Mission to Planet Earth May Be Vulnerable to NASA Budget Cuts
On May 6, the House science subcommittee on space examined the fiscal year 1994 budget request for NASA’s Office of Mission to Planet Earth. This office, of which the Earth Observing System (EOS) is the cornerstone, was split off from the Office of Space Science and Applications during an internal NASA reorganization in March.
NASA’s Acting Associate Administrator for Mission to Planet Earth, Shelby Tilford, began by reviewing the history of the EOS program. Originally designed as an ambitious two-platform program with a projected cost through the year 2000 of $17 billion, EOS has gone through several descopings in the past year and a half. In 1991 the funding profile was reduced by Congress from $17 billion to $11 billion. Again, during NASA’s cost-cutting exercises last summer, the program was reduced by another 30 percent. It is now projected to cost $8 billion through 2000, but even this reduced profile requires a doubling of the budget from fiscal 1993 to 1995.
Tilford listed the changes made as a result of the descoping process. The two large platforms were split up into a larger number of smaller, similar spacecraft. Program content was reduced by eliminating one major instrument and its associated data system and cutting back on additional instruments. Tilford estimated that this led to a savings of “slightly over $1 billion.” Increasing the program’s risk by reducing funding for contingencies contributed to a savings of about $700 million, and “process improvements,” resulting in reduced staff and paperwork, were responsible for approximately $900 million in savings. Relying on other countries to provide certain data eliminated from the EOS program saved $218 million.
When subcommittee chairman Ralph Hall (D-Texas) questioned the savings from process improvements, Tilford explained that since the Challenger accident, NASA had built up a system of excessive documenting and double-checking. He said that many thought the agency had “gone too far,” and needed to streamline operations and take some increased risk. Tilford stressed, though, that this philosophy was not intended to apply to the manned space program.
Hall pulled no punches in asking, “what would happen if . . . Congress is unable to provide the full budget growth required for NASA?” Specifically, he asked what the consequences would be if the EOS budget fell $450 million short by fiscal year 1995. Tilford responded that there were several options: the program could be “slipped,” or delayed; or further reductions could be made to the science content. He said he would try to maintain the AM-1 (the first EOS platform, due to be launched in June 1998) and critical elements of the data systems, “then try to decide which pieces of the program not to do.” He warned, however, that a lot of data measurements had already been eliminated from the program, and with further reductions, he did not believe the program could provide the data necessary to answer many of the uncertainties of global climate change.
