Congress, NASA

House Science Committee schedules NASA budget hearing

The House Science Committee has now scheduled its usual hearing on the administration’s budget proposal for NASA. The hearing is scheduled for 2 pm on Wednesday, March 7. NASA administrator Charles Bolden is the sole scheduled witness. While members got soe opportunities to pose questions (or raise concerns) about the NASA budget earlier this month when presidential science advisor John Holdren talked about the overall FY13 R&D budget proposal, this will be an opportunity for the full committee to go into greater detail with the head of the space agency about the funding, or lack thereof, for specific NASA programs.

7 comments to House Science Committee schedules NASA budget hearing

  • DCSCA

    More ‘free drift.’

  • SpaceColonizer

    Oh boy! Better start thinking up some drinking rules. Maybe I’ll borrow Jeff’s “tough fiscal times” rule from the budget rollout… that should be a good one!

    So… how much deja vu should we be expecting here? “We love SLS!” “Commercial Crew scares me!” “Do we really need Space Technology in space?” The only new topic of conversation will be Mars stuff… maybe that should be one of the other drinking rules.

  • Steven White

    Will someone please ask Administrator Bolden why it costs anywhere near $3 billion per year to operate the ISS? The construction is complete. We only have two astronauts up there. The ISS orbits the Earth due to the laws of physics, not the money we spend. Is the $62 million per seat we are paying the Russians even included in the $3 billion ISS operations cost? Perhaps, $1 billion would be a more reasonable figure for ISS operations.

  • ArtieT

    I hope that the committee asks Bolden what his plans are to make sure a JWST does not happen again, and what plans does NASA have for SLS.

  • amightywind

    Steven White wrote:…

    Would be nice to know all of these things, wouldn’t it? It would be also nice to have a breakdown of annual contributions by country. I disagree with you about the $1 billion figure. That is far too much for what ISS does.

  • Coastal Ron

    Steven White wrote @ February 28th, 2012 at 12:41 am

    Will someone please ask Administrator Bolden why it costs anywhere near $3 billion per year to operate the ISS?

    Is this your first time on the internet?

    If so, I’ll make it easy for you. You don’t have to ask the NASA Administrator these types of questions since the information is public. This is proposed NASA budget that Bolden will be asked about, and the ISS Operations section starts at “SO-1″.

    In summary, the ISS Space Operations budget request for FY2013 is broken down into three buckets:

    – Systems Operations & Mainenance = $1.494B
    – Research = $$229M
    – Crew & Cargo Transportation = $1.285B

    Hope that helps. Again, welcome to the Internet. ;-)

  • Doug Lassiter

    I think we can assume that ts hearing will be mostly about astronaut safety. Why? Because if you’re going to do something dangerous, and you don’t really have a good reason to do it, then it would be unforgivable if you allowed something bad to happen. There are very few things Congress can do that look good with regard to human space flight right now. In order to look responsible, highlighting safety is the, er, safest policy. When bad things happen, you get to say “But, but, I warned them!” When bad things don’t happen, you pat yourself on the back. “MIssion accomplished” becomes simply survival.

    Chairman Hall is expert at this tactic. Safety is job-one. Job-two is, well, going places and doing things. Exploring, inspiring, and all that stuff. Of course, commercial crew will be the logical target for this concern. Congress will protect us against those evil, dangerous, commercial providers. Holdren took heat on this point about human space flight in the last committee hearing on the topic.

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