Amid the vast firmament of NASA’s $19 billion portfolio, with its exploration aims spanning from planet Earth to the edge of the visible universe, $30 million may not seem like all that much money. Yet sometimes principle matters, especially when that principle illustrates the political headwinds buffeting the space agency as it seeks to push humans outward into deep space.

When appropriators were writing a budget for NASA last month, Senator Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) designated $30 million in spending for “small launch technology” for the coming fiscal year. The stipulation was tucked into the space technology program, a relatively new area of NASA’s budget that President Obama created in 2010 to invest in “bold, broadly applicable, disruptive technology that industry cannot tackle today.” The central objective of this program is to bring forward advanced technologies needed to land humans on Mars.

But Congress has disdained the space technology program almost from its inception. During every subsequent budget cycle, the Senate and House have cut the president’s request—the money NASA says it needs that year to ensure Mars technology development is proceeding apace. The last couple of years, however, the US Senate has added a new wrinkle. Appropriators not only cut the space technology budget, they further squeezed the remainder by specifying what NASA must work on rather than leaving those decisions to the agency’s rocket scientists.

“It’s sad, because the whole space technology budget has just became an earmark haven for these guys,” said one aerospace engineer. He was one of a half-dozen engineers and space policy experts familiar with the budgeting process that Ars spoke to for this story. All were granted anonymity because Shelby, who chairs the Appropriations subcommittee over NASA’s budget, has outsized power to punish those who openly oppose him.

Shelby's $30 million stipulation for the coming fiscal year appears to take the insult to NASA’s technology budget a step further. The proposed law directs the agency to fund a specific type of small satellite launch technology, known as the Super Strypi, “to the maximum extent possible.” The problem with that, three separate sources confirmed to Ars, is that two companies in Huntsville, Alabama, are seeking to develop a launch system based on the Super Strypi vehicle.

Instead of developing technology to get humans to Mars, then, NASA is being told to support rocket development to launch small satellites. That is not such a bad thing... except more than half a dozen companies have already invested private capital in such small launchers. “Providing support for any of the small launcher developments has issues,” said one official, noting the commercial interest in this area. “Picking one that has a demonstrated poor track record seems like an even worse choice. Doing so through an earmark is just the lowest approach you can imagine.”

Space technology

NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate may perhaps be best thought of as paving the way for the agency's journey to Mars. An example of the kinds of technologies the agency has sought to develop is its Low Density Supersonic Decelerator. This large, flying saucer-shaped disk is helping NASA study ways to land future human and robotic Mars missions, as well as safely return large payloads to Earth.

During these tests, a balloon will lift the huge disk to 120,000 feet, after which rockets will fire to raise the disk further up to 180,000 feet. At that point, as the craft begins to fall back to Earth at 3.5 times the speed of sound, the saucer inflates to test its ability to decelerate. This is just the kind of process NASA must better understand before it contemplates human landings on Mars. Unfortunately, thanks to earmarks in the 2016 space technology budget, this project will only receive a small fraction of its originally planned budget of $20 million.

This is but one of many such technologies NASA needs to fully research, develop, and test for Mars. According to the space agency, there are at least 11 major categories of technology required for deep space exploration, everything from in-space propulsion to radiation mitigation to entry, descent, and landing. Despite the rhetoric, there simply is no “Journey to Mars" without this technology.

When the Obama administration first created the space technology program in 2010, it sought $572 million in fiscal year 2011 to fund it. The president’s proposal envisioned this amount growing to more than $1.2 billion annually by now. But there was no constituency for space technology in Congress because this was a program with, as yet, no jobs to protect back home. As a result, space technology has gotten only about half of the funding it needed to keep NASA on track for Mars. This year, the Senate bill proposes a $687 million budget for space technology. Of that, the bill designates how $189 million, or more than 25 percent of the total budget, should be spent.

A presentation made last year by James Reuther, a deputy administrator in the space technology program, offers a sense of how devastating this has proven for NASA’s exploration efforts. Titled “Historical Consequences of STMD Funding Shortfalls,” the report makes for depressing reading. Solar propulsion and advanced arrays: delayed. Laser communications: not ready for tests until 2019 at the earliest. Deep space communications: delayed and de-scoped. Fuel depots: in-space tests moved to the ground and delayed. The list goes on and on.

Small satellites

There are perfectly good reasons for NASA to invest in small satellite launch technology. Weighing in the neighborhood of 50 to 400kg, small satellites have become one of the hottest areas of aerospace. Demand has increased for launch vehicles that can deliver these payloads to a Sun-synchronous orbit 400km or more above the Earth’s surface. For now, though, these smaller payloads must “ride share” with larger satellites on more powerful rockets. This can often delay their launch for a year or more.

Naturally the market has reacted to this, and more than half a dozen companies have been developing private launch systems to meet the demand. Proposals range from launching traditional rockets from the ground to setting them off from airplanes or balloons high in the atmosphere. It is a marketplace teeming with private capital. This seems like the opposite of what space technology, created to address areas the “industry cannot tackle today,” was intended to support.

Rocket Lab

Eric Berger

Virgin Galactic

Firefly space systems.

Interorbital Systems

PLD Space

Vector Space Systems

Zero2infinity

Zero2infinity

Generation Orbit Services

On top of that, NASA has already invested in three of these systems. In October 2015, the agency awarded “Venture Class Launch Services” contracts to improve access to low-Earth orbit for CubeSats, microsats, or nanosatellites. In return for providing launches, Firefly Space Systems received $5.5 million, Rocket Lab USA $6.9 million, and Virgin Galactic $4.7 million. All of these companies are bringing to market launch vehicles capable of delivering 200 to 250kg to a Sun-synchronous orbit—the same capability as the Super Strypi. One or more of these rockets should be ready by 2018, if not sooner. Yet now NASA is being asked to back a fourth, the Super Strypi, it does not want.

A few years ago as it sought similar, on-demand access to these orbits for smaller payloads, the Department of Defense began supporting the Super Strypi program. Developed by engine maker Aerojet Rocketdyne in conjunction with the University of Hawaii and the Sandia National Laboratories, the basic launch technology is based on the Strypi rocket first built by Sandia in the early 1960s. That rocket was part of a nuclear weapons test program, and it was originally designed to carry a nuclear warhead into space for tests there (it never did so). More recently, after multiple delays, the modified vehicle made its debut test flight as the Super Strypi rocket in November 2015. However, once the rocket accelerated away from its rail guide the vehicle tumbled out of control.

When asked about Congress tasking NASA to compete in the growing small launch industry with a Super Strypi-like technology, an official with one of these rocket companies who tracks space policy told Ars: “What do you want me to say? This is Washington. Here is a technology the government has already abandoned because it didn’t seem very promising. And now the government is supposed to intervene with it in a marketplace filled with private investment. I look at it and roll my eyes with vigor.”