Thanks to a little birdie (thanks, N.B.), we have a copy of the draft of the NASA Authorization Act of 2010.
Just a quick review–this Act is to support America’s human space flight program and is the result of efforts by Senators Jay Rockefeller and Kay Hutchison, respectively the Chairman and Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Science & Transportation, and Senators Bill Nelson and David Vitter, respectively the Chairman and Ranking Member of the Senate Subcommittee on Science & Space. That is a long way of saying that this proposed Act has strong bipartisan support.
With the House Science Authorization Committee busy with the data dump from the White House in response to the Committee’s request for pre-decisional information on the genesis of the White House’s proposed changes to NASA, its Senate counter-part is likely taking the lead, at least for now, in crafting legislation. Senator Mikulski and Representative Mollohan, respectively the Chairmen of the Senate and House Science Appropriations Subcommittees, have in the past openly stated that they wanted to work closely with the Authorizing Committees on re-writing the White House’s proposed changes to NASA. In short, this proposed Act is likely to be very close to the final one that arrives on the President’s desk.
Yes, the White House and its “space” staffers will fight the efforts of Rockefeller, et. al. So far, the Administration has had great difficulty in forming a coherent plan for hunan space flight. So, one must be forgiven for assuming that the White House will likely be no more successful in derailing this legislation than it has been in gaining support for its own human space flight proposals.
I have never been to this website before. What a breath of fresh air! It seems that the other sites I see dealing with Ares, Constellation and commercial space are full of comments from people with their own agendas to push. Most of the newspapers (especially the Orlando Sentinel) seem to just plain get it wrong! I recently replied to a Sentinel post about Utah vs. KSC, commenting how laughable the whole idea was. I am relieved to see there are others who recognized this ridiculous idea for what it was. No matter how it is colored or presented, jobs will always play a big part in the decision on the future of manned spaceflight. I am relieved to hear that KSC employees are in agreement that HLV (or whatever it will be called) can and should benefit both Utah and Florida. With a Heavy Launch plan being pushed to a much sooner time frame, KSC will retain a skilled workforce, Utah (ATK) will be able to stop laying off hundreds of workers, as will Marshall in Alabama, and we can go forward as a nation in Space Exploration. And as for Obama, we will just call the HLV something other than Constellation, and he can still tell the world that he successfully “killed” Bushes evil space plan. As for commercial space, I believe they will do just fine, and I hope they succeed (in a nation of free enterprise, I believe they will).