By Emelie Rutherford
A House panel revised its NASA authorization bill yesterday to be more in line with a Senate version that accelerates plans for developing a new heavy-lift rocket and has heftier funding for commercial cargo and crew-development activities.
House Democrats want to take up the three-year policy-setting bill for the space agency before they leave Washington the end of next week for the mid-term elections. The House Science and Technology Committee unveiled yesterday compromise NASA legislation that differs from the bill it approved back in July and is more in line with the version the Senate passed in August.
The Senate-passed bill itself was a compromise with the White House, after some lawmakers resisted President Barack Obama’s plan to cancel the Constellation manned-spaceflight program. The Senate bill calls for beginning work on a new heavy-lift rocket right away, instead of Obama’s previous date of 2015 (Defense Daily, Aug. 9).
The new House Science and Technology Committee bill unveiled yesterday likewise would authorize faster work on the heavy-lift rocket.
The new House legislation also calls for increasing funding for commercial cargo and crew development activities, boosting the $464 million in the committee’s previous bill to $1.2 billion now. The Senate’s NASA authorization bill has $1.6 billion for such activities through fiscal year 2013.
Overall, the House Science and Technology Committee’s latest bill would authorize $58.4 billion in NASA spending from FY ’11, which starts Oct. 1, through FY ’13.
Members of the House NASA authorizing panel previously fought hard against canceling Constellation, an underfunded and rocky space-shuttle-replacement effort intended to carry astronauts to the moon and beyond. It has included the developmental Ares I launch vehicle and Orion crew capsule and future Ares V heavy-lift rocket (Defense Daily, Feb. 26).
House Science and Technology Committee Chairman Bart Gordon (D-Tenn.) yesterday called the revised legislation a bipartisan compromise that “helps move the discussion about the future of NASA closer to a final product.”
“For too long, NASA has not been given the resources to complete the many missions the nation has asked of it,” he said. “NASA is too important to the nation to continue on that path. This will provide a clear and sustainable direction for NASA, in light of the current fiscal environment.”
The committee’s new bill and the July-approved version have different amounts for exploration. The older bill provided $13.18 billion for the restructured exploration program and also included $150 million for the 21st Century Launch Complex initiative. The legislation released yesterday, though, instead would authorize $12.21 billion for the Space Launch System, Crew Vehicle, and associated activities, of which $1.33 billion would be for a NASA Launch Support and Infrastructure Modernization program.
The House panel’s new and old bills also differ on the Space Technology authorization; the older version had $2.64 billion and did not specify the amounts provided for Exploration Technology Development in that account, while $5 million was included for Exploration Technology Development in the Exploration account. The new legislation would authorize $2.67 billion for Space Technology, of which a total of $1.19 billion would be for Exploration Technology Development.
The new legislation proposes more funding than the older version for robotic precursors, boosting the figure from $5 million to $150 million.
A separate NASA appropriations bill, not yet finalized in Congress, will actually set the NASA budget figures. A Senate Appropriations Committee bill has many similarities to the Senate-paused authorization measure (Defense Daily, July 22).
For Constellation, ATK [ATK] has been the prime contractor for the Ares I first stage, Boeing [BA] has developed the Ares I upper stage, and Lockheed Martin [LMT] has been making Orion.