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Congressmen Agree Space Exploration Will End Without More Funding

September 16, 2009 (LPAC)—At the first hearing on Capitol Hill to discuss the findings of the panel to review NASA's human space flight program on Tuesday, led by Norm Augustine, most Representatives expressed their anger at the fact that this country is on the verge of losing its manned space capability, noting that the responsibility lies with most of the post-JFK presidents, and the Congress, itself.

Nearly every member of the House Committee on Science & Technology, of whom more than two dozen attended the hearing, attacked the Augustine panel report for not stating unequivocally that the only sensible path forward is continuing with NASA's on-going Constellation program, which has been under development for four years, The panel was tasked by the White House to come up with "options," and they included a variety of possibilities, some largely ideological, and others that are only in the PowerPoint stage of development. In fact, the whole report could have been boiled down to one sentence: NASA needs more funding, or there will be no exploration program. Norm Augustine admitted that under the status quo, there will be no manned U.S. program after the Space Shuttle and the International Space Station.

Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ), who chairs the Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics, angrily stated, "We [Congress] don't need an independent commission" to tell us NASA does not have enough money. "That's been painfully obvious for some time now." The Augustine panel report suggests that the NASA budget be "ramped up" over the next five years, to an additional $3 billion per year. Considering, as former NASA Administrator Mike Griffin pointed out, there is little confidence in the panel's estimates of what the Constellation program would cost, the Congress, along with NASA, will have to determine what the space program actually needs.

While many of the Members lamented that after zillions of dollars spent for bank bailouts and corporate bonuses, $3 billion more for NASA should be a no-brainer, Griffin pointedly reminded the Representatives that Article 1 gives the Congress "the power of the purse."


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