Senate committee orders a new course – and new rocket – for NASA

Orlando Sentinel: Senate committee orders a new course – and new rocket – for NASA

WASHINGTON – NASA's plans to return astronauts to the moon by 2020 died a quiet death this morning when a key Senate panel approved a new course for the agency that terminates the Constellation moon-rocket program and instructs NASA to build a new rocket for a yet-undefined mission.

By a unanimous vote, the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation committee agreed to a new NASA mission that supporters have touted as a compromise between White House desires to grow the commercial space industry and congressional desires to see NASA build its own rocket.

"I believe we have reached a sensible center," said Sen. Jay Rockefeller, the West Virginia Democrat who chairs the committee. "We're challenging NASA to do more with the resources that it has."

But if recent history is any indication, the new course faces an uphill battle.



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Over the last five years, Constellation has cost at least $9 billion and produced little more than one test flight for a stripped-down version of the program's Ares I rocket. While the Senate plan instructs NASA to salvage parts of Constellation when possible – and provides $11 billion over the next several years -- it will take time and resources to create a new design. Adding to the pressure is the 2016 deadline that Congress gives NASA to have the new vehicle ready.

On the eve of the vote, administration officials said they would support the new plan – even though the directive to build the new rocket takes time and money away from White House initiatives to fund commercial spaceflight so that NASA engineers can develop futuristic new technologies.

The bill also drew opposition from economic development officials on Florida's Space Coast, which stands to lose 9,000 jobs when the space shuttle is retired sometime next year. The bill does provide money for a third shuttle flight, in addition to the two remaining missions scheduled by NASA, which officials say will keep 2,500 shuttle workers on the job for another four to six months.

However, Space Coast officials had bought into Obama's plan to spend $10.1 billion to develop capacity for commercial rockets to fly astronauts to the International Space Station, more robotic missions and technology research that the administration had said would produce a new rocket capable of flying humans to an asteroid by 2025. Brevard officials had hoped that Kennedy Space Center and surrounding businesses could compete for more commercial launches and robotic missions as well as chunks of the research money.

On Wednesday, they sent a letter to U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Florida, objecting to the bill's funding of a new heavy-lift rocket that would be designed by NASA facilities in Alabama and Texas and likely built in part by ATK, the solid-rocket motor manufacturer in Utah. "[T]he risk that this future for Florida might be bargained away for one more attuned to the needs of Alabama, Texas and Utah, in the name of political expediency, demands a response," said the letter, from the Economic Development Commission of Florida's Space Coast.

Nelson, however, said that the bill was a necessary compromise to break a congressional stalemate that threatened to paralyze NASA. "If we don't pass a bill now, it'll effectively shut down the Cape," said press spokesman Dan McLaughlin.

During the hearing, lawmakers said they were told by leaders of the committee that controls NASA spending that they supported this bill.