NASA’s Fiscal Year 2011 Budget Request and Issues
Opening Statement By Chairman Bart Gordon
Good morning, and welcome, Administrator Bolden. Today’s hearing marks the beginning of this Committee’s review of NASA’s Fiscal Year 2011 budget request, including the proposed changes to the nation’s human space flight plans. As you know, NASA is an agency that occupies an important place in the nation’s R&D infrastructure, as well as being a source of inspiration and pride for all of our citizens. I know that my colleagues on both sides of the aisle want to make sure that we do all we can to ensure its future health and productivity. In that regard, I am pleased that the president’s FY 2011 NASA budget request has a number of positive features.
First, of course, is the fact that the budget request would increase NASA’s five-year funding by a total of $6 billion over last year’s outyear funding plan. It is less than many supporters of NASA believe is justified or needed, but in a fiscal environment in which many federal agencies and programs are facing funding freezes, it represents a vote of confidence in NASA that should not be ignored.
There are other good things in the proposed NASA budget. It recognizes the critical role that NASA’s Earth science program and climate research play in increasing our understanding of climate change and other phenomena that impact our society, and it moves to restore some of the purchasing power that was lost by NASA’s Earth science program over the past decade.
Aeronautics is another area that gets a needed boost in the FY 2011 NASA budget request. It is hard to think of another NASA program that has had more of an impact on our economic competitiveness, national security, and quality of life, and I am pleased that its importance is recognized in this budget proposal. In addition, the budget recognizes the importance in investing in long-term technology development for both aeronautics and space, a view long shared by this Committee.
Finally, this budget also makes provision for extending the operations of the International Space Station beyond 2015, as well as providing funds to allow for an orderly completion of the Space Shuttle’s flight manifest—two very constructive steps.
All of the initiatives that I have described are ones that I think could garner bipartisan support on this Committee and in the House at large—they are certainly consistent with last year’s NASA Authorization Act.
However, there are other features of this request that haven’t gained much support. Namely, this budget proposal represents a radical change from the approach to human space flight and exploration that has been authorized and funded by successive congresses over the past five years. This new approach is not clearly traceable to either past legislation or past policy directives, and it has raised as many questions as it has answered. Administrator Bolden, as you know, many folks in your own agency do not appear to have known what was in the budget request until the very weekend before it was released.
In addition, it has taken almost a month for Congress to get the NASA budget justification documents, a state of affairs that is not—and should not be—an acceptable way of doing business with regard to such an important national endeavor. This hearing is intended to help us understand the rationale for such a substantial change in direction from the approach of previous authorizations. In that regard, Administrator Bolden, there are a number of questions that I hope you will be able to address. For example, a feature of this proposal, and one that has not generated much support on the Hill, is the plan to rely on as-yet-to-be-developed commercial crew transport systems with no government backup system.
Leaving aside issues of safety for the moment, do you have concrete evidence that you can provide us that shows that there will be sufficient non-NASA commercial crew transport markets to keep these companies viable, or is NASA going to be on the hook to do whatever it takes to keep them in business since NASA will have no other means of getting into orbit? That is, will NASA’s actions make these companies “too important to fail” despite the lack of any significant existing markets for their proposed services—with all of the implications for the American taxpayer inherent in that phrase?
In addition, in this budget request you are requesting a 62 % increase over what the government and the companies had previously said would be needed to help the two would-be commercial cargo transport companies develop their systems—systems that are arguably much less challenging than the commercial crew transport systems you now want to support. Given that large cost increase, how much confidence should we have in the cost estimates for commercial crew contained in this budget request? I could go on to ask about other aspects of the human space flight proposals, but I’ve already taken up enough of the Committee’s time.
It is clear that the Administration’s human space flight proposals have profound implications for the workforce, for our position in the world, and for the future of our space program, and we are going to take a hard look at them. Administrator Bolden, you have a tough job. And I know that you are doing your best to be an advocate for this budget request and to present it in the best light that you can. However, I must be frank. So far, this plan has not found a lot of support here on the Hill. That could change, of course, but at present I cannot be confident that the votes are there to enact this budget proposal as is, and you shouldn’t be either. So I’m going to ask you to be flexible and open, as changes may be required to this plan if we are to achieve a durable consensus here in Congress.
Again, I want to welcome you to today’s hearing, and I now yield to my good friend, Ranking Member Hall.
Opening Statement By Chairwoman Gabrielle Giffords
Good morning. I would like to join Chairman Gordon in welcoming NASA Administrator Bolden to today’s hearing. He is an inspiring individual, and as an astronaut himself, I know that he cares greatly for the space program and the future of human space flight.
Today’s hearing is one of the most important we will hold this year, as it bears directly on the future of our nation’s space program. It will inform us on many key issues facing NASA, and we will be weighing many options in the subcommittee on space and aeronautics, on which I serve as chair, as we write reauthorization legislation for NASA.
There is no doubt that NASA and our space program help define America in the eyes of the rest of the world. Not quite fifty years ago President Kennedy announced that America would land a man on the moon and return him safely to Earth. We committed the best and brightest of a generation to this goal and through the combined efforts of the newly formed National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the ever innovative commercial aerospace industry, we accomplished that goal in a short eight years. It is no exaggeration to say that we took the world to the moon; the landing was watched by 500 million people worldwide. Out of the initial competition that spurred the space race came unprecedented international collaboration and was born an America that was the unequivocal world leader in aeronautics. This is a legacy we should never abandon.
Our space program has always been an engine of innovation for our nation, and equally importantly, a source of inspiration. When the Space Shuttle, the icon of the American space program, first flew in the early 80's you would be hard pressed to find a child who did not want to grow up to be an astronaut, and that meant staying in school, working hard, and taking math and science classes seriously. The space program has always inspired the youth of America to reach for the stars. As Members of Congress, and as Americans, we must refuse to let that dream fade.
Today we discuss the President's proposals for the future of NASA. Chairman Gordon has highlighted a number of the proposals positive features, and I wish to state my agreement with him. There is good news for NASA in the president’s budget request for NASA. The boost to science funding is in agreement with this committee and the president’s repeatedly stated commitment to American investment in the sciences. The new investment in aeronautics research is also welcome and probably long overdue and will be critical to our future exploration.
However, there are also features of the FY 2011 budget request that concern me greatly. As I stated in our subcommittee hearing earlier this month, I have serious concerns about the impact of this budget proposal on the future of American human space flight and exploration. By canceling the program of record, we trade a program that we know will work- even though it faced inevitable delays in part due to insufficient funding- that we know will safely take our astronauts, our American heroes, to space for a program that may work, but is in all honesty poorly defined.
What is most striking about the budget is the lack of an overall vision. We went to the moon with a vision of exploring our first heavenly body; we flew the shuttle and International Space Station with the vision of living continuously in space. What is our vision now? What Congress and the American people deserve is a detailed plan: Where are we going? How will we get there? And when will we go?
Today in your testimony you mentioned Mars as the ultimate destination, with a slew of other potential targets along the way. But how will we get out of low-earth orbit when we have no plans to build a heavy life vehicle? If the intention is to pause our development of an HLV for a few years while we develop new technologies, or to skip an HLV for a plan of multiple launches with in-orbit refueling and assembly, then I would like to see a plan and timetable for how and when we would have these things operational and then how they would take us to our destinations. If our plan is to go to the moon or asteroids of Lagrange points before setting off for Mars – each of these requiring significantly different systems – then I want to see a plan to do that.
It is simply unfair to ask the American people to hand over billions of dollars for something that isn't even detailed enough to qualify for a loan from a loan shark.
With that said, I am encouraged by the COTS program. As you mentioned in your testimony, we are hopefully close to seeing a test flight of the SpaceX Falcon rocket. I hope that is successful and that they quickly proceed to their goal of delivering cargo to ISS. Should this program succeed it gives us great hope that commercial crew – which is of course much more difficult and risks the lives of American heroes – could succeed. I believe that this committee and the Congress as a whole would be delighted to see this industry grow, and it would free up NASA to focus solely on missions beyond low Earth orbit, as envisioned in our previous NASA Authorization. Therefore, I am happy to see the president commit to making this a reality. However, I have strong reservations about pursuing this at the expense of the program that would take us out of LEO. That simply doesn't make sense. Congress intended to turn over LEO to commercial taxi services when they were proven, but what's the point if NASA hasn't developed the capability of flying at all?
There are also many unresolved questions regarding commercial crew services. Who will handle things like mission control and capsule retrieval? How will indemnity be handled? Will companies big and small be able to compete for these contracts or will they be limited by the size of their liability?
Additionally, I am concerned, as are most of my colleagues here, that outright cancellation of the entire Constellation program would put tens of thousands of engineers out of work and risk the vitality of the manufacturing base. Perhaps when commercial crew services are established there will be a robust industry that can absorb all these workers, but at this time I just don't see where they will go. These are exactly the types of good jobs we're trying to create. I think in this case it's a lot easier to save a job than to create a new one. In addition, these are exactly the type of jobs we need to keep here in America to shore up our innovation economy and protect our manufacturing base. I would hate to see American aeronautical engineers emigrating to Europe, India, Russia, and China because that's where the action is.
My concern when considering the space program is not one pet project versus another; one aerospace company versus another; or one administration's plan versus another's. My concern is the prudent use of taxpayers' money, which cannot be accomplished by switching course every few years. The unknown unexplored path will also seem more exciting and more promising than the program of record, and in the spirit of discovery we should explore it, but not at the cost of a sure fire bet.
My concern is the stewardship of a skilled American workforce and maintaining a manufacturing base that is second to none. Not just saving but creating jobs in a sector that will create a demand for scientists and engineers. I believe that the best and brightest young minds in our nation are smart enough to understand supply and demand, and so one understands why a sufficiently bright young student would eschew the vagaries and uncertainty of the aerospace industry for a more lucrative career in finance or law.
Finally, my concern is maintaining the American dream to reach for the stars and honoring our legacy that America will continue to lead the world into the heavens, exploring the great unknown.
The future of U.S. leadership in space is at stake, and we need to make hard decisions. Luckily presidents and members Congress from both sides of the aisle have long found common ground and common cause in our nation’s reach for the stars – a fact worth noting in the hyper partisan era in which we find ourselves in today. For nearly two generations, Republicans and Democrats alike have agreed that exploring the universe is not only worthwhile, but necessary. That past should guide us as we chart NASA’s future. Today’s hearing will help us get the information we will need to make the informed decisions necessary.
We continue to be that city upon a hill, and the world at this very moment watches us. Our space program is one of the crown jewels of our nation, and we must proceed carefully to maintain it.
Witnesses
Panel
0 - Mr. Charles F. Bolden
Administrator National Aeronautics and Space Administration National Aeronautics and Space Administration
Download the Witness Testimony