“I’ll add that our current leadership in aerospace is despite the work of NASA management, not because of it.”

I’m glad you pointed that out. What NASA has accomplished has inspired many, but what NASA hasn’t accomplished, or is not doing in a very good way, is currently inspiring today’s generation of aerospace pioneers.

How ironic is it that the date and time for this hearing into how the U.S. can “preserve” it’s space leadership, is exactly when Dennis Tito will be giving a press conference on how a U.S. citizen is going to be showing the real future of space leadership?

Congress wants to preserve space leadership through a political power grab, whereas Dennie Tito wants to do it by using American ingenuity. I wonder which one is more likely to result in preserving our space leadership?

“I put “lost” in quotations for a reason.”

Then what do you mean? What is the reason?

“Also I disagree with your characterization that we have ‘lost’ our leadsership in space.”

I put “lost” in quotations for a reason.

“The reason America has “lost” its leadership in space is because of commitments to long term projects that end up being cancelled due to bad budgeting by Congress.”

I think you are looking at the problem from the wrong perspective. If more affordable and sustainable projects had been chosen, then there wouldn’t have been a need to cancel them.

For instance, even though the Constellation program was very unenthusiastic (an Apollo redux), it likely would have had the political inertia to keep going as a goal if the program costs hadn’t spiraled so far out of control. And if you look at what Congress focuses on most is program that are out of control – that are exceeding their budgets.

Congress rarely cancels programs that are on-time, on-budget, and have the full support of their community or interest group.

Also, I disagree with your characterization that we have “lost” our leadership in space. Who owns the largest portion of the largest space station ever built? Who now has a domestic cargo resupply capability that can also return cargo to Earth? Who has the most vibrant commercial aerospace industry on the planet? Our space budget far outstrips everyone else’s.

In order to lose the leadership of something, someone else has to have taken it away from you. So who have we lost it to? Russia? China? I don’t think so.

The White House would still appoint the largest number of board members (three, vice two each for the House/Senate majority/minority). Those three board members would presumably be in contact with White House staff to ensure that the board’s slate of NASA Administrator candidates includes some candidates that the White House approves of. And the President would then pick one of those pre-approved candidates when the slate comes to him. There’s nothing here that constrains the President; the bill is toothless. It’s just an extra, bureaucratic, do-loop in the nomination process for NASA Administrator. (As if that process wasn’t long enough already.)

On budgets, the White House is just going to ignore whatever imaginary fairy dust comes out of the board, ask NASA for its budget submission, put it through the OMB wringer, and follow the usual passback and settlement process used to produce the President’s annual budget request. And the appropriators are going to use that as their baseline, not a budget from a random board that’s produced without input from the executing agency (NASA) and without review by and endorsement from the White House. Again, the bill does nothing to constrain the President or appropriators; it’s toothless. It just creates a parallel, duplicative, and useless budget process that the taxpayer is going to have to shell out a couple hundred thousand dollars for secretarial support and board travel.

As for “multi-year procurements”, NASA has been doing those the entire life of the agency. The Federal Acquisition Regulations (FAR) Part 17.1 (NASA FAR Part 1817.1) provides authority and guidance on “Multiyear Contracting”.

http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/procurement/regs/1817.doc

https://www.acquisition.gov/far/current/html/Subpart%2017_1.html

The latest authority derives from Section 1022 of the Federal Acquisition Streamlining Act of 1993:

http://www.commerce.gov/general/commercialpurchase/commitments.shtml

And NASA is using this authority today. Here’s a nine-year contract with a near two-year base period that was awarded just this past December:

http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2012/dec/HQ_C12-062_TOSC_KSC.html

The multi-year contraacting part of the bill is completely duplicative, useless legislation. It’s more likely to screw up NASA’s multi-year contracting authority than defend it.

If this bill is a power grab, it’s a really pathetic one.

More likely, it’s not a serious bill. Like so much of what comes out of NASA’s authorization committees (especially on the House side), it’s just theater to make the NASA workers back home think that their congressman is fighting for them, when in fact the legislation is toothless, duplicative, and irrelevant.

http://spaceksc.blogspot.com/2012/09/poseys-power-grab.html

My conclusion back then:

In my opinion, this is just another attempt at a power grab by Congress to solve a problem they have created themselves.

more free drift. We’ve seen this before- in Three Stooges shorts when the boys try to read a map.