NASA Deputy Garver-Stalemate With Congress Over

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The Huntsville Times’ Lee Roop reports that NASA Deputy Administrator Garver met with his paper’s editorial board, in Deputy NASA leader Lori Garver thinks stalemate between Congress and White House is over during which D.A. Garver mades the following points:

  • The stalemate between Congress and the White House is over.
  • What NASA wants now is “robust” work on a new heavy-lift rocket starting next year.
  • Marshall will lead the heavy-lift launch program.
  • The Administration could have and should have talked sooner to key congressional leaders such as Sen. Richard Shelby.
  • One of the reasons we are as far as we are (in space) is because of Sen. Shelby.
  • It won’t be up to the administration to marry the House and Senate bills, which may or may not come together in the fall.

Marshall Director Robert Lightfoot accompanied Ms. Garver to the editorial board meeting and said his center is ready to get to work on a heavy-lift rocket, that additional study is unnecessary once the question of what the rocket should be capable of is answered.

AmericaSpace Note: Clearly Deputy Administrator Garver is extending an olive branch to Senator Shelby and those in Congress who oppose the President’s proposed changes to the U.S. human spaceflight program, for which we applaud her. Like her, we believe that the Administration should have engaged Congress before the changes were put into the budget.

Deputy Administrator Garver’s enthusiasm for our nation’s space program is as deep as it is genuine; that is not up for debate. Our disagreement with her and others over the President’s proposed changes to the U.S. human space flight program was on a policy, not a personal, basis. We sincerely hope that once Congress has made its wishes clear through enacted legislation that everyone can move forward together in rebuilding our human space flight capabilities. Cooperation will strengthen our nation’s human space flight program; in-fighting will only harm it and us.

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