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Examining NASA’s transition

A recent GAO report looks at what NASA needs to do to make sure its transition away from the Shuttle program goes smoothly.

Federal News Network Staff

October 2, 2008 4:36 pm

3 min read

By Dorothy Ramienski
Internet Editor

NASA is facing a big transition during the next two years, but will it be able to deal with all of the challenges this change will bring?

The agency’s plans to retire the Space Shuttle program and launch a new mission in space exploration prompted officials at the Government Accountability Office to take a closer look at NASA’s processes.

On Thursday’s Daily Debrief, hosts Christopher Dorobek and Amy Morris spoke with GAO’s Cristina Chaplain, who says shuttle will be retired in 2010 to make way for a new space transportation system more akin to the Apollo project.

They’re still in the midst of a lot of planning. They have completed — or pretty much completed — the early phase of that effort, which is identifying the facilities and equipment that support the shuttle. What’s still ahead is deciding what to do with all of these facilities and equipment in terms of what goes to the new program and what gets destroyed and what gets brought to other parts of NASA or the government.

One of GAO’s concerns is based on the fact that the cost of these actions isn’t really transparent in the agency’s current budget request, nor is it expected to be outlined in the 2010 proposal.

Chaplain says there are two reasons for this.

They don’t exactly know yet what will be needed by the new program, and that effects cost estimates. The second thing is, some costs that they are working on developing are not included together with more direct transition costs. [This] includes things like environmental remediation and disposing of certain pieces of equipment. While those costs may have been estimated, they’re included in other parts of the budget and are not very distinct, so you don’t have a clear, distinct picture of cost in the budget just for transition — and it’s not readily transparent.

Chaplain says these problems need to be addressed because Congress needs to know what the price tag of the transition will be. This way, she notes, Congress can get a better idea of how it can financially support NASA.

Cost isn’t the only issue, however. Chaplain says the sheer enormity of the project is also a bit daunting.

We’re talking about hundreds of facilities and over a million lines of equipment and then trying to identify what all of these things are and what may be needed for the next program. You have a lot of uncertainty right now about the shuttle program itself. There’s a lot of pressure to keep the shuttle flying.

Chaplain points out that the planned mission to the Hubble telescope was postponed until next year, which means the shuttle program’s needs might extend beyond what was originally intended.

In addition, NASA is comprised of many offices and buildings across the country — and each of those has its own way of conducting business.

Each of the NASA centers have different ways of accounting for the property and dealing with it. There’s not good information systems that are really centrally available to pull all this information together.

In its report, the GAO does not offer recommendations about how to streamline the process; instead, Chaplain says the congressional watchdog is more concerned with the transparency of costs.

Making sure that they’re all pulled together some place in the budget that Congress can make very well-informed decisions related to NASA’s budget. We really want costs to be displayed and [represented] together in some place.

Chaplain says NASA has agreed to the recommendation and is working on developing a more unified picture for their next budget.

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On the Web:

GAO – NASA: Agency Faces Challenges Defining Scope and Costs of Space Shuttle Transition and Retirement

NASA – Space Shuttle Web site