Grounding saves little money.

http://www.floridatoday.com/news/spa...1203budget.htm

Grounded shuttle fleet saves agency little

Conressman hoped disaster would produce surplus

By Larry Wheeler
FLORIDA TODAY

WASHINGTON -- The shuttle program has seen little cost savings even though the
remaining three orbiters have been idle since the Feb. 1 Columbia disaster, a
NASA spokeswoman said Friday.
"There are no large-scale savings because of the grounding of the fleet," said
Melissa Motichek, a NASA spokeswoman. "People are still working and producing
what they produce."

The only savings agency managers could point to was about $30 million that
wasn't spent on rocket fuel and personnel overtime for the two shuttle flights
canceled after the Columbia accident.

Other than that, shuttle spending has continued at a steady rate, Motichek
said.

Lawmakers and others had speculated for months that the idled shuttle fleet
might leave NASA with a substantial amount of unspent money at the end the
fiscal year.

There was an expectation, particularly in Congress, that one fewer orbiter to
service and two canceled missions would produce a surplus.

NASA flew three missions during the current fiscal year. In recent years, the
agency has flown between four and seven missions a year with only modest
differences in the shuttle program's annual costs.

In the past, NASA officials have said the marginal cost of a typical shuttle
mission is $100 million. Much of the program's cost is dominated by personnel,
most of whom NASA and its shuttle contractors have kept on the payroll despite
the accident.

Still, a key House lawmaker said he was surprised by the NASA estimate.

"I would think there would be money to be found there," said Rep. James Walsh,
R-N.Y., chairman of the House appropriations subcommittee that sets NASA
spending levels. "I would expect the number to be larger."

On Tuesday, Walsh's subcommittee will mark up the annual spending bill that
contains NASA's budget for fiscal year 2004, which begins Oct. 1.

Panel members will need to know how much of the $3.8 billion allotted to the
shuttle program this year has been spent, Walsh said.

"We've been asking about it," he said.

Congressional appropriators are waiting for the Bush administration to clarify
whether more money will be necessary to fund the hardware, engineering and
management changes necessary to get the shuttles flying safely again once the
Columbia Accident Investigation Board reports its findings in late August.

In the absence of such a request, Walsh said his panel has little choice but to
stick closely to the budget request the administration submitted earlier this
year.

In February, administration officials requested a $15.4 billion budget for NASA
in fiscal 2004, about the same as the amount approved for this year. The
administration asked for $3.9 billion for the shuttle program.

The budget request was prepared before the Columbia tragedy.

"I don't see a dramatic departure," Walsh said.

Between 1992 and 2002, shuttle spending fell about 40 percent in
inflation-adjusted dollars. Two-thirds of government shuttle safety workers
were let go over the same period, according to NASA personnel reports.

One thrust of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board report is the damage
the spending cuts inflicted on the human space flight program.

This week, NASA asked Congress for $50 million in emergency funds to help
offset the cost of collecting remnants of Columbia and reassembling them to
investigate the cause of the accident. The funds were also to be used to offset
the costs of computer analyses of potential failure scenarios and testing of
shuttle wing components, according to the White House.
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If the program costs 3.8 billion dollars a year what creative accountanting
method calls the cost per flight iin the millions?

Enron accountants?