WASHINGTON — A skeptical Senate panel grilled NASA about its budget for next year on Thursday.
NASA Administrator Charles F. Bolden Jr. did his best to answer questions in an oversight meeting on the space administration’s FY 2011 request.
As expected, the major issue was the administration’s decision to scrap the Constellation program, which is responsible for manned space flight operations. The senators were also struck by concerns of astronaut safety, the $2.5 billion it costs to terminate Constellation, and the viability of relying on private industry to create safe and effective space rockets.
• NASA’s total budget for 2011 is $19 billion, or $276 million more than 2010.
• The budget request calls for NASA to see a $6 billion increase over the next five years.
• The budget calls for the elimination of the Constellation program, which operates NASA’s manned spaceflight operations.
• Roughly $9 billion has been spent on Constellation, and $2.5 billion will go into terminating the project.
• The Earth Science budget will see $381 million increase from last year, getting a total of $1.8 billion. Much of that money will go towards researching climate change.
• The Education budget will decrease by roughly 21 percent, going to $145.8 million in 2011, from $183.8 in 2010.
“I need to know more details,” said Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., the chairwoman of the Commerce, Justice and Science Appropriations Subcommittee, about the $19 billion budget proposal. “I want to know if this is the program that Congress and the American people are going to support from one administration to the next. We cannot reinvent NASA every four years.”
Other senators were not as kind in their questioning.
Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., whose home state contains NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, was perhaps the budget’s, and Bolden’s, harshest critic.
“Mr. Administrator, this plan lacks vision, is unrealistic and jeopardizes our entire human space exploration program,” he said.
Though the Constellation program will be discarded under the current proposal, NASA says it intends to continue putting Americans into space, both through rides hitched up to the International Space Station on Russian space rockets as well as on rockets built by private companies.
“By 2025, new spacecraft will allow us to begin the first crewed missions beyond the Moon into deep space, including the first human mission to an asteroid,” Bolden said in his statement. “We hope to follow this by sending astronauts to orbit Mars by the mid-2030s, with human beings landing on Mars after that.”
NASA has spent roughly $9 billion developing the Ares I and Ares V rockets, as well as the Orion spacecraft under Constellation. They will have to spend another $2.5 billion to shut the program down.
Sen. Robert Bennett, R-Utah, whose Web site claims that Constellation’s closing will cut thousands of jobs in his home state, said he was not convinced that trading the current manned spaceflight program for a different production model is a good idea.
“I think the proven financial circumstance is to stay with what we’ve got, instead of plunging into the unknown,” he said.
Elizabeth Robinson, NASA’s chief financial officer, said the administration’s long-term goals don’t mesh with the progress that Constellation has made thus far.
“We’re $10 billion into a $150 billion dollar program, so there will be termination costs,” she said. “But if you don’t think the program is in line with your long-term goals, you’re going to make a trade off.”
John C. Frost, a member of NASA’s Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel, said in front of the subcommittee that the “bottom line recommendation is to not abandon the well-established progress already made on the Program Of Record in favor of an alternative, until such time that it is determined that the alternative provides equal or better safety for our astronauts.”
The “Program of Record” Frost is referring to includes test flights of unmanned Ares I-X rockets, which NASA dubbed a success in experimental launch trials as recently as last October. Bolden made sure to clarify that it was not deemed a success because it was close to the goal of carrying astronauts into space, but rather because it provided the administration with a large amount of data.
Shelby saved some of his harshest remarks for the disintegration of Constellation: “Your destructive actions toward the Constellation program will only ensure that members cannot trust you. Mr. Administrator, you are creating an atmosphere where you and your leadership team have become a major impediment to moving forward.”
Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio, summed up the future of the budget request over the next several months, when he addressed the NASA administrator.
“You’re going to have to do a big job convincing this committee that this is sustainable,” he said.