Fri, Feb 17, 2012
Likens SLS To The MV Titanic
California Republican Congressman Dana Rohrabacher, who sits on
the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, issued a
statement Wednesday strongly critical of the NASA FY 2013 budget
request released by President Obama.
“The administration’s FY’13 budget includes
almost $1.9 billion for continued pursuit of the SLS Titanic, a
‘monster rocket’ based on 40-year-old Space Shuttle
technology in an attempt to recapture the glory days of the Apollo
Saturn V,” said Rohrabacher (pictured). “By
NASA’s internal estimates, the SLS and other components
won’t be ready to launch astronauts to an asteroid until
2028, after we have spent over $130 billion towards the mission. By
those same estimates, NASA has shown how they can accomplish the
exact same mission with our existing fleet of launch vehicles four
years earlier and at less than half that cost.
“If I had someone come to me and say they wanted to spend
well over a hundred billion dollars when they knew the task could
be done more quickly and less expensively, I'd say, 'You're
fired,’” he said.
Rep. Rohrabacher said that, as expected, the President did not
request an additional $1 billion above last year’s
appropriation, which NASA’s plans seem to require. Of course,
even that funding level would have fallen about $2 billion short of
what NASA would need next year to keep the SLS Titanic on
schedule.
“I am pleased the President requested $830 million for
Commercial Crew programs, which is America’s single most
important near-term civil space project. But cutting the Technology
budget while increasing the Earth Science budget – a function
that doesn’t even belong in a space exploration agency
– and continuing to shovel resources into the SLS money pit
is a travesty. Any more of this kind of “leadership”
and soon NASA’s entire budget will be consumed by JWST and
the SLS, two things that won’t have made it off the launch
pad ten years from now.”
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