Bill would spur NASA contractors to spend money

Ledyard King | Gannett Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON — Aerospace companies working on some of the space program's most ambitious missions have squirreled away $507 million in federal money in case Washington decides to reverse course and cancel their programs.

Closing a program in the works for years isn't cheap. It's also unusual. Lawmakers fear that putting federal money aside for unlikely possible emergencies threatens missions that need money now to remain on schedule and within budget.

On Wednesday, the House Science, Space and Technology Committee approved a bill making clear that Washington will cover the cost of terminating four specific big-ticket items if the decision to cancel is one of "convenience," such as shifting policy or budgetary reasons, and not contractor performance.

Those four programs are the International Space Station, the Space Launch System that will propel astronauts into deep space, the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle that will take astronauts to Mars, and the James Webb Space Telescope.

The bill "helps accelerate progress on these vital space programs by allowing these programs to spend dollars that have already been appropriated on actual work rather than withholding these funds on the unlikely chance of program termination," GOP Rep. Mo Brooks of Alabama said before the committee voted to send the measure to the full House.

"Unlikely" doesn't mean unheard of.

In 2010, President Barack Obama canceled NASA's Constellation program that would have returned astronauts to the moon after independent experts described the program as financially unsustainable. There also were questions about whether it was worth spending billions to travel to a place where Americans already have been.

Under pressure from lawmakers, Obama pivoted towards Mars. NASA has since come up with the Space Launch System, a heavy-lift rocket that is the centerpiece (along with the Orion vehicle) of the government's plan to send astronauts to the Red Planet.

Scrapping Constellation angered some lawmakers who felt blindsided by the decision, and it's been expensive. NASA estimates that closing the program could cost close to $1 billion, according to a 2011 report by the Government Accountability Office.

Issues also arose between NASA and companies about who was liable for those costs, leading to "disruptions in work activities" by some contractors, GAO found.

Democratic Rep. Donna Edwards of Maryland, who helped craft the bipartisan bill the committee approved Wednesday, said that if the government nixes any of the four specified missions, the measure would shield other NASA programs from being raided to cover those expenses.

"Instead, the agency needs to come back to the Congress and have an appropriation designated to pay for those costs," she said. "That's our intent."

NASA is declining to take a position on the bill. But spokesman David Weaver said the agency remains "fully committed" to funding both components of its crewed mission to Mars.

"Since fiscal year 2011, NASA has allocated more than $12 billion for these two programs, and we're preparing to test-fly Orion next year and are on track to test-fly SLS (the Space Launch System ) in 2017," he said. "In addition, the agency has allocated the resources necessary to launch, in 2018, the most sophisticated space telescope ever developed, the James Webb Space Telescope."

The House bill also would bar the administration from canceling any of the four programs "for convenience" without congressional approval.

Currently, the administration can effectively cancel a program by zeroing out its proposed budget for the coming year. Lawmakers can always try to revive it by adding back the money.