NASA’s Exploration Initiative: Status and Issues

Opening Statement By Chairman Mark Udall

Good morning.  I want to welcome our witnesses, and I look forward to your testimony.

Today’s hearing continues the Subcommittee’s oversight of NASA’s major program areas and will focus on the agency’s Exploration initiative.

In many ways, NASA’s Exploration initiative exemplifies both the strengths and weaknesses of the agency at this point in its history.

Begun in 2004 to implement the President’s Vision for Space Exploration, NASA’s Exploration initiative was conceived to be a broad and sustained program of human and robotic exploration of the solar system.

It was to be a step-by-step approach to exploration, starting with the completion of the International Space Station and subsequent retirement of the Space Shuttle, development of a new human space transportation system, and a return to the Moon as an initial step in a long-term journey to explore the solar system.  It was also to include an ambitious set of robotic exploration activities and scientific investigations.

Yet from its beginning, NASA’s Exploration initiative has suffered from chronic underfunding, with a "once-in-a-generation" project to develop a new space transportation system "shoehorned" into a NASA budget that in some years hasn’t even kept pace with inflation.

That same underfunding has led to cutbacks in the Space Station research and critical exploration technology investments that will be needed if NASA’s Exploration initiative is to go beyond simply being simply a repeat of the 1960’s era Apollo project, albeit on a somewhat larger scale.

This is in no way a criticism of the dedicated NASA team that is developing the systems needed to take American astronauts beyond low Earth orbit.

They are working hard to make the best of a tough situation, and we want them to succeed.

To that end, today we will hear from NASA about what has been accomplished to date, and we will examine what NASA is going to have to do to bring those new systems into operation.

Yet we also have to take a hard look at what it’s going to take to make the Exploration initiative both sustainable and worth the money.

A good number of my colleagues agree with me that we should be investing more in NASA – but there isn’t necessarily a consensus on what those funds should be used to accomplish.

For example, I think exploration is a worthwhile endeavor, and I support it.

However, it is also clear to me that NASA’s core missions in aeronautics and science – and especially Earth science and climate research – are highly relevant to addressing the nation’s needs and must be better supported than they have been.

Thus, if the next Administration keeps NASA’s budget as constrained as it has been under this Administration – and I hope it doesn’t – then the pace of Exploration is going to have to be adjusted to ensure that NASA’s other important activities do not wind up being cannibalized.

Yet, whether or not NASA gets more money, we also need to ensure that the money NASA does get is spent as effectively as possible.

Thus, at a minimum, NASA needs to follow good program management practices and do its best to control costs, something the GAO witness will discuss.

NASA also needs to do a better job of keeping Congress informed of its progress on critical initiatives, so we can determine if they are proceeding in the right way and on budget.

In addition, it means that we need to make sure that NASA’s Exploration program is structured in a way that ensures that the critical long-term exploration research and technology investments will be made.

It also means that we need to ensure that the activities we carry out on the Moon don’t become a counterproductive drain on NASA’s – and the nation’s – resources but instead help further our long-term exploration goals.

Finally, it means we need to ensure that we don’t succumb to the temptation to rerun a "space race" that we won nearly forty years ago.  Instead I think we need to be reaching out to fashion a new, internationally cooperative approach to exploration.

That, more than any nationalistically driven competition, will ensure that U.S. leadership in space is maintained in a way that will deliver the maximum benefits to our citizens for decades to come.

Well, we have a great deal to discuss today, and we have an expert panel to help us sort through all of these issues.

I again want to welcome you, and we appreciate your willingness to testify before us today.

Witnesses

Panel

1 - Dr. Richard Gilbrech
Associate Administrator Exploration Systems Mission Directorate National Aeronautics and Space Administration Exploration Systems Mission Directorate National A
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2 - Ms. Cristina T. Chaplain
Director Government Accountability OfficeAcquisition and Sourcing Management Government Accountability Office Government Accountability OfficeAcquisition and So
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3 - Dr. Noel Hinners
Independent Consultant
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4 - Dr. Kathryn Thornton
Professor of Department of Science, Technology and Society Associate Dean of the School of Engineering and Applied Science University of Virginia Associate Dean
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