Hearing of the House Committee on Science on Space Exploration
Federal News Service
HEADLINE: HEARING OF THE HOUSE COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE
SUBJECT: SPACE EXPLORATION
CHAIRED BY: REPRESENTATIVE SHERWOOD BOEHLERT (R-NY)
LOCATION: 2318 RAYBURN HOUSE OFFICE BUILDING, WASHINGTON, D.C.
WITNESSES:
SEAN O'KEEFE, ADMINISTRATOR, NASA;
JOHN MARBURGER III, DIRECTOR, OFFICE OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
BODY:
REP. SHERWOOD BOEHLERT (R-NY): Good morning.
I want to welcome everyone here for the first of what I'm sure will be many hearings on the president's space exploration initiative. Our goal today is to get as many facts on the table as possible. Congress can only have a sensible and definitive debate on space policy if we're all working with the same understandings and assumptions. The policy questions before us are tough enough without a fight over the facts in the case, and I think everyone concerned with this issue should expect a lengthy and spirited debate before Congress decides how to proceed, which could easily take us to the end of this calendar year.
So what do we hope to better understand at the end of today's session? We want a clearer description of the goals of the proposed initiative, the ways it's expected to contribute to science, security and the economy. We need a clearer understanding of the cost of the initiative, what's been assumed in developing cost estimates and how those estimates are most likely to change. We need to get more operational details of the initiative. For example, how the Space Station will be serviced after 2010, and we need a fuller explanation of the impact of the policy; how will it affect Earth science and aeronautics and other NASA programs? Right now we have far more questions than answers, and I look forward to hearing from our witnesses today, who are among the key architects of this new policy. We're going to need very direct and precise guidance from them.
As you might have already gathered, I remain open minded about this proposal. The president and his top advisers are to be congratulated for having done what no one has been able to-willing to do for more than 40 years: lay out a well thought out space policy with a seemingly reasonable price tag. The president has made hard choices. I know I agree with some of those choices. For example, I have been calling for the past year for a date certain to end the shuttle and Space Station programs. The president's proposal provides those dates, although we still have to examine whether the right endpoints were selected. But I still need much more information about the goals and costs before I can decide whether I support the particular choices the president has made in this proposal.
I have to say that this is hardly the ideal year for this proposal to have come forward, although perhaps there never would be an ideal year. But the increase proposed for NASA is especially conspicuous in a budget in which basic research increases by only half a percentage point. Indeed, non-defense, non-homeland discretionary spending as a whole increases only by that same slim amount. Is this initiative a high enough priority, a pressing enough priority, to be funded in such a budget? I don't know. And we have to remember that the percentage increases required in the years before Fiscal 2009, if not before, may also turn out to be significant.
So I'm in a quandary, quite frankly, and the answers we get today will help me determine which way to turn. I imagine that will be true of others on the panel and certainly of others in the Congress. The advance of human space flight is an engaging dream, but I want to know how we're going to feel when we wake up. Will we have advanced human knowledge? Will we have enabled our nation to be more respected, more secure and more prosperous? Will we have behaved responsibly in meeting the needs of the American people? Will we, in short, have helped this nation remain what Abraham Lincoln, born this day, called the last best hope of Earth? These are perhaps the toughest questions we'll confront at a hearing this year. I look forward to hearing our witnesses provide the specifics that will help me figure out the answers.
Mr. Gordon.
-BREAK OF TRANSCRIPT-
REP. BOEHLERT: Ms. Lofgren.
REP. ZOE LOFGREN (D-CA): Thank you, Mr. Chairman and thank you, witnesses, for being here today. I have a bunch of questions and we don't have a lot of time. So I may follow up in writing with some of the questions that I have. But one of the things that I'm puzzling over is your new accounting question and how to figure out really what's happening on the ground in the proposed budget and taking a look at Ames Research Center which I know that you value and you visited on many occasions for the nanotechnology work they're doing in robotics and the like.
I see a $90 million reduction in the proposed budget and it's in something called service pool. Now I think $55 million of that is the wind tunnel that's going away, but I'm not clear how the other $35 million-is that a programmatic cut? Exactly what is that? That's question number one.
I have another question which relates to the analysis that is apparently going on by a guy that you've brought on from the Navy who used to do the BRAC closings, base closings and I understand that this Mr. Casey is going to do real property mission analysis for NASA and I have a concern about that because certainly we have land that are assets to the agency, but the land is really not the sum total of the asset. I mean it's the human power. It's so much more than just taking a look at real estate and how the science will be integrated in the analysis. I'm interested in hearing from you.
Obviously all of the Science Committee members will want to be involved in this process and I'm wondering if it is your intention to close one or more centers and, if so, what the time frame is and the parameters are and the like. And finally, I have an interest and a concern over the future of space as a demilitarized zone. In past years and past administrations, we've talked about space exploration. But I see the word "security" popping up in the discussion of space at this point in a way that's relatively new. And I'm interested in whether the administration has a design or interest in arming space in a way that humankind has not done in the past?
Those are my three questions for now and I'll follow up with you in writing on the others, if I may, Administrator O'Keefe.
MR. O'KEEFE: Yes. Thank you, Congresswoman.
As potentially the Ames Research Center's budget, yes indeed, there is a transfer that's occurred between '03 and '04 and now continued in '05 of now capturing all the costs associated with an activity which is called a full cost accounting method. So now when you look at a program, you see the total cost of what it takes to carry that out as opposed to fractions of it or incremental pieces that are buried in lots of other locations. You can now make an informed decision each year on what you think the value of a program is and what's one of the advantages of the discussion we had earlier here is we'll be able to add with precision each year exactly what the cost of that next increment of achieving the year's exploration goals we encounter.
Let me give you a table for the record, if you would, of the comparison year to year as it pertains to the Ames Research Center budget. But there is a specific effort that needs to go on in the next few months. It will probably complete it by summer to really transfer all the data to be comparable, apples to oranges, so you can see what the differences are because, in one case, you have to assemble all based on all the disparate pieces. Now you get the assemblage all in one place. And we'll provide that for the record. So I couldn't speak to the specific differences between that dollar versus the other dollar at this moment.
REP. LOFGREN: So the reduction from $172 million to $74 million, this is little bits and pieces. It is not a particular program that is being proposed?
MR. O'KEEFE: Indeed. Indeed. Again we will give you more specificity on that.
REP. LOFGREN: I would very much value that.
MR. O'KEEFE: Yes, ma'am. On the second point, the gentleman we have recruited is this fellow named Cassidy (sp) and he was, in the last administration, at the Defense Department during the base realignment effort in 1993 and 1995. He has been brought in a month ago, following a comprehensive effort that we conducted last year to look at real property assessments. What do we have out there? Just in terms of inventorying what we have. The approach that we asked for, and we have developed now, in developing a strategy is how do we use those facilities in the most cost effective way. There is no specific intention to look at a realignment or closure activity. It's more just an inventory of what we have.
His expertise was primarily in the realignment phase, working with individual communities to assure transition from one mission to another. And so, given that expertise and his capacity in that regard, we've asked-rather than reinventing the wheel ourselves, we bring him in for his understanding of how that activity occurs as we move ahead from this point. There will be several different steps in this, a strategy, a business plan and ultimately, a mission analysis effort that will work with you to define exactly what each of those steps are as we proceed ahead.
And, finally, on the national security objectives, there is no implied or specifically stated objective to expand this to a national security mission. That's not an intention here. It is a broader definition of security of the nation, economic or otherwise, is what we intend to proceed with this exploration in general.
REP. LOFGREN: If I may, just a quick follow-up on-getting back to the real estate analysis as well, one of the issues, as you know, Ames is collocated at a spot that used to be the Moffett Naval Air Station and there is huge toxic issues that unfortunately the Navy never dealt with. That's been the case unfortunately all across the country. So the local communities have-it's out of my district-but the local communities have pushed for a long time for a clean-up of that base and I'm hopeful that, if we're doing an analysis, we can make sure that-I mean-the massive clean-up costs are once again raised to the attention of the Navy. Maybe we can get them to do something about that. And thank you very much for --
MR. O'KEEFE: This is an interesting irony. Having served as secretary of the Navy at the time the Moffett Airfield was part of the naval establishment, then coming back to NASA and finding we now have it, it seems to be a deed that I carry with me wherever I go. But it is one that we are evaluating and trying to assess exactly what the environmental impact would be.
REP. LOFGREN: Finally, not at this point because other members have questions and time is running short. But I do have some concerns about how full cost accounting is working. I certainly don't have an objection to understanding overhead and how it works and the like. But I do have a concern when you have, I think, Ames-and I think it would also be true at Langley-where you have a multiplicity of science projects that are not huge projects and yet essential to the mission in robotics or whatever, allocating the overhead-there is no consistent one project to do it in, so we may have the unintended consequence of really starving science projects that are going to end up being essential for the broader mission later. I know that you don't want that and I don't want that. But I'm interested in how we might avoid that consequence.
MR. O'KEEFE: That's a very, very important question. Again, it is really-you want to make sure that the process you develop in this particular case doesn't serve an unintended consequence like that. I mean, what we've tried to put together here is in full concert and compliance with the Government Performance Results Act. How do you develop a full cost visibility in what's involved. We've introduced that and that's the primary focus and objective we're after here and a budget and program integration effort so you can see with total visibility what that entails.
REP. BOEHLERT: Thank you very much, Mr. O'Keefe. You're putting your hats back, you know, what with the secretary of the Navy, OMB, we're getting you on all sides.