In October, NASA announced that the $1.5-billion Mars Science Laboratory (MSL), a car-size rover planned for launch this fall, had become the $2-billion Mars Science Laboratory. When first conceived, it was the $650-million Mars Science Laboratory. Even more egregious is the $1-billion-make-that-$4.5-billion James Webb Space Telescope, successor to Hubble. Complex projects of any kind—not only in the space program—always cost more than anticipated. But experts say the agency could—and needs to—do better.
“We have to accept the fact that there will be some cost overruns, but I think a lot of it could be mitigated if we managed things differently,” insists Sushil K. Atreya of the University of Michigan, a member of the MSL team and of a National Research Council (NRC) panel that evaluated NASA’s planetary exploration program last year.
The panel’s prognosis was bad. Between ballooning costs and shrinking budgets, NASA has had to delay or cancel many projects. Some worry that Congress may never trust it with ambitious future projects, such as bringing samples of Mars back to Earth for analysis, which scientists feel is ultimately the only way to tell whether the Red Planet was once inhabited. “As a result of the disregard for cost control, I’m now pessimistic that Mars sample return can ever happen,” says Alan Stern, who was NASA associate administrator for science until resigning last March in protest at the agency’s handling of MSL overruns.
It is not as if agency officials are unaware of the problem. Every project goes through independent evaluations and sets aside about a third of its budget as “reserves” for contingencies. But this is never quite enough to hold the line. “In an organization run almost exclusively by engineers and scientists, the technical will always supersede the financial,” says Humbolt Mandell of the University of Texas at Austin, a former high-level manager for the space shuttle and space station. The competition among project proposals reinforces this inclination; to get funded, projects have to promise the moon (sometimes literally).
Many experts argue that NASA should invest more in technology development. The agency used to have a stand-alone program to invent rockets, power supplies and communications systems that science missions could then pull off the shelf—making it easier to price them out. That program is now gone, and some scientists argue that MSL is one victim. “I think the cost of everything was severely underestimated because they didn’t have enough good information, because not enough investment had been made in the technology,” concludes Wesley Huntress of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, co-chair of the NRC panel.
Longer lead times could also mitigate overruns. Right now designing a spacecraft takes about a year and a half and 15 to 20 percent of the mission’s total budget. “It’s rather short,” Atreya says. An extra year or more would give engineers more time to nip problems in the bud.
To plug gaps, NASA headquarters should also maintain its own reserves, amounting to maybe 5 percent of the agency’s science budget, says the University of Michigan’s Lennard Fisk, until recently chair of the NRC Space Studies Board. Otherwise, when a project comes up short, NASA either cancels it (which can be expensive, if a new effort has to start from scratch) or raids another project for the money (which disrupts it, so it will probably end up overrunning, too).
Stern, though, argues that none of the above would have saved MSL. He says that the initial cost guesstimate was unrealistic and that managers failed to scale back the project once they realized it was going to break the bank. “No one ever made any compromises to try to keep it on cost,” he maintains. In extreme cases, NASA should hit the abort button, Mandell says: “Putting the absolute kill levels on a program ahead of time and sticking with them will force people to be less optimistic and to build in more reserves.”
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Add CommentGeorge Musser's article cited the challenges of developing cutting-edge NASA missions within fiscal bounds, such as the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) and James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). Grappling with uncertain cost projections for first-of-a-kind missions is an ongoing issue for NASA. Over the past few years we have thoroughly reviewed and updated NASAs cost estimating approach.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNASA only commits to a cost and schedule after a detailed study is completed to ascertain the technology readiness, manufacturing capabilities, and funding availability. Typically this occurs when preliminary engineering designs are completed and when the fiscal and manufacturing constraints are understood--in essence when we know enough to have confidence in our estimates. It is at this point that NASA commits to our stakeholders in the White House and Congress to build and operate a mission for a particular cost and schedule. In some cases, as with JWST, a thorough test and evaluation phase was required before a commitment could be made. This test and evaluation phase began in 1999 and included a set of ten key technology development milestones achieved in 2007.
For MSL, NASA committed to a cost of $1.6 billion in 2006. For JWST, NASA plans to make a cost commitment to our stakeholders in early 2009.
By contrast, the decadal planning process looks over a decade or more to determine which science and missions could result in breakthrough discoveries. Surveys are based primarily on the current state of scientific understanding, preliminary estimates of technology readiness, and rough estimates of cost. The decadal survey cost numbers quoted in Musser's article never represented the NASA commitment for MSL and JWST.
The MSL and JWST missions aim to revolutionize science, which is why they are top priorities in the decadal surveys for their respective fields. JWST will achieve ten-fold gains in performance over the Hubble Space Telescope for roughly the same cost when adjusted for inflation. MSL will provide a state-of-the art, long-lived, mobile laboratory on Mars at less than half the cost (when adjusted for inflation) of the stationary Viking missions in the 1970s.
NASA seeks to improve its projected early cost estimation methods for future frontier missions. When NASA commits to a mission in a confirmation review, we strive to develop that mission within its estimated costs. We are working constructively with the scientific community on their next decadal surveys to further improve this process. Balancing fiscal constraints with extraordinary scientific promise often leads to difficult decisions, including cutbacks in capabilities and delays in starting new projects.
The Hubble Space Telescope faced similar problems with its early cost estimates, but hopefully no one would deny that Hubble was worth our nation's investment.
Jon Morse, Director, NASA Astrophysics Division
James Green, Director, NASA Planetary Science Division
Building intricate, leading-edge, highly-innovative spacecraft is quite dissimilar to manufacturing an automobile or dishwasher where technologies have already been developed. The initial cost of research and development of a new spacecraft is reimbursed many fold as the technologies developed and the scientific information gained during exploration are channeled back into society. NASA is to be applauded for its many sterling achievements.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe seem to be overlooking another tack here. Whenever anyone project osts, they will inevitably lowball the estimate. If Nasa had told Congress they wanted 5 billion for a new telescope, do you think it would have been funded? Of course not. But if they have a 1 billion budget, their chances are much greater. And we all know how averse we are to spending a billion dollars and then cancelling the program due to over-runs.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe other thing to consider is that if an Agency predictably estimates their costs at 50% of the actual (or whatever fraction), you need to start revising your methods of estimation - either that, or Congress just needs to double/quintuple all estimates from NASA and approve/deny the project based on this inflated value. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice shame on me.
I've worked for government and learned that you always underestimate budgets to play the numbers game. When budgets are due and are to be cut back 7%, you lower fundemental costs to ensure that funding is available to less critical programs. You always run into cost overruns because those life-support programs are required to operate.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAt the end of the fiscal year, you spend what monies are left or risk losing them in the next budget year.
The upside to that is that the private sector reaps the benefits at the time because all that money is spent purchasing new equipment.
The end of the cold war spelled the end of the cold war budgets for NASA. Perhaps a space race with China will reinitiate programs that kept America on top.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNot everyone pads their budgets, albeit in this funding environment those who don't unfairly will lose out. But the whole concept of trying to nickel and dime technology and still be leading edge is laughable. Yes, a few university lab grade robots have done well for themselves on Mars, but there is only so much you can learn that way. By definition every experiment will not have been done before (if they were, nobody would approve the launch) and the unknown costs money. The first computers cost millions and now you can get more computing power for your desktop for $300. That does not mean the first computer builders were wasteful or negligent, they just didn't know what they were doing, had to first identify and solve the problems that existed at the time and had to do so with existing or developed technology. Things have progressed and now we can do better.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPioneers should not be penalized for being thorough, cautious and for putting redundancy into any design. The first moon landing took exhorbitant amounts of cash, sent some inexperienced and ill-prepared men certainly to their death and was one of the triumphs of the last century. Sure we are trying to take the man out of the equation now to reduce costs, but we will quickly find that quick and dirty experiments raise more questions than they answer. The more important question we need to ask is whether we feel the need to explore and learn more about the universe we live in, or whether we are content to stay on island Earth. If that's the case, I'd recommend we start treating it better.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGeorge Musser, author of Space sticker Shock- Economics at NASA, suggests that the agency couldand needs todo better, in the area of finances. In light of this economic downturn and official depression, NASA is seeing shrinking budgets, but is this what our nation needs? Over the last fifty years NASA has done many wonders for this country as well as the world. From going to the moon, to the launching of countless weather satellites, to building a space station, and visiting every planet in the solar system, it has explored humankinds final frontier. Even more importantly, it has produced countless essential tools to our everyday lives from computers to cell phones. And just this past year NASA has helped US Olympians win record-breaking gold medals by designing their swimsuits. All this and NASA still only gets 1% or 17.5 billion dollars of the national budget per year!
First and foremost, President Obamas administration must take into account that investing in NASA for the last fifty years was one of the best decisions the government has made. It is also important for them to realize that investing more in NASA now may pay off in the near future. Exploration of the universe has always been the leading goal of the agency, but to get there, they have miniaturized computers, built essential weapons systems and created technologies that would have never been imagined. So in their quest to expand humankind, they have actually made the world smaller. However, many people frown at the idea of spending money on exploring the universe because they still see it as a vast empty space, and that nothing can come from it for them. But what if Christopher Columbus decided not to explore the vast empty space of the Ocean in search of a new unknown world? What if this generations priceless discovery, like Columbuss, is out there just beyond our current grasp?
Now to put things in perspective, the War in Iraq and Afghanistan has cost America 600 billion dollars- yes thats a 6 with eleven 0s behind it- and what has anyone gained from it? A depression. Imagine what NASA could have done with just a fraction of that money. We could all be packing up our bags to go on a space vacation by now! All in all, we need to start reassessing where this nations budget goes, and even though NASA may be put on the backburner behind the depression for a while, pioneers cannot be penalized for being cautious and thorough.
Michael Ferrino
3300 Race Street Apt# 301
Philadelphia, Pa 19104
MDF29@drexel.edu
Mr. Ferrino: It is estimated that 911 cost the American economy $100 billion. A weapon of mass destruction employed in an American city would make 911 look like a walk in the park. Albert
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI see lots of excuses for the inevitable. Cost overruns. What about committing a percentage for ethical research and elimination of research fraud. implementing this would save lots of money.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.bccmeteorites.com/misconduct-planetary.html
I may be mis-reading this but I translate as:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe are Scientists (capital S) not mere "makers of things" and society should be happy to pay whatever the cost because it will eventually be worth it. I have heard this before and understand the ego and the lack of self discipline that academics bring to the real world of projects. Yes, leading edge technologies can pay indirect rewards down the line but the new economic reality is that we just can't afford everything any more. Wish we could but just can't. Could NASA and other such agencies impliment a policy of > 15% overrun == automatic project cancellation? Would this eventually force better up-front estimates? I know that some "innocent bystanders" would be lost, but I'm afraid that the whole lot will be lost instead with the loss of trust in Congress. We are about to face the fact of letting people starve & die w/o good healthcare because we can't continue to pay for everything anymore. Pretending that things are the same now as in the "American Century" (last) is, I fear, a loosing strategy. I'd be interested in hearing from those who might be inside this struggle as to whether this might work. Or am I as "out there" as Dr. Gortenbull?
NASA is worse than the Post Office. NASA is 50,000 old 'permanent' government employees who have learned how to milk the system. They hire their cousins, nepotism is rampant. They have learned how to use contractors as 'second class' labor, while they get 'bonuses' for doing nothing. 20 years, and NASA has produced close to nothing. The shuttle was operated by US Aerospace, a Boeing subsidiary.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt is time to end NASA. Create a new smaller agency with clear goals. There are many good scientists and engineers in USA, ... but not in NASA.