Saturday, December 12, 2009

NASA: Creature of Congress?

Lawmakers try to prevent Obama from cutting NASA

Mark Matthews and Robert Block

The Orlando Sentinel

Congress and the White House have signaled that they envision sharply different futures for NASA and its manned space mission.

At an aerospace luncheon, NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden said President Barack Obama wants the agency to embrace “more international cooperation” after the space-shuttle era ends in 2010 and hinted that its Constellation moon-rocket program could see major changes.

“We are going to be fighting and fussing over the coming year,” Bolden told an audience of aerospace executives and lobbyists Wednesday. “Some of you are not going to like me, because we are not going to do the same kind of things we’ve always done.”

But hours earlier, congressional appropriators reached a different conclusion, approving legislative language declaring that any change to Constellation, which aims to return astronauts to the moon by 2020 but is running well behind schedule, must first get the approval of Congress.

That language, inserted by U.S. Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., should pass this month as part of a nearly $450 billion omnibus appropriations bill. It would require NASA to spend nearly $4 billion on the program this fiscal year, effectively tying Obama’s hands as he attempts to forge a new NASA policy that is likely to cancel Constellation’s Ares I rocket.

According to industry sources, U.S. Rep. Alan Mollohan, D-W.Va., also signed off on the language, at the urging of U.S. Reps. Bart Gordon, D-Tenn., and Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz. Mollohan heads the appropriations subcommittee that handles NASA, while Gordon and Giffords have oversight responsibility for the agency.

“They are at an impasse,” said space historian Roger Launius of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. “And unless the White House levels enough pressure, Congress could prevail.”

Read the article HERE.

No comments: