject all the way back during the first Bush Administration, when the fraud was already clear for anyone to see (and when Greenberg wrote his "sucker bait" comment). One (Aviation Week, 1/13/92, pg. 53) is "Veteran Designer Offers Reconfigurable Alternative to NASA Space Station". The other is aerospace historian T.A. Heppenheimer's detailed program overview "Beyond Tomorrow: Realistic, Useful Alternatives to NASA's Grandiose Space Station" in the May 1991 issue of the libertarian magazine "Reason". (Heppenheimer, by the way, is in no way a hard-line libertarian -- there's not a speck of Ayn Randian fantasy in the article). And as for the feasibility of Shuttle-C as a good future design for big American boosters: Robert C. Truax -- who played a central role in conceiving the Polaris missile, and then played Cassandra in the late Seventies by prcisely but futilely predicting what the Space Shuttle would turn into -- has a terrific piece on the optimal future design for big, economical boosters in the January 1999 "Aerospace America" ("The Future of Earth-to-Orbit Propulsion"). (Among many other things, he takes a dim view of strap-on boosters. His article spurred several letters to the magazine by other aerospace engineers -- every one of whom completely agreed with him, except for one who had studied pressure-fed engines in detail and thought Truax had overestimated their preferability to turbopumps, because tank walls capable of containing such higher pressures are thick and heavy.) Rather than summarize these three articles -- and since two of them may be almost impossible for non-American readers to find -- I'll insert all three of them soon in the File Vault of the Astronautics Group. == You are subscribed to the Europa Icepick mailing list: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Project information and list (un)subscribe info: http://klx.com/europa/
