Washington, D.C. –Rep. Gene Green (TX-29), Rep. John Culberson (TX-07), Rep. Frank Wolf (VA-10), and Rep. C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger (MD-02) along with 58 of their colleagues from 18 states sent a letter to President Obama outlining compromise principles that would preserve NASA’s human spaceflight program. In February, the President proposed cancelling NASA’s Constellation Program and reducing the Exploration Systems Mission Directorate by $5.7 billion over five years. This proposal jeopardizes our country's leadership in space and could put our national security at risk.
“We hope the Administration is willing to work with us on the compromise,” Rep. Green said. “It is an important step in ensuring we save our valuable workforce and keeps America as the leader in space exploration.”
The bipartisan group of lawmakers urged the President to preserve the highly trained and skilled workforce connected with the manned spaceflight program through the immediate development of a heavy lift vehicle. NASA has to date invested approximately $10 billion into the Constellation program and the immediate commencement of its heavy lift vehicle development and continued development of the Orion crew exploration vehicle will ensure the safe deployment of humans beyond low earth orbit in approximately 6 years along, while preserving our workforce and defense industrial base. This will further the President’s own commitment to launching humans to an asteroid by 2025 and to Mars by the mid-2030s.
“This is a good compromise with broad bipartisan support,” Rep. Culberson stated. “I’m hopeful that the Administration will come to the table to preserve America’s leadership role in space.”
“I urge the president to embrace these core principles to ensure continued U.S. leadership in space,” Rep. Wolf said. “The immediate development of a heavy lift rocket and crew capsule to take American astronauts beyond low Earth orbit is something that all supporters of NASA can unite behind.”
Thousands of American space workers encompass the complete experience of this generation’s only human spaceflight program. The technologies discovered and developed from the spaceflight program have furthermore added to our national security. With the loss of this program, America will lose an encouragement to high technology education and the pipeline of America’s best and brightest minds to our national security programs.
“I am concerned we are in danger of losing the space race to countries like Russia and China if we don’t continue our manned space program and make a serious investment in long-term research and development. I believe we can come to some sort of compromise with the Administration to save these jobs, cut costs, advance America’s presence in space, and protect our country’s national security all at the same time,” said Rep. Ruppersberger, Chairman of the Technical and Tactical Intelligence Subcommittee.
Support for NASA’s human spaceflight program has been received from industry experts and dozens of former astronauts including Neil Armstrong, Jim Lovell, and Gene Cernan.
The complete list of cosigners:
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