Sat, Sep 10, 2011
Senators Nelson And Hutchison Again Call For Acceleration Of
SLS Development
U.S. Senators Kay Bailey Hutchison
(R-TX) (pictured) and Bill Nelson (D-FL) have renewed
their call on the White House to move forward with the development
of a Space Launch System rated to carry people into low Earth orbit
and to the ISS.
Senator Hutchison
“A just-completed,
NASA-commissioned independent cost assessment by Booz Allen
Hamilton found that development of the Space Launch System,
Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle and complementary ground system was
feasible within authorized funding levels and timelines," the
Senators said in a joint statement. "This was expected; NASA
experts had verified and re-verified estimated costs several
times.
"Rather than announce these results and move forward with
development, the administration’s budget office has kept the
independent cost report under wraps. Instead, a wildly
inflated set of NASA cost numbers was invented, based on an
imaginary “acceleration” of SLS development. Under
these contrived numbers, which were leaked in yesterday’s
Wall Street Journal, development costs were forecast to increase to
$57 billion – nearly double the amount that NASA and Booz
Allen Hamilton agreed would be needed in the independent cost
assessment.
Senator Nelson
"No one has proposed to accelerate development. We and others
have – repeatedly – demanded that the
administration’s budget office simply follow the development
plan that the President signed into law last year. It has been
validated repeatedly, internally and externally (including the OMB
requested Booz Allen Hamilton report), as a sound approach for
going forward and maintaining our leadership in manned space
exploration. Accelerated development is a convenient myth. The
White House should proceed immediately according to the reasonable,
achievable development timetable embedded in federal law, and
preserve America’s pre-eminence in space."
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