Myopic space budget keeps U.S. grounded

Editor’s note: The following editorial appeared Monday in the Orlando Sentinel:

Almost three weeks ago, at Kennedy Space Center, government and business leaders celebrated the prospect of a return to U.S. manned space flight within four years and more than 500 new jobs.

That was before Congress got hold of NASA’s budget. Now it’s the Russians who can celebrate.

Boeing announced Oct. 31 that it would assemble a manned capsule at KSC that could be ready to launch there by 2015. The company said it hopes to create 550 jobs on the Space Coast, which has been hammered by the end of the shuttle program.

But Boeing cautioned that its launch schedule and hiring plans would depend on enough federal dollars to support commercial space development. Last week, Congress took an ax to President Obama’s funding request in that category. The president wanted $850 million. Lawmakers put up about $400 million.

A cut that size might postpone the first manned flights from a U.S. company – whether it’s Boeing or one of its rivals – by two years or more, industry analysts say. That’ll prolong U.S. dependence on Russia to ferry astronauts to and from the International Space Station, NASA’s only option until a U.S. successor to the shuttle is ready. That gets harder to stomach as Russia gets more authoritarian at home and more brazen abroad in challenging U.S. interests.

NASA already is committed to paying Russia $1.5 billion over the next five years as its taxi to the space station. A seat on Soyuz is costing NASA $62 million per ride. That’s one expensive fare. It’s penny wise and ruble foolish for Congress to extend such dependency by starving funding for shuttle successors.

Florida did get some good news in the latest NASA budget – up to $484 million for KSC to upgrade its facilities. That’ll better prepare the center to launch commercial rockets – when they’re ready – and a heavy-lift rocket that NASA is developing for travel past low Earth orbit.

But U.S. space policy goals must go beyond creating construction jobs. The longer America’s manned space flights are grounded, the more its historic and hard-won leadership in space will erode.

All federal agencies, including NASA, must take a haircut to bring down budget deficits. But Congress could have kept its bottom line for the space agency next year without slowing commercial development by shifting some dollars from other big-ticket items – the heavy-lift rocket and the James Webb Space Telescope.

Those two projects are important, but not scheduled to be ready till the end of this decade or later. For commercial rockets, the future is now.