Hearing Of The House Committee On Science and Technology - Review of the Proposed National Aeronautics and Space Administration Human Spaceflight Plan

Statement

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.

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