This story was updated at 2:13 p.m. EDT.
WASHINGTON —
Former U.S. Sen. John Glenn (D-Ohio), the first American to orbit the Earth,
criticized President George W. Bush for directing NASA to set a course for the Moon
and not following through with the promised funding.
"I
favored the [Vision for Space Exploration] because I assumed it was in addition
to, not in place of, existing programs. I assumed that money requests would
follow," Glenn told the House Science and Technology Committee during a Wednesday
hearing. "Instead what we got were cuts in other research to try to pay
for this program and it wound up in my view one of the biggest unfunded
mandates that we have in all of government history."
Glenn, a NASA astronaut who spent 25 years in
the Senate before retiring shortly after his 1998 flight aboard the space shuttle
Discovery — his
second spaceflight — appeared before the committee to testify about the
challenges facing the U.S. space agency celebrating its 50th anniversary this
year.
Glenn
criticized the Bush administration for rolling out the Vision
for Space Exploration in January 2004 without much external consultation
and said concerns among scientists and others about financing the program have
been borne out.
"Congressional
consent and consultation and international consultation was certainly lacking
in this because there was consternation in some of those communities when this
was announced," Glenn said. "Not only would there be no increase in
funding but ongoing research at that time was gutted by $1.2 billion over a
five-year period."
The Bush
administration sought and received a nearly 6 percent increase for NASA for
2005, the first budget Congress enacted after the Vision for Space Exploration
was unveiled. Subsequent NASA requests have been less generous, with the White
House failing in some years to request sufficient funding to keep pace with
inflation.
NASA in
response has capped spending on science and stretched out the development of
the Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle and Ares I rocket, the vehicles it is
building to replace
the space shuttle. NASA does not expect to field Orion and Ares any sooner
than March 2015 — nearly five years after it expects to conduct its final
space shuttle mission. NASA's plan for keeping the International Space Station
occupied during that gap relies on buying Soyuz rides from Russia. The agency
already has signed contracts with Russia totaling more than $700 million for
crew-carrying Soyuz and cargo-hauling Progress vehicles and currently is asking
Congress for permission to negotiate additional Soyuz flights beyond 2011.
"I
never thought I would see the day when the world's richest, most powerful, most
accomplished spacefaring nation would have to buy tickets from Russia to get up
to our station," Glenn said. "I think that's a bummer."
Glenn
proposed giving NASA an additional $2.8 billion to $3 billion annually to
enable it to keep flying the space shuttle until Orion and Ares are
fielded. Glenn has floated such a proposal before, as have Rep. Dave Weldon
(R-Fla.) and Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.), both of who are gravely concerned about
the estimated 3,000 to 6,000 jobs that could be lost at Kennedy Space Center in
Florida during a five-year gap in U.S. human space flight activity.
"We
will have $100 billion invested in this when the station is completed,"
Glenn said. "If we put 2.8 to 3 billion per year additional into the
program now we could keep the shuttles, keep the research, and keep the workforce."
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