Source: Florida Today
Obama, Congress should craft NASA compromise
We’re talking about new moves in the White House and Congress to shape the agency’s direction that have turned the situation into a bitter stalemate.
On one hand there’s the Obama administration, which keeps pressing its plan to launch astronauts aboard private rockets and kill the Constellation moon project.
On the other are some members of Congress from NASA-dependent states, fighting to save Constellation and armed with a law that says it can’t be canceled without congressional approval.
Common sense calls for cool-headed negotiations to break the impasse, but that’s too much to ask in Washington.
So what happens?
NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, at the behest of the White House last week, throws more fuel on the fire.
Citing an obscure 140-year-old federal spending law, he says the agency has to save money to cover Obama’s plan by cutting off $1 billion that otherwise would be spent on Constellation by year’s end.
That made Constellation backers ballistic, with Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah, calling the action “pretty sleazy” and others an attempt to undermine congressional power.
Enough, already. The brawl is delaying the need to move forward, and it’s time both sides recognize a compromise is in order.
We’ve offered this idea before — so have others — and do so again as a starting point:
A dual-track approach that allows commercial companies to move forward while also giving NASA approval to continue testing the Ares 1 rocket that was part of Constellation.
That would provide the nation a fail-safe option should commercial rockets not prove up to the task of ferrying astronauts to the International Space Station.
The Ares work also could accelerate design of a new heavy-lift rocket that could eventually carry crews to Mars and have the additional benefit of saving jobs at Kennedy Space Center and in other states.
At the same time, and whether detractors like it or not, the recent success of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rockets shows private rockets have promise and should continue receiving federal funds.
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http://www.floridatoday.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2010100614012