Comments on: A look at the conference report

By: Jeff Foust

Jeff Foust — Thu, 10 Nov 2005 18:10:59 +0000

William P: The language in the conference report notes that it is decreasing the amount appropriated by $34 million; the House had $34M in its budget and the Senate none, so the Senate appears to have won that argument (also note that the conference report adopts the language from the Senate version regarding the program.) If I’m misinterpreting that, though, feel free to correct me.

William B: The House has been more supportive than the Senate in regards to the prize program (see above); I suspect the issue is a concern about appropriating more money than the program really can use at this time, particularly given the limits on prize purses to date with the lack of authorizing legislation. With access to the funding appropriated in FY05, I don’t think a lack of FY06 monies is a serious worry for the program.

By: Michael Mealling

Michael Mealling — Thu, 10 Nov 2005 14:58:27 +0000

William,
Yep. I wasn’t to concerned about the budget since the cap has meant they couldn’t spend all of what they had. The fact that they get to keep it for next year and that few, if any, of the bigger prizes will be won next year means the budget is probably fine. What I’m slightly concerned about is that the appropriators or Congress might start monkeying with the prizes themselves. I can just see someone creating an earmark as a prize: “the first company to build a statue of the Congressman from Wyoming in his home town gets $1 million”. Just an unfounded fear at this point, though…

By: William Pomerantz

William Pomerantz — Thu, 10 Nov 2005 13:29:56 +0000

Actually, William, you’ll note that the bill allocates $34 million to the Centennial Challenges program (see the section “SCIENCE, AERONAUTICS AND EXPLORATION (INCLUDING TRANSFER OF FUNDS)”).

Centennial Challenges needs to more in the long run, but I think that this is an important start. Hopefully, this new appropriation will be matched in the near future by a NASA Authorization bill that gives the Agency the authority to award prize purses in excess of the $250,000 level they are currently using. If so, that should allow the Centennial Challenges office to quickly and wisely spend the money the have left over from previous years, plus the new $34 million, building their case for a stronger appropriation for future years. Indeed, as you hint at, the appropriations committe has explicitly stated that they won’t give more money to the program until it is properly authorized: “[f]unding for the Centennial Challenge is not available for obligation unless authorized.” (“ADMINISTRATIVE PROVISIONS, #3″).

The text of both the House and Senate versions of the NASA Authorization Act include some sort of improved Authorization language, so if and when that gets passed, the program should be in a better position than it is today. Here’s hoping!

By: William Berger

William Berger — Thu, 10 Nov 2005 04:51:38 +0000

Can anybody explain why Congress appears hostile to Centennial Challenges? Or is it just a case that they don’t want to give money to the program until it is in a position to actually spend it?

By: Donald F. Robertson

Donald F. Robertson — Wed, 09 Nov 2005 18:00:05 +0000

On a cursory reading, this looks about as good as it could be if you support the current Exploration Architecture. It appears to explicitly continue support for the VSE, although all the funding directed in other directions may mean trouble later down the road.