[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 156 (2010), Part 8]
[House]
[Pages 11807-11813]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                  FUTURE OF AMERICAN SPACE EXPLORATION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 6, 2009, the gentleman from Utah (Mr. Bishop) is recognized for 
60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. BISHOP of Utah. I appreciate the opportunity of being here this 
morning on one of the days when obviously our time management skills 
are not perhaps the greatest, but it still is nonetheless an 
opportunity to speak on this floor before you, Mr. Speaker, on a couple 
of issues that are significant. I appreciate also that I will be joined 
by my good friend from Texas, who just spoke so eloquently about one of 
those who has given his all for all of us and how grateful we are for 
this family and this particular individual.
  I think we're going to be hitting several different themes this 
evening as we talk about the future of this country, especially as it 
deals with space. And here, once again, I'm grateful the gentleman from 
Texas is here because Mr. Olson has indeed been a leader in this 
particular issue in charting the future of America as far as space 
policy will be.
  It is very easy in this environment to try and focus, first of all, 
on jobs. I think we will. Because, indeed, as this particular 
administration is going to begin their summer of recovery tour in which 
they will be touting the kinds of jobs that will be created to try and 
change the economic future this country is currently in, it seems 
almost ironic that administrative policies, especially with NASA, are 
going to create a vast amount of unemployed individuals--up to 30,000 
individuals who will receive their pink slips and be unemployed 
specifically because of policies initiated by this administration and 
the current leadership in NASA. It's at least ironic, but we will be 
talking about that. However, we want to go beyond that because if 
you're dealing with simply jobs, that can be a very parochial issue. 
We're also dealing with the future of space and the importance of 
space. And, clearly, if indeed this administration and the leaders of 
NASA today seem to be de-emphasizing the role of space in our future, 
other nations are not. The Russians, the Chinese, even the Indian 
government and

[[Page 11808]]

the Japanese government have a unique interest in taking our position 
in the leadership role of space exploration. That's another issue I 
think we will be talking about.
  I also want to make sure that we illustrate how sometimes there are 
unintended consequences in our actions. This administration and, once 
again, NASA's leadership did not take into effect the consequences of 
their program changes and the consequences that would have specifically 
related to our military preparedness, for indeed one of the things we 
have to realize is that the component pieces that go into the missiles 
that shoot somebody to the Moon are the same component pieces that go 
into missiles that shoot down rockets from our adversaries Iran or 
North Korea, and that if you harm the industrial base that creates one 
program, you harm the industrial base that creates the other program, 
and that gives us some pause to think what we're doing on the defense 
side of this country, which is clearly one of the few roles 
specifically given to Congress in the Constitution. Finally, I think 
I'd like to talk some about a communique that came out from the 
administration today as to their future in space, and say that some of 
the platitudes that are very nicely written in this communique are 
contradictory to the actions that indeed take place.
  So with that, Mr. Speaker, I think if the gentleman from Texas is 
prepared to lead off, I would like to turn over as much time to Mr. 
Olson from Texas, who, as I said, has for quite a while been the 
organizer and the leader of this effort to try and explore what this 
administration is doing, and maybe make some corrections, as is the 
role and responsibility of Congress dealing with space. Then I will be 
happy to make some remarks after the gentleman from Texas has 
completed.
  Mr. OLSON. I want to thank my colleague from Utah for allowing me to 
speak a little bit on an incredibly important issue to our Nation's 
future. Five months ago, the Obama administration proposed NASA's 
budget for fiscal year 2011. The proposal included surprisingly drastic 
decisions just out of the blue to cancel the Constellation program, 
NASA's follow-on to the space shuttle. Constellation will provide a 
means and a service to utilize the International Space Station for as 
long as it needs to--plus, to go beyond low Earth orbit, go to the Moon 
and beyond. I believed at the time that such a dramatic reversal risks 
ceding American leadership in human space flight for the future. A lot 
has transpired since those 5 months, but I still believe canceling the 
Constellation presents more risks than rewards, creates more challenges 
than solutions, and raises more questions than it provides answers.
  The fact that NASA and the administration cannot or will not provide 
cogent, comprehensive details related to such a radical policy change 
should alarm every Member of Congress. My colleagues and I are mainly 
concerned about our ability to maintain and utilize the international 
space station; the impact on the aerospace industrial base and our 
highly skilled workforce, as my colleague from Utah alluded to; and the 
financial, programmatic, and crew-safety risk of reliance on 
unidentified commercial crew vehicles. These concerns have not been 
adequately addressed by the administration. And I've long supported a 
balanced program that combines Constellation with an increasing role 
for the commercial sector, beginning with cargo flights to the space 
station and, over time, evolving to crewed missions. And I will 
continue to do so.
  I'm not alone in advocating this balanced approach. As the heralded 
Augustine Commission report, when it was released, said that over time, 
within the aerospace community--even they, even the Augustine report, 
did not advocate canceling the Constellation. I still believe that this 
balance exists between government and commercial space. It can exist. 
And within the budget that's been proposed. Both of these sectors have 
experienced tremendous successes over the past months--notably the 
Orion pad abort test in May and the Falcon 9 launch just last month. 
Yet, rather than focus on the vital elements to maintain American 
leadership in space, the administration and NASA are distracted with 
programs that seem to spend money on anything but space.
  Many of us are astonished by the misplaced priorities within NASA's 
budget. Instead of building and testing flight hardware, NASA proposes 
spending $1.9 billion to cancel Constellation contracts. Even now, 
NASA's selective enforcement of a termination liability provision for 
Constellation contracts is prematurely triggering layoffs across the 
country. It's been determined that somewhere between 20,000 and 30,000 
jobs could be lost nationwide as a result. And we're not just losing 
jobs. We're losing American know-how. We're losing capabilities and 
expertise that will be difficult and costly to get back if and when our 
Nation decides that it wants to explore again. Our space program does 
not employ people; it invests in them. And, by doing so, we strengthen 
our Nation's security and our economic well-being.
  As if to add insult to injury, last Friday the administration came 
forward with a request to transfer $100 million of NASA's already 
limited resources to the Labor and Commerce Departments to funds an 
interagency task force to spur ``regional economic growth and job 
creation.'' Our Nation's best and brightest engineers and technicians 
don't want or need an interagency task force. They'd much rather be 
retained and put to use with the critical skills building and flying 
American-built spacecraft. The administration claims to have focused on 
jobs, jobs, jobs. Yet it fails to recognize the destructive impact of 
canceling Constellation and shifting $100 million to the Labor and 
Commerce Departments.
  So as we look forward to the next 6 critical months, there are some 
things we must do. We must get answers from the administration. We in 
Congress must recognize the impacts on our workforce and our 
infrastructure. We must pass an authorization bill. And, perhaps most 
importantly, we must ensure that the final flights of the space shuttle 
and the continuous operation of the space station are done safely and 
successfully.

                              {time}  1830

  I am both humbled and inspired that while men and women in our human 
space flight programs watch us debate and question whether jobs will 
exist, they continue to excel and drive our Nation towards new 
achievements in space. Their focus, their sacrifice, their dedication 
and that of the men and women who came before them have enabled the 
United States to be the global leader in human space flight. Let us 
work to keep it that way.
  If my colleague from Utah would let me, I would like to read this 
just to show you how important it is to the American people and some of 
the people that are opposed to the administration's plan. This is the 
letter that ran in the Orlando Sentinel prior to the President's speech 
in Florida on April 15. And I think it's worth reading because our 
Nation's experts and heroes in human space flight, this is how they 
feel about this administration's budget proposal:
  ``Dear President Obama, America is faced with the near simultaneous 
ending of the shuttle program and your recent budget proposal to cancel 
the Constellation program. This is wrong for our country for many 
reasons. We are very concerned about America ceding its hard-earned 
global leadership in space technology to other nations. We are stunned 
that, in a time of economic crisis, this move will force as many as 
30,000 irreplaceable engineers and managers out of the space industry. 
We see our human exploration program, one of the most inspirational 
tools to promote science, technology, engineering and math to our young 
people, being reduced to mediocrity. NASA's human space program has 
inspired awe and wonder in all ages by pursuing the American tradition 
of exploring the unknown.
  ``We strongly urge you to drop this misguided proposal that forces 
NASA out of human space operations for the foreseeable future. For 
those of us who have accepted the risk and dedicated a portion of our 
lives to the exploration

[[Page 11809]]

of outer space, this is a terrible decision. Our experiences were made 
possible by the efforts of thousands who were similarly dedicated to 
the exploration of the last frontier. Success in this great national 
adventure was predicated on well-defined programs, an unwavering 
national commitment, and an ambitious challenge. We understand there 
are risks involved in space flight, but they are calculated risks for 
worthy goals whose benefits greatly exceed those risks.
  ``America's greatness lies in her people. She will always have men 
and women willing to ride rockets into the heavens. America's challenge 
is to match their bravery and acceptance of risk with specific plans 
and goals worthy of their commitment. NASA must continue at the 
frontiers of human space exploration in order to develop the technology 
and set the standards of excellence that will enable commercial space 
ventures to eventually succeed. Canceling NASA's human space operations 
after 50 years of unparalleled achievement makes that objective 
impossible.
  ``One of the greatest fears of any generation is not leaving things 
better for the young people of the next. In the area of human space 
flight, we are about to realize that fear. Your NASA budget proposal 
raises more questions about our future in space than it answers. Too 
many men and women have worked too hard and sacrificed too much to 
achieve America's preeminence in space, only to see that effort 
needlessly thrown away. We urge you to demonstrate the vision and 
determination necessary to keep our Nation at the forefront of human 
space exploration with ambitious goals and the proper resources to see 
them through. This is not the time to abandon the promise of the space 
frontier for a lack of will or an unwillingness to pay the price.
  ``Sincerely, in the hopes of continued American leadership in human 
space exploration.'' The letter was signed by approximately 37 
astronauts who span all of our main human space flight programs, from 
Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, Skylab, Apollo-Soyuz, shuttle station. This is 
a powerful argument, my friend, as to what we're doing, and what we're 
doing here is wrong for our country's future. We need to develop the 
Constellation. We need to get beyond low Earth orbit; and we need to 
explore, explore like Americans have been doing ever since our 
forefathers left their homes to come to this country.
  Mr. BISHOP of Utah. I appreciate the gentleman from Texas, the points 
that he made and especially the poignant letter that came out and 
illustrating how the overwhelming majority--in fact, I would say almost 
all but one--of our retired astronaut core feels very strongly that 
Constellation was the right approach for this country to do and that we 
should continue on with that particular approach.
  I would like to go back to a couple of points. I hope I am not 
redundant, but I think they are significant enough that even if we say 
them a second time, it's important. And I would hope the gentleman from 
Texas would stay here and try to fill in the blanks where I miss those, 
if we could.
  There was quick mention, once again, as I said, on the jobs that we 
are talking about here. The Vice President recently sent out a press 
release, announcing that he was going on his summer tour to tout the 
``Summer of Recovery.'' Now, amongst the bullet points that they put in 
that press release was that this administration would be proposing 
programs to build up to 30,000 miles of new roads, up to 2,000 new 
water programs, up to 80,000 homes that might be weatherized, 800 jobs 
here, some there, asking this country to add a nongermane issue to the 
military supplemental to try to protect government worker jobs.
  And I just find that so ironic, as was mentioned, that at the same 
time we were doing that, the policies of this administration with 
regard to NASA contract jobs would take between 20,000 and 30,000 
people who are part of the private sector, who are doing these jobs 
well--many of them being scientists and engineers--and they're 
basically giving them the pink slip at the same time we talk about how 
we're trying to build jobs in some other way. It simply does not 
compute that that is the way we're doing it.
  I readily admit, some of these jobs that have been threatened and 
have been lost are personal friends and neighbors of mine. I shared a 
picture with General Bolden, who is the head of NASA, at one of our 
committee hearings of a personal friend who has spent 26 years dealing 
with procurement issues at one of the companies, who is just in his 
mid-fifties and was just released simply because this is the policy of 
this particular administration. And I would love to be able to go to 
him and say, Ray, the reason that your job was terminated was because 
the government decided to try to save money. The problem is, none of 
these jobs that are going to be eliminated save the government a dime.
  In fact, it is true that this administration is asking for a $6 
billion increase in the NASA budget even though they are going to be 
stopping the manned space program and throwing up to 30,000 high-paying 
jobs, employees who have proven their worth for years and years, 
throwing them out. There are some people who said, Well, the new 
programs would create new jobs within the NASA-private sector 
relationship. Yet the most they're talking about there is maybe up to 
10,000 jobs to be offset by the 30,000 that we're losing? That's a 
three-to-one loss in the process that is there.
  For a fraction of that $6 billion of new additional money above and 
beyond what we're already spending to be focused directly on 
Constellation, we could continue this program to a successful 
conclusion. And once again, jobs, I recognize, are parochial. I am part 
of that situation. But it seems ironic that in an era in which we're 
talking about jobs and job creation and more jobs and job creation and 
realizing that we're never going to get out of these economic doldrums 
that we're in until we actually do have jobs, we, as a government, are 
having a policy to try to throw out 30,000 workers who have proven 
their net, who have proven their worth and are moving this country 
forward. It just flat out does not make sense.
  Mr. OLSON. If my colleague would yield, you're right: it absolutely 
doesn't make sense. And these just aren't some engineers who have just 
been doing it for a passing amount of time. These are the best in the 
world at what they do. These are the rocket scientists of America who 
led our dominance in human space flight. They have been the best for 50 
years. Having been a naval officer, one thing I can tell you, in 
government agencies like NASA, like the military, you depend on your 
people to pass down their information to the young people coming up, 
the new generations who take that information, take that knowledge and 
exploit it and develop even better vehicles, better space exploration. 
We're going to lose that. These people are going to walk out the door 
and take that expertise with them.
  If we try to decide as a Nation that we want to rebuild that at some 
point in the future, we're not going to be able to do it. Those people 
are going to be gone, and we are going to have to start over from 
scratch and teach a new generation of young Americans the lessons we 
learned from going to the Moon and spending 6 months in orbit at the 
space station. We've learned those things.
  And I agree with you on the terms of the priority of the budget. This 
is the second largest cut in the entire budget, the Constellation 
program. I mean, that is the largest cut. So you figure, okay, if we're 
going to cut this money out of the budget, we're cutting the funding to 
the agency. No, as my colleague alluded to, we're actually giving $6 
billion over a 5-year period to develop global warming research, to 
transition to these commercial launch vehicles. And I think our 
priorities are just wrong here. They're wrong for, certainly, our 
workforce; but they're wrong for America.
  One thing I would like to mention too that's hard to put a dollar 
value on, but the ability of human space flight to inspire youth, to 
get these jobs, to become astronauts and to pursue the

[[Page 11810]]

American Dream. I mean, I can tell you as a kid who grew up about a 
mile and a half from the Johnson Space Center, whose Little League 
football coach was Joe Engle, the pilot of the second space shuttle, 
and just growing up in that environment, how much those men and women 
inspired us, my schoolmates, to want to be astronauts, to want to be 
part of that. And that still exists today. I see it all around my 
district.
  The administration doesn't seem to realize all the implications of 
killing this budget. We're killing 30,000 jobs, the best in the world 
at what they do. We're going to cede U.S. dominance in human space 
flight, give up some national security possibly, and we are going to 
lose the ability to inspire our youth. And I also must add, we don't 
give NASA enough credit for all the things they've developed for us 
back here on Earth. I mean, everybody here in this gallery has somehow 
benefited from NASA and their research up there.
  If you've got a cell phone, if you've got a satellite GPS, if you've 
got a pacemaker or some sort of medical device, that's come from NASA. 
That research has come from NASA, and we're going to throw that away 
with this budget. That's why we're working very hard to stop it. And I 
wish the administration would just sit down and talk with us because, 
Mr. President, you have a voice, but you don't have the final word. The 
United States Congress, under the United States Constitution, has the 
final word.
  Mr. BISHOP of Utah. I appreciate the gentleman from Texas, if I could 
reclaim the time briefly. Changing from just the concept of jobs and, 
indeed, the future of space and especially to put the emphasis on the 
fact that, what are we going to do to inspire people to go into science 
and math and become the engineers of the future. Let's face it, if you 
only build one new plane for our military once every 40 years or if 
we're only doing one new adventure into space once every 30 years, that 
doesn't inspire somebody. In fact, supposedly one of NASA's new goals 
is to try to encourage education into space. And I think, as the 
gentleman from Texas clearly cited, kids are not dumb; and they're 
realizing, if you are at a whim firing 30,000 engineers and scientists, 
that doesn't give you a whole lot of encouragement to try to move into 
that particular area.
  One of the issues especially is because Constellation is the cutting 
edge of science. It was granted last year by Time magazine as one of 
the 50 best inventions of the year. In fact, it was number one of the 
50 best inventions of last year, and it shows that what we are doing is 
right. This is the right approach, and this is the approach that is 
being threatened by the policies of this administration and the current 
NASA leadership.
  The space shuttle had a couple of very sad disasters. In the last 
one, there was a study made on how to avoid that in the future, and 
they said, The most important thing we can do--and I think every 
astronaut understands this, which is maybe why so many of them signed 
that particular letter from which the gentleman from Texas read--is two 
goals: NASA will never be effective if, number one, the safety of our 
astronauts isn't in the most primary and utmost position; and, number 
two, you have a clear, understandable and stated goal--what we are 
going to accomplish.
  It is true that during the Bush administration, we decided to halt 
the space shuttle program. It had run its course. We have been very 
successful in going to the space station and back, but there were some 
issues that we needed to go beyond simply space shuttle. So the effort 
was made to try to put our best minds together and see where we could 
go into the future that would meet those two goals: a clear statement 
of purpose and safety. And the reality of that was Constellation. This 
is the safety concept. This Constellation program is designed to be 
safer than the space shuttle by a factor of 10.

                              {time}  1845

  It was recognized that if you want to try and stop some of the 
catastrophes we've had today, you separate the cargo from the 
passengers. That's what Orion does in that process, allows a safety 
valve for the safety of the passengers, in this case, the astronauts. 
And in addition, we clearly realized that we needed to go with solid 
rocket propellants because it is much safer than liquid propellant, 
perhaps not as powerful, but certainly much more controllable. And, 
once again, the concept of safety is important. This is the future, if 
you really care about astronauts.
  And the second one was the goal is very clear. The design was for a 
specific goal. The intent was for a specific goal. And I don't want to 
be disparaging to this administration, but the apparent goal of this 
administration with spaceflight is some day, maybe perhaps at some 
time, we might land on some asteroid somewhere. That's not a specific 
goal. That's not even a dream. That's not even a reality that we can 
deal with. That may be almost cartoonish in the approaches to deal with 
it.
  And unfortunately, if we start scaling back, other countries are not. 
The Russians are still involved. The Chinese are stepping up their 
involvement in space exploration. As I said earlier, even the Indian 
Government and the Japanese Government have stated that they have a 
plan in mind to try and become involved in this concept.
  What becomes so bizarre is the United States, that won the space 
race, is now forfeiting the space future to other countries. We had a 
plan between the actual startup of Constellation, which is both the 
Aries rocket and the Orion space capsule, and the end of the space 
shuttle in which the Russians would have to do some of the taxi service 
for us. They would charge us somewhere in the neighborhood of $30 to 
$35 million per ride. That's a large amount of money. But, however, our 
good friends in Russia, after they left communism, have found 
capitalism to their liking, and they realize what a monopoly gives them 
the power to do.
  In the 2011 budget, NASA wants to budget $75 million per astronaut 
ride from Earth up to the space station and back. Now, that's the kind 
of cost that's coming to the taxpayers of the United States. And I 
would, once again, maybe be willing to accept it if that was moving 
America forward. But simply subsidizing the Russian space program 
instead of building our own program is not what I call smart use of 
moving us into the future.
  In fact, we simply have said that this summer of recovery should be 
the summer of the Russian and Chinese recovery. We will be subsidizing 
their missile program, their space exploration program, at the tune of 
$75 million every time we send an American astronaut into space on 
Russian technology to help their program out, to keep their jobs going. 
And, well, I'm sorry. That just does not make sense as to where our 
future should be.
  Mr. OLSON. Will my colleague yield?
  Mr. BISHOP of Utah. I would be happy to yield.
  Mr. OLSON. Thank you.
  I wanted to get back to your point about needing a goal, having some 
sort of focus. I'm a Rice University graduate, and we had the honor of 
President Kennedy coming to our school in the early sixties to make his 
famous speech where he said, you know, we're going to go to the moon, 
take a man to the moon and return by the end of this decade. That was a 
clear goal. Here's our goal. Here's when we're going to do it in. We're 
going to give you the resources to do it.
  When I go home, when I go back to my district, the one thing I hear 
from both the government employees and the contractors at NASA are, 
What's our goal? I mean, what are we doing? What's our target? We're 
going to go to Mars sometime by 2035 or somewhere in that window. We're 
going to take 5 years to develop a design and make development designs 
for heavy-lift vehicles, and then we're going to build that 5 years 
from now.
  That's not what makes NASA great. You give these people a goal, give 
them a time frame and give them the resources they need to do it, they 
will do it. Every time in our history, they've made some of the 
greatest technological advancements that mankind

[[Page 11811]]

will ever know. And again, this administration's budget priorities have 
nothing to do with that. And again, the ability it has to inspire our 
kids.
  The thing we've gotten into with the Russians now, where we're going 
to have to depend on them to take our astronauts up to and from the 
space station--and as my colleague alluded to, you can say what you 
want about our former communist friends, but they have figured out 
capitalism in a very short time. And, you know, we were paying about, 
somewhere over, just over $20 million per seat last year. That price 
has gone up now to just a little over 50. We signed a contract, I 
believe, through 2014, and it's doubtful, certainly with the 
administration's budget proposal, that we'll have an American vehicle 
that can transport us to the space station. We're going to renegotiate 
that contract. And as my colleague from Utah alluded to, that thing's 
probably going to double again. This is just a terrible position we've 
gotten ourselves into.
  The Constellation is the program of record, been endorsed by a 
Republican Congress in 2005, a Democrat Congress in 2008. We need to 
develop Constellation and stay the course and let our engineers and let 
our space experts and let our astronauts do what they do to inspire our 
youth.
  Mr. BISHOP of Utah. If I could reclaim the time, and I appreciate 
that comment. And once again, the fact we're throwing out different 
numbers of what it will cost to send Americans up there is simply 
because NASA doesn't know what it will cost, and that's why they're 
budgeting very high. Who knows if that is the actual number. Because 
once again the Russians realize, when they have a monopoly, they can 
charge what they want to charge.
  Let's deal with another phrase that we often hear from this 
administration. They are about to commercialize space. I want to try 
and put that one to rest, if we could. There is no such thing as 
privatizing or commercializing what we are doing in space.
  The Constellation program is being built by private enterprise. There 
were contracts let by this government that were done on a competitive 
bid process and won by private sectors, by the private sector, by 
commercial companies, which means when we cut Constellation, we're not 
cutting a government program. We're cutting 30,000 jobs in the private 
sector to build a contract that comes from here.
  What the President and the NASA leaders were talking about when they 
say, well, we're going to commercialize the future of space is not 
really changing the philosophy of what we're doing. All they're doing 
is they're going to take the contracts from those who have them now, 
building Constellation, fire those people, and then we will give some 
of that extra NASA money that we are going to be appropriating to other 
companies in the private sector who are going to be winners in the 
values that this administration places on those particular companies.
  In fact, the companies that are talking about the so-called 
commercialization of space already are under contract with NASA. They 
are already being subsidized by NASA. They are already behind in their 
programs with NASA, and they are asking for more Federal dollars for 
NASA.
  So, once again, I oftentimes hear, well, this is an administration 
that wants to totally change the way we deal with space and they want 
to try and commercialize everything. That's a cute word, but the 
reality is you're simply having some people in the private sector who 
will lose their jobs so the administration can pick other people in the 
private sector to have jobs, and not necessarily on a one-to-one ratio.
  There is no such thing as commercialization of space or these 
programs, and we are not trying to come up with a free enterprise 
approach to the future of space. This is simply the government picking 
winners and losers among a lot of people who are out there in the 
private sector. The 30,000 jobs that are going to be lost are not 
government jobs. Those are private sector jobs.
  Mr. OLSON. Yes, sir. My colleague from Utah makes a great point, if 
he'd yield a little time.
  Mr. BISHOP of Utah. I yield.
  Mr. OLSON. Certainly commercial has a place in our future, but they 
are not anywhere near being ready to do what this administration wants 
them to do, carry cargo to a space station. They're not there yet. 
They've had one launch. That's a long, long way to go from being able 
to carry cargo up to and from the space station.
  More important, astronauts, human beings, that is a much, much 
greater challenge than carrying cargo, and they've got a long way to 
go. When I talk to experts back home, they say a decade would be a good 
number for the commercial operators to have man-rated vehicles. And 
they've got a long, long way to go.
  And one thing I'm concerned about is safety. As my colleague from 
Utah alluded to earlier tonight, safety is paramount. I mean, we need 
to do what we've done at NASA. The 50 years they've been in existence, 
they have put safety of astronauts as the number one concern. And it is 
a very, very risky endeavor that they do. And we've got to make sure 
that safety is put first, and that's one of my concerns with these 
commercial operations.
  Again, as my colleague alluded to, economically, it's no different 
than what we're doing now. But it concerns me that we're going to have 
people who don't understand NASA's--the safety that's required. And 
they think that just because they get cargo to the station, they can 
get crew to the station.
  Wrong. You have to do--there's so much more to carry a crew to and 
from the space station. You've got to insure they're safe. You've got 
to have the redundancy to the redundancy to the redundancy to the 
backup to the backup system to ensure that if anything happens to that 
vehicle from the time it pulls off that pad till the time it gets to 
the station and comes back down that the crew has the ability to get 
home safely. And I'm concerned that's one thing that this President's 
budget proposal doesn't take into account.
  Mr. BISHOP of Utah. I appreciate that.
  And reclaiming the time once again, I'm glad we're talking about the 
fact that these are real people in the job market that we're going to 
be harming. I'm glad we're talking about the overall purpose of our 
space exploration program and what it means to them. I'm glad the 
gentleman ticked off a bunch of areas. I mean, let's face it. When my 
kids were growing up, the fact that I could put their shoes on with 
Velcro was a major advantage than trying to tie their shoes. We have 
those examples in our life.
  I'm glad that we're talking about the fact that the Constellation is 
the future. It is the best science that we have. It is the safest way 
of going forward. And I'm glad we're talking about the fact that we're 
not, this entire idea that we're going to privatize our space program 
which has caught the fancy of some of our colleagues who aren't really 
perhaps deeply involved in the Science Committee, as the gentleman from 
Texas is, to realize that's not what we're talking about here. All 
we're talking about is, once again, government picking winners and 
losers amongst the private sector to go on with programs that will 
still be subsidized by the taxpayers. And in some respects, perhaps 
this is the right approach to do it.
  If I could take us into one other direction just for a minute as 
well, and perhaps this comes back to one of my areas of interest, 
because I'm on the Armed Services Committee. One of the things that 
this particular administration failed to do when they announced their 
new program of canceling Constellation for whatever new goal that they 
want to have in the future is they failed to communicate with other 
members of the administration and with other policies and programs 
within government to see what the impact would have in other government 
areas. And once again, I'm specifically talking about our military 
defense system.
  As I said in the very beginning, we forget that the people who build 
rockets and have the component parts to put a man to the moon are the 
same people who build the component parts

[[Page 11812]]

and build rockets that shoot down incoming missiles from other 
countries.
  If, indeed, we are going--and once again, as was mentioned earlier, 
the industrial base that creates these jobs is not something you can 
turn on and off like a spigot on a water fountain. You can't just 
decide today we're going to have these scientists; tomorrow we'll fire 
them and turn it off, and then the next day we'll just open it up and 
they'll be there again.
  What we are doing, if we decimate Constellation, is we're decimating 
the industrial base that builds our Defense Department missiles at the 
same time.
  The House authorization bill has intent language that tries to 
quantify what this is because, to be honest, as we started our hearings 
this year on authorization bills, both for NASA as well as for the 
Defense Department, we simply asked the question that if, indeed, 
Constellation is taken out, what impact will it have on the military. 
And it was clear that the military had never been broached. They had 
never talked about this. They had not anticipated it. However, reports 
going over a year now, going back to Congress simply said that there 
would be devastating circumstances and harmful consequences if, indeed, 
Constellation was stopped for the military side.
  Now, in the language that will be presented in the House 
authorization bill, it simply says that the best estimate we have right 
now is the cost of military defense on everything that deals with the 
missile, any kind of propulsion system, is between a 40 to 100 percent 
increase in the cost to the defense side of our Nation if, indeed, we 
stop Constellation and you fire those 30,000 workers who are part of 
that industrial base. That simply means that anything that needs a 
solid rocket motor, an ICBM, the Navy missile system, double the cost 
of what it will take just to replace those motors to replace the work 
and to keep that system functioning. Any kind of strategic missile that 
has propulsion as part of it, and I hate to say that, but that's every 
kind of missile that we have, the cost will increase 40 to 100 percent 
simply because we are losing the expertise and the industrial base. 
And, indeed, oftentimes those propulsion concepts have a fixed cost to 
them, so if, indeed, you have to have propulsion in there, there's a 
fixed cost. If you have less of that, the military will be picking up 
what is now being shared as far as the cost with NASA at the same time.
  Our land-based missile system, our kinetic energy system, even the 
fact that some of our laser systems in the future will have a negative 
impact simply because the industrial base that builds those missiles 
for our military is the same industrial base that builds missiles, the 
component part, the labor, the propulsion system for NASA for 
Constellation.

                              {time}  1900

  You hurt one, we will hurt the other. And that was a factor that was 
never considered by the administration or NASA when they came up with 
their quick decision to try and stop Constellation for something else, 
some nebulous policy in the future.
  Defense of this country is the role of Congress. It's a legitimate 
question. This administration should have asked those questions ahead 
of time before they announced the policy. They should have understood 
what the costs would be and how they planned to handle that cost. As it 
was, it kind of snuck up on everybody. And now people are trying to 
play catchup. And the best way of solving that problem is simply go 
with the winning program, which is Constellation, and continue on with 
the goal that is safe and has a clear, concise goal message to it. 
Don't lose the jobs, don't lose the industrial base, don't increase the 
costs for our military. And let us move forward in an organized, 
rational approach rather than this helter-skelter idea that takes place 
at some particular time.
  Mr. OLSON. Would my colleague yield?
  Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Yes, I will be happy to yield.
  Mr. OLSON. One thing I am concerned about, as my colleague knows, is 
the fact that this administration is making NASA a partisan issue in 
many ways. As you alluded to, I am not sure who proposed this budget or 
who put it together, but they certainly didn't outreach. It seemed like 
a very small group of individuals at the White House over at OMB who 
made these decisions that have dramatic impacts for our Nation.
  As you alluded to, I don't think they talked to any of the defense 
contractors, particularly the ones that developed the missiles for our 
strategic nuclear deterrence. As I understood it, nothing. They heard 
nothing. I represent the Johnson Space Center, the home of human space 
flight. Our center director, when I called him up on February 2 just to 
sort of get how are people doing, what's the mood there, those type 
questions, I asked him, when did you find out? He says, I found out 
about it when you did. I read the paper yesterday.
  That's another point. I mean Congress has the oversight. We are the 
power of the purse. And I am unaware of any outreach from the 
administration to any Member of Congress prior to this decision being 
made. I am a freshman here as a Member of Congress, but I have been on 
the Hill for a number of years, particularly in the military and the 
Navy. One of the standard things was, if you are going to make a 
radical change in a program, you went and talked to the committees of 
jurisdiction, the chairman, the ranking member, and at least sort of 
gave them the courtesy of what you were planning to do. And I am 
unaware of anything like that happening.
  And again, they are playing politics with this. This thing we are 
doing with the termination liability, the Anti-Deficiency Act, where 
they are using--we think it's unprecedented. We are doing some research 
to find out if it's ever been done in the past. As my colleague knows, 
what's basically done is, NASA has told the contractors you are going 
to have to hold some money in reserve for termination liability. You 
can't spend that on developing rockets and human space flight. You are 
going to have to hold that in an account in case things get terminated. 
And what do the companies have to do? The money they were holding for 
September 30 is now going to be dried up sometime in the middle of 
August. The only solution they have is to lay off those people.
  And again, I don't want to be skeptical, but that gets the 
administration more of what they want. If those people go, we are going 
to have a hard time getting them back, and the costs are going to go 
up. We need to stop this. We can't make NASA a partisan issue. It's 
been a bipartisan issue. That's its strength. Every American loves 
human space flight, is proud of America, what we have done in orbit and 
what we have done on the Moon. And we've got to go beyond that. And 
Constellation, as my colleague alluded to, is the best, most tried way 
so far to do it. There is no reason to get off that path.
  Mr. BISHOP of Utah. If I could reclaim my time very briefly here 
again, and once again I appreciate you making those points, because 
they are spot-on accurate. Congress made its voice very clear last year 
when we specifically told NASA, Constellation is our program of record, 
and you will not cut funding to Constellation. It's very clear that 
Congress has never changed that position. Well, this is speculation, 
but nor do I think we would, given our own choice of what to do.
  But as the gentleman from Texas clearly illustrated, there are some 
things that NASA is doing right now that appear--I don't want to try 
and ascribe motives--but they appear clearly to try and force the issue 
so that by the time Congress goes through its process of coming up with 
a budget and appropriations process and language directing what the 
bureaucracies will do, in this case NASA, that this will be a fait 
accompli.
  So the idea of withholding the derivatives was not a reduction of 
their contracts, but it had the same effect. The idea of taking the 
Constellation manager and reassigning him had a specific effect. And 
then, as you alluded to, the idea of telling companies that they are 
going to have to hold out closing costs, which has never been done in 
NASA before, in fact there was

[[Page 11813]]

only one time where Congress did tell them in some way, shape, or form 
that they needed to close a program, but that's when Congress told them 
to close a program down, not when they were trying to close it down 
before Congress has a chance to react to it. But what that would do is 
simply force them to fire people now so the industrial base is gone 
before anything takes place.
  And that is a strange approach for any kind of executive branch of 
government to do when the legislative branch has yet to give them any 
clear direction that's what we want to do, or has spoken. In fact, 
everything we have said so far is the exact contrary to that. So I 
appreciate that.
  If I could just put one last thing in, and then I will yield to the 
gentleman from Texas again. The government apparently put out the 
National Space Policy of the United States today. It's an interesting 
document. It says that we should have a robust and competitive 
commercial space sector, which is good. But I promise you, if you take 
all the jobs away from those who are doing Constellation, there will 
not be a robust or competitive space program.
  They say that we should strengthen U.S. leadership in space-related 
science. Now, once again we have said over and over again if indeed you 
stop Constellation, you are ceding leadership in space-related science. 
We're not creating leadership. They say we should retain skilled space 
professionals. Once again, what is happening today is the exact 
opposite of this effort or this directive.
  They say we should reinvigorate U.S. leadership. You don't 
reinvigorate something if you destroy the program that is our program 
of record that will move us towards a leadership position. I find this 
document unusual.
  Now, I haven't had a chance to read everything that is in it, but 
certainly certain things come glaring out in the process of just 
skimming through it, saying that what we are doing is not necessarily 
what our words are. If our words here were indeed what our policy is, I 
would be very happy and content. But what I see happening is not what 
this policy statement says that we should be doing.
  Sometimes I wonder if we really do understand what we are doing in 
space. And we need to recognize the significance of it, the importance 
of it, and the importance it has in other aspects of the government, 
and to our citizens, and to the future to inspiring kids. I yield back.
  Mr. OLSON. If my colleague would yield very briefly again, I am just 
very scared that this administration is turning NASA into a partisan 
political football, and it's never been that way. Let me read just 
another quote again from the letter I read earlier that was put 
together by Walt Cunningham, who was one of our first return-to-flight 
astronauts after the Apollo 1 disaster. Walt flew in the next Apollo 
mission. And he has been very adamant and very clear about how he feels 
this change, this radical budget is going to affect our human space 
flight future.
  Let me just read the three paragraphs that I think are most 
important. Again, Walt and about 30 other astronauts from every 
program, every human space flight program we have, signed this letter: 
``Too many men and women have worked too hard and sacrificed too much 
to achieve America's preeminence in space, only to see that effort 
needlessly thrown away. We urge you to demonstrate the vision and the 
determination necessary to keep our Nation at the forefront of human 
space exploration with ambitious goals and the proper resources to see 
them through. This is not the time to abandon the promise of space 
frontier for a lack of will or an unwillingness to pay the price.'' Yet 
that's exactly what this budget proposal does.
  And I am very scared that this has become a partisan issue that 
doesn't serve America well, that doesn't serve our future well. As my 
colleague alluded, Republican Congress endorsed the Constellation, 
Democrat Congress endorsed the Constellation. You hear people out there 
say this is George Bush's plan. Yes, it was his plan, but it's been 
endorsed by, again, a Republican Congress and a Democrat Congress. It's 
not Bush's plan. It's America's plan. And we need to see it through.
  Mr. BISHOP of Utah. If I could just reclaim for just one particular 
second right here. Once again, and I appreciate you bringing that point 
out, I think the pushback or the outrage in Congress has been a 
bipartisan pushback and outrage. Republicans and Democrats alike have 
said the approach this administration is taking is not necessarily the 
right approach. Because indeed, Constellation is a safer, better system 
than the space shuttle. It is the new way forward. It shows what is the 
best and the brightest that this country has to offer. It is something 
that makes us good and makes us noble. It is the direction we should go 
into the future.
  And for us to back off now for some program that is not clear, is not 
understandable, has no discernible goals, that's just not the way a 
country moves forward. It is indeed the way a country moves backwards, 
and this country should not be moving backwards.
  I appreciate the gentleman from Texas's leadership on this particular 
issue, everything that he has been doing in organizing our review, our 
reports, some of our complaints, too, as we try and say what we need to 
do is do that which moves the country forward and ennobles us as a 
people. Constellation does that. A clear space mission does that. A 
mission emphasizing safety for astronauts does that. That's what we 
need to continue on. And I'm sorry, but what NASA is asking us to do 
right now does not meet those goals.
  I yield back for any concluding statements the gentleman has.
  Mr. OLSON. Yes, I will be very brief here. You are very aware of the 
Orion Pad Abort, the very successful launch test we had I believe it 
was in late April or early May. Good chance you could get a Time 
magazine from this upcoming year, and that's going to be on the cover 
of that magazine. That was a flawless, flawless test.
  In fact, if you remember, the rocket got off the pad so quickly at 
White Sands that the cameras that are there to track rockets--I mean 
they are there to track all rockets--couldn't keep up with it because 
it was moving so darn fast. And that's the program of record.
  And I will just conclude by saying what I tell people all across this 
country. The President and the administration have a voice in this 
process, but they don't have the final word. The United States Congress 
has the final word. And I am confident that at the end of the day, 
Constellation is still going to be the program of record. I thank my 
colleague, and yield back my time to him.
  Mr. BISHOP of Utah. Thank you. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate your time 
and efforts. We yield back.

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