Avi Blizovsky
Direct link to this page: https://www.hayadan.org.il/bush230705.html
The US House of Representatives approved President Bush's plan to return humans to the moon and fly to Mars, passing a resolution on NASA policy for the next two years.
The proposal passed by a majority of 383 to 15 against after a debate in which lawmakers said their commitment was not only to Bush's ambitious space exploration programs but also to traditional NASA programs in the fields of science and aeronautics.
The tension between Congress and the White House revolved around the balance between the Bush space exploration program and other NASA initiatives. Originally, Congress was supposed to divert $1.3 billion from the Discovery program to other NASA programs.
However, after the legislators who opposed NASA added the money back to the discovery budget after a big debate. This was done by means of adding an overall multi-year budget to the program which currently stands at 34.7 billion dollars not at the expense of science and aeronautics.
Democratic Representative Bart Gordon of Tennessee said Bush's ambitious mission to the moon and Mars "should not be done by cannibalizing other NASA missions."
This is the first policy proposal to pass Congress in five years (except for the current budget). This policy comes just as NASA is trying to return the space shuttle Discovery to space for the first time since the Columbia disaster, a launch currently scheduled for July 26.
The decision permits but certainly does not encourage the grounding of the ferry fleet until 2010 as the agency would like to do. The decision directs the agency to launch a new manned CEV spacecraft that will not have all the capabilities of the shuttle but will be able to fly to the International Space Station as close to 2010 as possible. Current plans are talking about 2014, and until then the US will have to rely on other countries to hitch a ride to the station the space.
A companion resolution approved by the Science and Transportation Commerce Committee last month could, if passed, prevent NASA from grounding the shuttles until the replacement vehicle is operational.
Both the Senate and the House of Representatives encourage a service mission to the Hubble Space Telescope. Without this mission, Hubble will cease to operate when its gyroscopes and batteries stop working in the next five years, but NASA has not announced whether it will let the telescope die or conduct an expensive manned upgrade flight.
"Congress is encouraging the president's vision for space exploration," said House of Representatives member Howard Buehlert, a Republican from New York. "The US will work hard to return to the moon by 2020 and continue from there to other destinations."
Despite Friday's decision, NASA will still have to compete with other agencies for the annual budget in a separate track process. This means that it will be difficult to fulfill all the policy requirements as laid out in Friday's congressional resolution.
There is still one prominent voice among the opponents of President Bush's plan. Senator Barney Frank, Democrat of Massachusetts, asks why we should spend billions to fly to Mars when there is no money for housing for the poor and health care.
The knowledge of man and space
For news on CNN
https://www.hayadan.org.il/BuildaGate4/general2/data_card.php?Cat=~~~220150792~~~8&SiteName=hayadan
