NASA is considering "hard decisions" in its budget to fund Artemis plan

NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine has repeatedly said that Artemis' ambitious new plan to send humans to the moon in 2024 would no longer require searches in other areas of its budget, such as its wide range of scientific programs, technological research or research. aeronautical work.

The reason, he says, is simple. The surest way to torpedo the support of a program within the agency is to take the help of a third party to fund the new plan, and the surest way to lose support for Congress is to subtract from work to various field centers in the country.

"We can not cannibalize one part of the agency to feed another part of the agency," Bridenstine told Ars in April, after repeated remarks. "We can not cut the direction of the scientific mission to feed human exploration, we can not cannibalize the International Space Station to feed the Moon's mission, so if we go in that direction, which has already has been tried in the past, it will never work politically, we can not do the same thing any more and blame ourselves that it does not work. "

"Make cuts"

However, it may be exactly what is happening. Friday, at a meeting of NASA's advisory board, the agency's senior manned spaceflight leader stressed the challenge of paying for a plan to accelerate landings on the moon from the end of the years 2020 to 2024, as requested by Vice President Mike Pence at the agency. .

"I do not think we can get the full budget as new money," said Bill Gerstenmaier of NASA. "We are going to have to look for efficiencies and make internal cuts at the agency – it's there that it will be difficult." Everyone can be there when everything goes well. 39 before and an infinite amount of new funds will arrive at the agency. "

Neither Bridenstine nor Gerstenmaier said how much it would cost for the accelerated lunar program – development of the Space Launch System rocket, elements of a lunar bridge, construction of a three-stage Lander, and improvement of space suits. However, sources told Ars that the actual cost of the Artemis program was likely to be $ 6 billion to $ 8 billion a year, beyond NASA's $ 20 billion annual budget.

"I know what is the newest issue of money, but the question is whether we can find other solutions to gain efficiency," said Gerstenmaier on the board, chaired by Lester Lyles, former general of the Air Force. "WWe've already had a series of meetings where we start discussing other things we can cut, or things where we can slow things down to focus. We will do it even in my own direction. It's no longer that your thing is no longer a priority, it's always a priority, but we need to bring it back so that we can achieve those other goals. "

Board meetings are usually not broadcast or recorded, but the media and the general public can listen via a teleconference line. Gerstenmaier's remarks were part of a presentation on how he wanted to keep NASA's budget and in-depth space planning anchored in "tax realism" and how it did not want to develop lavish plans and then hope the funding would materialize. The breadth of Gerstenmaier's comments and his deliberate manner suggest that he has not failed to talk about the potential for reduction.

"We will not have a huge amount," he told council about NASA's budget. "We can get increases of 1% or 2%, which is significant, but we will not have a large, new, multi-billion dollar program – and we will have to do the same. The first thing is, we used to say, if we just had a compelling and inspiring program, a dump truck would pick us up and we would swim in dollars. it never happened. "

A "frugal" approach?

Following Gerstenmaier's remarks, Ars asked NASA how this "cut-off" discussion was in line with Bridenstine's view that certain areas of NASA's budget would not be used to fund funding. other programs. In response, the agency issued a statement including the following comment on "frugal approaches" to budget planning:

"The recent budget amendment demonstrated the unprecedented commitment of this government to seek the resources that NASA needs to reach its goal of landing humans on the surface of the moon in 2024, and Congress has also expressed its bipartisan support for the agency's objectives.With careful budget planning, we also need to protect ourselves from alternative scenarios and consider frugal approaches to make the most of every dollar in order to support efforts to reach our goal. "