| NASA's Budget Outlook - Having Too Much to Do with Too Little? |
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bridges vol. 10, June 2006 / Feature Article
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In 1990, a committee charged by the White House with conducting a sweeping review of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) found that the agency's budget was inadequate for the slate of programs being executed. Known as the Augustine committee, after chairman Norman Augustine, their report stated that "NASA is currently overcommitted in terms of program obligations relative to resources available - in short, it is trying to do too much, and allowing too little margin for the unexpected." A similar finding was noted in 2003 by the Columbia Accident Investigation Board, which analyzed not only the specific technical causes, but also the underlying factors within the agency that contributed to the loss of the Shuttle earlier that year. In a section entitled "An Agency Trying To Do Too Much With Too Little," the report of the Board noted that NASA has been unable to obtain a budget allocation necessary for its continuing ambitions, saying that in the past decade "neither the White House nor Congress has been interested in a reinvigorated space program." In May of this year, the National Academies released a report which again claimed that "NASA is being asked to accomplish too much with too little." Citing the increasing demand for funding needed to continue the Shuttle program, as well as the higher-than-expected costs of science missions, the Academies' report concluded that "the resources are inadequate to accomplish NASA's broad missions of national importance." A December editorial in The New York Times called this situation "a surefire recipe for disaster."
