Options and Issues for NASA’s Human Space Flight Program: Report of the “Review of U.S. Human Space Flight Plans” Committee
Opening Statement By Chairman Bart Gordon
Good afternoon. I want to welcome our witnesses to today’s hearing. You each bring significant experience to this afternoon’s deliberations, and we look forward to your testimony.
Today’s hearing marks the first congressional examination of the summary report of the Review of U.S. Human Space Flight Plans Committee, which was released just last week. We will have two panels of witnesses appearing before us today.
The first panel consists of someone who is no stranger to this Committee, Mr. Norman Augustine, an individual with many years of experience in the aerospace field. Mr. Augustine chaired the human space flight review committee, and he will present the findings of that review in his testimony today.
The second panel will consist of two witnesses. The first, Admiral Joseph Dyer, is the chair of the congressionally-established Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel. I believe that as we consider the potential paths for our nation’s human space flight program, we need to make sure that we keep safety uppermost in our deliberations, and Adm. Dyer is well equipped to help us understand the safety issues that need to be considered. The second, Dr. Michael Griffin, currently serves as a professor at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, and before that, he served the nation as NASA Administrator. Dr. Griffin was heavily involved in formulating the Constellation architecture that has been authorized and for which funds have been appropriated by Congress over the past four years. As such, he will be able to help this Committee better understand the considerations that go into developing a mature human space exploration architecture, which should aid our deliberations as we work to determine the best path forward.
Because that’s fundamentally what I believe this hearing should be about—determining where we go from here.
I have made no secret in recent years of my belief that the resources given to NASA haven’t kept pace with the important tasks that we have asked NASA to undertake. That has caused significant stresses in recent years, and we can’t continue down that path.
We either have to give NASA the resources that it needs or stop pretending that it can do all we’ve put on its plate. That’s especially true for NASA’s exploration program, and it’s true for the rest of its important missions too.
So as we proceed today, my focus is on the future. In that regard, I want our witnesses to help the Committee address a number of important questions. First, NASA has been working for more than four years on the Constellation program, a development program in support of which Congress has invested billions of dollars over that same period. As a result, I think that good public policy argues for setting the bar pretty high against making significant changes in direction at this point—that is, there would need to be a compelling reason to scrap what we’ve invested our time and money in over these past four years. Thus we will need to know whether or not the review panel found any major problems with the Constellation program that would warrant its cancellation, such as technical “showstoppers”, improper cost controls, or mismanagement. If it didn’t, logic would argue that our focus should be on ensuring the success of the current approach, not walking away from it.
Second, I have no interest in buying a pig in a poke…and I don’t think anyone else in Congress or the White House will want to either. Thus we need to know how we can credibly compare options proposed by the review panel that are immature technically, programmatically, and from a cost estimation standpoint—especially relative to the current program.
Do we just pick an option and hope for the best, or will we need to bring our exploration program to a halt for a year or more while the options are fleshed out and then re-evaluated once the specific implications of each are better understood?
Third, safety has to be a significant determinant of what we do. The review panel’s summary report is largely silent on safety. How do we meaningfully compare the safety implications of the various options proposed by the review panel?
And finally, while the review committee proposed a number of options that it asserted could be done with enhanced funding, what if the Administration or Congress determines that there will be no enhanced funding—is there any path forward that makes sense in that situation?
Well, we have quite a lot to discus today, and I again want to thank our witnesses for their testimony.
Before closing I should note that while we initially sought the participation of NASA Administrator Bolden at today’s hearing, we determined that it would be premature for him to appear until the Administration has developed its response to the Augustine committee’s report.
We look forward to having Administrator Bolden testify at a later date.
With that said, I will now recognize Mr. Hall for any opening remarks he may care to make.
Opening Statement By Chairwoman Gabrielle Giffords
I want to join Chairman Gordon in welcoming our distinguished set of witnesses, and I look forward to their testimony. Today we will be discussing no less than the future of America’s human space flight program—the program that I think every politician in Washington and across the country points to when we talk about America’s great innovation and technological superiority. I know that each of our witnesses today will bring important insights to our deliberations.
Yet as we start this hearing, I have to say that I am extremely frustrated, in fact, I am angry. With all due respect to Mr. Augustine and his panel, I have to say that I think we are no further ahead in our understanding of what it will take to ensure a robust and meaningful human space flight program than we were before they started their review. In fact, I’d argue that we have lost ground.
Let’s review the facts.
Probably the most important finding of the Review of U.S. Human Space Flight Plans is the panel’s determination that there is a serious mismatch between the challenges that we have asked NASA to meet and the resources that have been provided to the agency. In other words, we can’t get anywhere worth going to under NASA’s projected budgets. Well, we certainly didn’t need an independent commission to tell us that. That’s been painfully obvious for some time now. And the impact of that shortfall is that the good work being done by NASA’s civil servants and contractors risks being undone.
I’m glad they highlighted the problem, but it’s not exactly news to anyone who has been involved in the budget battles of recent years. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not denigrating the work done by Mr. Augustine and his panel. Mr. Augustine has an excellent reputation and I know that he has put a lot of work into this commission.
They have given us a sobering reminder that our position as the world’s leading spacefaring nation is not a given—we continually need to re-earn that preeminent position through our actions, and we can’t just rest on past laurels. The rest of the world has discovered space too, and we are seeing the emergence of impressive capabilities in other countries that we need to take seriously.
That said, I think the men and women of NASA have demonstrated that they are up to the challenge. Over the past four years, they have moved from initial concepts into design and development of the Constellation systems. They have successfully completed a number of important design reviews, have undertaken test activities—including test-firing just last week the five-segment booster that will power the Ares I rocket into space and planning for a test flight of the Ares I-X rocket at the end of next month. And they’ve done all of this even though the budgetary sands keep shifting under them, taking away resources that they thought they could count on and forcing them continually to replan and rephase even while they are trying to complete the hard technical and programmatic work that has to be done if Constellation is to succeed.
So when it was announced that Mr. Augustine would be leading an independent review of the nation’s human space flight program, I thought that they would take a hard look at the Constellation program and tell us what should be done to maximize its chances for success.
But that’s not what they did. Instead of focusing on how to strengthen the exploration program in which we have invested so much time and treasure, they gave only glancing attention to Constellation—even referring to it in the past tense in their summary report—and instead spent the bulk of their time crafting alternative options that do little to illuminate the choices confronting Congress and the White House.
And so where does that leave us? Well, in place of a serious review of potential actions that could be taken to improve and strengthen the Constellation program, we have been given set of alternative exploration options that are little more than cartoons—lacking any detailed cost, schedule, technical, safety or other programmatic specifics that we can be confident have been subjected to rigorous and comprehensive analysis and validation.
So, I have to ask my colleagues on the Committee—what are we to do with this report? In the absence of evidence of mismanagement or technical or safety “showstoppers”—none of which the Augustine panel has indicated has occurred in the Constellation program—can any of us in good conscience recommend canceling the exploration systems development programs that Congress has funded for the past four years on the basis of the sketchy alternatives contained in the panel’s report?
I know that I can’t justify doing so, and I would suspect that you can’t either. Hoping that “maybe things will work out” if we try something new is no substitute for the detailed planning and design and testing that has been the hallmark of successful space flight programs in the past. Nor do we gain anything by confusing hypothetical commercial capabilities that might someday exist with what we can actually count on now to meet the nation’s needs. We’ve made that mistake in the past, and we’ve suffered the consequences.
So I have to say that I just don’t get it. I don’t see the logic of scrapping what the nation has spent years and billions of dollars to develop in favor of starting down a new path developed in haste and which hasn’t been subjected to any of the detailed technical and cost reviews that went into the formulation of the existing Constellation program.
For the nation’s sake, I hope that we can break this cycle of false starts in our nation’s human space flight program. It does not serve America well. As far as I can tell, the Constellation program’s only sin is to have tried to implement a very challenging program with an inadequate budget. Yet, some would now advocate walking away from that program, not because it is not performing, but because we are unwilling to face the truth that, as Mr. Augustine said in testimony before our Committee more than five years ago, “it would be a grave mistake to try to pursue a space program ‘on the cheap’”.
I hope that the Administration and this Congress finally take those words to heart and do the right thing. The future of America’s human space flight program is at stake.
Witnesses
Panel 1
1 - Mr. Norman Augustine
Chair Review of U.S. Human Space Flight Plans Committee Review of U.S. Human Space Flight Plans Committee
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Panel 2
1 - Vice Admiral Joe Dyer USN (Ret.)
Chair Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel NASA Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel NASA
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2 - Dr. Michael Griffin
Eminent Scholar and Professor Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering University of Alabama in Huntsville Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering University of Alabam
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