{"id":44857,"date":"2024-09-13T01:32:13","date_gmt":"2024-09-12T17:32:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/eminent-officials-say-nasa-facilities-some-of-the-worst-theyve-ever-seen\/"},"modified":"2024-09-13T01:32:13","modified_gmt":"2024-09-12T17:32:13","slug":"eminent-officials-say-nasa-facilities-some-of-the-worst-theyve-ever-seen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/eminent-officials-say-nasa-facilities-some-of-the-worst-theyve-ever-seen\/","title":{"rendered":"Eminent officials say NASA facilities some of the \u201cworst\u201d they\u2019ve ever seen"},"content":{"rendered":"

A panel of independent experts reported this week that NASA lacks funding to maintain most of its decades-old facilities, could lose its engineering prowess to the commercial space industry, and has a shortsighted roadmap for technology development.<\/p>\n

\u201cNASA\u2019s problem is it always seems to have $3 billion more program than it has of funds,\u201d said Norm Augustine, chair of the National Academies panel chartered to examine the critical facilities, workforce, and technology needed to achieve NASA\u2019s long-term strategic goals and objectives. Augustine said a similar statement could sum up two previous high-level reviews of NASA\u2019s space programs that he chaired in 1990 and 2009. But the report released Tuesday put NASA\u2019s predicament in stark terms.<\/p>\n

Grumbling about crumbling infrastructure<\/h2>\n

Around 83 percent of NASA\u2019s facilities are beyond their design lifetimes, and the agency has a $3.3 billion backlog in maintenance. When you consider NASA\u2019s $250 million estimate for normal year-to-year maintenance, it would take a $600 million uptick in NASA\u2019s annual budget for infrastructure repairs to catch up on the backlog within the next 10 years.<\/p>\n

To members of Congress or the White House, backing a new NASA mission to the Moon or a space telescope to probe the deepest reaches of the Universe is often more attractive than investing in facility maintenance. The former initiatives grab headlines and create jobs. Most of NASA\u2019s facilities across the country are rated \u201cmarginal to poor\u201d in condition, according to a presentation to the National Academies last year by Erik Weiser, NASA\u2019s director of facilities and real estate.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn NASA\u2019s case, the not-uncommon tendency in a constrained budget environment to prioritize initiating new missions as opposed to maintaining and upgrading existing support assets has produced an infrastructure that would not be viewed as acceptable under most industrial standards,\u201d the panel wrote in its report. \u201cIn fact, during its inspection tours, the committee saw some of the worst facilities many of its members have ever seen.\u201d<\/p>\n

,<\/p>\n

\u201cSince the year 2010, the NASA budget for missions has gone up by 8 percent,\u201d Augustine said. \u201cMeanwhile, the budget for mission support has dropped by 33 percent. If you do a little arithmetic, it shows that every dollar of mission support budget today has to support 50 percent more mission activity than was the case in 2010, not that long ago.\u201d<\/p>\n

NASA is dealing with these infrastructure shortfalls as the agency pursues the most challenging missions in its 66-year history.<\/p>\n

\u201cViewed in terms of both the architectural complexity and the technical complexity, NASA today\u2014for example, in the Artemis program to land on the Moon a few years from now\u2014is taking on challenges that far surpass anything that was faced in the Apollo program,\u201d Augustine said.<\/p>\n

\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

This chart shows the condition of NASA facilities, divided by center and discipline. A red circle means poor, yellow means fair to marginal, and green means compliant. The size of the circle corresponds to the number of facilities at each center.<\/p>\n<\/figure>\n

All of NASA\u2019s centers have facilities the agency considers marginal, but Johnson Space Center in Houston has the facilities with the worst average score. Johnson oversees astronaut training and is home to NASA\u2019s Mission Control Center for the International Space Station and future Artemis lunar missions. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, which develops and operates many of NASA\u2019s robotic interplanetary probes, and Stennis Space Center in Mississippi, used for rocket engine testing, are the only centers without a poor infrastructure score.<\/p>\n

These ratings cover things like buildings and utilities, not the specific test rigs or instruments inside them. \u201cYou can have a world-class microscope and materials lab, but if the building goes down, that microscope is useless to you,\u201d Weiser told the National Academies panel in a meeting last year.<\/p>\n

The panel recommended that Congress direct NASA to establish an annually replenished revolving working capital fund to pay for maintenance and infrastructure upgrades. Other government agencies use similar funds for infrastructure support. \u201cThis is something that will require federal legislation,\u201d said Jill Dahlburg, a member of the National Academies panel and former superintendent of the space science division at the Naval Research Laboratory.<\/p>\n

,<\/p>\n

Thinking long-term<\/h2>\n

The panel also found that NASA lacks a specific long-term strategy to ensure that the agency develops the right technologies needed for future missions. In the panel\u2019s meetings with agency employees, \u201cwe often heard the comment that it doesn\u2019t make any sense to try to do long-range planning for organizations like NASA,\u201d Augustine said. \u201cOur committee takes exception to that.\u201d<\/p>\n

The federal government works on one-year budget cycles, and overall plans for government spending only go out every five years. This doesn\u2019t match up with the time NASA needs to see its missions through from concept to completion. \u201cNASA\u2019s activities, its missions, generally entail decades of work, or at least a decade of work,\u201d Augustine said.<\/p>\n

While NASA officials can\u2019t do anything about the federal budget process, the panel urged the agency to determine \u201cneed dates\u201d for mission-critical technologies and to prioritize technology development efforts.<\/p>\n

Ed Crawley, a professor of engineering at MIT, said the review board identified 10 types of technologies NASA and its contractors must develop to achieve the agency\u2019s goal of a sustained human presence on the Moon and future crew expeditions to Mars. Most critical, Crawley said, are in-space power and propulsion to push large masses around Earth, the Moon, and Mars; entry, descent, and landing technologies for spacecraft traveling to the Red Planet; and radiation safety for humans.<\/p>\n

\u201cI call them the three miracles that we need to get to Mars,\u201d Crawley said. \u201cSome progress has been made over the last decade\u2026 but there\u2019s a lot of work to be done, and each of these can be viewed as a relatively expensive standalone project that has to be integrated into a larger set of missions.\u201d<\/p>\n

Competing for the best<\/h2>\n

The panel members also spotlighted concerns they heard from NASA employees that an increasing reliance on commercial partners could decay the skills of the agency\u2019s workforce. The committee acknowledged the successes of NASA\u2019s commercial cargo and crew program, which are based on fixed-price service contracts, but cautioned that excessive use of such contracts puts NASA employees in oversight roles rather than hands-on engineering jobs.<\/p>\n

,<\/p>\n

This puts NASA at risk of losing its most talented engineers, who might move to companies for more rewarding and higher-paying work. \u201cVery few of the nation\u2019s most innovative scientists and engineers would likely seek or remain in such pure oversight positions,\u201d the panel wrote.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s the committee\u2019s consensus view that the United States would be best served for its future by continuing to have engineering prowess in NASA and not have the agency just become a funding pass-through or a contract monitor,\u201d said Kathy Sullivan, a retired space shuttle astronaut and former administrator of NOAA.<\/p>\n

NASA\u2019s commercial partners often rely on the agency\u2019s technical expertise and facilities. SpaceX launches rockets from a NASA-owned launch pad, tested its first Crew Dragon spacecraft inside a NASA vacuum chamber, and leaned on NASA experts to develop Dragon and design its astronaut-training program. NASA has numerous agreements with other commercial companies to provide expertise and assistance.<\/p>\n

\u201cIndustry actually values having an agency like NASA that understands the technology, that\u2019s not just going to sit back and dole out dollars,\u201d said Lester Lyles, a retired Air Force general.<\/p>\n

Hans Koenigsmann, SpaceX\u2019s former vice president of build and flight reliability, said NASA\u2019s use of service contracts, like the agreement it has with SpaceX for crew and cargo transportation, has led to \u201csome amazing progress\u2026 But it also leaves some of the NASA workforce a bit concerned about their future and how much hands-on work on NASA\u2019s side itself will be done in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n

The panel recommended that NASA set specific criteria for fixed-price service contracts to avoid using these kinds of agreements on programs involving immature, early-stage technologies. \u201cWhere such contracts have faced issues is where invention, significant development, one-of-a-kind situations, or uncertain requirements are involved,\u201d the panel wrote.<\/p>\n

NASA is using fixed-price contracts with SpaceX and Blue Origin to develop the Human Landing System for the Artemis program. The human-rated landers will ferry astronauts between lunar orbit and the Moon\u2019s surface. SpaceX will provide a version of its powerful Starship rocket as a lunar lander, and Blue Origin is working on its own system called Blue Moon.<\/p>\n

\u201cGiven the difficulty of this endeavor, it is likely the full capabilities of NASA and the contractors will be necessary for a national program of this complexity and importance to be assured of success,\u201d the National Academies panel wrote in its report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A panel of independent experts reported this week that NASA lacks funding to maintain most of its decades-old facilities, could lose its engineering prowess to the commercial space industry, and has a shortsighted roadmap for technology development. \u201cNASA\u2019s problem is it always seems to have $3 billion more program than it has of funds,\u201d said […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":44859,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44857","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44857"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44857"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44857\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44859"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44857"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44857"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44857"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}