More Insight Into FY 2011 Budget for NASA Commercial Activities

Keith’s note: According to Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation staffer Jeff Bingham posting as “51DMascot” at NASASpaceflight.com on 11 July:
“I assure you, the FY 2011 numbers will appear to be “underfunded” for Commercial crew, because activities in that year wiill be focused heavily on concept development, common technology development, human-rating requirements, review of procurement approaches and performance milestones and funding “gates’ that must be accomplished with assurance before any authority to proceed o a procurement effort is initiated, and not before the end of FY 2011. But there will still be a stated commitment to the support and development of such capabilities–including requirements for a crew-rescue capability, meaning six-month on-orbital lifetime certification, etc. Those are the kinds of things that you might expect would constitute the closet thing to articulating the “walk before you run” approach for which there is large consensus in the Congress vis-a-vis commercial crew.”