Review of the Proposed National Aeronautics and Space Administration Human Spaceflight Plan
Opening Statement By Chairman Bart Gordon
Good morning. When the Fiscal Year 2011 NASA budget request was released almost four months ago, it contained major changes to the NASA program that had been authorized and funded by Congress over the past five years. Among those changes, the Administration’s request proposed canceling the Constellation-based exploration program on the grounds that it was “unexecutable” under foreseeable budgets.
In contrast, the proposed new budget for NASA was described as a budget that puts NASA on a “sustainable path” for space exploration.
Since that time, this Committee, as well as other Committees of the Congress, have been trying to get the information we need to make informed decisions about the Administration’s plan as we prepare for authorization and appropriations actions. When we had Administrator Bolden before us in February, there was precious little information and analysis that NASA could provide us in support of the budget request, and what was provided raised more questions than it answered. When Chair Giffords had NASA testify in March on the proposed new plan for human space flight, the outcome was the same—more new questions than answers.
Then on April 15th, the president announced revisions to his NASA plan, adding a new crew rescue vehicle development program, a human mission to a Near Earth asteroid by 2025, and a decision by 2015 on development of a new Heavy Lift launch vehicle—in essence, directing NASA to pursue a program very similar to one of the options proposed by the Augustine Committee.
There are legitimate debates that Members can have concerning the choices made in the president’s plan about which destinations to pursue, the appropriate role of the commercial sector, and what type of technology program makes the most sense. Yet those debates ultimately won’t matter unless the Administration’s plan actually is doable under the Administration’s proposed budget—that it actually is “executable” and truly puts NASA on a “sustainable path”. It does no good to cancel a program that the Administration characterizes as “unexecutable”, if that program is simply replaced with a new plan that can’t be executed either.
That’s the issue before us today, and Administrator Bolden, to be blunt, the burden of proof is on your shoulders to make the case that you have an executable program.
So what do we need to hear from you?
Let me cite three specific issues:
As you know, one of the most significant findings of the Augustine Committee was that “Human exploration beyond low Earth orbit is not viable under the FY 2010 budget guideline.”
We’ve now taken a close look at your proposed human space flight and technology development budget plan, and this is what we’ve found:
Your budget for human space flight and technology provides about the same amount of funding through FY 2015 as the “not viable” FY 2010 budget guidance.
Equally importantly, your budget guidance through 2025—the date of your proposed first human mission to an asteroid—is $40 to 50 billion lower than the amount the Augustine panel determined would be needed to implement any of its exploration options.
Second, in his April 15th speech, the president directed NASA to develop a new crew rescue vehicle for the ISS that would “be flying within the next few years”—but he didn’t add any money to your budget to do it.
I understand that NASA’s preliminary estimates indicate that it could cost $5 to $7 billion to develop such a vehicle, and that number doesn’t include the annual cost to launch it and rotate the vehicles once it is operational. That’s a big unfunded mandate to absorb in your budget over the next five years—you’ll need to take a billion to two billion dollars per year from elsewhere in your budget over the next five years to cover it.
To put the budgetary impact of that into perspective, if you eliminated all of the FY 11 funding for the Exploration Technology Demonstration program, the Robotic Precursors program, and the KSC 21st Century Space Launch initiative, you will have only covered $1.2 billion of the shortfall. If the annual shortfall over the next five years is closer to $2 billion, you would also need to eliminate the FY 11 increases for Space Technology, Aeronautics, and Earth Science.
That’s not to argue that we shouldn’t be developing a spacecraft that can provide the basis for exploration beyond low Earth orbit. One clearly will be needed. But it’s another troubling indication that the plan that has been sent over to Congress has a great many loose ends and unexamined assumptions that call its credibility into question.
Third, the FY 2011 budget plan assumes that multiple commercial crew systems can be developed over the next five years for a total cost of $6 billion. However, analyses done by the Aerospace Corporation and even NASA’s own estimates for the development cost of a simple crew rescue vehicle argue that the proposed commercial crew development budget is likely to be low by a factor of two or more.
The burden of proof has to be on you and the White House to justify that cost estimate, and so far we have not seen any hard analysis from the Administration that would give us confidence that it can be done for the amount budgeted. Given your statements that you will do what is needed to make the commercial providers succeed, the consequences of such an underestimate could be devastating to the rest of NASA’s programs.
We all share the goals of inspiring and innovating and exploring. Let me be clear. I have no interest in having to have another Augustine committee in five years. Your task today is to convince this Committee that this is truly a well-thought out, responsibly budgeted, executable plan.
Before turning to Ranking Member Hall for his opening remarks, I want to note for the record that the Committee also invited OSTP Director Holdren to testify at this hearing, but Dr. Holdren was unavailable due to travel plans.
In addition, I want to inform Members that I plan to insert into the record of this hearing several items that were submitted to the Committee, including:
- A statement by Dr. Buzz Aldrin
- A letter from Dr. Russell Schweickart,
- A letter from the Planetary Society,
- A Joint Statement by several space organizations;
- And a letter from Governor Bill Richardson of NM
With that, I now recognize Ranking Member Hall for an opening statement.
Opening Statement By Subcommittee Chairwoman Gabrielle Giffords
Today’s hearing is one of the most important that this Committee will hold this year. We will be deliberating on the future of America’s human spaceflight program, and in essence we will be deliberating about the future of this great country. The stakes are that high.
As Chair of the Space and Aeronautics Subcommittee, I have been working since last year to hold hearings and to conduct oversight to illuminate the issues that need to be considered if we are to craft a human exploration program that can be successful and worth undertaking.
There were a number of themes that recurred throughout all of those hearings and oversight activities: the need for budgets that are adequate for the tasks to be undertaken—you can’t do meaningful exploration “on the cheap”; the need to sustain a commitment and not keep constantly changing direction or goals; the need to keep safety paramount and not assume that it will be maintained without diligent effort and hard work; and the need to examine the broader national and international context when contemplating any changes to programs.
I had hoped that the Administration’s FY 2011 budget request would reflect those themes. Unfortunately, it does not. Not only does the Administration’s plan not provide a budget plan that would help redress the balance between what NASA is asked to do and what it has been provided to date, but it has all the hallmarks of an ill-conceived mishmash of buzzwords about innovation and inspiration, assumptions based on hope rather than data, and an apparent desire to discard all of the work carried out by the previous Administration.
We are now seeing the consequences of that approach. Nearly four months after the initial rollout of the budget and after an addendum by the president on April 15th, Congress still is unable to get answers to basic questions about the proposed plan. Even something as basic as asking how the Administration intends to pay for the crew rescue vehicle development program that was added to NASA’s budget without any additional funding is beyond their capacity to answer.
In that case, I think the reason for their unwillingness to answer is clear: the needed funding will have to come out of the “technology and innovation” initiatives that they touted as hallmarks of their new approach. In short, those new investments that were to compensate Centers for the loss of their work on Constellation are illusory and always were. I will not dwell on the other contradictions and shortcomings of the plan in these brief remarks—I believe that the distinguished witnesses we have here today will be able to articulate them quite clearly on their own.
What I do want to emphasize is that we are now at the point where the lack of a credible plan from the Administration means that Congress is going to have consider alternative options that will provide a productive path forward for our human space flight program. We may not be able to correct for all the past underfunding in a single authorization or appropriation bill, nor can we negate the past actions that will lead us to a “gap” in crewed access to space after the Shuttle is retired. Yet we can make a start, and at a minimum, we can start by heeding the wisdom contained in the classic dictum: “first do no harm”. I believe that we would do irreparable harm to our nation’s human space flight program if we were to adopt the Administration’s proposals. I intend to work to ensure that we take a better path.
Witnesses
Panel 1
1 - Mr. Charles F. Bolden, Jr.
Administrator NASA NASA
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Panel 2
1 - Mr. Neil A. Armstrong
Commander Apollo 11 Apollo 11
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2 - Capt. Eugene A. Cernan
United States Navy (Ret.) Commander Apollo 17 Commander Apollo 17
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3 - Mr. A. Thomas Young
Executive Vice President (Ret.) Lockheed Martin Corporation Lockheed Martin Corporation
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