Big battle brews over planned NASA cuts

Lawmakers see saving jobs and JSC as their top priority

By STEWART M. POWELL and ERIC BERGER
HOUSTON CHRONICLE

Jan. 30, 2010, 12:03AM

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama's budget blueprint for ending NASA's program to return astronauts to the moon by 2020 is fueling a titanic political fight as lawmakers from Texas move to protect jobs, astronauts and the Johnson Space Center.

Obama wants to push total spending on NASA to nearly $100 billion over the next five years by adding $5.9 billion to cover the costs of increased earth science missions, extending the life of the International Space Station, and subsidizing commercial rocket launching firms' development of spacecraft to deliver astronauts and cargo to the orbiting space station.

But it leaves too little money to return astronauts to the moon, spelling the effective end of the 5-year-old Constellation program that envisioned going back for the first time since Apollo 17 mission commander Eugene Cernan left the surface in 1972.

NASA officials are refusing to comment on the budget proposals, expected to be released Monday.

“It would be premature to discuss the president's 2011 budget request for NASA before it is announced next week,” said NASA spokesman Michael Cabbage.

But officials and experts familiar with Obama's plans portrayed the upcoming budget proposal as a milestone in the evolution of the 50-year-old space program because the White House is dropping the moon as the destination in favor of a “flexible path” that might or might not lead to manned space exploration beyond low Earth orbit, such as to the moon, to a near-Earth object or even to Mars.

“This represents a fundamental shift in U.S. plans for space,” said John Logsdon, a historian of the space program who is former director of George Washington University's Space Policy Institute. “It's going to spark a vigorous, spirited and heated fight with Congress.”

Powerful lawmakers from Texas, Florida and Alabama are drawing their battle lines to try to protect aspects of NASA's existing manned space program that account for jobs, payroll and subcontracts in their states.

Site's economic impact

Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Dallas, a candidate for governor in the March 2 Texas GOP primary, vowed to strongly oppose cuts in manned spaceflight, insisting that U.S. space operations remain essential to “secure our economic well-being and security.”

As many as 20,000 employees work for NASA and for space agency contractors in the Greater Houston area, pumping billions of dollars into the local economy.

The demise of the Constellation program could cost the region as many as 2,500 jobs in addition to a projected loss of as many as 3,000 jobs when the shuttle retires next year, said Bob Mitchell, president of the Bay Area Houston Economic Partnership.

“We are not going to stand back and let this administration dismantle NASA and all of the fine work they do,” Mitchell said.

Reps. Pete Olson, R-Sugar Land, and Michael McCaul, R-Austin, have added their voices to the consternation, contending that changing NASA's course will bring instability and weaken America's role in space.

Yet, some NASA-dependent operations in Houston could benefit from the five-year extension of space station operations, management of projected commercial spacecraft development, production of the Orion crew capsule and coordination with Russia's delivery of American astronauts to and from the space station after the shuttle fleet retires early next year.

Cuts in Constellation

“To my mind, there'll be plenty of work for JSC,” said Logsdon, author of The Decision to Go to the Moon: Project Apollo and the National Interest.

The end of the back-to-the-moon program has been closing in on the White House and Congress almost from the day that then-President George W. Bush announced an ambitious schedule in 2004. The Constellation program that initially called for spending $108 billion over 15 years gradually lost 38 percent of its projected budget.

“You should not be surprised that the existing moon program has come to an end,” said Scott Pace, a former NASA executive now heading the Space Policy Institute. “Bush's budget decisions stressed the program; Obama's cuts drove it off the cliff.”

nancy@callnancyfurst.com