Ledyard King

Gannett Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is concerned that a provision in a NASA funding bill being debated on the Senate floor this week would add costs and delays to the program that will replace the mothballed space shuttle with private rockets.

As part of a $17.9 billion spending bill to fund NASA in fiscal year 2015, the Senate Appropriations Committee earlier this month approved the $805 million for the commercial crew program that will ferry astronauts to the International Space Station.

As a condition, the committee required firms in the NASA-supervised competition to develop the next generation of space taxi to submit "certified cost and pricing data" similar to what's required in traditional contracts NASA uses for other services.

The bill also included a similar provision for the commercial cargo program that uses private rockets to transport supplies and equipment to the orbiting lab. Senators, led by Republican Richard Shelby of Alabama, said it would add an important layer of accountability.

The Office of Management and Budget, which reviews and comments on legislation on behalf of the White House, issued a statement Tuesday in support of the overall appropriations bill. The measure also includes billions for the programs in the Justice and Commerce departments.

But while OMB applauded the committee for approving what would be a record amount for the commercial crew program, the statement warned the Shelby-authored conditions "would seek to apply accounting requirements unsuitable for a firm, fixed-price acquisition, likely increasing the program's cost and potentially delaying its schedule."

In an effort to keep costs down and speed development, NASA has opted to use Space Act agreements instead of traditional contracts for both crew and cargo programs.

Under the agreements, NASA pays companies to achieve certain milestones but leaves details largely to the contractor. It costs less, but the firms get to keep the intellectual property rights of their products, and there's a risk a problem could go undetected until later in the development process.

Advocates of the arrangement say it means companies can more nimbly — and cheaply — meet contract targets. But skeptics like Shelby say there's little oversight and the government has little control over costs.

OMB's concerns echo those aired by commercial space interests. Alex Saltman, executive director of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation, has called the provision "a step in the wrong direction" at a time when the U.S. is trying to end its dependence on Russia — at $70 million a ride — to ferry U.S. astronauts to the space station.

He said it would likely force NASA to restart the procurement process and push back the program as long as a year. That would not only inflate the cost of the program but require paying Russia hundreds of millions more dollars for rides to the station, he said.

Commercial space advocates say it would cost only about $20 million for each astronaut's seat.

The full Senate could vote on the measure as early as this week. It would then have to be reconciled with a House version, which does not include the provision.

Shelby's provision in the Senate version wasn't the administration's only misgiving about the bill. OMB said it also does not provide enough for space technology. And it's concerned about prematurely specifying elements of future science missions while they are in a very early stage of development.