Senate Appropriators Slam NASA Commercial Crew Program

The heads of a NASA budget-writing panel questioned recently the space agency’s subsidization of four private companies that are developing systems to carry astronauts to the International Space Station.

While the harshest criticism of NASA’s commercial-crew effort came from Republicans during a Senate Appropriations Committee (SAC) subpanel hearing, Chairwoman Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) also expressed concerns about the nascent program to help launch a private space transportation industry.

“I think it’s bold, I think it’s promising, but I’m concerned that it’s behind schedule,” she said during the Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies (CJS) subcommittee hearing.

Mikulski noted test launch delays with the commercial endeavors. She further asked NASA Administrator Charles Bolden if the nation can afford the commercial-crew program considering the earliest data a firm can launch a spacecraft would be 2017, and the space station could be shut down in 2020.

Bolden defended the investment, noting President Barack Obama wants to extend use of the space station to 2028. The commercial providers, he said, “are doing very well.”

“They’re meeting challenges that have come their way,” Bolden testified. “ We advise. We can’t tell them what to do. But we have relatively good insight into what they’re doing and we’re confident that the decisions they’re making are prudent. We would much rather see them delay than to fly and fail, because we cannot use a failed system.”

SAC-CJS Ranking Member Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas) continued voicing her opposition to the level of commercial-crew funding in NASA’s fiscal year 2013 budget proposal.

Hutchison–also the ranking member of the NASA-overseeing Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee–slammed what she said is NASA’s proposed 104 percent increase in funding for the commercial effort and corresponding $170 million reduction for NASA’s in-house manned-spaceflight program. That is made up of the developmental Space Launch System (SLS) heavy-lift rocket and Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle (MPCV), which NASA is developing to replace the retired Space Shuttle.

Hutchison noted that NASA said the combined SLS and MPCV effort make up one of its three top priorities.

“What is said and what is proposed don’t always match,” Hutchison said.

She and Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) called for Bolden to lower the number of commercial-crew firms NASA is supporting.

“Members of Congress are already coalescing around NASA choosing no more than two companies, providing competition as well as funding realities that we see in our budget, and not stealing from the long-term future, which is Orion and the launch vehicle,” she said.

Shelby, for his part, argued the “core mission of NASA is to build cutting edge systems that allow us to expand our knowledge of the universe.” He charged the Obama administration “seems to think that NASA’s job is to use taxpayer money as venture capital to support speculative commercial companies.”