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.

FMI: http://sicence.house.gov, www.nasa.gov, www.house.gov