HeHearing of the Senate Commerce, Justice, Science Appropriations Subcommittee: Constellation and Ares Programs

Statement

Hearing of the Senate Commerce, Justice, Science Appropriations Subcommittee: Constellation and Ares Programs

Madam Chairwoman, I would like to express my appreciation to you for allowing me to join this subcommittee hearing this morning. This issue is extremely important to Utah and to me personally, so I am sincere in my gratitude.

Utah has a rich history in supporting NASA's human space exploration missions. For decades, talented workers in Utah have helped engineer, design, and manufacture solid rocket motors that have safely and efficiently launched our astronauts into outer space. We have launched over 100 shuttle flights, all of which have begun their journey on
solid rocket motors made in Utah, a fact of which I am extremely proud. Even though there have been some setbacks along the way, they have made us stronger and have taught us valuable lessons that have made subsequent flights safer and more reliable.

And now, at the end of this year, the Space Shuttle that has helped the United States maintain its role as the leader in space exploration, leading to life-changing technological discoveries along the way, will be retired. But the end of the Space Shuttle was not supposed to be the end of human space exploration. Rather, the Constellation program, which grew out of the Challenger disaster several years ago, was supposed to seamlessly take over for the Space Shuttle to continue to ferry our astronauts to the International Space Station and, eventually, beyond low-earth orbit by
venturing back to the moon and eventually to mars, a plan that was approved by both Republican and Democratic leadership.

And now after several years and billions of dollars of investment in this program, thepresident has decided to cancel the program. Why? To me, it's not clear, and neither the president nor anyone in his administration has made a compelling case for why we should abandon the Constellation program. The president made a decision to cancel the Constellation program and laid out his vision for space exploration earlier this year, and then last week he "revised" that vision. This type of "on-the-fly" decision making
has made me very concerned about who may actually be making these decisions.

Regardless, I have several very serious concerns about canceling the Constellation program. If we are going to cancel this program and pursue a different path, we should only do so under the following conditions: 1) the president has demonstrated a clear vision for human space exploration and adequately explained why it is superior to the Constellation program; 2) the alternative provides significant advantages in cost, schedule, performance, and safety; 3) the potential consequences of changing course mid-stream do not outweigh the anticipated advantages of such a significant shift in
policy; and 4) we are able to maintain our leadership in space exploration.
Unfortunately, the president's alternative plans to replace the Constellation program fail these conditions miserably.

First, since the president announced he was cancelling the Constellation program, he has already announced changes to his new plan. His new plan is short on details and expected costs, relying on the commercial industry to take over the role of transporting crew and cargo to the International Space Station, increasing the role of robotics for exploration, and speeding up development of a "heavy lift" vehicle by 2015. The problem is that the commercial industry has not proven to be able to meet any safety or
budget deadlines and the Constellation program already has a heavy lift vehicle, the Ares V, in the works. So, here we have a program that is meeting all of its milestones and has a demonstrated capability to achieve our space objectives with Constellation, and we are scrubbing it for a commercial industry that has not proven its worth in spacetravel and for a heavy lift vehicle that we will begin working on in five years. And do we
intend to go to the moon? To Mars? To an asteroid? What exactly do we hope to achieve with the new plan envisioned by the president? The problem is I can't tell.

Second, the president's alternative plan will actually cost us more money and delay our ability to get ourselves into space. The Ares program, which is a major component of Constellation, is a prime example of how this program is on track. Just last year we launched a successful test flight of the Ares I rocket. It went perfectly. It has been under design and testing phases for over four years, with $6 billion already invested in
perfecting the rocket. The Ares I is built off of the same manufacturing format as the current rockets that have been putting our space shuttle into space for over two decades, so we know we have a proven technology that takes advantage of an existing manufacturing base and capability. Scrapping this investment and starting fresh does not make sense to my business sense. The Augustine Panel said we'd need about $3 billion a year to keep the program on track. This year alone the president wants to
spend $2.5 billion to cancel the Constellation program, with billions more in funding set aside to subsidize the commercial industry. This makes no sense. And finally, the Ares I design is proven to be the safest mode of transporting our astronauts. The Safety Advisory Panel that found that the model embraced by Ares would be the safest for our astronauts, and now we are going to pretend that safety doesn't matter. This has me very concerned. The president's alternative plan does not provide significant advantages in cost, schedule, performance, or safety.

My third point of concern is regarding the consequences of canceling Constellation. I don't believe the administration fully understands the drastic impact this decision will have on our national security. Ending Constellation will devastate an industrial base critical to our national security. The Constellation Program is powered by the Ares I, a large scale solid rocket motor. If there are no large solid rocket motors in production with the cancelation of Constellation (other than NAVY D-5 at 12 motors a year under
their "warm line" program), the current industrial base will be too large to support small solid motor production, requiring massive layoffs. In Utah alone, this means losing about 2,000 jobs. Producing only small solid motors would not be sufficient to keep the supplier base engaged as many of them would go out of business or stop producing highly specialized components because the economies of scale won't justify the decision to remain in business. This will certainly lead to price spikes at the Department
of Defense for smaller tactical missiles (which are solids-based), and lead to hundreds of millions of dollars in price increases on tactical weapons systems every year. It could also mean that DoD may have difficulty getting solid-based tactical missiles produced in the future at all, which is not good for either readiness or costs.

And finally, I don't believe the current plan of the president will allow the United States, a country which has been the leader in space technology development for over 40 years, to continue to lead the world in space exploration. It's almost embarrassing that we will rely on the Russians to take our astronauts into space starting next year. And
what happens if the commercial industry isn't able to deliver on time? Do we rely on the Russians for the next decade to meet our space needs? And what about other emerging nations like China and India? Will they surpass the U.S.? Of course I applaud other nations in further developing their technologies, but I believe if we continue down the path this president wants to take us, we will lose our global competitive advantage that space exploration has helped us develop. We cannot allow this to happen.

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