The sunset of the American space

Well-known truth: astronautics-a business card of aspirations and scientific and technical levels of the country. Judging by the 2012 financial year, the US budget, which was published on February 14, is no longer able to maintain the usual status of the first space power of the world.

Budget: How is it done

Normally, the process of layout and coordination of the budget starts in the fall of the year before October 1 - the date of the beginning of the next financial year (F.G.). Ministries and departments - budget administrators - agree on their requests with the Budget Department of the White House, and in February a recisted project is transferred to Congress for consideration and approval.

A general application for a group of budget managers (in our case, these are the Ministry of Trade and Justice and a group of departments responsible for scientific projects-the management of scientific and technical policy, the National Aeronautics and Cosmos-NASA and the National Scientific Fund) is the basis for the corresponding budget law-one of the 12 or 13 bills on the allocation of financing (Appropriations Bill), which are together together. Form the annual budget of the United States.

In the spring and summer, the assignment committees of both chambers of the Congress are preparing for approval at plenary sessions two options for the draft law. As a rule, they differ, and the compromise is developed by the conciliation commission. He goes to the vote of both chambers and enters the signature of the president.

Normally, this should happen until October 1, but this rarely happens. Now, for example, it has already expired for almost five months of 2011, which began on October 1, 2010 and will end on September 30, 2011, and the budget has not yet been adopted! In such cases, the congress draws up a resolution on the extension of financing, which has the status of the law, and the departments receive funds at the same level and in the same areas as in the budget of the previous year. This time, it seems, the 2011 budget will not be approved at all, and it will be replaced by another resolution that extends financing 2010 F.G. for the entire current year [1].

In parallel with the law on the allocation of financing, the Authorization Bill Law may be adopted. He also talks about what kind of cosmic NASA projects should be done, what priorities to be guided and what is not entitled to do. It even contains articles indicating the amounts for the next year or several years, but the latter have no practical significance. The treasury transfer funds to the budget managers only in accordance with the Law on the allocation of financing.

Victims of unsecured ambitions

Seven to eight years ago, before the death of Colombia, the NASA budget was at the level of about 15.5 billion dollars per year, of which 4.0 billion was supposed to be in all directions of space science, about 1.6 billion and the scientific program of the International Space Station (ISS) -1 billion. Operation of the Space Shuttle system was about 4 about 4 billion, and another 1.7 billion went to the construction and maintenance of the ISS. About 1.6 billion was released for promising research and OCD. The rest of the funds went to ensure space missions, to work in the field of aviation and educational programs.

In January 2004, President George Bush declared the goal of the American space program the return of astronauts to the moon until 2020 in order to master and create a lunar base. At the same time, he ordered to complete the construction of the ISS with the help of shuttle and from 2010 to stop the operation of the reusable transport system.

The Constellation program proposed by Bush did not receive adequate financial support - not because the Congress opposed it, but due to the fact that NASA requested by the government grew only at the pace of inflation (see schedule).

For six years, from 2005 to 2010, the concept of promising manned ships and carriers for them was formed. The Orion’s multi -purpose six -seater ship was intended for flights to the ISS and in the near -moon orbit, and the Altair heavy lunar module was intended for the delivery of astronauts and cargo to the surface of the moon and for returning to the near -moon orbit to Orion. Expeditions were planned according to a one and a half -turned scheme: “Orion” - on a heavy media “Ares I”, and “Altair” - on the superheavy rocket “Ares V”. In addition to the "architecture" of the lunar expedition, NASA experts draw a mission plan with landing on Mars. They managed to make “in iron” and even launch the experimental version of “Ares I” without a second stage, as well as to cook the body of the first mock -up copy of the Orion ship.

For six years, approximately $ 15 billion was spent on the Constellation program. Since these works were inscribed in an unchanged (taking into account inflation) total amount of NASA budget, someone had to “pay a banquet”. The first victim of reduction in expenses was the project of the heavy AMS Jimo for studying Jupiter satellites, with a nuclear reactor as a power source. Since 2007, the United States has reduced more than three times the financing of scientific research on its ISS segment and for a long time rushed with the idea of ​​flooding the station already in 2015. With difficulty Russia and other partners have broken the states to increase the crew of the station to six people and extend its work until 2020

When drawing up a budget for 2007, the “Cosmic Science” was subjected to this robbery - over this and three next year, $ 4.7 billion was cut off from it. A year later, the independent theme of “Research of Mars” was eliminated, pouring it into the general topic “Research of planets”.

NASA budget draft for 2012 F.G. (amounts in million dollars)

The implementation of the program of delivery of the Martian soil was first postponed from 2011 - 13 to 2022-24, and then they tried unsuccessfully, consistently abandoning all other Martian projects. The result today is this: in the promising Martian program there is only one joint project with Europe with the EXOMARS project with implementation in 2018 and later. As we will see later, the list of victims of the lunar adventure is by no means exhausted.

With the change in the administration in January 2009, the Constellation program was revised. By the fall, a special commission led by Norman Augustine established that it would take twice as many means to create a technique for mastering the moon than is ready to allocate the US government, and its operation is one and a half times. As a result, in February 2010, President Barack Obama announced the closure of the program without replacing it with something more meaningful. The US aerospace industry and the Congress met this decision, rightly seeing in it the delivery of a manned program for the mercy of Russia and private American firms developing their transport ships instead of Orion.

The last word

For the current 2011 F.G. For NASA, exactly 19 billion dollars were requested, but apparently, only 18.4 billion for 2012 fe.g. The 18.7 billion was requested, as much as the NASA actually got in 2010. Thus, financing of the space agency passed the maximum and began to fall in current prices and even stronger - taking into account inflation. Moreover: if a year ago, Obama was ready to make an exception for NASA, freezing the budget of other ministries and departments, then this time the agency did not receive any advantages.

NASA budget

What is it planned to spend the funds of the 2012 budget?

NASA budget draft for 2012 F.G. (amounts in million dollars)

The authors of the budget once again reviewed the promising space program. If in 2011 the project was laid in large funds for research and experimental work, which “will allow to sharply reduce the duration and cost of interplanetary flights in the future”, now NASA is forced to return to the “gross force method”: to continue to create a promising multi -purpose ship on the “Orion” base ($ 1010.2 million) and immediately begin to create a super -heavy carrier of SLS with a lifting capacity 100-130 tons based on the elements of the Space Shuttle system (1800.0 million).

Topics related to global warming and the role of anthropogenic factors are traditionally important for the Democrats administration. The draft budget is reflected very clearly: more funds are allocated for the study of land than all other planets combined, and there are no “new starts” at all - not a single new project has been approved for any new project.

The "earth" budget provides financing the following projects: a device for studying Glory aerosols; Aco-2 satellite for the analysis of a carbon cycle; satellites GPM and SMAP to measure the amount of precipitation and soil moisture; ICESAT-2 apparatus on the study of polar ice balance; The experimental NPP weather consulture and the LDCM remote sensing device, compatible according to the Landsat system.

The “planetary” subsection includes the launch of the JUNO station into the Jupiter system and the heavy Marso-da MSL, as well as the small AMS Grail to study the gravitational field of the moon. The creation of the Maven apparatus continues to study the evolution of the atmosphere of Mars and the small Ladee satellite for the study of the lunar exosphere and the dust environment. The United States is not planning any lunar landing devices.

The document costs a complete silence in February 2009. The project of the EJSM expedition to the Jupiter system and its satellites of Europe and Ganyveda, which was selected in February 2009, in particular, in particular, for the existence of life on them. Obviously, funds for the planetary mission of the “flagship” class with orbital and landing devices with a total cost of about $ 2 billion are not and not expected.

In the field of heliophysics and sunny and earth ties, RBSP projects are being implemented on the study of the radiation zones of the Earth, the magnetospheric system Magnitospheric Multiscale and the solar observatory IRIS. The preliminary design of the Solar Probe Plus solar probe begins to launch in 2018

The space observatory JWST is highlighted in an independent topic. This astronomical megaproekt, on which 3 billion dollars have already been spent on and more than $ 1 billion before launch in June 2014, still behaved like a cuckoo in a nest, depriving the remaining devices in the field of space astrophysics. Now they will have a chance to survive, but there are only a little of them: the Sofia aircraft observatory, the small satellite-telescope Nustar, the Gems apparatus to study the conditions in the vicinity of black holes ... And that’s it!

Even the search and research work on the SIM space interferometer project and the Mission to study the “dark energy” of JDEM. The previously claimed LISA projects (search for gravitational waves, together with ECA), IXO (International X -ray Observatory) and TPF (search for land -like planets) are not mentioned at all.

About the prospects

Today, NASA is operating more than a dozen research devices that study the Universe in all ranges of waves, work at Mars and Saturn, fly to Mercury and Pluto, explore the moon, asteroids and comets. But the future of American astronautics looks very negligent. To internal problems - the Czech with promising manned plans and a chronic lack of funds for scientific projects - may soon be added external related to the general state of the US economy and the US budget.

The fact is that the project of the American budget-2012 is a reversed with a tremendous shortage. At the moment, the excess of income expenses (respectively 3729 and 2627 billion dollars) is 42%, but the experience of previous years shows that the results are much worse than forecasts. So, according to the results of 2011, F.G. It is expected to exceed income expenses not by 44%, but by 76%, which means that the US economy is seriously ill and that Barack Obama's confident speeches about the fight against a deficiency cost a little.

The only thing that is saving America from bankruptcy is the fact that it takes four times more in a month than it earns, and gives it less than it takes. However, this circus number cannot continue endlessly.

Igor Lisov

1. The budget passage is convenient to track on the website http://thomas.loc.gov/home/Approp/App11.html