NASA Budget Debate Live on C-SPAN
Keith’s note: NASA FY 2013 Budget debate is now live on C-SPAN. Watch live.
Comments Made During House Debate on NASA FY 2013 Budget
“Mr. Rohrabacher: I rise today to engage in a colloquy on NASA’s Commercial Crew program. The chairman has shown great leadership on space and science issues. He and I have often worked together on issues of shared interest, and he is a great friend. The report of this bill contains some strong language about NASA’s Commercial Crew program, and I admittedly have some concerns about that language. I believe it makes a flawed comparison between commercial crew program partners and the energy firm Solyndra. In addition, it requires an immediate downselect to a single program partner, which I do not believe is the best path forward.”
NASA’s equivalent of Solyndra is Rocketplane Kistle. NASA signed an agreement with Rocketplane Kistle in 2006 to develop a rocket for launching cargo. This agreement was terminated when Kistle was unable to obtain sufficient money.
Fortunately NASA had prepared for such problems by using redundancy. They had signed a second agreement with SpaceX. NASA then signed a third agreement with Orbital Sciences. The resulting Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) spacecraft are due to arrive at the International Space Station this year.
Having learned that two firms working on rocket development is insufficient to ensure a redundant transportation system NASA selected 4 firms for the
Commercial Crew Development (CCDev).
For the politicians to change from a tried and test method of preventing failure – redundancy – to a monopoly supplier situation is a brave decision.