House committees will be marking up bills that affect NASA this week:
- Showdown on NASA’s future expected this week – Florida Today
- Edwards introduces alternative NASA authorization bill – Space Politics
- House Democrats Preparing Their Own NASA Authorization Bill – SpaceNews.com
- The Future of Civil Space Exploration – YouTube – Speech by Rep. Donna Edwards (D-MD) on July 8th on NASA policy
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Here is a long table of papers submitted to the National Academies Committee on Human Spaceflight giving outside views on human spaceflight policy. The deadline for paper submission is tonight.
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Other space policy related items:
- A Conversation With Buzz Aldrin Regarding His Vision For Space Exploration – Forbes
- Why there is not enough space in the Final Frontier – Russia & India Report
- Is NASA Being Too Protective of Mars? Two astrobiologists think we could send more probes to Mars if we didn’t spend time and money sterilizing them – IEEE Spectrum
Update: The House Appropriations Committee with jurisdiction over NASA released its draft bill today. It cuts NASA funding by about a billion dollars to $16.6B. However, it nevertheless specifically instructs NASA to fund the Space Launch System and Orion spacecraft at specific levels and even dictates what total payload mass the SLS must achieve. Never mind that there will be no money for payloads for it. I don’t see anything dealing directly with commercial crew and cargo.
- Appropriations Committee Releases the Fiscal Year 2014 Commerce, Justice, Science Appropriations Bill | Committee on Appropriations, U.S. House of Representatives
- BILLS-113HR-SC-AP-FY2014-CJS-Subcommittee Draft (pdf) – see NASA section on p. 57
From the Committee page:
National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) – NASA is funded at $16.6 billion in the bill, a decrease of $928 million below the fiscal year 2013 enacted level and $1.1 billion below the President’s request. This funding includes:
- $3.6 billion for Exploration – $202 million below the fiscal year 2013 enacted level. This includes funding to keep NASA on schedule for upcoming Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle and Space Launch System flight program milestones.
- $4.8 billion for NASA Science programs – $266 million below the fiscal year 2013 enacted level. This includes funding above the President’s request for planetary science to ensure the continuation of critical research and development programs.
Update 2: Jeff Foust provides a table showing the differences between the House allocations for different NASA programs and the Administration’s requests: House appropriators propose $16.6 billion for NASA – Space Politics