House Democrats Preparing NASA Friendly Authorization Bill
House Democrats Preparing Their Own NASA Authorization Bill, Space News
“Democrats in the House are set to unveil their own NASA authorization bill, which unlike a much leaner Republican proposal due to be marked up June 10 would authorize $18 billion in spending for 2014 — more than NASA has gotten since 2011.
… The Republican bill would ban an asteroid retrieval mission the Obama administration proposed in April and instead direct NASA to send more astronauts and hardware to lunar space. The Republican bill, which assumes NASA will be subject to across-the-board sequestration cuts for the foreseeable future, also called for shrinking NASA’s Earth science program and restructuring NASA management.
The official summary of the Democratic bill mentions none of these things, and directs NASA to only one destination: Mars. The agency would be on the hook to draw up a 15-year Mars road map for Congress, under the Democrats’ bill, but it would be entirely up to NASA to decide whether the road to the red planet included detours to the Moon, asteroids or Mars’ natural satellites. ”
UPDATE: Ranking Member Edwards Introduces Legislation to Authorize NASA, Cites Need to Return Agency to Path of Greatness, Rep. Donna F. Edwards (D-MD)
UPDATE July 10: The amendment Rep. Edwards proposed was defeated 11-9 at today’s hearing.
This is turning out to be The Year of the NASA Authorization Bill. This one makes, I think, three so far, and no two are similar. Maybe a public referendum should be held to determine the plans of most interest. I don’t think that’s the right way to do things, but it’s got to be better than what’s happening (not happening?) now.
It seems to me that the contents of the various proposed Bills break into the same general preferences as we see in the space advocacy discussions on line. That seems both good and bad to me, but doesn’t bode well for progress any time soon.
I don’t know if it’s reasonable to expect any budget agreements with the current Congress, one in which any cross-aisle budget agreement is seen as either weakness or traitorous.
The authorization bill is different from the budget. NASA can have all sorts of things written into the authorization bill, but unless the budget bill funds them, a task that is authorized to be done, but not funded to be done, won’t be done.
Unfortunately, getting any agreement on an authorization requires surmounting the same obstacle: Congress. Agreement in Congress is in short supply.
I’ve only seen two authorization bills. Since neither of them recognize that HSF beyond LEO is impossible under the constraints they prescribe, I’d say they break into local interests rather than those of space advocates.
Steve, I doubt even a public referendum would get much done as most of the public doesn’t care. I’d bet a good many of them would pefer to get rid of NASA all together to “save money” or at the least spend it elsewhere.