House Passes NASA Authorization Act
House Passes Bipartisan NASA Authorization Act
Space Subcommittee Chairman Steven Palazzo (R-Miss.): “Our bill represents a serious bipartisan commitment to space exploration at a serious time in our nation’s history. American leadership in space depends on our ability to put people and sound policy ahead of politics. That is what we have tried to do with the House bill. I urge our friends in the Senate to move forward with us by adopting our commonsense compromise and passing the House bill. Our nation’s space program needs this legislation.”
House Passes NASA Reauthorization Act of 2014
“While this is not a perfect bill, especially in terms of its short duration and lack of meaningful funding guidance, the bill in its present form includes many important policy provisions that help guide the future of NASA at a critical time for our space program.”
A 401-2 vote to pass the NASA Authorization bill may be the strongest vote on a NASA bill ever. This would seem to be a strong sign of bipartisan agreement on NASA, at least the policies, since there was no FY15 funding authorized in the bill.
Is this strong vote a sign that there is bipartisan agreement on NASA policy? Or is it possibly a sign of apathy and diminishing interest in having a serious debate about NASA’s future?
It’s hard to tell. The Approps bills seem pretty strong in most respects. But the lack of any serious discussion in the halls of Congress of fundamental questions about the executability of its plans suggests that they don’t want to have a debate, and possibly don’t care so much if the program is on a sustainable path.
What do you think? Should we be rejoicing the emergence of consensus or alarmed at the lack of interest? What should be the next steps?
It is most likely the latter. A case of “eh, whatever, pork will keep going to the same states anyways.”
Now if they had shown the same partisan support for commercial crew years ago, we could have a spacecraft with astronauts in final training and a firm launch date from the Cape.
Very good question and one that people in this forum are smart enough not to answer. Whether you assume the former: “that there is the emergence of consensus” or the latter “lack of interest” the fact remains that, given the continued increase funding, SLS is not going away. As an observer of this forum, I can see that there are some bright movers and shakers who here. Given the facts on the ground as they are, it would be disappointing if SLS made it to production without a well designed purpose. Think of SLS now as ISEE-3 (only trillions of dollars more expensive but prettier) and think of what 130 metric tons payload you want to get NASA to focus on. Then make it so. My 1st thought is to send Congress on a one-way trip, but that is unrealistic. Regardless of which one of your 2 divergent reasons for the voting margin on this bill is correct, House members will either embrace your ideas because of their grand vision or because it gives them one less thing to think about. I don’t have enough knowledge or creativity to even suggest what we could put up if you could ship 130 metric tons off this planet. I leave that to the smarter ones here. We have limited capacity to affect events in congress. So if we fail this opportunity to come up with an answer for this payload question, then smaller, less interested minds will make that choice for us. We did not ask for them to build this tractor trailer, but we have a responsibility to make sure they pack it right.
You may be right, but it remains difficult to see any good come out of this. Because it is still insufficiently funded, other programs will be further squeezed. The best we can hope for is to keep it minimally supported as a sort of storage ring for surplus civil servants who would otherwise be getting in the way of the much smaller number of people who actually might succeed in making human spaceflight sustainable.
I knew I could count on people like Duheagle and Vulture4 to make sense of all of this! If nothing else then SLS can serve as the “hey look what I am doing over here” project while behind the curtain, real scientific work can be done on the payload. Hey it will make a lot of noise, and do less than promised. Maybe we should just have the official congressional logo painted on the side of it as it carries its 90 metric tons of whatever we figure we need to send out of LEO.
Among many regrettable things about SLS, its probable lack of ability to actually launch Congress into deep space has to rank right up there. Owing to NASA’s twin decisions to abandon the advanced boosters for SLS Block 2 and also any high-energy upper stage based on the J-2X engine in favor of an anemic thing based on four RL-10’s, SLS is never going to exist in a version capable of lofting 130 metric tons to LEO. The best it will likely ever do, should it ever fly at all, is 93 metric tons. It’s like some Bizzaro World beer commercial. Costs more! Lifts less!
At least they want cost estimates for ISS extension to 2030. I didn’t understand the amendments about climate sensors. it sounds like NASA can only actually operate climate sensors if someone else pays for it.
One interpretation might be that the purpose for such amendments is to handicap climate research. Other interpretations might exist, but it’s unlikely that we’ll get a forthright explanation from those who wrote the amendments, no matter their reason.
Cost estimate for ISS extension : making good friends with Putin and Hollande.
Authorization bills , if funded per stated policy, would have NASA on Mars by now.
They are meaningless except for those looking to protect turf.
401-2 says :”I’ve got more important things to do that be interested in the future of NASA, SLS, or Orion. Where is my next fund raiser?!”
They want reports on CC on the Milestones. SAA had milestones. Now on no SAA, so might not be any milestones to report on. The recent completed round, I don’t remember any milestones. They do not say cut CC to one. Just at least one. With Musk saying that he will need close to a billion total with 1/2 spent.He needs 250 million a year. So with funding at 700 million NASA should be able to afford two providers. Non partisan? They have gone back to Moon,Mars and beyond. A Bush program. They even call it a vision. They seem mostly to leave it to NASA, with a lot of reports.
Also they are going to have a student contest to rename SLS and the NASA crewed exploration program. I hope NASA does not choose one that is impossible. Like Shoot for the Stars. Or Moon, Mars and Beyond. Beyond includes the whole Universe. It was a sneaky way for Bush to have a goal that no new president could beat. The trouble with a new name is that in 5 years there will be a new contest and a new name.
“They do not say cut CC to one. Just at least one.”
Well that’s good
Does the House bill include the nonsensical FAR language about Commercial Crew pushed by Senator Shelby in the other chamber?
The full text link embedded in the first linked announcement above is the original version,before amendment. The second link above has a further link to “more information” reflecting the amendment at the subcommittee level that was carried forward. From everything I can glean, I think the amended version is to be the one that passed. A little troubling that the house has inconsistent information on what they actually passed, though.
Of course they believe it – they designed it, for their own purposes ( which is not “going to space” )
Have any of the players in the Commercial Crew contest weighed in yet? One would think that, given the relationship between Shelby and SpaceX, that Elon would have said something about this by now.