Space Budget

[Deepwater6]

http://www.space.com/31880-white-house-nasa-2017-budget-proposal.html

http://www.space.com/31875-nasa-2017-budget-request-summary.html

 

Alas, the painfully slow progress of human space exploration from my perspective continues. I know, I know - things are tough all over and there just isn't enough budget $$ to go around, but the Orion and SLS projects? Uuuugh.

 

I'm happy to see the JWTS money doesn't seem to be on the trimming block. A tribute to the Hubble scope me thinks.

 

Question, without me going through the budget line by line, does anyone know the approximate budget proposal (if any) for space junk removal?

 

 

 

 

[CraigD]

Question, without me going through the budget line by line, does anyone know the approximate budget proposal (if any) for space junk removal?

NASA major space junk team is its Orbital Debris Program Office at Johnson Spaceflight Center, which appears to be under the larger agency-wide Office of Safety & Mission Assurance (OSMA). The OD Program office appears to consist of 1 chief scientist, a manager, and an executive. Their major output appears to be a quarterly news letter.

 

From this, I’d guess their yearly budget is only a few million $US, a negligible fraction of the total NASA budget.

 

At present, I think OD is mostly seen as something to keep an eye on, in case it cascades ("Kessler syndromes") to become suddenly much worse. As is, mission losses from OD is so rare, it’s not worth spending much on actual programs. Rather, NASA (and I imagine other national space agencies, companies and universities) are just providing a forum for promising ideas, like Raytheon’s proposed spaDE system, which would use huge high-altitude air cannons or explosives to shoot jets of air into space to deorbit specific problem vehicles or debris swarms.