A science blog with Eric Berger

Augustine report out today. What you need to know.


NOON UPDATE: The full 155-page report has now been released, which largely tracks the executive summary that came out in September and fleshes out some of the context behind the summary’s conclusions. The questions outlined below remain the broad ones that President Obama must now address.


“The premier finding is that the human spaceflight program that the United States is currently pursuing is on an unsustainable trajectory,” the committee’s chairman, Norman Augustine, said today.

That’s the central issue: NASA’s present human spaceflight goals are too ambitious for the funding currently provided to the agency. And that’s the choice that now faces Obama: spend more money to go places — about $3 billion a year — or slowly cede our country’s leadership position in space.

“This administration has invested a lot to stimulate the economy in these down times, and what we’re talking about here is a pretty small percentage of that to save a lot of high-tech jobs,” said Bob Crippen, pilot of the first shuttle mission, STS-1. “NASA’s budget now is a half a percent of the federal budget, and this would change it to six tenths of a cent.”

ORIGINAL ENTRY: Some six weeks after Norman Augustine dropped the summary of his humans spaceflight review report, the full version is due out today at noon. I’m not expecting substantial changes from the summary.

Augustine’s report does not make specific recommendations, but rather lays out options for President Obama, who is left to make the hard choices.

The big question now is how and when President Obama will act on the report, and how he will answer a series of questions that will determine the future of NASA’s human spaceflight program. All of this, of course, directly bears upon Johnson Space Center, which trains astronauts, controls flights and is helping to build the next generation of rockets.

Here’s how I see the key questions he must answer, with some general thoughts on where he might go:

What should NASA do with the space shuttle? The most likely scenario is the retirement of the shuttle after six more missions, probably in early 2011, when it completes construction of the International Space Station. To fly the shuttle longer would require a lengthy safety evaluation of the vehicle, and NASA has already started closing major production lines as shuttle components for the final six missions are built. The problem with ending the program is that keeping the shuttle flying is the only way to realistically close a five-, six- or maybe even seven-year gap in America’s ability to fly humans into space.

White House

Obama, science adviser John Holdren and new NASA administrator Charles Bolden

What to do about the space station? This is the only area where there seems to be certainty. The Augustine report overwhelmingly endorses extending the life of the station through 2020 to both maximize its usefulness (only now are we really beginning to use it with construction nearing an end) and ensure that we can have an international partnership when NASA turns its attention to exploring beyond low-Earth orbit. It’s a lock that Obama will extend the space station’s life.

How will we get astronauts to the space station? After the shuttle retires we’re going to rely on Soyuz rockets until an alternative can be developed. Prior to the Augustine report NASA had sought to have Constellation’s Ares I rocket and its Orion capsule ready by 2015, but the Augustine committee found these time lines to be overly optimistic. (Constellation program manager Jeff Hanley, ahem, disagrees with this assessment.) In any case, the Augustine committee seemed to lean toward scrapping Ares I and opening the door to private industry to develop commercial transport options to the station. Perhaps Obama could find extra money for NASA by selling this as an economic stimulus opportunity. I’d bet on the commercial option.

Will Obama show NASA the money? If there’s one exceptionally clear point in the Augustine report, it’s that without additional money NASA can’t get back to the moon before 2030, if then. There’s just not enough money to develop and fly new rockets. If NASA is to have ambitions beyond the space station during the next few decades, its budget must be increased by about $3 billion a year. (Here’s why.) If not, is Obama willing to take the political hit and open the door to international competitors to wrest leadership in space away from the United States?

What should NASA’s exploration goal be post-space station? Prior to Augustine, NASA’s goal was to go to the moon by 2020, learn how to live and work there, before eventually trekking to Mars at some distant point in the future. If NASA does scrounge more money, should it still go back to the moon? Although he did not do so explicitly, Augustine seemed to suggest that NASA should receive more money, and that it be put into a “flexible path” of exploration, going to interesting places like the L2 point, asteroids, possibly the moons of Mars and elsewhere in the solar system.

How will we get there? Who knows. NASA’s plan has been the development of the Ares V rocket, a bigger, badder version of the Saturn V rockets that took Neil and Buzz to the moon’s surface 40 years ago. But alternatives abound. There’s the shuttle-derived heavy lift vehicle, there’s Delta IV and Atlas V rockets, and there are more exotic solutions. President Obama is going to have to decide where we’re going before he chooses a hardware architecture that gets us there.

The bottom line is that, with the report’s release finally imminent, we may begin to get some answers to these questions burning through Houston’s vast aerospace industry.

Categories: Space
Eric Berger

46 Responses

  1. John says:


    I’ll agree with the badder part of the assesment(this path should never have been followed; we should have gone with DIRECT), but disagree with “bigger”. The Saturn V was 110 m high, massed 3,038,500 kg, and could put 118,800 kg into LEO. Ares I is only 94 m high, and can hoist a mere 25,000 kg into LEO. (Ares V hasn’t even made it off the drawing pad yet. It may be taller, but will probably haul less cargo than Saturn V once the necessary safety changes are made.)

  2. ModerateChuck says:

    Interesting summary. A few opinions: first, the Shuttle will retire in late 2011 (launch delays?) and Orion will probably fly on Ares (or something) in perhaps 2017? With a bit of optimism. But then the system will be in flight test and cannot be relied on for crew transport. It likely will transport a crew or two while still in test but it might have to stand down for fixes, etc. So it will not be declared “operational” until after perhaps four (same number as the Shuttle) flights? So the Orion/Ares will “replace” the Shuttle in about 2021. So there will be a ten year period where we depend on the Russians to get any astronauts to the ISS. In the meantime we are looking at paying $51 million per seat and that price is likely to go up – when they have a monopoly. I wonder if we might see several years when there are NO astronauts on the ISS – perhaps ESA folks, Japanese, but no US people.

    And I don’t see the Administration adding more money to the government side of the space business – they are now piously weeping about our federal deficit. They have a LOT of partially completed bridges, partially completed runways, etc and the news folks will feature those nightly. That is gonna take a lot of deficit spending to fix. Maybe we could have a giant garage sale for space? It may come to that.

  3. Ben says:

    Who doesn’t think that Obama will keep NASA on life support at best while diverting the funding and attention to passing his healthcare plan? Universal healthcare gets Obama another term with his hardcore supporters…the moon does not. It’s that simple.

  4. Jay Clayton says:

    I’m confused: Texas Republicans are almost advocating secession, saying the “self-reliant” Texas doesn’t need the Federal Government.

    Never mind the fact Texas receives more back from Washington than it pays in.

    Why doesn’t Texas fund NASA itself and keep the royalties from curing every disease, like the TMC doctors always testify to before Congress?

  5. TexasRed55 says:

    Just as a note, the “commercial option” deals with LEO only. We could still see Orion on some sort of HLV for beyond LEO missions.


    From SpaceX:

    “People are very worried [our] efforts are a threat to Constellation rather than an enabler,” says Bowersox. “We don’t want to compete like that. We want to enable. We want to provide a cheap way to get to station so you can spend money to do the exciting exploration things.”

  6. bkbirge says:

    Well, NASA is at least trying to keep a foot in the lunar game despite what forebodings there are about the Augustine Report.

    Note that a private donar dedicated some of his estate to this so we can’t really pat NASA too much on the back but it is encouraging.

  7. Kellybee says:

    Great food for thought, Eric. The bottom line is, if Americans want a manned spaceflight program that does more than just ferry astronauts to and from the ISS, we’re going to have to pay big bucks for it. The commercialization of space travel might ultimately be a solution, but it’s not a short-term one.

    The only thing I know for sure is that, 1)whatever the President decides to do, folks will be unhappy, and 2) Katy will not have to evacuate.

  8. tonybot says:

    I think it’s a bad isea to rely on Russia for anything. They may end up being an adversary despite the fall of the Soviet Union. Their underhanded dealings with Iran and other dangerous nations should raise up (no pun intended) some red flags!

  9. MsKishaRenee says:

    It seems that NASA’s biggest enemy is time…it’ll take too long to get to the really exciting explorations that they’d like to achieve. After the shuttle is retired, and there is a period without American space flight, more and more Americans may lose interest without anything tangible to stimulate their space curiosity. By the time the new space vehicle(s) becomes available, the program would pretty much have to go to Mars straight away just to revive our interest in space.

  10. Doug_LCity says:

    Agree with John above about the scrawny booster that NASA has sourced. Had it not been so woefully inadequate for the task, the Constellation program would likely have been much further along and the gap would have been minimal. The ARES V is a scrawny little weakling in comparison to the Saturn V. But the lack of thrust from the ARES booster has forced NASA into making a long series of compromises and redesigns that should not have been needed had they sourced an adequate booster to begin with (as was available with Direct Launch). But Griffin squashed Direct because it didn’t fit into his ‘vision’. If the Constellation program gets cancelled, we can all thank Griffin’s hard headed devotion to ARES for that.

  11. readonly says:

    I always have a question for NASA, since NASA has sent the human beings to the moon about 40 years ago, why not exactly follow that same routes to land the moon? With the great development of the science and technology in the past 40 years, it should be pretty easy these days.

  12. John says:

    why not exactly follow that same routes to land the moon?

    NASA’s argument is two-fold:

    1) It would cost as much to re-establish the assembly lines that were shut down when Saturn ended as it would to start up new ones, and

    2) Re-using Saturn technology would not advance the state of the art while incorporating new technology into Saturn would end up being as costly as starting all over

    To be fair, there is some real data to back up their second statement. When the shuttle first launched, it used magnetic mass memory units in the computers because that’s what it had first been designed with back in the 60s. It would have cost (and did cost) billions to redesign the shuttle to use more modern technology. Changing the Saturn V from the vacuum-tube era to the digital transistor era would probably cost quite a lot and would require re-testing everything.

  13. TexasRed55 says:

    Doug, are you sure you meant to compare Ares V to Saturn V and not Ares I? Ares V is taller, and can has more lift.

  14. Deborah says:

    Obama somehow found $13 billion to give all seniors on social security $250 extra dollars this year since there was no inflation to trigger a cost of living increase. This boost is regardless of need, and ironically, seniors are the least enthusiastic about it according to polls. Surely if this were eliminated or limited to only those with pressing need, $3 billion extra dollars could be found for NASA at least for this year. And that $3 billion would act as a stimulus for technical and scientific jobs, exactly the areas we want to encourage if the US does not want to fall behind. All we need now is yet another segment of the population to become jobless.

  15. gabriellyn says:

    I am sitting on pins and needles waiting for a decision. I admit I do not have a lot of hope that funding will be increased. I think Ben put it very well and NASA will remain on life support, but just barely. We’ll only be limping into the future, if we are lucky.

  16. Eric Berger says:

    U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, of Florida, says:

    “I’ve asked the president to use money from leftover stimulus funds,” said Nelson, in a prepared statement. “I’ve also asked him to help minimize the job losses after the space shuttle is retired, in part, by transferring other NASA-related work to Cape Canaveral. He’s assured me that NASA will get enough money to do what it does best: go explore the heavens.”;


  17. bkbirge says:

    Great timelapse video of the ARES test rocket being assembled…

  18. Artemusg says:

    “…spend more money to go places — about $3 billion a year — or slowly cede our country’s leadership position in space”

    An easy call. Save the money for more important priorities.

    Or maybe devote a few thousand bucks to draft something up front that might be entitled “how more space exploration will address our current urgent national priorities”. And if that report can’t identify results that focus on energy independence, climate change, improving American education or improving our economy, I’m with the teabaggers and the conservative Republicans we have elected to represent us in Congress. Cut the spending.

    And yes, I own a home in the Clear Lake area whose value would immediately diminish as a result of decreased demand. That’s a sacrifice I am more than willing to make if it means our nation will focus on our more important needs.

  19. major says:

    ‘leadership’ issues? oh now sure…

  20. NraMan says:

    You Obama Bots listen up. If it wasn’t for NASA in conjunction with Big Blue, you folks wouldn’t be able to have the opportunity to promote your socialist propaganda via your desk tops. Try and remember that the next time you feel it is far more important to taketh from my pocketh, and giveth to another. Of course with the new revised social studies manuals for our public schools, the Moon and Neil Armstrong are out, and the pro communist loving Cesar Chavez is in. So NASA is on the chopping block as far as you socialists are concerned anyway. Isn’t that right comrades?

  21. NASA needs to be refocused on helping fix all the damage that we have caused to our planet for the last few hundred years. We have been “pissing” in our pool and our planet is sick. Once our planet is “sustainable” then we can start looking for others. The fact that we have not been contacted by an alien species is proof that there is intelligent life out there.

  22. Pat says:

    $700 billion for the banks

    $700 billion for the stimulus

    $1000 billion+ for healthcare

    Give NASA their $3 billion for gods sake.

  23. Clif says:

    How I long for the days when our country had visionary people that would take risks and strive to achieve great things. People like Goddard, von Braun, Langley, Carpenter, Cooper, Glenn, Grissom, Schirra, Shepard, Slayton, Armstrong, Aldrin, and many others led the way for us and pushed the limits of technology and human achievements. I believe the political will to commit and invest in the future of manned exploration is much weaker today than ever before. When the space programs were started we had strong national leadership and vision from President Eisenhower and Kennedy in laying out the future of space science and exploration to us clearly, and then inspiring us to move forward rapidly. There were many unknowns and high costs in every aspect of the space program, but there were much greater rewards. The decision to go to the Moon was made long before the technology existed to get us there.

    I believe the words spoken long ago are still valid today:


    John F. Kennedy

    Special Joint Session of Congress

    May 25, 1961


    John F. Kennedy

    Rice University Stadium

    Houston, Texas

    September 12, 1962

  24. hunter says:

    So if we were to double NASA’s budget, we would be spending 1% of the budget.

    How pitiful.

    The question for Houstonians is this:

    Will this be the first leg of our economic stool Obama kicks out?

    NASA, Med Center and Energy.

    Obama has big plans for them all.

    If he is successful, Houston is the next Detroit.

  25. Dave says:

    I cannot believe that US citizens would leave this decision to this man.

  26. tinyhands says:

    What a narrow-minded conclusion, that human beings in space equate to a “leadership position.”

  27. Gabacho says:

    Now is the time to shut NASA down. With the state of the economy, and Obama’s incompetence (or refusal) to solve it. Let’s shut it down. We’ve spent BILLIONS on the Space Shuttle, and they want to scrap it. We’ve spent BILLIONS on the space station, and they want to abandon it. Why should the tax payor keep footing the bill? Obama and Congress are intentionally destroying the economy and the dollar. Socialism (and the “Healthcare Reform” is much easier to push when EVERYONE is hurting. When will they inpeach this dictator?

    I’d rather have all the NASA people laid off and collect unemployement, than to keep feeding them money. By the time they get results-the USA is history anyway!

  28. SChaos1701 says:

    Anyone who doesn’t support the space program is a moron.

  29. 42 says:

    $693 billion spent so far on the war in Iraq

    $229 billion spent so far on the war in Afghanistan

    $1.8 trillion blown by the Bush tax cuts

    If we can do all that, then surely we can find a way to increase NASA’s budget by $3 billion!

  30. luckyone says:

    The money will be used to pay welfare benefits.

    Hope & Change and kool-aid for everyone.

  31. Mr_Unexpected says:

    Will Obama show NASA the money?

    This decision is way to easy for President Obama.

    He will apologize for it while declaring our most daring endeavor ever, to all of mankind is just not in “the budget”.

    He will appease and cede it to another country.

    All things being “equal”, right?

  32. minihaha5 says:

    Hey 42,

    tax cuts is not blowing away money. It is allowing those that produce an opportunity to keep it in the eeconomy.

  33. Illydar says:

    “I’d rather have all the NASA people laid off and collect unemployement, than to keep feeding them money. By the time they get results-the USA is history anyway!” It’s spelled unemployment btw.

    Nice. Just what results are you or some of these other posters looking for? If you had any knowledge of how anything in the scientific community works you would understand that NOTHING comes quickly. Too many people, like you, expect them to just whip up something in a month or two or it’s not worth the investment. How pitiful.

    You want results? How about this: Without NASA you could not use a cell phone, get the weather, use a computer, or have your groceries scanned. We would have no hurricane tracking. The hole in the ozone would still be hypothetical instead of verified. We would be looking up at the stars today and still wondering just what they truly are made of.

    If you need more go here and see just what they have done before you start spouting uneducated ideals of what a waste they are.

  34. tanstaafl says:

    Imagine how it will affect today’s young people as they see our nation surpassed by China in so may areas. Education, manufacturing, technology, space travel. Will young Americans feel good, working their WalMart jobs, as Chinese astronauts begin to colonize the moon and head to Mars? Should we be the generation of Americans that presides over this country’s demise?

    What is so exceptional about America today that will inspire young people to be creative, innovative dreamers who do things that are remarkable and the envy of the world? Nothing! We can’t even repeat a feat from 40 years ago. What higher priority, at less than 1% of the federal budget, can there be than to inspire young people?

  35. Valley View says:

    How much have we spent on the Shuttle program versus the Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity? What has been the return in scientific knowledge of the rovers versus the shuttle? Manned space flight is a waste of money. Robots are the only way to go.

  36. RightWingDino says:

    It’s become increasingly clear that it’s time to cut all space programs. We get zero benefit from putting people in space, and it does nothing but generate job safety for a bunch of physics eggheads. If China wants to throw money into space that should be their option.

    If we really needed to be in space private business would have done it long long ago.

  37. 42 says:

    minihaha5 wrote, “Hey 42,



    Where do you think federal expenditures are spent? Aside from payments to foreigners for interest on the national debt (incurred to large degree by the Bush administration’s tax cuts and war expenditures), those expenditures are spent primarily in our economy for all sorts of goods and services — including the purchase of launch vehicles and the salaries of people who work at NASA, and for NASA contractors.

  38. Melissa Pierce says:

    Ignorance is going to destroy the future of this country. For everyone who thinks NASA is a waste of time…Please feel free to throw out most technological advances in past 40 years…If NASA is not funded not only will we lose out on future advances in technology, it will kill any hope of improving the economy…Do you know what isn’t sustainable?…NATIONAL HEALTH CARE…

  39. truebeliever says:

    lllydar, while I agree with you that firing NASA scientists and engineers is shortsighted, most of your examples of NASA technology transfer have nothing to do with human space flight. The satellites that allow cell phones to work, monitor the weather, and measure astrophysical phenomena don’t need a space station or shuttle to provide their benefits. Much of NASA budgetary needs arise because of the difficult task of keeping people alive in space. Robots don’t have such expensive requirements. The NASA budget is large because we allow emotions to set our space policy, rather than logic.

    The other problem with the list of tech benefits at the web site you link to is that ignores the highly likely possibility that all those technological advances would have occured, whether we went to the moon or not. Government spending through NASA stimulated and quickened their development, but you can’t say we wouldn’t have MRIs and CAT scans by now if we didn’t have manned space flight in the 60s.

  40. Doug_LCity says:

    You’re right TexasRed, I meant to compare to the ARES I. That’s the one they’re intending to use to launch ORION. In order to use ‘the stick’, they’ve had to reduce the crew size from 6 to 4 (for ISS missions), eliminate the features that would have allowed re-use of significant portions of the vehicle, and eliminate a lot of system redundancy needed to keep the crew alive in the event of a system failure. And system failures may be more likely given the 210 day missions being planned.

  41. Ed C says:

    Another big reason that Saturn V technology is not being used is because a lot of it has been lost. Most of the people that built the thing are dead and a lot of the plans have been lost over the years. That seems weird but it is true. I doubt they could build it again if they wanted too. Just sayin’

  42. Alicial says:

    I will reiterate the opinion expressed by Schaos–Anyone who doesn’t support the space program is an idiot.

    If you want to know why, click on the links provided by the others.

  43. whoustonl says:

    No Big government, NO NASA & NO war in Iraq & NO war in Afganistan, period.

  44. Katherine says:

    I’m 25 years old and, IMHO, we need to keep the space program. Think of all the men and women who worked so hard to get to space, learned so much, and inspired so many…and now we just want to give up that legacy? Yeesh.

    And if you think that ceding control of space to China, Russia, or anyone else is a good idea, then may I introduce you to a not-so-novel concept: these guys are out to eat our lunch. If we give them space, then we may as well resign ourselves to a future where the U.S. no longer has a say in running things. Is this something you can live with, oh great leadership in Washington? Because this young person finds the idea of going down without a fight appalling.

  45. John says:

    TexasRed, the stats on the Ares V given on that wikipedia page are preliminary (and now may not be relevant at all, given the Augustine Commission’s report). Over at NASA, they do not give the final height, mass, or lifting capability for the Ares V as these are subject to change.

  46. sammy says:

    “Never mind the fact Texas receives more back from Washington than it pays in.

    Posted by: Jay Clayton at October 22, 2009 10:01 AM”

    Wrong.. Texas is a donor state..