Congress, NASA

Senate subcommittee approves NASA appropriations bill

The Commerce, Justice, and Science subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee approved an appropriations bill Wednesday that includes $17.8 billion for NASA, Space News reports [subscription required]. The details of the bill haven’t been disclosed yet, although the topline figure is similar to what the subcommittee’s counterpart in the House approved last week. Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), chair of the subcommittee, issued a brief statement about the bill, mentioning only NASA’s total, and that full details about the bill and its provisions will be released when the full committee takes up the bill tomorrow.

7 comments to Senate subcommittee approves NASA appropriations bill

  • anonymouspace

    It’s also worth noting the order of magnitude disparity between these appropriations bills, which increase NASA’s budget ~$150 million (with an “m”) above the President’s request, and the House authorization bill, which would increase NASA’s budget ~$1.5 billion (with a “b”) above the President’s request. The appropriators (along with the White House) are not buying what the authorizers are selling, and the initial appropriations bills introduced at the subcommittee level are usually the high water mark in terms of total agency funding. The ten-fold smaller appropriations levels are likely to go down from here, and we havn’t even accounted for earmarks yet. Clearly, none of the major spending items in the authorization bill (COTS D, Ares I/Orion acceleration, additional Shuttle flights, etc.) are going to come to pass.

    If we don’t care about a lengthening 5-6 year gap in U.S. civil human space flight or about having any funding left over to pursue actual human space exploration hardware (or other civil space initiatives) before the end of the next President’s first term (circa 2011-12), that’s okay. But if we do care, then we have to face the reality that the appropriated human space flight budgets simply don’t support much more than some very lengthy and very expensive Ares I/Orion development, and that those projects need to be replaced by a less expensive and more expedient means of pursuing a post-Shuttle U.S. civil human LEO transport capability if we hope to do more than just fly back and forth to ISS.

    FWIW…

  • rfthompson

    In this fiscal enviornment why are we terminating shuttle and purposely creating a gap-why are we in a hurry to return to the moon with yet to be developed vehicles that aren’t as good as those of apollo 40 years ago-and the moon is not on the way to mars-it’s way out of the way.Someone is being sold a bill of goods. We climbed the moon mountain once in order to feel good. Why not be satisfied with flying back and forth to ISS for a while. We might just learn something.The last time I looked the shuttle fit within the level of budget support that NASA has been getting recently.The shuttle gives us a unique capability -why are we giving up on it?

  • Because, RFT, the Columbia Accident Investigation Board said two things:

    1) if it is to fly much past 2010, the Shuttle must be recertified from the ground up as an operable system. while the orbiters were ostensibly supposed to be capable of 100 flights per airframe, they were also supposed to be able to fly a dozen times a year each and for an order of magnitude less per flight. since those other early promises fell short, the CAIB said we shouldn’t believe the hopes of the 1970s-era design team, but should prove that it is fit to continue flying

    2) more importantly, the CAIB said that to risk human life for public (i.e. govt) purposes, NASA must be doing something more than just flying people into low Earth orbit for an ISS whose research portfolio has been eviscerated. the President (and Congress) responded with the goal of human exploration of the solar system, with the Moon as an early testbed for those capabilities. you may disagree — I can imagine several other purposes for federal human spaceflight — but it *is* a clear direction, something NASA has lacked since, at least, the earliest days of Space Station Freedom, if not Apollo itself.

  • Anonymous,

    I completely agree with you, but the Authorizers are operating under different rules than the Appropriators. The latter provide the actual funding, and have to make their totals fit within a budget. The former are trying to send a message to the next President as to the kinds of budget NASA needs to carry out its current program, and (more importnatly) their sense of priorities for the multiple competing goals for that program. The House bill, at least, tracks the actual budget limits much more closely, albeit with a one-time $1B supplemental authorization for Ares-Orion acceleration.

    The problem (if you work in the White House) with the two authorizing bills is that they both mandate three extra Shuttle flights, which could, if you are less optimistic about the Shuttle manifest fly-out rate, cause NASA to continue spending $3-4B/year, or $300m per month, of extra lifetime of the Shuttle standing army. Of course some interested parties say “that’s a feature, not a bug”, but you and I know that whatever the right post-Shuttle transportation architecture is, it will happen later and probably worse if NASA has to keep paying for Shuttle operations into 2011.

  • anonymouspace

    “Anonymous,

    I completely agree with you, but the Authorizers are operating under different rules than the Appropriators… The former are trying to send a message to the next President as to the kinds of budget NASA needs to carry out its current program,”

    I apologize if my comments came off that way, but I didn’t intend to criticize the authorizers in my first post. Rather, I was just trying to point out that the increases in the appropriations bills are lower by an order of magnitude than those in the House authorization bill. Therefore, if any of the new or good program content in the authorization bill is going to see the light of day, hard decisions to get off Ares I/Orion and onto something more affordable and timely for civil human LEO access need to be made. (That, or drastic offsets will have to be made in other NASA program areas.)

    “and (more importnatly) their sense of priorities for the multiple competing goals for that program.”

    Even with appropriations increases that are ten-fold lower, I agree that it’s important for the authorizers to get a bill circulating that puts their views on the record for the next White House.

    But I would criticize the authorizers for not demonstrating a greater sense of priorities when it comes to the specific and budget-busting issue of civil human LEO transport. The bill basically proposes to do everything in this area: more Shuttle flights, accelerate Ares I/Orion, and pursue COTS D. Maybe stronger priorities would have killed the bill at birth, but it would have been nice if the authorizers could have, for example, held back on the Shuttle flights, or prioritized COTS D over Ares I/Orion, or provided some other signal that would have demonstrated a more budgetarily realistic path to shortening the gap. By proposing to do everything, when only something will be affordable, the House bill basically throws the problem back into the laps of the appropriators and the next White House. Other than “send more money”, the bill transmits no real signal on this issue, which is arguably the most important issue facing the agency right now.

    “… but you and I know that whatever the right post-Shuttle transportation architecture is, it will happen later and probably worse if NASA has to keep paying for Shuttle operations into 2011.”

    No doubt, not to mention flight safety issues and CAIB recertification. Were I king of the authorizers for a day, additional Shuttle flights would be last on the list of budget priorities.

    FWIW…

  • Vladislaw

    “the bill transmits no real signal on this issue”

    In my opinion it is sending a very clear message:

    Congress is not QUITE ready to abandon the shuttle until it flys one last expensive science mission.

    Congress is commited to the Ares/Orion and are “concerned” about the gap.

    Congress is still willing to allow NASA some spending on COTS as a backup.

    Do you believe congress has moved to that stage in a program where it just becomes the status quo and you no longer have to deal/think about it and just move on to other issues? It seems to be a business as usual kind of thing. Do you feel Constellation has a life of its own now and funding may wax and wane a few million here, a few million there on total funding for it but that it is now a given and alternatives will only be given lip service?

  • anonymouspace

    “In my opinion it is sending a very clear message:

    Congress is not QUITE ready to abandon the shuttle until it flys one last expensive science mission.

    Congress is commited to the Ares/Orion and are “concerned” about the gap.

    Congress is still willing to allow NASA some spending on COTS as a backup.”

    That message is useful only if there’s enough funding to pursue all three options, which there’s not in the appropriations bills or the President’s budget proposal for NASA. So essentially the House authorizers have transmitted no sense of their priorities — no message — in their bill. There’s no guidance from them to the appropriators or to the next White House as to whether Shuttle, Ares I/Orion, or COTS D is more important. The only message is to send more money, which is not a useful message for future decisions.

    I’d also be careful about characterizing even that message as being representative of the Congress as a whole, at least at this point. This is just the House authorization bill that we’re talking about, not a conference bill or an appropriations bill.

    “Do you believe congress has moved to that stage in a program where it just becomes the status quo and you no longer have to deal/think about it and just move on to other issues? It seems to be a business as usual kind of thing. Do you feel Constellation has a life of its own now and funding may wax and wane a few million here, a few million there on total funding for it but that it is now a given and alternatives will only be given lip service?”

    As has almost always been the case with NASA’s programs, and especially the human space flight program, the White House leads and Congress follows when it comes to big changes in direction. It will be up to the next White House as to whether and what parts, if any, of Constellation continue in their current form.

    Regardless of whether it’s a McCain or Obama White House, it’s highly unlikely that Constellation’s lunar elements (Ares V/EDS/Altair) will be pursued — it’s just hard to see either White House making a decision to start development of those elements at the end of their first term in FY 2011-12. And as long as the Ares I/Orion schedule and budget continue to be mired in the magnitude of technical problems that they have, a change in direction is more likely than not there too, although it’s almost as likely that they’ll plod on due to lack of priority and White House neglect.

    My 2 cents… FWIW…

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