Marshall Space Flight Center has a long and storied history when it comes to rocket design and production. It was there that Wernher von Braun and his German compatriots helped NASA design the Saturn line of rockets that took humans into deep space and landed on the Moon. There, too, key components of the space shuttle's rockets were designed.

Now, however, US rockets and engines are much more commonly developed outside of northern Alabama, where the NASA center is located in Huntsville. SpaceX has designed and built its Merlin rocket engines in California, and it is doing the same thing with its more powerful Raptor engines. Blue Origin has designed four engines in the state of Washington. Both companies have tested their rocket engines in Texas.

Smaller firms, too, such as Virgin Orbit, Vector, Rocket Lab, Relativity Space, Firefly, and a host of other companies have developed innovative new rocket engines and boosters outside the walls of the Marshall Space Flight Center. These companies have at times drawn on the NASA center for its expertise, but these efforts have largely been privately financed and independently led.

This apparently has not sat too well with the Alabama lawmaker whose House district includes Marshall, a Republican named Mo Brooks. And so Brooks has introduced the ALSTAR Act, or the “American Leadership in Space Technology and Advanced Rocketry Act." (Brooks is the legislator who recently—and baselessly—claimed that SpaceX would launch a demonstration mission of its Crew Dragon spacecraft without life support.)

Among other things, the new legislation designates Marshall Space Flight Center as "NASA’s lead center for rocket propulsion and establishes it as essential to sustaining and promoting US leadership in rocket propulsion and developing the next generation of rocket propulsion capabilities."

While Marshall is certainly NASA's top center for rocket propulsion, including taking the lead on innovative ideas such as nuclear thermal propulsion, the new legislation seems to be an effort to turn back the clock. The reality is that most new rocket engine design in the United States is being done largely by private companies at their own expense. (NASA's new Space Launch System rocket, designed by Marshall, uses space shuttle main engines that were first built in the 1970s.)

The US House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology will meet on Wednesday for "mark up" of the proposed legislation. Perhaps, at that time, Brooks will offer more explanation for why Marshall should lead in the development of new rocket propulsion technology.