Space Policy: NASA job cuts, Lamar Smith’s space vision, GAO assessment, and SLS’s un-trackable cost

The next NASA budget will require job cuts: NASA Fiscal 2014 Budget Cuts Include Workforce – Aviation Week.

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Marcia S. Smith reports on a House science committee hearing yesterday with Presidential Science Adviser John Holdren testifying : House SS&T Chairman Smith Wants Vision for Space Program – spacepolicyonline.com

Committee chairman Chairman Lamar Smith has his own space program vision: Smith: U.S. needs vision, plan to reignite space program – Houston Chronicle

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The GAO says NASA is getting better at keeping its projects close to the planned budgets and schedules. However, to reach this conclusion they have to exclude the James Webb Telescope and its several billion dollar overrrun:

An NASA is able to obfuscate the SLS/Orion program so opaquely, the GAO cannot even begin a rational evaluation of its performance. From pp.26-27 in the report (pdf) :

Estimating costs associated with SLS and MPCV to ensure oversight and transparency: Estimating the full life-cycle costs of SLS and MPCV projects will be critical to ensuring transparency into their cost and schedule and will enable effective oversight. At this point, however, NASA currently plans to estimate only the costs of portions of the SLS and MPCV projects, which is not a true life-cycle cost estimate. For example, the preliminary cost estimates of SLS only extend through the first non-crewed flight in 2017, plus 3 months of data analysis. This estimate does not include costs for the first crewed flight of the same vehicle type of the SLS in 2021, nor does it include costs associated with substantial development for future flights of other variants of the launch vehicle.18 According to project officials, the cost of the first crewed flight will be tracked by the project. Similarly, the MPCV cost estimate extends only through the first crewed flight in 2021. MPCV officials told us that separate cost estimates will be completed for future flights of MPCV. Developing cost estimates in this manner will not allow NASA to provide a total life cycle cost for the SLS and MPCV projects. As a result, a true life cycle cost may never be established and oversight of the projects would be hampered because no one would be able to track the baseline cost and associated cost growth.

According to NASA officials, the agency is developing a tailored definition for SLS and MPCV life-cycle cost estimating since it is one of evolving capabilities on a continuum, not a traditional life cycle. Additionally, NASA officials stated that the full life-cycle costs of SLS and MPCV cannot be calculated because SLS and MPCV are really programs and not projects that have discrete start and endpoints. Thus, NASA is reporting the cost for attaining a certain level of capability and what it costs to fly each version of SLS and MPCV. In an era of declining budgets, a true life cycle cost estimate will inform decision makers about the long term affordability of these programs before making any long term investment decisions. Credible cost estimates also help assess the reasonableness of a contractor’s proposals and program budgets, and can be used to determine how budget cuts may hinder a program’s effectiveness.

While NASA indicated that they will provide transparency into the cost and schedule for various research and development segments, given the significant costs that will likely be associated with these projects and the impact that any overruns could have on the rest of the agency, we plan to review this issue further to ensure better cost oversight of the projects.

(My emphasis.) Clearly NASA and its Congressional supporters do not want to ever specify a cost number for the SLS/Orion program. Better to keep it permanently vague and undefined so that the public never knows its true cost. This is also a great way to prevent accusations of overruns. You can’t overrun an unspecified cost .