This morning, the Senate Subcommittee on Space, Aeronautics and Related Sciences held a much-anticipated hearing on the status of the Vision for Space Exploration and the coming legislation to reauthorize NASA. The chair of the Committee is Senator Bill Nelson (D-FL), who flew abord Space Shuttle Columbia in 1986. The Ranking Member of the Committee is Senator David Vitter (R-LA).
Senator Nelson made extensive opening remarks, commenting on the fact that the coming NASA reauthorization legislation will be critical because NASA itself is at a crossroads. He pointed out numerous issues that need to be resolved, such as whether to launch the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, the spaceflight gap between the last flight of the Shuttle and the first flight of Orion, and the continuing expansion of Chinese spaceflight capabilities.
Senator Vitter, in his opening remarks, pointed out that he agreed with Senator Nelson's position, highlighting the fact that the American space program is not a partisan issue and is something on which Democrats and Republicans can work together. He raised the question of what role should be played by the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program and whether Congress should increase NASA's budget by $1 billion to $2 billion, as had been suggested by Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), in order to accelerate the development of the Orion/Ares system.
Among the distinguished panel members invited to testify at these hearings was legendary Gene Krantz, who served as NASA Flight Director for the Apollo 11 landings and the miraculous rescue of Apollo 13. He made several key points. First, he said that the coming spaceflight gap presented a danger that NASA's best people would leave to find employment elsewhere, thus forcing the space agency to rebuild its workforce at a later date and at great cost. This, he said, is what happened between the final flight of Apollo and the first flight of the Shuttle. He also stressed that the current plan to return to the Moon is the "bst game plan" he had seen since the Kennedy administration and that current NASA Administrator Mike Griffin was the best NASA leader he had seen in decades.
Of particular importance, Krantz said, is the need for NASA and the aerospace community to realize that there is no free ride and that they needed to work harder to build public support for the space program. He lamented the large and expensive conferences held by NASA and the aerospace community, where, he said, "space people talk to space people." Preaching to the choir was no way to build public support, and he urged that NASA and the aerospace community get out of their comfort zone and encourage the general public to become involved in the space program.
Senator Vitter asked Mr. Krantz whether the existing "architecture" for the Moon-Mars initiative should be reexamined and reconsidered during the coming debates over NASA reauthorization. Krantz responded by saying that this would be a waste of time. He said that NASA had been a victim of too many studies and too many reconsiderations. Frantz stated his beleif that the current plan was "very sound" that NASA should "stay the course."
Later on, after other panel members had testified, Senator Nelson pointed out to Mr. Krantz that NASA had received 3% of the federal budget during the Apollo era, whereas it receives only 0.6% of the federal budget currently. Senator Nelson asked whether the Apollo landings had been achieved had they ben given only 0.6% of the budget. In response, Krantz said that the outcome would have been America stuck in Earth orbit while a Soviet flag flew on the Moon.
Generally, the atmosphere of the hearing was positive and space advocates can hope that there will be a strong amount of support in the Senate when the time comes for NASA reauthorization legislation.
