The Russian Progress supply ship, meant for NASA's International Space Station, had barely burned up in the atmosphere when American politicians rushed forward to take full advantage of it, according to their agendas.
Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-CA was first up with a press release. The failure of the Progress, for him, was clearly an indication that efforts to get the commercial crew spacecraft operational needed to be redoubled. Rohrabacher has a plan to do this very thing.
"I am calling on General Bolden, the NASA Administrator, to propose an emergency transfer of funding from unobligated balances in other programs, including the Space Launch System, to NASA's commercial crew initiative. Funding should be used to speed up the efforts of the four current industry partners to develop their systems and potentially expand the recent awards to include the best applicants for launch vehicle development."
Rohrabacher suggests that "several hundred million dollars" could be transferred from the SLS program to commercial crew. There are several problems with his proposal.
First, commercial crew space craft such as the SpaceX Dragon are not due to start carrying human passengers until 2015 at the earliest. The cargo version, depending on some test flights being flow successfully, would start flying next year. There is little evidence that a transfer of "several hundred million dollars" would advance the start dates of either version by as much as a day.
On the other hand, siphoning off money from the underfunded SLS would pretty much cripple that project and add to the arguments of those who want it scrapped entirely. That may be the entire point of Rohrabacher's proposal. However the proposal is so transparent that it is not likely to be met favorably by other members of Congress. Rohrabacher is in the strange position of being a man who has advocated free market capitalism demanding more government subsidies for a space craft whose sole purpose, at least thus far, is to service the government.
Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas has a different view of the implications of the Progress failure.
"This failure underscores the importance of successful development of our own National capabilities and at the same time demonstrates the risks with having limited options for ISS supply and crew rotation. As we have already seen with the multi-year delay with commercial providers of cargo to the space station, the country would greatly benefit from the timely implementation of the NASA Authorization Act of 2010 and development of the Space Launch System (SLS) as a back-up system."
Hutchison also suggests that the Booz Allen Hamilton report vindicates her view that the SLS could be built even under the current constrained budget environment.
Hutchison makes two crucial errors in her press release.
The SLS, with an initial capacity of 70 metric tons to low Earth orbit and an eventual capacity of 130 metric tonnes is not very suitable for launching the Orion MPCV to low Earth orbit. The SLS is meant as a deep space, heavy lift launcher, to send astronauts beyond low Earth orbit/
The Booz Allen Hamilton report does suggest that costs estimates made by NASA for the next 3-5 years are reasonable, as Hutchison suggests. Beyond that timeframe is a different story. "Beyond this horizon, the inclusion of large expected cost savings in the estimates, the beginning of development activities, and the potential for significant risk events decreases the ICA Team's confidence in the estimates." The report does not have anything like hard numbers, but does have some recommendations for NASA to come up with them as the SLS project progresses.
Mark R. Whittington is the author of Children of Apollo and The Last Moonwalker . He has written on space subjects for a variety of periodicals, including The Houston Chronicle, The Washington Post, USA Today, the LA Times, and The Weekly Standard.
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