NASA Hearings Highlight Continuing Funding Problems
NASA continues to have too little funding for everything that the space agency, authorizing committees, appropriations committees, and the science community want it to do. This lack of money was a consistent theme at a series of recent hearings, echoing the same problem that was raised a year ago at hearings on Capitol Hill.
In late February, Senator Bill Nelson (D-FL) and his colleagues on the Space, Aeronautics, and Related Sciences Subcommittee received testimony from NASA Administrator Michael Griffin. Nelson highlighted the funding problem in his opening remarks, citing the NASA Authorization Act of 2005 and then commenting that “the White House has requested less funding for NASA than authorized by that act. For that reason, and due to the continuing resolution for this fiscal year, NASA will receive $1.7 billion less than authorized in 2007. If the President’s 2008 budget is adopted, NASA will have received $3 billion less than the amount planned under the two-year authorization act. These shortfalls are in addition to the $2 billion that this little agency had to take from other programs to recover from the tragedy of the Columbia accident and return the shuttle to flight. If we continue on the President’s path, we face an extended period when the United States will have no human access to space. I say this is unacceptable - especially at a time when other nations are aggressively developing space technology.” The “extended period” Nelson was referring to is the time between the retirement of the space shuttle by the fall of 2010 and the earliest operation of its replacement vehicle that has been delayed by funding shortfalls to late 2014 or 2015. During these four+ years, NASA will spend hundreds of millions of dollars to purchase transportation to the space station from Russia, China, or yet-to-be developed private interests. Griffin acknowledged that this was “unseemly.” Read more
