House Science Committee Leaders Johnson, Horn Criticize NASA Human Landing System Awards
WASHINGTON, May 1, 2020 (House Science Committee PR) — Yesterday, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) announced that Blue Origin, Dynetics, and SpaceX have been awarded contracts to design and develop Artemis program human landing systems, one of which NASA plans to use for a 2024 lunar landing.
“I am troubled that NASA has decided to ignore congressional intent and instead press forward with Human Landing System awards to try to meet an arbitrary 2024 lunar landing deadline,” said Chairwoman Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX). “As the Apollo program showed us, getting to the Moon and back safely is hard. The multi-year delays and difficulties experienced by the companies of NASA’s taxpayer-funded Commercial Crew program—a program with the far less ambitious goal of just getting NASA astronauts back to low Earth orbit—make clear to me that we should not be trying to privatize America’s Moon-Mars program, especially when at the end of the day American taxpayers—not the private companies—are going to wind up paying the lion’s share of the costs. I want our Nation to pursue the inspiring goals of returning to the Moon and then heading to Mars, but we need to do it sensibly and safely while we also protect the interests of the tax paying public.”
“America’s human space exploration program has inspired generations and led to discovery, development, and innovation,” said Chairwoman of the Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics, Rep. Kendra Horn (D-OK). “Returning humans to the Moon safely is an important and worthy endeavor for our nation. It is also a challenging one that requires significant investment of taxpayer dollars to achieve. I was disappointed to see that NASA’s decision on lunar landing systems development starkly contrasts the bipartisan House NASA Authorization bill and the advice of experts on minimizing risk and ensuring the highest likelihood of success in landing humans on the Moon.”
“Unfortunately, more than a year after their announcement to accelerate the Artemis program, NASA has yet to provide Congress a transparent architecture and technical and cost assessment, despite our repeated requests. The American taxpayer deserves to know their money is being spent wisely, especially if they are being asked to invest billions of taxpayer dollars in a private lunar landing system. Our nation should dream boldly and pursue aspirational goals but we have to do so thoughtfully and intentionally. I look forward to working with NASA in good faith to steer our nation’s space program in a direction that allows our country to achieve inspiring goals and explore space in a responsible and measured way.”
39 responses to “House Science Committee Leaders Johnson, Horn Criticize NASA Human Landing System Awards”
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Blah, blah, blah…
Go SpaceX!
This is the perfect opportunity to have a hearing on the matter. Both sides have some good arguments to make, and in the process the governmental model of the US is acted out. If I were NASA, I’d be asking for a hearing.
If an honest hearing in congress could be had. Much of what I have seen suggests that the various congressmen use hearings for their own talking points/camera time without serious attention to the testimony or actual facts. And certainly not holding hearings looking out for the good of the country if it interferes in any way with their pork fed reelection prospects.
That’s the nature of the system. It’s always been that way. They’re lawyers, they aggrandize and advocate for the interests they represent. Your job as someone looking to do the best job outside of any interest would be to make the technical case and address the falsehoods in the arguments of the other side by showing their technical fallacy if there is any. … If you can’t do that, you advocate back against their advocacy. Those who are interested in the technical case can gleam all kinds of information from the process.
Worst, they are politicians which causes them to forget the wisdom they learned in their previous professions. Rep. Johnson for example had a career in nursing before entering politics. That is why hearings, especially now, are nothing but political theater with each member trying to out do the other in terms of sound bites. it’s interesting to read the transcripts of Congressional Hearings in the days when no cameras were present and see how much higher quality they were. But once CSpan entered Congress there was a rapid downhill slide in quality
I guess we should just disband The Congress…..
There should at least be a test. A couple I could mention don’t/didn’t know there are three main branches of government nor what their responsibilities and limitations are.
… Just like the people they represent. I doubt any members of Congress lack an understanding of the structure of the US Government.
There is a rather junior member that made it very clear they didn’t know what branch did what and continues to make statements that reinforce their ignorance.
Of course, all of them make it sound like they have no power to do anything and the President is all-powerfull from the blame that gets quoted in the “Main Stream Media”.
Well we’ve created a runaway presidency. And we have a cult of personality running away with it right now. Don’t be coy, name the member and show a source. I’d love to see it. Congress is like high school. Cliques are real, and they let the freshmen know how close to nothing they are. A person who gets in early in life, or not having failed a lot and survived in life are not going to have enough chutzpah to balance acting within your clique vs being independent.
We’re recovering from a runaway presidency that was created in 2009.
how so?
Obama had numerous challenges by the GOP, and the GOP lost most of them.
And it is fair to say that O took very few actions on his own.
No, Obama lost most of them.
Very few actions on his own? Does the phrase, “I have a phone and a pen,” ring any bells?
But a lot of Obama’s damage was inflicted in terms of the people he appointed and the marching orders he gave to executive departments.
Actually, trump keeps trying to overstep what ANY past president ever has. THat is why trump has lost more challenges in the courts than ALL previous presidents before.
It’s Dem Presidents who are typically the big oversteppers. Obama was the worst. Trump has lost a lot of suits because he’s been sued more than any other past President. Most of the suits were filed in DC Federal District Court, which remains one of the most leftist in the nation. But initial decisions don’t necessarily settle the issues. Obama also got sued a lot and usually won at the District Court level, then got overturned on appeal. Trump seems to be trending the opposite way, losing at the District Court level, then being upheld on appeal. The final scorecard can’t be filed until all the suits have at least gone to Courts of Appeal.
Or convene a Constitutional Convention and pass an amendment based on the The Purge in which, at randomly-occurring times, it will become permissible to kill any current member of Congress for a period of 12 hours.
That says so much about you.
lol.
First he was joking.
Secondly, there is value in this. THe CONgress critters only somewhat represent their areas, but anymore, they are doing damage to America. Think about how much better America would be without McCarthy or Pelosi.
Those 2 have caused almost as much damage as Trump has (and no doubt, history will rank trump in the bottom 3 and possibly the bottom president)
Trump has mainly repaired damage wrought by his immediate predecessor but has also repaired some longer-standing damage that dates all the way back to the Clinton administration. His complete record and legacy, in any case, awaits completion of his second term.
I think the worst President in U.S. history was James Buchanan. But Barack Obama will certainly be duking it out with the ghosts of several other one-term wonders who preceded Buchanan for the runner-up spot. Obama is, without any serious competition, easily the worst two-term President in American history.
Trump dallied for two months while a pandemic took hold in the USA by years end will have killed over 100,000, and so far as many as 50,000 in a month. As for his economy being rock solid …. look how fast it fell. Just like the man, it was lipstick on a pig, but in this case it was artificial tan and hair dye.
Trump didn’t “dally.” The initial travel ban anent China was imposed in late Jan. – at which time every prominent Democrat was calling it racist and xenophobic including Veggie Joe Biden. The idiot Dem Gov. of NY and Mayor of NYC were still pooh-poohing Covid-19 through Feb. and into Mar. with DiBlasio urging Americans to keep coming to NYC and to take in a show on Broadway. He was very resistant to calling off the St. Paddy’s Day parade. Small wonder NYC quickly became Petri Dish Central.
Dems fought Trump at every turn and called him alarmist – right up until the “We’ve always been at war with Eastasia,” moment when The Narrative instantly did a 180 and Trump was suddenly heedless and sluggardly in response to THIS REALLY REALLY BIG PROBLEM!!!!
As for the deaths, it will likely never be known how many actually died of Covid-19. Several blue states seem to be inflating their statistics, most likely in a two-fer attempt to both increase the aid money they can claim from the federal government and to make Trump look bad.
The economy has definitely taken a hit. But when I heard that GDP was down only about 5% in 1Q 2020 I was rather shocked it wasn’t far worse. Making most Americans stay home and most businesses close is definitely going to take an economic toll. And quickly too – quel surprise.
The real test is how quickly the economy comes back. I think it will come roaring back pretty quickly. Trump will do everything possible to enable that.
The economy was generally godawful for so long under Obama because, as a raving lefty, he pretty much hated private business anyway and seemed to have a particular disapprobation for small business. He didn’t manage to completely tank the economy, mostly due to the burgeoning fracking revolution. Obama, of course, did everything he could to spike that, then hypocritically tried to take retroactive credit for that as well as the early upswings of the Trump economy.
So the difference this time will be that we’ve got a President in office who, when the economy is drowning, throws it a life ring – unlike the last guy who repeatedly threw it anvils.
historians, along with A LARGE majority of America and the world, disagree with you.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wi…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wi…
This one is decent:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wi…
The only ones that agree with you would be Russia.
Historians are, overwhelmingly, academic leftists. So I pay no attention whatever to the vast majority of them when they express opinions on any matter that is even modestly political – and U.S. Presidents is a subject that is certainly well beyond being modestly political.
Wikipedia is also a very unreliable source about anything with much of a political component. The vast majority of Wikipedia’s editors are Lefties.
The rest of the world? Why would I pay any attention to what foreigners think of American Presidents? Most foreigners, in my experience, are even less well-informed about the realities of American life and politics than is the case with Americans anent foreign life and politics. And that applies even to foreigners who have a generally favorable view of America and Americans. The ones who don’t tend to be even more ignorant. I worked in several nations in Western Europe for a couple years in the late 1970s so my opinion on such matters comes from abundant personal experience.
I pay equally little attention to polls of the general public on such matters. The public has become steadily more ill-educated since teachers were allowed to form unions and made to toe the progressive party line. In any case, it is generally recent Presidents who rate highest in these surveys as, with the exceptions of Lincoln and Washington, not many of the general public can any longer even name a President who was in office before they reached an age where politics and government were even concepts in their heads. Look at historical “Greatest Presidents” lists based on public polling and this is immediately obvious.
Obama was a lefty, a Democrat, and is a very recent ex-President. He’s also black, so there is an additional “Tom Bradley” factor. All these things put him pretty high up on recent “Greatest Presidents” lists based on polling – or on polling of just academic leftist historians, for that matter. Anything even approximating a disinterested view and objective evaluation of the Obama Presidency – especially in academe – is going to require the passage of at least 50 years and, unless academe is rendered something other than a leftist monopoly in the interim, even 50 years may prove insufficient. In any event, I don’t expect to be around to see that.
That I occasionally indulge a dark sense of humor?
Dark humor like showing up a state capital buildings bearing arms. Those guys are hilarious. Or that stand up comedy sketch done at that ‘protest’ at the nature preserve. You guys really are a riot.
I think the Left pretty much lost any standing to criticize the “storming” or even occupation of capitol buildings during their long-running insurrection in WI against Scott Walker.
It doesn’t hurt, once in awhile, to remind arrogant politicos why the 2nd Amerndment is in the U.S. Constitution in the first place. If those worthies interpreted the demonstrations as threats – good. That’s what they were intended to be. It is not incumbent upon the American public to stand meekly by and countenance outrageous assaults on their liberties by opportunistic megalomaniacs in statehouses and state legislatures.
You invoke the US Constitution yet lick the boots of Donald J Trump who claims supreme authority over all the states and all the governors and the entire economy. Phhhtttt, you hold no friggn’ water at all. Not only are you guys socialists too, but you’re authoritarians as well.
Not always. As you note, these are mostly lawyers and hearings are conducted somewhat like trials. The object of each side is not to get the truth out, but to put in the record as much that is favorable to one’s client and to suppress as much as possible that is not. The selection of witnesses, though, is worse than the selection of jurors in a courtroom trial as only the lawyers on the majority side have “preemptory challenges” where potential witnesses are concerned.
Jerry. Jerry? Jerry!
If I were NASA I’d be working with Congress not picking a fight. This reaction is a response to the lack of detail Jim Bridenstine has provided regarding overall costs and detailed plans.
That makes sense. While the Trump admin does have contempt for the Article 1 branch, in this case it’s probably because Jim has no idea that would survive Congressional scrutiny what the schedule or budget to complete the task is.
The detailed plan is still being worked out, but these latest HLS awards have defined another big chunk of it. As for overall costs, I believe Mr. Bridenstine quoted a figure of $35 billion over five years sometime last year.
The demands for details and costs, though, is kind of rich coming from a lot of people who were perfectly content to vote for Obamacare “to find out what’s in it” as the Nancy-ism of the day had it.
no, it is not. Read what the dems said. THey are pushing for using SLS to go to the moon regardless of costs or timeline.
Bridenstine is trying to get us to the moon. period.
Lack of detail? I’d say the supposed “detail” that committee demanded is a catch-22, impossible to comply with, and the committee damn well knew that too when they demanded it.
The very premise of the question makes it impossible to get to the moon by 2024. Which is fine by the committee, since they want the whole 2024 idea ditched, and they insist on a token flags-and-footprints one-time-only lunar landing in 2028 (if that) since they say Mars should be the goal instead.
The 2024 date is arbitrary, but setting a date helps maintain focus. If they were just to say we are going back to the moon, contractors would stretch things out as much as possible.
I don’t find it a bad idea to start penalizing companies for over-running deadlines they have agreed to if they can’t show that delays were unavoidable or there are conflicts with physical law and wants. I’m not too concerned with NASA insisting on capabilities that violate the laws of physics, but politicians would change Pi to exactly 3 if they could.
The space program in the US has been a public/private thing for most of NASA’s existence. It’s just been a matter of which side has the lead on design and decision making.
Getting to the moon with a manned mission by 2024 is tight, but not impossible. It will take the political will and budget allocations to make it happen. It won’t happen if funding is an on again, off again thing causing companies to have to stop work and lay off employees for every election and budget impasse. There also can’t be the burden of unreasonable mission objectives. Waiting until everything is ready to do a thousand things on the first mission is silly. As much as I am not in favor of “flag planting” missions, the first trip back may be mostly that just to get feet wet again. I’d be happy with just setting up a basic habitat of some kind for a stay of a week or so while astronauts corral items sent on un-crewed ships and deploy a couple of experiments. Maybe even install a RTG or two so there is month long power. A really big issue to work out is excluding dust and fines. Finding a way to cement the regolith around the base and clean up suits and rovers coming back from a trip out might be job one. Another big bonus might be finding a way to use existing caves as habitats and labs so there isn’t the limitation of only doing work during lunar dawn and dusk.
The main reason contractors take forever to do things is cost-plus contracting which provides perverse incentives to stretch things out and make them as expensive as possible. Fixed-price, milestone-based contracts don’t have that built-in perverse incentive.
They aren’t a panacea to be sure. Boeing, for one, doesn’t seem to really get the basic idea despite having been working for years under such a contract on Starliner but still mostly behaving as though it’s cost-plus.
I saw a directly analogous thing when I worked for a tutoring service some years ago. Certain cut-ups and wiseacres didn’t really grok that they were no longer in “free” public school paid for by anonymous taxpayers but in “pay for” after-hours school for which their parents or guardians were doing the paying. Sometimes explaining these facts of life resulted in better behavior. Sometimes not.
I think Boeing is quite analogous to my more incorrigible erstwhile charges. “Goofing off” has become something of a way of life there and there seems a strong reluctance to straighten up and fly right. I’m not hopeful of any real turnaround short of a bankruptcy and liquidation of Boeing with its various pieces going to new owners who will have no compunction about clearing out the deadwood.
On the general subject of getting something consequential going on the Moon starting in 2024, I think the only realistic hope of that happening is for SpaceX to keep doing its thing. If Bezos also cares to proceed in parallel, more power to him, but I still have doubts that an optimum Gradatim/Ferociter ratio has yet been achieved at Blue.
In any case, Elon and SpaceX will, correctly, view the new HLS contract as found money that will modestly improve the company’s ability to make progress on more fronts for as long as it lasts. If Congress cuts these rations, the work necessary to accomplish real objectives will continue without a hiccup in Hawthorne and Boca Chica, though anything specifically aimed at accommodating problematical NASA “assets,” like Orion, may be de-emphasized. Bezos would likely decide to do the same, though at a lower velocity. Dynetics is the HLS contractor most likely to be forced out if Congress is really insistent on messing with HLS and Artemis more broadly. That would be too bad as their lander is a nice bit of kit and could be very useful in ways not well-suited to use of HLS Starship.
But that still remains to be seen. The current House is certainly quite hostile to this administration’s Moon plans but the next House may not be to the same degree. And then there is the fact that the Senate is not the House and both have to be involved to get anything passed in signable form. The Senate has a long history of getting more of its way in conference than the House. I see no obvious reason for HLS and/or Artemis to be an exception.
Interesting that it’s now the Democrats that are supporting OldSpace. When the Republicans were in charge in the House, it was the Republicans supporting OldSpace. What the…
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. So true – no wonder Daltrey screamed.
Well, once commercial crew starts flying, hopefully within a few weeks, the arguement about “contracting experiments” and safety will get weaker. Of course, they’re going to the ISS that was built and is maintained by a long series of dockings, but whoever is in charge in Congress argues that dockings are “too risky”, so logic and even evidence won’t necessarily prevail
The Space Pork Caucus has always been bi-partisan. Just like the Cheap Labor Caucus.
what jackasses.
Such twisted approaches.
Under O, the dems (specifically, O/Bolden/Garver) pushed Commercial crew.
In many ways, it was like W/Griffin pushing COTS.
CONgress wanted neither, but the pres/NASA directors pushed private space.
BUT, GOP fought private space under both, and now we have the idiot dems pushing old space.
Congrats to Trump/Pence/Bridenstine on this one. Hopefully, we can land SX on the moon BEFORE trump leaves. While I want him gone, he at least deserves to take some credit for pushing this.