By Jeff Foust on 2011 September 29 at 9:30 am ET The cost increases and schedule delays associated with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) have become a major concern in the scientific community and beyond, as best illustrated when the House Appropriations Committee offered no funding for the program in its FY2012 appropriations bill, which is currently pending consideration by the full House. Although the Senate has proposed $530 million for JWST in its FY12 appropriations bill, there is still the open question of how NASA proposes to cover the costs of JWST over the long haul, through its planned launch in 2018. One member of Congress is now openly looking for answers.
In a letter Wednesday to Jacob Lew, director of the Office of Management and Budget, Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA), chairman of the Commerce, Justice, and Science subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee, wants answers from the administration on its plans for paying for JWST. “While acknowledging that substantial cuts will be necessary, the Administration has so far failed to identify a single specific proposal to offset the increase in JWST spending above the levels contained in the President’s fiscal year 2012 request,” he wrote, referring to cots in other NASA programs to cover the costs of JWST. “Either no offsets have been proposed because JWST really isn’t a top priority, or the Administration is hoping that remaining silent will force Congress to act unilaterally and thereby take sole ownership of the cuts necessitated by the Administration’s actions.” To emphasize his concern, Wolf scrawled below his signature on the copy of the letter the words, “This is very important.”
NASA has started to identify where those funds would come from. In a webinar last week by the Space Telescope Science Institute that covered both the scientific potential of the program as well as its management, project officials discussed their current plans for covering the project’s costs in 2012 and beyond. “The replan is on track to support the ’13 budget process,” Rick Howard, program director for JWST at NASA Headquarters, said. “All the details will be rolled out in February [2012] when the president’s FY13 budget is released.”
Howard said that JWST needs $1.223 billion above the administration’s budget projections for the program (about $355-370 million per year) from 2012 through launch (now planned for October 2018, or the beginning of fiscal year 2019). That includes an additional $156 million in FY12. Half of that money, he said, would come from NASA’s Science Mission Directorate (SMD), although earth science programs would be exempt from any cuts. The other half comes from “agency institutional support”, a reference to the Cross-Agency Support line in the budget, which is about $3.2 billion in FY12. The specific programs in SMD and Cross-Agency Support that would lose money “is still being worked,” he said. Likewise, he added, finding the additional money needed in FY2013 and beyond hasn’t been determined.
In the meantime, JWST is still something of a punching bag for people who want to criticize cost overruns on NASA programs or government programs in general. “Right now, as all of you are probably aware, there is considerable pressure on Congress to be a better steward of the people’s money,” Rep. Ken Calvert (R-CA) said in a luncheon speech Wednesday at the AIAA Space 2011 conference in Long Beach, California. “This means we need to figure out a way to end the days of overbudget and underdelivery. A perfect example of that is the James Webb Space Telescope.” Citing the cost growth in the program, he blamed “a government-wide acquisition problem that couples unrealistic government specifications with overpromising by industry.” Ironically, Calvert made the comments at a luncheon sponsored by Northrop Grumman, the prime contractor for JWST; all the luncheon attendees received a tote bag emblazoned with an illustration of JWST.
By Jeff Foust on 2011 September 28 at 9:05 am ET Skeptical about NASA’s plans—mandated by last year’s authorization act—to develop the heavy-lift Space Launch System (SLS), Congressman Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) is demanding to find out details about alternative architectures that use smaller rockets coupled with propellant depots. In a press release this week, Rohrabacher is calling on NASA to release a study about propellant depots that he said NASA administrator Charles Bolden promised in July to provide, but has yet to do so. The agency, Rohrabacher noted, has played up the potential of depots in the past, “then the depots dropped out of the conversation, and NASA has yet to provide any supporting documents explaining the change.”
Advocates of propellant depot architectures argue that using them, in combination with existing launch vehicles, could obviate the need for a heavy-lift vehicle like the SLS. “The promise and potential of on-orbit fuel depots is the ability to use our existing fleet of launch vehicles, including Delta IV, Atlas V, Falcon 9, Taurus II, and Liberty, to enable deep space missions,” Rohrabacher said in his statement. “Using this system instead of a huge ‘monster’ rocket would increase flight rates, bringing greater efficiency into operations, increasing flight experience and providing data leading to greater reliability; and would increase the market potential for the commercial systems we will use for crew and cargo transportation to the International Space Station.”
This is not the first time Rohrabacher has pushed for the release of this NASA depot study. Earlier this month, as Space News reported, Rohrabacher wrote a letter to Bolden asking him for the study that the administrator had promised back in July. Bolden at the time had said that the study indicated that depot architectures were more expensive than the SLS approach, but Rohrabacher pressed him for details. “A wrong decision now could commit this nation to wasting tens-of-billons-of-dollars of taxpayer dollars,” Rohrabacher wrote. “My concern is that committing the nation to building a super-heavy-lift system is the wrong decision.” The article about the letter, though, came out around the same time as the SLS decision was announced, and hence got limited attention at best.
In this week’s statement, Rohrabacher tries a very different tack: seeking to enlist the support of former NASA administrator Mike Griffin. That seems at first an odd choice, since Griffin has been skeptical at best about the efficacy of propellant depots, such as in his testimony before the House Science Committee last week. Rohrabacher argues that if Griffin thinks depots aren’t the best approach, he would suport the release of a report that supports that. “Due to your continuing interest in this topic, as well as your strong belief in the importance of accountability and transparency in human space exploration, which you reiterated in [last week’s] testimony, I ask that you join me in calling for NASA to make public the analysis and conclusions performed as part of the Human Exploration Framework Team activities,” Rohrabacher wrote in a letter to Griffin included in the press release.
By Jeff Foust on 2011 September 27 at 7:33 am ET NASA’s plan to sole-source most elements of the Space Launch System (SLS) heavy-lift rocket has led one member of Congress to complain to the Government Accountability Office (GAO). “I have serious concerns with NASA’s attempt to avoid holding a full and open competition to acquire the SLS,” Congressman Tom McClintock (R-CA) wrote in a September 22 letter to the GAO, provided by the advocacy group Tea Party in Space (TPIS).
McClintock wrote that he believed NASA’s plans to procure key elements of the SLS through modifying existing contracts made them “de facto sole source awards” that could be in violation of the 1984 Competition in Contracting Act, which allows sole source awards only when there is a “single responsible source” to meet government needs. “I am aware of multiple potential contractors who have expressed intent to compete for any available SLS contracts, and who should have every opportunity to do so,” McClintock wrote, without identifying those contractors. (McClintock’s northern California district does include part of the Sacramento metropolitan area, which is home to Aerojet, a company that has sought competition for at least the SLS’s booster rockets.)
In a “Space Launch System Acquisition Overview” released the same day as McClintock’s letter, NASA states that SLS procurements “will include utilization of existing assets to expedite development, as well as further development of technologies and future competitions for advanced systems and key technology areas specific to SLS evolved vehicle needs.” This includes using existing Ares contracts for the boosters, core and upper stages, and avionics, as well as using existing RS-25D (SSME) main engines for the core stage and continuing the J-2X development contract for the upper stage engine. As previously indicated by NASA, though, there will be a competition for “advanced boosters” for use after the initial SLS flights (which will use the five-segment SRBs developed for Ares), as well as “competitive acquisitions” for spacecraft and payload adaptors and the rocket’s payload fairing. More details about NASA’s SLS acquisition plans are expected at an industry day this Thursday at NASA Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville.
McClintock asked the GAO to investigate NASA’s SLS procurement plans, including if NASA determined any cost difference between modifying SLS contracts and holding a full and open competition for SLS components. He also asks the GAO to consider making its own independent cost estimate of the SLS, “given the concerns raised by the independent Booz Allen Hamilton” cost estimate completed this summer.
TPIS praised McClintock’s complaint in a press release, asking other organizations affiliated with the Tea Party movement to call on the GAO to stay the SLS procurement until the agency can complete its investigation. “Every thoughtful member of Congress should join Congressman McClintock in challenging the spending of $32 billion in taxpayer funds without free and open competition,” said Andrew Gasser. (The $32 billion appears to reference reports of internal NASA estimates for the cost of the overall program; announced plans call for $3 billion a year through at least 2017 on SLS, the Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle, and related programs.) TPIS’s disgust with SLS can be summarized in this one sentence from Gasser: “This SLS bailout earmark is Solyndra on steroids.”
By Jeff Foust on 2011 September 23 at 8:56 am ET A day after the full House Science, Space, and Technology Committee tackled the issue of NASA’s human spaceflight program, two of its subcommittees will take on today another key topic: the nation’s polar weather satellite programs. The Investigations and Oversight subcommittee is joining with the Energy and Environment subcommittee for a hearing titled “From NPOESS to JPSS: An Update on the Nation’s Restructured Polar Weather Satellite Program” at 10 am EDT. Witnesses include NOAA deputy administrator Kathryn Sullivan, NASA associate administrator Chris Scolese, and David Powner of the GAO.
There have been long-running concerns about the future of the nation’s polar weather satellite programs, which led the administration last year to cancel the joint civil-military NPOESS, separating the civil Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS) from the military’s Defense Weather Satellite System (DWSS). In June, Sullivan gave what she described as a “pretty bleak picture” for the future of the civil efforts, warning of a gap in coverage as existing satellites reach the end of their lives while JPSS replacements face funding issues. The military’s DWSS is beyond the scope of this hearing, but its future isn’t looking too good, either: Senate appropriators moved last week to deny funding to DWSS, seeking to recompete the contract for future defense weather satellites rather than repurpose Northrop Grumman’s former NPOESS contract for this.
By Jeff Foust on 2011 September 23 at 8:01 am ET Yesterday morning the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee hosted a hearing on the past, present, and (especially) future of human spaceflight, and attendees heard their fair share of complaints about the nation’s current space policy. Witnesses, in particular former astronauts Neil Armstrong and Gene Cernan and former NASA administrator Mike Griffin, criticized everything from the decision to retire the shuttle to a perceived over-reliance on “certain entrepreneurial companies which have yet to show that they can deliver the laundry to ISS, never mind the crew that would wear it,” as Griffin put it in his opening statement.
Their criticism of the state of NASA’s human spaceflight program attracted some attention, but how significant is it? Armstrong, for example, complained that the current situation, where NASA has to rely on Russia for transporting crews to and from the ISS, is “lamentably embarrassing and unacceptable”, a soundbite that got a lot of play in reports of the hearing. While it may be embarrassing and unacceptable, it actually has its roots in the implementation of the prior nation human space exploration policy, the Vision for Space Exploration, which had inherent in its original goals (retiring the shuttle by 2010 and putting what was then called the Crew Exploration Vehicle into service in 2014) a gap as well. Armstrong also said commercial proposals to continue flying the shuttle (apparently a reference to United Space Alliance’s CCDev-2 proposal to continue shuttle flights at a low flight rate) “should be carefully evaluated prior to allowing them to be rendered ‘not flightworthy’ and their associated ground facilities to be destroyed.” However, that proposal was evaluated, and rejected, by NASA, and for all practical purposes the point of no return for extending shuttle operations has long since passed. And one wonders if officials at Boeing, one of the four companies with funded CCDev-2 awards (or, for that matter, ATK and ULA, which have unfunded CCDev-2 agreements) are chuckling over being lumped in with “entrepreneurial companies”, a comment that seems primarily a jibe at SpaceX.
So what, then, was the purpose of the hearing? There seems to be no enthusiasm for trying to salvage the shuttle from retirement, despite Armstrong’s testimony. Similarly, there appears to be little concrete interest in reducing the gap between the shuttle’s retirement and the introduction of a replacement system to carry astronauts to low Earth orbit, be it a commercial crew system (neither House nor Senate appropriators have proposed funding CCDev at the administration’s request) or the Space Launch System (which will not be ready to fly crews for about a decade, according to NASA’s plans, which key members of Congress seem to have signed off on given last week’s announcement, and for which there seems to be little appetite for additional funding to accelerate its development).
NASA itself was not represented on this panel, and didn’t seem to take the criticism levied at it too seriously, based on its response in a statement from an agency spokesman. “We respect the contributions Neil Armstrong and Gene Cernan have made in service to our country, and thank them for helping to pave the way for our exciting future forward,” the statement read. “Just as their ambitious missions captivated the nation’s attention nearly a half-century ago, today’s American space explorers are leading the way to even farther destinations that will one day allow the first astronauts to set foot on Mars. It is a bold vision laid out by President Obama and Congress, in bi-partisan fashion, to pioneer new frontiers, push the bounds of exploration, and test the limits of innovation and technological development.”
So this hearing may have been little more than an opportunity for critics of the administration’s plan—which, as the NASA statement implied, has the endorsement of Congress in the form of last year’s authorization act—to vent their frustrations that things aren’t going they way they would like, rather than an attempt to reshape policy in the near-term. With the current authorization act in effect for two more fiscal years, and little interest by appropriators to rectify those perceived shortcomings by, say, putting more money into SLS and MPCV (or CCDev), the current policy is likely to be in place at least into 2013. And even if a new president takes office in January 2013, space is probably not going to be a high priority for him or her given the current focus of candidates’ campaigns on jobs, the economy, and other issues outside the realm of human spaceflight.
By Jeff Foust on 2011 September 22 at 6:59 am ET A reminder that at 10 am EDT today, the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee will be holding a hearing titled “NASA Human Spaceflight Past, Present, and Future: Where Do We Go From Here?”, which will be webcast on the committee’s site. The witnesses include former astronauts Neil Armstrong and Gene Cernan, as well as former NASA administrator Mike Griffin; late last week the committee added another witness, MIT planetary sciences professor Maria Zuber, the principal investigator of NASA’s recently-launched GRAIL lunar orbiter mission.
On the eve of today’s hearing, the student space advocacy group Students for the Exploration and Development of Space (SEDS) said it send a letter to Armstrong, asking him to “carry with you some of the messages” that SEDS members articulated in a letter earlier this year. That earlier letter strongly supported commercial spaceflight, saying that “NASA and the nation both benefit greatly from investing in commercial spaceflight programs that will allow astronauts to fly on commercial vehicles,” and playing up the educational and workforce development benefits of such efforts. Given that Armstong (along with Cernan and Griffin) have been critics of the administration’s space policy, which has put an emphasis on commercial crew vehicle development, it’s not clear the students’ message will resonate with the legendary astronaut.
By Jeff Foust on 2011 September 21 at 7:02 am ET For over a year and a half the space community has debated what the future of NASA’s human spaceflight program should be, after the Obama Administration announced plans to cancel Constellation and focus more on technology development and commercial crew and cargo development. The outcome has turned out to be something of a hybrid: some funding for technology development and commercial crew, but also development of a new heavy-lift rocket and a crewed spacecraft (the latter, the Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle, effectively an uninterrupted continuation of Constellation’s Orion). But for the differences between the approaches of the current and previous administrations, one person suggests that they share a fundamental similarity—which may also be a weakness.
“I think there is, underpinning the debate, a fairly fundamental disagreement about how to carry out a long-term program of human spaceflight,” John Logsdon, professor emeritus at George Washington University’s Space Policy Institute, said in a presentation at the National Air and Space Museum last Tuesday. Some people, he argues, advocate for “re-creating the Apollo-era NASA, modified for the 21st century”, while others call for “a new NASA, one based on technological innovation,” as he described the two camps. “If you want to, you can call them the Griffin paradigm and the Garver paradigm,” he said, referring to former NASA administrator Mike Griffin and current NASA deputy administrator Lori Garver.
On the first approach, Logsdon said later he didn’t want to make it sound like attempting to “recapture past glory” couldn’t work, but past efforts to do so have failed. However, the alternative approach, he said, required “a radical paradigm shift, probably too radical for the political system to accommodate.”
Despite these sharp differences in how to do human spaceflight, Logsdon sees something in common between the two paradigms. “The basic Bush vision is the basic Obama vision: that human exploration beyond Earth orbit is the purpose of government-sponsored human spaceflight,” he said. “If one believes that human spaceflight is an important part of the US government portfolio, I believe there is a consensus that spaceflight has to include travel beyond Earth orbit.”
That condition in his statement, though, may be critical: does the nation really believe that human spaceflight is something the US government should be doing? “If you say you have to go beyond Earth orbit, the next question is ‘why?’, and we continue to search for one or several justifications,” he said. He worries that the space community may have concluded that human spaceflight is “inevitable and good and right and obvious”, but that the broader public is unconvinced. “So if you say that the only reason to send people into space is to go places, but there are inadequate reasons to spend the billions of dollars required to do that, where does that leave you?”
By Jeff Foust on 2011 September 20 at 8:46 am ET In a followup to the reaction to last week’s SLS announcement, four members of Houston’s congressional delegation portrayed the decision as a “new era of space exploration” in an op-ed Tuesday in the Houston Chronicle. (As of this writing, the op-ed is illustrated with a photo of Paul Krugman. Go figure.) The members, Democrats Al Green and Gene Green and Republicans John Culberson and Pete Olson, claim credit for proposing a compromise last year that they say has now been adopted with the release of the SLS design. However, they’re looking for more, including goals that are “beyond vague statements about missions to asteroids and Mars in time frames that are too distant or undefined” and, not surprisingly, the use of “the talent, resources and facilities that we have in Houston instead of reinventing the wheel in some other area.”
An editorial by the Orlando Sentinel over the weekend, though, is less celebratory and more cautionary, comparing the SLS to the “Hail Mary pass in football — a last-chance bid for success.” The editorial is concerned that funding will not be available for the SLS at projected levels given the current zeal to cut federal spending, and that even if the money is available, the program won’t be able to stay on budget. “[I]f the space agency’s new program runs into the kind of problems that doomed Constellation, the nation might have no choice but to turn to the private sector. This could be NASA’s last chance.”
Speaking of the private sector, commercial human spaceflight got an endorsement of sorts from retired Utah senator Jake Garn in a speech at Utah State University, according to a report in the university newspaper. “It’s not going to be economically feasible for several years at a minimum. But it will become so,” he said of commercial spaceflight, adding that he believes that “the government and NASA” will help support its development. He added that he was opposed to ending the Space Shuttle program before a replacement vehicle was ready.
By Jeff Foust on 2011 September 16 at 2:24 pm ET The Senate Appropriations Committee has released the report accompanying its fiscal year 2012 Commerce, Justice, and Science appropriations bill, offering more details about the $17.9 billion it proposes for NASA. Here’s a summary chart comparing the president’s budget request (PBR) for FY12 along with what the House Appropriations Committee (HAC) and Senate Appropriations Committee (SAC) has offered in their respective appropriations bills (all amounts in millions):
| Account |
PBR |
HAC |
SAC |
| Science |
$5,016.80 |
$4,504.00 |
$5,100.00 |
| Aeronautics |
$569.40 |
$569.93 |
$501.00 |
| Space Technology |
$1,024.20 |
$375.00 |
$637.00 |
| Exploration |
$3,948.70 |
$3,649.00 |
$3,775.00 |
| Space Operations |
$4,346.90 |
$4,064.00 |
$4,285.00 |
| Education |
$138.40 |
$138.00 |
$138.40 |
| Cross-Agency Support |
$3,192.00 |
$3,050.00 |
$3,043.00 |
| Construction |
$450.40 |
$424.00 |
$422.00 |
| Inspector General |
$37.50 |
$36.30 |
$37.30 |
| TOTAL |
$18,724.30 |
$16,810.23 |
$17,938.70 |
The Senate’s bill is not nearly as severe as the House’s version, as the numbers above make clear. Space Technology still suffers a significant cut, but not nearly as bad as the House version. Aeronautics is the one area where the Senate proposes deeper cuts than the House. Some highlights:
- In Space Technology, the Senate bill fully funds the SBIR/STTR and the “Partnership Development and Strategic Integration” programs, and splits the remaining money between Crosscutting Space Technology Development and Exploration Technology Development. The committee recommends in the report that NASA “prioritize ongoing efforts funded in fiscal year 2011 under the auspices of Space Technology using Space Operations funds” for Crosscutting tech work, and specifically recommends that satellite servicing work be continued at FY11 funding levels. ($75 million for satellite servicing is provided in the Space Operations section of the bill.)
- The bill provides $1.8 billion in Space Exploration for the Space Launch System, but the report states that the program ” shall be managed under a strict cost cap” of $11.5 billion through 2017. NASA is asked to provide a report within 60 days of enactment of the bill that, among other things, should either validate that cost cap or provide “a viable and validated alternative”.
- Similarly, the bill provides $1.2 million for the Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle, but includes a cost cap of $5.5 billion through FY2017. NASA, again, is asked to either validate that cost cap or provide an alternative in a report.
- The bill includes $500 million for Commercial Crew, but only $307.4 million will initially be available. The remaining $192.6 million would be released only after NASA publishes “the notifications to implement acquisition strategy” for SLS and starts to execute “relevant contract actions in support of development of SLS”.
- The same report section requires NASA to “develop and make available to the public detailed human rating processes and requirements to guide the design of all crew transportation capabilities” funded by NASA, be they government- or commercially-operated. It also directs NASA to limit its use of Space Act Agreements for future CCDev rounds, although NASA is already planning to move to contracts (incorporating some elements of such agreements) for the next CCDev procurement.
- For the James Webb Space Telescope, the bill provides $529.6 million in 2012, but includes language critical of the cost overruns on the program. It sets an overall development cost cap of $8 billion, in line with the most recent NASA estimates.
- The bill provides $10 million for NASA to transfer to the Department of Energy to restart plutonium-238 production, although it’s not clear if that will be useful since other appropriators failed to provide matching funding in the DOE budget.
By Jeff Foust on 2011 September 15 at 6:58 am ET Most members of Congress—with one notable exception—spoke approvingly of NASA’s announcement Wednesday of the design of the Space Launch System (SLS) heavy-lift rocket, even if they also expressed some frustration that the decision took too long to make or a perceived lack of vision for NASA’s human spaceflight programs.
For example, the key senators involved in promoting the SLS, Bill Nelson (D-FL) and Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX), joined colleagues in praising the announcement. “This is the biggest thing for space exploration in decades,” Nelson said. “Because of the delays in announcing this design, it is imperative that we work with NASA to assure that the new Space Launch System is pursued without further losses of time and efficiency, while relying on NASA’s world-class engineers and designers to continue U.S. leadership in space exploration,” said Hutchison.
Another senator vocal on NASA issues, Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL), was cautiously pleased with the announcement. Citing a lack of details in the announcement, he said, “I will continue to monitor this situation very closely to see whether the administration implements the 130-metric ton SLS plan as enacted by Congress.” NASA’s current plans call for initial development of a 70-ton version of the rocket that can later be upgraded to a 130-ton version at a unspecified date. Shelby’s comments were echoed by his colleague, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL): “NASA must continue to strive for the 130 metric-ton goal specified in law passed by Congress. And, I will continue to strongly encourage NASA to complete the Space Launch System and the 130 metric-ton rocket.”
Three House members—Rep. Ralph Hall (R-TX), chairman of the House Space, Science, and Technology Committee; Rep. Steven Palazzo (R-MS), chairman of that committee’s space subcommittee; and Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA), chairman of the subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee with oversight of NASA—issued a joint statement primarily venting frustration with delays in announcing the SLS design. “This Administration’s lack of commitment for human space exploration has frustrated and angered many of us in Congress who are committed to American leadership in space,” they state. “It is our sincere hope that today’s announcement signals a breakthrough with this President that will help alleviate the uncertainty that has plagued our aerospace industrial base and wreaked havoc on its employees.”
The science committee’s Democratic leadership was more conciliatory than their Republican colleagues. This is a great step forward. I am pleased that the White House has joined Congress in committing to a sustained, productive future for the nation’s human space flight program,” said Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX), ranking member of the science committee.
Individual Republican members expressed variations on the same themes. “While I am pleased that the new system has been announced, it was long past due and I will continue to push this White House to comply with the law of the land and get America back into space,” said Rep. Pete Olson (R-TX). Rep. John Culberson (R-TX) had similar concerns: “Despite today’s announcement, I remain frustrated and deeply disappointed that the Obama Administration continues to delay the implementation of the human space flight program approved by a bi-partisan Congress last year.” “It is time for NASA to give Congress a schedule — a hard and fast timeline — so American taxpayers have no doubt how their money is being spent on this effort. The days of unaccountable calendar and cost overruns are over,” said Rep. Sandy Adams (R-FL), who emphasized job creation in her statement as well. Rep. Bill Posey (R-FL), while saying he was “encouraged” by the decision, is looking for a clearer vision and mission for the space agency: “We need bold objectives and an aggressive timeline to captivate and excite Americans of all ages, and keep our nation first in Space as a matter of national security.”
An exception to the general praise for the SLS decision comes from Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA). “This program is just fundamentally wrong,” he told the Los Angeles Daily News. He called the SLS “old technology” that he likened to the Saturn 5 rocket of the 1960s. “There are more viable and more creative ways of approaching the creation of a space transport system.”
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