Last month Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) announced that it was “time for space summit with the President” to discuss the future of the exploration effort and NASA in general. There has been little overt signs of progress on such an effort, but yesterday House Science and Technology Committee chairman Bart Gordon and space subcommittee chairman Mark Udall sent a letter to the president calling for a meeting between him and members of Congress regarding NASA. The letter argues that the rhetoric coming out of the White House on competitiveness, aeronautics, and exploration don’t match the funding that has been requested by the administration. While Gordon and Udall don’t specifically use Mikulski’s word, “summit”, they do write, “We echo the views of other members of Congress who have expressed their interest in meeting with you on this important matter, and we hope that there will be the opportunity for all of us to meet with you in the near future to discuss how best to realize our common goals.”
While Gordon and Udall were the only signatories on that letter, Rep. Dave Weldon (R-FL) announced Thursday that he had joined a “bipartisan group of lawmakers” calling for a meeting with the president on NASA budget. However, Weldon’s press release had more of an edge, criticizing members of Congress who called for the summit while, a couple months ago, voting for a budget resolution “that raided NASA’s budget and gutted the manned-space initiative.” Weldon: “[I]t seems a little disingenuous to write a letter expressing concern about NASA’s lack of resources, when you’re voting for budgets that cut NASA funding.” (Nitpickers may note that the budget didn’t strictly cut NASA’s budget, but instead failed to provide the agency with the increase it expected for FY07.) Weldon said that without a commitment by “Democratic leaders” in Congress to increase NASA’s budget, the letter “will be nothing more than a PR stunt to distract voters’ attention from their vote to cut NASA.” That assumes, of course, that voters have been paying any attention at all on this subject…
I doubt any such “summit” or meeting between Congress and the POTUS on the NASA budget will occur. Congress sends these sorts of letters to the White House all the time on all sorts of issues that go nowhere. They’re really more of an opportunity for individual congressmen to appear like they’re doing something for a constituency (e.g., NASA or aerospace industry employees in their district or state), rather than a real attempt to lobby the POTUS. And as Mr. Foust’s post points out, the few congressmen that are interested in the issue appear to lack any semblance of a coordinated plan.
Even if such a summit does occur, the White House will not go back on its 2008 budget submission — certainly not for NASA. There are much higher priorities for such requests, such as additional Iraq war funding. Moreover, the White House has much more to lose than gain politically if such a change was made. They don’t want Peter Jennings announcing on the evening news that the President asked for another billion or half-billion for NASA when there are so many other budget needs going unfulfilled.
And someone should remind Weldon that it was his Republican-controlled Congress’s failure to pass a 2007 budget allowed the new Democrat-controlled Congress to effectively cut NASA’s exploration budget. How soon the losers forget…
If John Young is right, Congress and the White House have a lot more to worry about at NASA than the budget:
http://collectspace.com/ubb/Forum39/HTML/000114.html
More rampant speculation about John Young’s prediction that Ares 1 can’t lift Orion and that NASA will face up to it on May 23rd:
http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=7647&posts=42&start=1
FWIW… gonna be an interesting month.
I have checked many of the folks associated with Ares and Orion, and no one knows anything about this magic date.
If John Young is correct, then I suspect that the inner circle has finally recognized the futility of the Ares concept. They are working frantically to put the final touches on an alternative and the accompanying spin to show why all of this is a good thing. I’m sure that the last two years of wasted effort will be portrayed as a positive that has contributed to arriving at the new solution.
I would be surprised if the new solution is not a man-rated Atlas/Delta with a streamlined CEV at the top.
Fearless cynical prediction: NASA will propose Yet Another brand new booster, something other than Ares V, to launch Orion. NASA has not yet been slapped around enough to think of hiring Atlas Heavy and Delta Heavy and Falcon 9 (note: “and”, not “or”!) for simple delivery jobs.
Yeah, I know, those launchers don’t exist yet and they’re not “man rated”. Those objections are piddly-@ss bullsh!t compared to the challenges of developing anything from scratch.
I agree with “anonymous”. May will be an interesting month.
– Al
“May you live in interesting times, and come to the attention of important people”
According to insiders, it’s business as usual. The universe is completely normal. Nothing unusual to report. Nothing to see here. Move along.