Third, with China, Japan, India, and other countries making serious strides at becoming major players in space exploration, the money could also possibly be used to speed up the development of the new Constellation Project, which will replace the Space Transportation System and its fleet of aging space shuttles. Currently, the space shuttles will be retired in 2010 and the new Orion space capsule is not expected to fly its first manned mission until late 2014 or early 2015.

U.S. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, a Republican from Texas and ranking member of the Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Space, Aeronautics and Related Sciences, and U.S. Senator Barbara Mikulski, a Democrat from Maryland and the chairperson of the Commerce, Justice and Science Appropriation Subcommittee, were important advocates for helping to fund the extra money to NASA. Their Mikulski-Hutchison amendment provided the extra money to NASA.

According to a July 10, 2006 email memo from the Senate Appropriations Committee staff, provided by SpaceRef.com: “At the full Committee mark-up on Thursday, Sen. Mikulski and Sen. Hutchison will offer their amendment to pay back NASA for the costs of returning the Space Shuttle to flight. NASA has estimated the return to flight costs at just over $2 billion so far. Sen. Mikulski and Sen. Hutchison are committed to providing the $2 billion but will do so over two years, instead of one year.”

“The amendment they will offer in Committee will provide $1 billion to the NASA Administrator to pay-back the costs of returning the Shuttle to flight and restore cuts to science, aeronautics and exploration programs that were cut in order to pay for the return to flight  The $1 billion will be declared an emergency under the terms of the budget act and budget resolution.”

The full contents of the email is found at: http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=21299.

Hutchison commented on NASA’s performance, “NASA shouldn't have to play a shell game of shifting funds from one area to another in order to get by. NASA performed its duty superbly when it returned the Space Shuttle to flight; however, NASA's core scientific mission has suffered since then due to the lack of funding."

She went on to say that NASA research shows that “… each dollar invested in space programs yields up to nine dollars in new products, technologies and processes on Earth."

However, at the same time, NASA administrator Michael Griffin said that it would roughly cost about $100 million per month to speed up development of Orion. Many people in the U.S. government and in the NASA community are nervous about the United States not having a manned launch vehicle between the years of 2010 and 2014 because the country would have to rely on Russia to transport astronauts and supplies back and forth from the International Space Station. However, a similar situation occurred for over two years after the space shuttle Columbia disaster, when flight operations were suspended during the investigation and Russia spacecraft were used to transport astronauts and supplies to the space station.

Hutchsion also made the quote that leadership in the United States with respect to space exploration could be compromised and the country could have “another Sputnik moment” without sufficient funding of NASA programs.

Florida Democrat Bill Nelson added, “China is now graduating five times the number of engineers as the United States. I want to return to that era when we can get people excited about science and technology."

NASA has major space centers in Florida (Kennedy Space Center near Cape Canaveral, Florida), Maryland (Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland), and Texas (Johnson Space Center in Clear Lake City, Texas, just south of Houston).


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