Politics guides NASA future
Decisions won't come until after elections
BY BART JANSEN FLORIDA TODAY
July 27, 2010
WASHINGTON — Decisions on whether NASA's future flies aboard commercial rockets or government rockets likely will be based more on politics than science.
But don't expect a resolution soon. A decision likely won't come until later this year, after the fall elections.
"At this point in time, it's moved beyond the space community and it's very much a political story," said Roger Launius, a historian at the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum and former historian at NASA.
He added a note of optimism, however.
"All the people who are in this debate want the right thing to happen," Launius said. "They just aren't sure how to make that happen."
President Barack Obama's proposals for NASA calls for using federal money to help commercial companies develop rockets and spacecraft that could carry crews to the space station, while NASA prepares for future missions beyond Earth's orbit.
Obama wants to spend
$312 million next year to help such companies develop rockets to carry cargo and $500 million to help them prepare to carry people. He would spend $3.3 billion over a three-year period to foster commercial crew services, with the total growing to $6 billion over five years.
The Senate science and appropriations committees agreed to spend $312 million next year supporting commercial cargo rockets and $300 million supporting commercial crews. The combined amount would increase to $500 million in 2012 and 2013, for a total of $1.6 billion over three years.
The House science committee was stingier, agreeing to $14 million for cargo rockets and $50 million for crew rockets, with a $100 million loan program for commercial rocket developers. The three-year total wouldn't reach $1 billion.
The question now is whether members of the House Appropriations subcommittee governing NASA will go along with the amounts approved by their colleagues on the science panel or will choose those approved by the Senate committees, a compromise that also has the administration's backing.
"Certainly the House and Senate authorization committees are on very different pages," said John Logsdon, a former member of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board and a professor emeritus at George Washington University. "What really counts is the appropriations."
While the dollars start small, the policy decisions will ripple for years.
"The stakes could not be higher," Launius said. "Whatever decisions are made are going to directly affect human spaceflight for the next generation."
While the debate has been rancorous, it could still end amicably.
Scott Pace, director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University, said bipartisan agreement on Obama's proposed $19 billion fiscal 2011 budget for NASA has been "very positive" for the agency and could lead to a detailed compromise.
"I don't believe differences over the pace of funding for the commercial crew program will be a fundamental barrier to passage of a new NASA authorization bill and appropriations this year," Pace said.
Obama's plans for NASA would expand research and extend the life of the International Space Station from 2015 to 2020. He also wants to cancel the Constellation return-to-the-moon program as underfunded and unrealistic, an idea that has provoked widespread opposition in Congress.
The proposals also have sparked concerns on Florida's Space Coast because they coincide with the retirement of the shuttle program and the anticipated loss of 8,000 local jobs as a result. Both the House and the Senate have called for adding one more shuttle flight beyond the two already scheduled.
But lawmakers have struggled to reach agreement. And with a spotty schedule between now and the Oct. 1 start of the fiscal year, policy decisions are expected to wait until after the election.
"It is a bit of a mess," said Leroy Chiao, a former astronaut who served on a presidential commission last year that studied NASA.
"However, I am hopeful that we'll get something through and keep going down a good path. The worst thing in the world is to have uncertainty. What we have in spades right now is uncertainty."
Sources: http://www.floridatoday.com/article/20100727/NEWS02/7270322/1007/NEWS02/Politics+guides+NASA+future
images: file
Administration Note: Bah! It is time for NASA to come FULLY clean about its relationship with the Department of Defense in light of the realeses of the basic unreliability of people to believe what Govennment, in general, tells us as "Truth", especially when independant sources come forth and eventually FORCES the Press Whores to cover through various topics of Governmental Coverup on topics of importance to the average citizen's education and knowledge.
Paradigm Research Group Unnecessary Preventable Oil Leak UFO Energy http://ow.ly/1TRVc
Americas Nuclear Flying Saucers
http://www.commonsensecentral.net/howtocats-rb/Americas_Nuclear_Flying_Saucer.htm
Military Manipulated Media Industrialized Imperial Intelligence Corporational Control Complex.
M3I3C3 aka “Mickey...They'll Eat Everything before you knew there was something. Then tell you there was nothing...move along.”
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