NASA’s administrator is concerned that a proposed budget cut could delay the agency’s new Orion crew exploration vehicle, which will replace the space shuttle.
NASA has been planning for Orion’s first manned mission by 2014, eventually taking astronauts back to the moon and later to Mars, but that plan could be at risk.
Lockheed Martin’s Jefferson County-based Space Systems unit won a $3.9 billion contract in August to design and build Orion.
It has about 450 employees in Colorado working on the project, with plans to ramp up to 600.
President Bush’s budget request for fiscal year 2008 includes $17.3 billion for NASA, up 3.1 percent from his 2007 request of $16.8 billion. But NASA’s budget for the 2007 fiscal year, which ends in September, has not yet been approved.
A House resolution being considered in Congress would reduce NASA’s fiscal 2007 funding by $545 million from Bush’s request. The House resolution specifically reduces human-spaceflight funding by $677 million, including $577 million from exploration systems.
There is potential for “significant negative economic impact with the loss of jobs and skilled workforce in a number of states around the country,” according to the Coalition for Space Exploration, a group of space-industry businesses and advocacy groups.
Lockheed spokeswoman Joan Underwood said “it’s too soon to tell” how the company would be affected by the House resolution.
During a news conference Monday, NASA Administrator Michael Griffin called human spaceflight “a strategic capability for this nation,” adding, “We must not allow it to slip away.” He also acknowledged that not everyone agrees with him.
Griffin said he is concerned about NASA’s ability to bring Orion and the accompanying Ares I crew launch vehicle online by 2014.
“America may have a prolonged gap between the end of the shuttle program (in 2010) and the beginning of operational capability in our new systems,” he said. That gap could bring a brain drain from the space program.
Griffin said Orion and Ares I are high on NASA’s priority list, but a budget cut would mean less money over the next few years to Lockheed for Orion and to the contractor selected for Ares, extending the timeline.
Colorado Springs-based Space Foundation president Elliot Pulham, in a statement Monday, expressed dismay at the House’s budget rollback and urged the Senate to reverse it.
The Space Foundation also called the fiscal year 2008 budget proposal inadequate to assure continued U.S. leadership in space.
“Merely maintaining our current level of space capability is a flawed approach when placed in the context of emerging, competing and even hostile space capabilities all over the world,” Pulham added.
Staff writer Kelly Yamanouchi can be reached at 303-954-1488 or kyamanouchi@denverpost.com.
Appropriation for NASA in President Bush’s budget for 2007
$17.3 BILLION
NASA budget proposed for 2008
$3.9 BILLION
Lockheed Martin’s contract to design and construct the Orion space vehicle
