How NASA's 'Mad Money' Could Ease the Spaceflight Gap

The scoop: NASA recently got word that $1 billion is heading its way as a result of the Omnibus Appropriations Act, a plan signed into law by President Barack Obama early in his tenure.

Wildly over-budget and facing a gap in off-Earth access, what is an aging space agency to do with the cash?

For an agency that has to fight for every dollar, $1 billion is a welcome windfall.

As part of the $787 billion stimulus package passed by Congress in February, NASA will get a bonus on top of $17.8 billion already hedged for it through 2009. This bump is far less than what some space advocates sought -- in recent years a one-time $2-billion supplement -- but it does help ease some of NASA's budgetary pressure.

Congress has directed how most of that extra money should be spent:

• $400 million for science, specifically Earth sciences research and supercomputing applications
• $150 million for aeronautics work, which will range from aviation safety to next-generation air traffic control
• $50 million for repairing NASA facilities, such as those at the Johnson Space Center damaged by Hurricane Ike last year

That leaves $400 million for space exploration. However, unlike the other money, there are no strings attached, giving NASA the ability to spend the money as it sees fit.

So, where does the space community see the buck stopping? The Gap. Not the clothing store, but the extended period -- perhaps five years -- between the space shuttle's 2010 retirement and the introduction of the Ares 1 rocket and Orion spacecraft. During that time, NASA won't have the ability to send humans into space.

Unfortunately, even $400 million won't go very far. NASA officials previously estimated that each extra $100 million would speed up development of Ares and Orion by only one month. Trimming a five-year hiatus by just one third of a year doesn't help much, nor does it address fundamental concerns about relying on Russia for space station access. Not to even mention the economic impact of a stand down on the aerospace industry, and Florida's "Space Coast", which is highly dependent on activity at the Kennedy Space Center.

But there's an unconventional alternative. Through a program called Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS), NASA is supporting the rise of commercial vehicles to resupply the International Space Station once the shuttle program retires. Two companies developing cargo-transporting spacecraft -- SpaceX and Orbital Sciences Corporation -- recently landed contracts with NASA for launching cargo to the space station after 2010.

SpaceX's award even includes an option (called COTS-D) for flying astronauts into space, and the company thinks it could have a crew-ready vehicle as soon as late 2011. The cost to NASA? $300 million.

There are plenty of reasons to be skeptical about SpaceX's timeline and its capabilities; after all, the company has had only one successful launch in four attempts, and has yet to launch the larger Falcon 9 rocket needed for COTS. Yet if successful, the proposal could greatly shorten the Gap, reduce American dependence on Russian access to space -- and, oh yes, stimulate the economy.

All that for only a little bit more than what NASA spent on the ill-fated Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO) mission. And unlike OCO, the COTS program is structured so that SpaceX only receives funding when it achieves specific milestones: if the company fails, NASA can redirect the remaining money elsewhere.

So what about the remaining $100 million in the stimulus bill for exploration? It's not enough to fund another COTS award, but it could be used for training astronauts on the new generation of space vehicles, supporting work on new technologies needed for the future human exploration of the moon and Mars, and other purposes.

Think of it as some "mad money" for NASA to do things it would normally struggle to fund. Indeed, this whole proposal may seem a little mad to some -- but it could be crazy in the long run to do anything else.

Jeff Foust is editor of The Space Review and a senior analyst at the Futron Corporation. The views expressed are the author's alone and do not represent the official position of the Discovery Channel.

Article posted March 16, 2009.

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