NASA Supporters Fear Bush May Cut Space Plan

Congress has always had doubts. Bush's Jan. 14, 2004, speech called for a revamped spaceflight program to return humans to the moon by 2020 and eventually send them to Mars, all of this to be accomplished without dramatic increases in NASA's budget or changes in its portfolio.

The vision's cornerstones were the space shuttle's return to flight after the Columbia tragedy, completion of the international space station, and development of the new exploration vehicle to take humans to the moon and beyond.

Bush, however, has seldom spoken of the initiative since the announcement, a reticence that caused Congress to question his commitment. Lawmakers were also concerned about a lack of details to flesh out the proposal and were generally wary because of NASA's history of killing new spaceflight schemes in infancy.

But plans for the exploration vehicle moved forward quickly after Griffin's arrival in April, and he won lawmakers' support for the vision after he all but promised the shuttle would fly a servicing mission to the Hubble Space Telescope and suggested the exploration vehicle would be ready by 2012.

Other problems were not so easily resolved. Congress refused to let Griffin cut NASA's aeronautics programs this year and is worried that aeronautics, space science and the rest of the agency's portfolio would be "cannibalized" to pay for the vision.

Then, in early November, Griffin told a congressional hearing that NASA's earlier estimates on the vision's cost had left the shuttles underfunded by "$3 billion to $5 billion." The fleet is grounded while engineers seek a way to keep the external fuel tank from shedding foam insulation during launches. Plans call for flights to resume in May.

Industry and congressional sources said Griffin's acknowledgment of the shortfall was accompanied by news leaks that OMB was proposing to cut the number of shuttle flights to between eight and 11, retiring one of the three orbiters and reducing the shuttle workforce to free up money for the exploration vehicle.

Hutchison and Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.), representing the two states with the largest involvement in human spaceflight, led Senate efforts to stop this move, but sources said the heavy lifting was done by then-House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.), whose district includes the Johnson Space Center. The sources said DeLay met separately late last year with Bush and Vice President Cheney to make the case.

"DeLay said that in his judgment the Congress would not stand by a unilateral decision by the administration to walk away from the space shuttle and the space station," said one source familiar with these talks.

DeLay did not return phone calls seeking comment, but he was the instigator of a sharply worded Dec. 9 letter signed by himself and 35 colleagues warning Bush not to contradict "your own stated priorities" in the space program.

Days later, Congress unanimously passed its space bill, stipulating full funding for the shuttle and the exploration vehicle for 2007 and 2008, and forbidding the administration to use aeronautics and science money to pay for the vision.

Such bills, which authorize programs but do not appropriate money, are partly wish lists to be shaped later in spending bills, but the legislation left little doubt that lawmakers now regard Bush's vision as crucial to U.S. space policy.

"The bill is an affirmation of support," said John Logsdon, director of George Washington University's Space Policy Institute. "But it's also a challenge to the administration to pony up for the transformational space program it outlined two years ago."