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Senate's NASA "compromise" emerges. It undoes much of the President's space vision, Houston Chronicle (includes working draft of legislation)
"Sen. John Rockefeller, chairman of the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, has submitted the Senate version of the NASA budget this morning. It has been endorsed by Sen. Bill Nelson, a former NASA astronaut who many on the Hill look to for guidance on space issues, as well as Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison."
Senate bill rejects Obama's JSC plans, Houston Chronicle
"Obama requested $6 billion over five years for advanced technologies. The Senate bill requests less than $1 billion over three years."
Our views: Compromise space bill offers promise, problems for KSC, Brevard, Florida Today
"But the bill's catch -- and one that concerns us -- is that it would phase in $6 billion in funding for the commercial rocket program and other research and development projects that could be staged at KSC instead of providing it up front. That has the potential to slow the creation of new jobs and industries -- and diversification of the space industry -- our region needs. For instance, NASA could spend only $456 million on commercial rocket contracts next year with more allocated in later years, providing the companies meet safety and other requirements for flying astronauts."
So here we go with congressmen designing rockets. Thank goodness they didn't do that back in the early days or all those programs would have failed also. By design, Utah is happy, Hutchinson is happy, Shelby is happy, and on and on. And suddenly they are all engineers as well! This is just another example of our congresses problems with pork. It is habit forming and they cannot see beyond the pork barrel. While I do think NASA should have a more concrete direction, this is not the direction it needs, technical and engineering guidance from a bunch of money grubbing congressmen.