[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 101 (Tuesday, July 20, 2004)]
[Senate]
[Pages S8468-S8469]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




      SUBSTITUTE AMENDMENT TO THE NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE 
                ADMINISTRATION AUTHORIZATION ACT OF 2004

  Mr. HOLLINGS. Mr. President, today, I submit an amendment to the 
National Aeronautics and Space Administration Authorization Act, 
S.2541, to offer a more pragmatic and sustainable approach to future 
space exploration, given the uncertainties that now confront the 
National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).
  Put simply, this substitute addresses three fundamental flaws with 
the approach contained in the underlying bill. Like the underlying 
bill, the substitute endorses human exploration of the Solar System but 
places it in context alongside other, equally important, elements of 
scientific discovery in space. Second, it states that a gap in U.S. 
human launch capability is unacceptable and requires NASA to accelerate 
the development of the next crewed launch vehicle. Finally, it 
authorizes the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, NASA, for 
one year, fiscal year 2005, and rejects the ``go-as-you-pay'' approach 
the Administration wants to employ in planning for human space 
exploration.
  Allow me to discuss this final point first. The underlying bill 
authorizes NASA at the President's requested level for five years. I 
took a different approach--if the agency is embarking on a broad new 
program, it is unlikely that estimates made now will have any fidelity 
three, four, or five years from now. After all, we were told in this 
past week--2 months before the new fiscal year will begin--that it will 
now take at least $450 million and possibly as much as $760 million 
more than was requested to fix the Space Shuttle just in fiscal year 
2005. If the administration cannot make accurate budget predictions 
from one year to the next in a 20-year old program, I am not confident 
that we have any idea what a new exploration program will take. The go-
as-you-pay approach is reckless and allows us to avoid difficult 
questions regarding costs, timetables, and reaching a consensus on the 
future of human space exploration that will generate not only the 
support of the space and scientific communities, but of the Congress 
and the American people, too. It's a license to throw fiscal discipline 
out the window and drag out projects until they never finish.
  Under the substitute I am introducing today, fiscal year 2005 will 
become a year of planning for a new program of human exploration. The 
substitute authorizes NASA a single year's funding to plan for the 
decades of exploration ahead and to begin work on new space 
transportation and robotic solutions. These solutions are the 
pathfinders that will enable us to use earth's moon as a test-bed for 
developing and demonstrating the know-how we need to conduct extended 
operations on another world's surface beginning by the year 2020.
  The substitute attempts to put the proposed program of exploration in 
context. It embraces the principles of exploration and embraces the 
human exploration of deep space as a core mission of NASA, including 
the demonstration of the human beings' abilities to explore and inhabit 
worlds far beyond the earth. It also embraces the ideals of space 
flight as expressed in 1958, when the original Space Act and NASA were 
founded, and restates them in a way that makes them relevant for 
today--with clarity, division of purposes, and the claim that the 
United States shall have a U.S. space agency whose chief purpose shall 
be to contribute to life on earth, learn more about the universe and 
the mysteries of time and space, and provide leadership for our human 
pursuits in space.
  Under the President's plan, NASA will have a 4-year gap in our 
ability to launch humans into space. The underlying bill calls for a 
study of the launch gap. My substitute declares it to be a matter of 
U.S. policy that any prolonged period of a year or more interruption in 
U.S. crewed space transportation shall cause the administrator of NASA 
to report and submit to the Congress a request for supplemental 
appropriations to resolve those circumstances. Since that is exactly 
the posture we are headed into in the next decade, we require 
the administrator to make such report and request within 60 days. In 
addition, my substitute calls on NASA to immediately begin work on the 
crew exploration vehicle the next human-capable rocket even in the 
planning year of FY 2005.

  In addition to these three main pillars, the substitute calls for 
several reports to be prepared to lay the foundation for future 
programs. It calls for a plan of objectives, capabilities, costs, and 
milestones that will be used to

[[Page S8469]]

manage the new program of human exploration.
  The substitute requires an independent report on the changes to 
NASA's safety, operations, engineering, and management cultures to 
ensure that these changes meet the requirements of the Columbia 
Accident Investigation Board and the Nation's expectations of the U.S. 
space program. It requires NASA and the Departments of Defense and 
Transportation, each of which plays a key role in managing U.S. space 
transportation, to report on the state of the U.S. launch industry and 
to propose how the United States can achieve reliable, affordable, and 
safe space transportation by 2015. I also call for NASA to report on 
how the NASA and the United States should be organized to best achieve 
our broad national goals for space, including the role of industry and 
international collaboration in the future.
  In addition, consistent with the Columbia Accident Investigation 
Board report, we apply its primary recommendation, to establish 
independent technical and safety controls over human space flight, to 
all U.S. organizations conducting human flight in space.
  Finally, we call for reports on the Hubble Space Telescope, peer-
review assessment of NASA's science programs, and grants to 
institutions of higher education offering advanced programs in 
aeronautics and aeronautics-related disciplines. While our legislation 
attends to the primary matter at hand--the future of human space 
exploration--it does not ignore the importance of having a balanced 
program and view of the contributions of space and aeronautics to our 
economy and society.
  Mr. President, our mission to demonstrate humanity's future role in 
space cannot be founded upon goals without solutions, means that are 
intangible and unknown, and resources tied to timelines that have no 
definite end-point or objective. Just this morning, the House VA-HUD 
Appropriations Subcommittee reduced NASA's FY 2005 appropriation by 
over $1 billion, which makes it clear there are many doubts about this 
program and no consensus on how to move ahead.
  The Congress must act now to ensure that our bold visions do not take 
the place of the hard work of planning, budgeting, and executing 
programs. Let us not pursue the folly of go-as-you-pay, but substitute 
a reasoned course of ``pay and prove''-as-you-go, harnessing the proper 
capabilities and assigning the necessary resources to the journey of 
human exploration needed to make it successful, affordable, and safe.

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