From: oneil@aio.jsc.nasa.gov (Graham O'Neil)
Subject: Re: funding for Lunar Prospector urgently needed
Followup-To: sci.space
Summary: Balancing other funding sources and other programs
Keywords: Lunar, SEI, Prospector, Funding, Payload
Organization: nasa-jsc
Date: Thu, 24 Dec 1992 18:02:40 GMT


In <22DEC199214281236@judy.uh.edu>   Dennis Wingo writes:

>Lunar Resource Mapper is not dead as of this time. Work is still
>progressing at the two contractors selected for the Phase A study.
>(Martin & Boeing) This at present is unfunded by NASA but indications
>are that money will be available for the studies in the spring. So
>don't count LRM dead yet.

	Note what Dennis is saying is that if work is being performed
on LRM, it is company profits that are being used.  Over the last 20
years, there have been many years where, US funding would be available
in the spring for lunar science missions.  However I would not count
LRM as dead, even if funding does not materialize in the spring of 93.

>Also there are other Lunar missions that are NASA supported and under
>consideration. One is the Lunar Geophysical Explorer sponsored by
>JPL.  There i s also another private effort waiting in the wings if
>these NASA supported mission do not come off. No I won't give any
>information on the private effort yet. It will not go forward unless
>the NASA efforts clearly are not going to be funded. This effort is
>not in any way connected to Lunar Prospector however and is guaranteed
>to cost less and already has significant aerospace support.

	There are and have been many NASA supported [and even funded]
studies and Phase A projects for Lunar missions.  JPL's LGE is at
present NASA supported but not NASA funded.

	I guess the real question is where this unnamed private effort
will go forward from.  How much system engineering has been done,
mission planning, infrastructure for scientific data acquisition,
analysis and archival, design maturity...?  Even if this project
doesn't come to fruition, I would like to see the details on how it
will cost less than Lunar Prospector.  There are sure to be many
lessons learned from that information.

If it costs less, how much science will be on it? And what does
significant aerospace support really mean?  For instance, the
University of Colorado mission [Hanson and Humble] has imaging as a
priority, but few science instruments as a payload.  I suspect they
have even less money than LRM, LGE, or LEI, but they certainly have
significant aerospace support. And that might be a different community
than space science support, or SEI precursor mission support.

And then in <22DEC199220260175@judy.uh.edu>, where Dennis seemingly
misunderstands Henry's point

>>In article <BzoqqC.24@zoo.toronto.edu>, henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry
Spencer) writes...

>>The $30M in question was first-year funding to get Griffin's entire effort
>>started; this was to include the beginnings of the mapper project, which
>>would end up costing $30M or so for the spacecraft proper.
>> 
>>Griffin didn't get it.

>The money is coming from JSC internal funds as well as left over
>funds from other operations at Griffin's code. I repeat the project
>is not dead as of this time. 

	Stop work orders on this have been issued from both Building 1
[carryover, discretionary] and the Nova building [other money pots
related to SEI, or code SL].  While I wouldn't call it dead, employees
on both government and contractor sides are being Approved For
Reassignment [AFRed] or worse.  Indeed any NASA centers discretionary
funding can only go so far.  

>This money also does not affect the Lunar Geophysical Explorer which
>is not part of SEI.  It seems that you can get money as long as the
>SEI tag is not attached. Heck there is 5 million dollars this year for
>the Lunar power beaming project and money is being spent even now for
>the Lunar far side telescope project.

It may seem you can get money if SEI is not tagged along, but lets
look for money for real hardware, money for launch, and money for
mission operations... Help me, I can't find the line item for those
elements of a Lunar mission in the NASA budget, or the Center budgets.
Maybe Marshall has some discretionary money for this that you've seen?

Meanwhile LEI is working to get Prospector off the ground, with or
without US government funds and in a timely fashion.  Checkout the
archives at ames in /pub/LEI.

graham

-- 
Graham O'Neil    oneil@aio.jsc.nasa.gov      GONEIL@nasamail  
Lockheed  2400 NASA RD 1 Houston, TX 77058  (713)333-7197
----------------------------------------------------------
Practice Random Kindness and Senseless Acts of Beauty