Source: Houston Chronicle
Senate leaders Wednesday took a step toward saving a component of the back-to-the-moon program by adding $1 billion to NASA’s proposed budget for continued testing of the heavy-lift rocket motor that would be used for deep-space exploration.
The development was the first attempt to override President Barack Obama’s proposal to cancel NASA’s $108 billion Constellation program, which is critical to Houston’s Johnson Space Center.
Senate Budget Committee chairman Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D. unveiled the Democrats’ version, a resolution that would increase NASA’s current $18.7 billion budget by 5.3 percent to provide uninterrupted testing of the Ares I-X rocket motor. The committee must debate and vote on the proposal before it goes to the Senate floor.
Modernize Nuclear Aresenal
The sophisticated rocket motor would be used for both NASA’s deep space rocket and to modernize Pentagon rockets stationed on submarines and in land silos that carry part of the nation’s arsenal of nuclear weapons.
Conrad and Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., sketched out Congress’ addition six days after the president visited NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
The lawmakers made it clear that political support needed to boost NASA’s budget in hard economic times would come from lawmakers’ recognition that the heavy lift rocket’s motor would be crucial to the Pentagon rather than the importance of the rocket to manned space exploration.
“In our classified discussions that we can’t go into now, with respect to this initiative, I would say to my colleagues: This is absolutely essential for the national security that this go forward and I think every member of this committee understands what I’m talking about,” Conrad told members of the Senate Budget Committee.