Ted Cruz advocates for human space exploration

Ledyard King | USA TODAY

WASHINGTON — Texas Sen. Ted Cruz isn't a proponent of big government programs, but on Tuesday the Tea Party Republican championed NASA's human space exploration program as a national priority that deserves congressional support.

Developing a rocket and capsule to take astronauts to Mars by the 2030s — a mission projected to cost tens of billions — is "critical" to ensuring the nation's leadership in space, Cruz said.

He also stressed the need to speed completion of NASA's Commercial Crew Program, which will use private spacecraft to ferry astronauts to the International Space Station. Some of Cruz's fellow Republicans say the program needs more oversight and is draining valuable resources from other agency programs.

"It is imperative that America has the capability to get to the space station without the assistance of the Russians," Cruz said Tuesday while chairing a hearing before the Commerce, Science and Transportation Subcommittee on Science, Space and Competitiveness. "The Commercial Crew Program is critical to restoring this capability."

NASA has relied on Russia to transport astronauts to the orbiting lab since the last space shuttle flew in 2011. The space agency has contracted with two companies — Boeing and SpaceX — to develop a replacement for the shuttle by 2017.

Since taking over the subcommittee, Cruz, who represents Johnson Space Center in Houston, has emerged as an important player in the debate over the nation's space program. Tuesday's hearing on human space exploration was the subcommittee's first since last year's elections gave Republicans control of the Senate.

Florida Sen. Bill Nelson, the top Democrat on the space subcommittee, also supports more funding for the Commercial Crew Program and for the deep-space program known as the Space Launch System. He told Cruz he was "heartened (and) delighted " by his comments.

"We shouldn't be relying on the Russians to ride (to the space station)," Nelson said. "They were a reliable partner ... but we can't predict what Vladimir Putin is going to do now." Nelson was referring to tensions between Washington and Moscow over Ukraine.

It remains to be seen whether Cruz's public embrace of NASA's human exploration missions will translate into more funding, given the GOP's commitment to smaller government and debt reduction. Without a steady, substantial increase in agency funding, the Commercial Crew Program and the Space Launch System — especially a trip to Mars — are expected to face mounting delays.

Lawmakers and the Obama administration also remain divided on the best pathway to Mars. GOP lawmakers support returning to the moon as a first step, while NASA wants to use an asteroid to prepare for the mission.

Former Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin, the second man to walk on the moon, isn't impressed by the return-to-the-moon argument.

"In the '70s, we learned how to go and land on the moon and stay and do some things there," Aldrin told the panel. "To do that again 50 years later just does not seem to be something that would be attractive."

Former astronaut Walt Cunningham, who piloted the Apollo 7 mission, said the debate about where to go first and how to get there is academic, since the $18 billion in annual NASA funding amounts to about one-half of 1% of the federal budget.

"Unless Congress decides to put more money in it, this is just talk we're going through here," he told the senators. "The budget has to go up."