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Aviation History
1979
1979 - 0492.PDF
472 FLIGHT International, 17 February 1979 Shuttle first in Nasa budget BVDAV.D BAKER THOUGH the funds for continued Shuttle development and Orbiter production are adequate, Nasa's Fiscal Year 1980 budget is below the level requested. Unlike British Government departments, US agencies are run by specialists rather than politicians and have to justify projects to the White House each year. The Carter adminis tration is trying to eliminate what it regards as an intolerable excess of national expenditure over income. In 1978 the deficit was nearly $62,000 million, and in 1979 it will be about $45,000 million. The 1980 budget will attempt to hold the deficit down to $29,000 million, and the aim is to be back in the black by 1981, for the first time since 1969. Defence is the only category to get an increase, and Nasa is having to take its share of the cuts. Excluding funds for aeronautical research, the space agency has been allowed to request $4,424 million, 0-8 per cent of the federal budget. Nasa wanted a budget of around $4,600 million, against an Office of Management and Budget goal of $4,350 million. Nasa's 1980 budget is up 2-8 per cent in current dollars, but an expected infla tion rate of at least 7 per cent puts it below the 1979 figure in purchasing power. Nasa also faces major financial problems in the current budget, which ends on September 30. Shuttle costs have overrun and Nasa says that it must have an extra $185 million if the first-flight deadline of November this year is to be met. Nasa's 1979 budget, placed before Congress in January last year, requested $985-3 million for Shuttle development. By the end of the year that estimate had risen by 19 per cent, with an over run of $118 million on the Orbiter, $47 million on the Main Engine, $27 million on the External Tank and $36-7 million on the Solid Rocket Boosters. With $458 million spent on Orbiter and Main Engine production, Shuttle costs for 1979 will total $1,628 million compared with an anticipated $1,443 million. The current plan is to deliver Orbiter 102 (named Columbia) in April this year, Orbiter 099 (Challen ger) in September 1981, Orbiter 103 (Discovery) in December 1982, and Orbiter 104 (Atlantis) a year later. In 1978 President Carter tried to cut production funds for a fifth Orbiter, but Nasa has been fighting back. The space agency says that its four Orbiters will cost a total of $2,522 mil lion to produce, including $220 mil lion already spent on long-lead items for the fifth vehicle. If completed, a fifth Orbiter would cost only $265 mil lion more. The first and second Orbiters (Columbia and Challenger) are development models lacking the full payload capability. Nasa needs three fully capable Orbiters and will have to spend $100 million on im provements to Challenger if the fifth Orbiter is not built. Thus the true additional cost of a fifth Orbiter would be $165 million, Nasa believes that it will cost $2,500 million more to operate its space pro gramme between 1980 and 1991 if the fifth Orbiter is not authorised. More expendable rockets will have to be bought for payloads that would other wise fly by Shuttle, and payloads that should be designed exclusively for the less demanding Shuttle environment will have to be designed for a possible conventional launch. Congress agreed last September to retain the option on a fifth Orbiter until Fiscal Year 1981. A decision will be needed by then if Orbiter 105 is to fly by 1985. If the current $185 million request is approved by Congress, Columbia should make its first flight this year, though it will be 1981 before fully operational missions are possible. Five or six development flights will be flown first to qualify the Orbiter. The present Shuttle is incapable of per forming certain polar-orbit missions, and Nasa had hoped to begin work on a "thrust-augmented" version. Small solid-propellant rockets would be attached to the sides of the main boosters and, in an uprated variant, more solids placed beneath the External Tank. Nasa is keen to begin work on an augmented Shuttle by 1981 so that Defence Department missions can be carried out by 1984. Nasa is also stalled on another Shuttle development: the 25KW module designed to supply extra elec trical power to high-consumption ex periments. If started in the 1981 budget, Nasa might get the power module operational by 1985. Shuttle development and produc tion costs will all but disappear over the next five years, opening a possible NASA 1980 SPACE BUDGET ($ x MILLION) funding "wedge" that Nasa hopes to use for projects exploiting the Shuttle's reusability. But the OMB wants to use the fall in Shuttle development costs to further reduce Nasa spending, which over the past 10 years has fallen from 1 • 9 per cent of federal expenditure to 0-8 per cent. Shuttle money accounts for about half of Nasa's R&D fund. If Nasa is allowed to maintain a more or less constant budget, the funds previously allocated to the Shuttle could be spent on important new projects. No new projects were allowed in the 1980 budget, forcing more pos sible programmes into the bottleneck of Fiscal Year 1981. Nasa had hoped to make a start on the Venus Orbiter Imaging Radar (VOIR) project, which in 1984 would exploit a launch opportunity that occurs only once every seven years. VOIR will now have to compete with a proposed flight to Halley's Comet which must receive funds in 1981 if an August 1985 launch is to be achieved. Nasa is keen on the Halley flight because of its popularity among scien tists, and is currently talking with the European Space Agency about possible co-operation. This type of agreement is fast becoming a Nasa hedge against US budget cuts. With VOIR and a comet flight competing for money in the 1981 budget, plans to follow Project Viking with a Mars sample-return mission are fast evap orating. Certain of the categories in the Nasa budget have received significant increases. Space science gets a 19 per cent increase over the 1979 budget, though this is all for existing pro grammes. All money for a radio search to detect extraterrestrial life has been cut. Not surprisingly, space applications get a 21 per cent increase, with money for applied research nearly doubled and a new emphasis on agriculture supported by Landsat and weather satellites. On the other side of the coin, projects deferred include a multispectral linear Landsat array and a new oceanographic sur vey satellite. The premature loss of Seasat last year has left Nasa without any form of maritime observation until at least the mid-1980s. Spacelab applications money is down. Rarely has there been a more critical time for America's space agency. / 1980 1979 Space transportation systems (total) 1,904 2,009-5 Space Shuttle 1,366 1,628-3 Space flight operation Expendable launch vehicles Space science Space and terrestrial applications Space research and technology Energy technology Space tracking and data systems Research and development Construction of facilities, research & programme management TOTAL BUDGET 467-3 70-7 601-6 344-4 116-4 3 332-8 3,302-2 1,121-8 4,424 309-7 71-5 505-6 283-9 107-3 5 302 2,213-1 1.0E8-8 4,301-9
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