Lawmakers concerned over gaps in future NASA budgets

House Science Committee members from both parties expressed alarm on Tuesday that NASA's proposed funding will not allow it to carry out its assigned mission, with the greatest concern over the space agency's ability to develop a new generation of manned space vehicles.

Committee members representing NASA's major facilities seized on the expected loss of thousands of skilled workers during the five-year gap between the planned retirement of the space shuttles in 2010 and the operational capability of the new Constellation space exploration system.

And Republican members complained that NASA would have to pay Russia $1.2 billion to service the International Space Station during that hiatus in U.S. manned space capability.

But acting NASA Administrator Christopher Scolese warned that any effort to keep the shuttles flying beyond 2010 would take funding and personnel away from the new system, further delaying deployment of the Ares launch vehicle and the Orion crew capsule.

But Scolese said NASA had committed to flying the eight scheduled shuttle missions, even if that requires operating the aged space ships longer. Although agency officials believe they can complete the schedule by December 2010, he said, "the requirement now is we will fly out the eight missions, with no specific date" of completion.

NASA's previous administrator, Michael Griffin, had warned that continuing to fly the shuttles was a safety risk he was not willing to take.

Two shuttles have disintegrated in flight, killing 14 astronauts.

The proposed fiscal 2010 budget would give NASA $18.7 billion, a 5 percent increase over current funding. It also got $1 billion from the stimulus bill, most of which would go to the Constellation program.

But the budget projects no real increase in NASA funding through fiscal 2014.

Scolese said he believed that funding would allow NASA to build the initial Constellation system, which could reach low-earth orbit and service the ISS, but not the follow-on system able to meet the goal of returning to the moon by 2020.

"It's become clear in recent years that the resources given to NASA haven't kept pace with the tasks that the nation has asked it to carry out," House Science Chairman Bart Gordon, D-Tenn., said.

The nation is going to have to give NASA the funding it needs to carry out its current and planned missions and revitalize its facilities and work force, "or the nation is going to have to agree on what it wants NASA to cut," Gordon said.

Science ranking member Ralph Hall, R-Texas, said that, while he did not like adding to the federal budget deficit, "NASA is the one area of the federal budget where I think some increases are justified." He proposed taking money from foreign aid or U.S. support for countering the spread of AIDS in Africa.

The Obama administration has created a commission to study the future of manned space exploration, led by former aerospace executive Norm Augustine. It is expected to report its findings by late summer.