The Senate Appropriations Committee (SAC) on Thursday approved 27-3 its version of a fiscal year 2016 spending bill that provides nearly $334 million less for Commercial Crew than NASA requested, according to a statement from committee Republicans.
The bill is now available for consideration by the Senate. Sens. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), Jon Tester (D-Mont.) and Armed Services Committee (SASC) Ranking Member Jack Reed (D-R.I.) voted against sending the bill to the Senate floor.
The full committee basically approved the same bill the commerce, justice, science and related agencies (CJS) subcommittee passed Wednesday that provides $18.3 billion for NASA, $229 million less than requested but $29 million more than enacted for FY ’15. The full committee also approved $1.9 for the Space Launch System (SLS), $544 million more than NASA requested and $200 million more than enacted last fiscal year.
By approving the bill, SAC also approved $2.5 billion for ISS Crew and Cargo, which covers payments for the Cargo Resupply Services that uses commercial companies to deliver cargo and goods to the International Space Station (ISS) and payments to the Russian space agency Roscosmos to deliver United States astronauts to ISS. The $2.5 billion is $895 million more than NASA requested. Of the $2.5 billion, $900 million is for crew payments to Roscosmos (Defense Daily, June 10).
NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said Wednesday in a statement after the SAC CJS subcommittee vote that slashing Commercial Crew funding “guts” the program and “turns our backs on U.S. industry.”
“NASA will be forced to continue to rely on Russia to get its astronauts to space, and continue to invest hundreds of millions of dollars into the Russian economy rather than our own,” Bolden said. “I support investing in America so that we can once again launch our astronauts on American vehicles.”
U.S. astronauts get to ISS on Russia’s Soyuz rockets. Space.com reported that a rocket lifting a Soyuz spacecraft on May 7 failed after liftoff while attempting to deliver the Progress 59 cargo mission to ISS. NASA astronaut Kjell Lindgren is scheduled to launch aboard a Soyuz spacecraft between July 23-25 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan, to ISS.
Charles Miller, president of space and public policy consultancy NexGen Space LLC and former NASA senior adviser for commercial space, told Defense Daily Thursday that the reduced Commerical Crew funds will result in NASA delaying payments to Boeing [BA] and Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX). An industry source said Wednesday that the companies are operating under firm-fixed-price contracts.
“If Congress provides less funding, than is an automatic delay in when the Commercial Crew systems will show up,” Miller said. “It will not kill either one, it will just slow down the day we get American independence from Russia on crew transportation (to ISS).”
Boeing spokesman Adam Morgan said Wednesday it is too soon to assess what, if any, the final budget impacts will be the company’s programs, including Commercial Crew, SLS, and ISS. Morgan said Boeing wouldn’t speculate on any potential impacts or the final budget allocations.
Amendments were approved for non NASA and National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) portions of the CJS-passed bill. The House on June 3 approved $1 billion for Commercial Crew, $244 million less than NASA requested.