Vote Expected Wednesday On NASA Funding Legislation
The U.S. House of Representatives is expected to vote Wednesday
on a Senate bill setting spending priorities for NASA, according to
House Science and Technology Committee chairman Bart Gordon
(D-TN).
In a statement on the committee website, Gordon said he has a
number of concerns with the Senate bill. Among them is "... an
unfunded mandate to keep the Shuttle program going through the
remainder of FY 2011, even after the Shuttle is retired, at a cost
of $500 million or more without clarifying where the funds will
come from, all but ensuring that other important NASA programs will
be cannibalized."
He also said that it appeared that the Senate was trying to
design the follow-on rocket to the shuttle, and that he was
concerned about the "transportation gap" that will exist when the
shuttle is no longer available to carry crews to ISS. Still, he
said, he is "wary of being completely dependent" on Commercial
Crew, as commercial providers had "missed contractual cargo
milestones thus far."
Still, he said, "It has become clear that there is not time
remaining to pass a Compromise bill through the House and the
Senate. For the sake of providing certainty, stability, and clarity
to the NASA workforce and larger space community, I felt it was
better to consider a flawed bill than no bill at all as the new
fiscal year begins. I will continue to advocate to the
Appropriators for the provisions in the Compromise
language.”
What that means for NASA employees working on the shuttle
program is that, while layoffs scheduled for Friday would not be
avoided by passage of the Senate bill, it would authorize programs
that will need experienced aerospace workers, according to Reuters.
Florida Senator Bill Nelson (D) said at a space policy symposium at
the University of Central Florida in Orlando Monday that the Senate
bill "will push development of this new heavy-lift rocket with the
goal to fly by 2016. Right off the bat, that would hire 2,000 of
the space workers that otherwise would be losing their jobs."
There are only two scheduled shuttle missions remaining. One is
an ISS cargo re-supply mission set for launch November 1st. The
other, now planned for next February, is to deliver one of the
final pieces of the station ... the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer.
Reuters reports that the Senate bill adds an additional mission to
the schedule next summer. Nelson said passing the Senate bill will
reduce the "transportation gap", which relies on Russian Soyuz
spacecraft to take crews and cargo to ISS until a new NASA system
is built.
Reuters additionally reports that The United Space Alliance
estimates that 1,222 workers in Florida, Texas, and Alabama will be
laid off Friday, with the bulk of those coming in Florida. The turn
of the new fiscal year will also see the loss of 350 jobs from
companies with shuttle contracts.
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