NASA officials say they’re prepared for delay in Moon program

There is little anxiety among the NASA workforce about a potential delay in retiring the space shuttle program to prepare for a new exploration mission, several space agency officials said Wednesday.

At a breakfast sponsored by Government Executive, the officials pointed to a presidential campaign proposal by Barack Obama that would extend NASA's shuttle program as far out as 2015, five years later than what President Bush envisioned when he announced his Vision for Space Exploration in 2004. That announcement led to the creation of the Constellation program, which involves retiring the shuttle and building a new set of flight hardware to take Americans to the moon and possibly to Mars and beyond.

Sue Leibert, human capital manager for the shuttle program, said reaction among NASA workers about a potential delay in the Constellation program has been varied, with some employees anxious to move on to the new mission and others excited to see an extension of shuttle operations.

"At the end of the day, the program is going to end, whether it's going to end in 2010, it's going to end in 2012, or some time beyond that," she said. "We still have to keep planning it … and we're pretty good at adapting to those kinds of changes."

Joel Kearns, transition manager for NASA's space operations mission directorate, noted that there are still uncertainties about the future of the shuttle and Constellation programs, especially in regards to funding. The $789 billion stimulus package signed by President Obama earlier this month, for example, will provide $1 billion to NASA, and the agency is still working with Congress and the administration to determine how that money will be spent, Kearns said. Other funding for the agency is up in the air, he added, as Congress is considering an omnibus spending package for the remainder of fiscal 2009, and the administration is preparing its fiscal 2010 budget proposal.

"There are a lot of things coalescing right now that will start setting a new direction," Kearns said.

John Logsdon, director of the Space Policy Institute at The George Washington University, touted an Obama proposal to re-create a National Aeronautics and Space Council, led by Vice President Biden, to coordinate space policy among all federal agencies and the military. Presidential administrations have used variants of the council model during the past 50 years.

"If we want a national space program that uses in the most efficient way our human capabilities, financial resources and technical capabilities to achieve intelligence, defense, commercial and civilian goals, then there needs to be some adult management at the center of the government," Logsdon said.

Kearns said NASA officials have had six years to plan for what comes after the shuttle, unlike in 1972, when the agency had to swiftly transition from the Apollo program to building the shuttle.

Still, the agency is at risk of not retaining the workforce and skills necessary to safely fly out the remaining shuttle missions, according to Leibert. The key to retaining both civil service and contractor employees, she said, is convincing them that they will have meaningful work after the shuttle program ends.

But that effort is challenging, Leibert added, because of the recent uncertainty in federal budgeting. "It's like remodeling a house that you're still living in," she said. "If the money changes, like [it does with] continuing resolutions … you can't quite remodel as fast as you wanted to."

Jane Datta, human capital transition lead at NASA headquarters, said a multiphased study of the agency's workforce and how it will transition to Constellation has helped officials identify where they have surplus skills. When a civil servant with those skills retires or leaves, she said, rather than backfill the position, the agency can contract out the work. "The obstacle we face is that we never have a crystal ball," she said. "But as an agency, we're accustomed to planning with uncertainty. It's more of the same, and we'll take it as it comes."

Another daunting challenge to NASA's transition efforts, Kearns said, is cataloging the shuttle program's millions of pieces of hardware and other inventory, only half of which can be transferred for use on Constellation. The space suits used on the shuttle, for example, likely will be donated to museums, while other items will be sold through the General Services Administration.

The biggest challenge will be determining where the shuttle's orbiters go, Kearns added, since museums would have to pay $42 million in cleaning and shipping costs to obtain one.