Orlando Sentinel (Florida) August 17, 2003
NASA Budget Is T-Minus And Holding As Columbia Probe Is Out
Congress Doesn't Know If The Agency Needs A Recommitment To The Shuttle Or A Broader Approach To Future Plans
By Gwyneth K. Shaw
WASHINGTON -- Six months after the Columbia disaster, Congress is still waiting for an indication from NASA about how much money the agency needs, when it will be needed and what's in store for the future of the space program.
Part of the problem is the timing: Although NASA has been working on a number of fixes for the shuttle fleet, it is waiting for the report of the independent board investigating the tragedy. That report is expected Aug. 26, late in the congressional budget process and at a time when shoehorning a significant funding increase for the agency would be difficult.
Also, a full-scale consideration of the longer-term goals of the space program -- and whether the National Aeronautics and Space Administration will press to move beyond the orbits of the shuttle and international space station -- has been almost completely eclipsed by the board's investigation.
For now, there appears to be broad support on Capitol Hill for giving NASA the money it needs to get the remaining three shuttles flying again. But when -- or if -- there will be an effort to take a bolder approach to space exploration remains an open question.
U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, a Florida Democrat who has frequently complained that NASA is underfunded, said he thinks the agency is holding the purse strings too tightly at the behest of the White House Office of Management and Budget.
"I hope that we're going to be able to get some increases," he said. "The problem is, when the agency, itself, won't ask for the increases -- because they're taking orders from OMB -- it makes it a lot more difficult for the supporters of NASA in Congress to get the additional monies."
The House passed a $15.5 billion budget for NASA late last month, based almost entirely on the request the agency submitted in February, only two days after the accident. The Senate has not yet taken on the agency's spending plan but is expected to follow roughly the same path, leaving the budgets for the shuttle, international space station and planned orbital space plane unchanged.
House budget writers told NASA to come back by Sept. 15 with an action plan. But U.S. Rep. Dave Weldon, a Palm Bay Republican who sits on the House Appropriations Committee, said it could be much later before the House and Senate deal with additional NASA funding.
NASA officials say they have enough money for the time being, because the post-accident grounding of the shuttle fleet means four flights that had been planned this year won't happen. The agency expects to have a better handle on its requirements once a formal return-to-flight plan is released this fall, spokesman Robert Mirelson said.
Brian Chase, executive director of the National Space Society, a Washington space-advocacy group, said there is time to outline a long-term vision later. Right now, necessity dictates that NASA and lawmakers focus on the critical needs of the shuttle and space-station program, he said.
"There clearly seems to be a consensus building that we've got to make changes in the way we do this, and like any large government organization, you can't turn these things on a dime," Chase said. "It may take several sessions of Congress and several budget cycles before this thing fully evolves."
John Pike, a space-policy expert and head of GlobalSecurity.org, a northern Virginia-based think tank, said that evolution needs to involve serious consideration -- and serious money. If NASA wants to really move ahead, getting the space station back on schedule, making the shuttle safer and laying the groundwork for future exploration, he said, the agency's small annual budget increases will have to grow substantially.
NASA's budget has grown by 3 percent or less each year for more than a decade.
"I think you get the budget up to $20 billion a year without breathing very hard, and anybody who goes into sticker shock over that needs to rerun some of that Columbia accident videotape," Pike said.
Before thinking very far into the future, however, NASA has to spend money on making the shuttle safer. So far, the price tag for that remains uncertain.
The Columbia Accident Investigation Board, led by Harold Gehman, has already recommended that the agency upgrade its ground, launch and in-flight cameras and add the capacity for astronauts to inspect and, if necessary, repair the orbiter during flight. NASA is redesigning parts of the massive external tank to reduce the risk that debris such as insulating foam on the tank will hit the shuttle during liftoff.
And the agency has announced an independent safety and engineering office, based at Langley Research Center in Virginia, to boost oversight of critical prelaunch and in-orbit decisions.
Another initiative sparked by the Columbia accident is the effort to accelerate the development of the orbital space plane. The plan was for it to be ready to serve as an emergency-return vehicle for the space station by 2010, and prepared to ferry astronauts back and forth by 2012.
Now, amid new doubts about the safety of the shuttle and space-station support completely dependent on the Russian space program, NASA wants to move up that timetable by two years. There is no definitive price tag for the space plane, or a sense of how much more it would cost to build it more quickly.
All of this adds up to uncertainty -- and puts NASA in a difficult spot. Lawmakers grew weary of the agency's troubles in the 1990s, as space-station cost overruns became routine and efforts to build a successor to the shuttle cost too much and did too little.
NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe, tapped in late 2001 to get the station's books under control and crack the fiscal whip, has been successful in beginning to rebuild the agency's political credibility. But, although there is support in Congress for the space program and manned space flight, there is also a sense that lawmakers are getting tired of vague answers.
"I don't think the Congress is going to be unwilling to spend more. But they want to know it's going to solve the problems, and they want to know it's going to get you somewhere in the long run, that it's not just a short-term fix," said Jim Muncy, an independent space-policy consultant at PoliSpace, based outside Washington, D.C.
O'Keefe, a former Capitol Hill staffer and deputy director of the White House budget office, understands that, Muncy said. While O'Keefe has a reputation as a budget hawk, Muncy and others said that doesn't necessarily mean he won't ask for more money.
"If he can show progress in what he was asked to do, why shouldn't he go in there and ask for more money?" asked Henry Hertzfeld, a senior research scientist at the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University.
But even if O'Keefe makes a successful pitch, there may not be the money to do something truly ambitious. The war with Iraq, a series of tax cuts and an economy that continues to underperform have left the government facing massive budget deficits. Funding a bold space initiative just might not make it. Chase said the environment is the best it has been in years for a new focus on space, although there are always competing interests that tend to push NASA's needs off the table.
Nelson, who flew aboard Columbia in 1986 while a House member, said fixing the shuttle simply isn't enough.
"They can fix the problem and do a temporary fix with the space plane, but that's not going to solve the problem long term. We need a bold new initiative. . . .," Nelson said. "It looks like NASA and the administration are only going to respond to the Gehman commission, and I think that it's going to take a lot more."
© Copyright 2003, Sentinel Communications Co.
