WASHINGTON
-- The top Democrat on the House Science Committee says NASA faces a protracted
fight for its budget and the future of space exploration, and that the attacks
will come from the right and the left.
Rep. Bart
Gordon (D-Tenn.) told the audience at an Oct. 21 breakfast meeting of the Space
Transportation Association that he expects conservative Republicans to press
for savings from the NASA budget and some Democrats to push for NASA dollars to
be spent on "problems here on Earth."
Defending
the NASA budget will be difficult, Gordon said, in part because the agency
suffers from a credibility problem arising from years of broken promises and
incorrect cost projections on programs like the international space station. On
top of that, he said, U.S. President George W. Bush's vision for returning to
the Moon and going on to Mars is difficult to defend when funding gets tight.
"Going to the Moon is just something that is so easy to slap at," he said.
To counter
those weaknesses, he urged the space community to do a better job mobilizing
lower tier suppliers to lobby Congress on behalf of the space agency's agenda.
He urged them to build a strong coalition to bolster NASA and do a better job
of communicating NASA's importance to the general public. Part of that
coalition's job will be to "explain that we are going to the Moon not just on a
tourist expedition but that there are good reasons for it."
"Even
though I think we will get by this time, what we want to avoid is blood in the
water," said Gordon, noting that any cuts in NASA's budget now would send the
message that the agency is easy prey for those searching the federal budget
waters for spending cuts.
"We are
getting into an every-man-for-himself situation," Gordon said. That
environment, he said, makes cuts to the NASA budget over the next three to four
years a "realistic scenario."
When push
comes to shove and the power of the president may be the only thing standing
between NASA and significant budget cuts, Gordon said he is worried that Bush
might not come through.
"I don't
think President Bush is a space guy when it comes down to it," he said, citing
the president's apparent lack of interest in space issues while he was governor
of Texas.
Several
space industry officials who attended the breakfast said they were watching the
coming federal budget clash with trepidation and planned to do as much as
possible to avoid cuts to NASA's budget, especially its space exploration
spending.
"As a
member of the Coalition for Space Exploration, it is critical that we heed his
challenge to do a better job of communicating the benefits and relevance of
space R&D to a broad public audience," said one attendee.
Several
sources at the breakfast expressed some surprise at Gordon's call to bolster
the use of suppliers to lobby Congress. "We already do everything he
mentioned," said one industry representative. "But we'll keep pushing, because
he's right that people are going to come after NASA dollars."
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