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Budget

Congress Chides NASA Over Cost Increases

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
May 10, 2013
Filed under , ,

Lawmakers urge NASA to be mindful of budget constraints, The Hill
“Lawmakers on Thursday urged NASA to be more realistic about developing space technology in light of budget constraints. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) chided NASA for not making the cost of projects clear to Congress and warned the agency that it risked having them axed entirely. Noting the recent exoplanet discoveries by NASA’s $591 million Kepler telescope, Rohrabacher noted that Congress nearly shut down a similar telescope due to a lack of funding. “The [National Science Foundation’s] Arecibo telescope was actually the first observatory to find evidence of this exoplanet, and we almost closed that down due to lack of funds. And that telescope remains a very important part of the projects that we are talking about,” Rohrabacher said.”

Keith Cowing

NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.

4 responses to “Congress Chides NASA Over Cost Increases”

  1. Steve Whitfield says:
    May 10, 2013 at 7:46 pm
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    I still think this was a witch hunt looking for excuses to cut NASA funding.
    —–
    “And it’s really possible if we do that, we’ll just defund all the things the SLS is supposed to carry. Meaning your projects, Rohrabacher said.“

    And just what were those “things” again, aside from Orion? Last I heard there wasn’t anything, except Orion, to go on top of SLS, since SLS was spending all the money.
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    “A number of the things that each of you has laid out requires an allocation of resources over a period of time,” said Rep. Donna Edwards“

    And if NASA had asked for the full amount at the outset of the Kepler program, the program would never have happened, or at best, Congress would have cut it back anyhow. Heads, Congress wins; tails, NASA loses.
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    This is discouraging.

  2. cb450sc says:
    May 11, 2013 at 3:42 pm
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    It would be difficult to imagine two telescopes less similar than Kepler (an optical space telescope) and Aricebo (a fixed dish earth radio telescope). Well, I guess they both have the word “telescope” in them.

  3. Stanley Richard Clark says:
    May 13, 2013 at 7:55 pm
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    I think Congress should do something constructive to help out NASA’s
    funding, like repealing the Law of Gravity, this should be very easy for
    them and just look at the benefit to the Space Program…. ;-D

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