[House Hearing, 113 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
AN UPDATE ON THE SPACE LAUNCH
SYSTEM AND ORION: MONITORING
THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE
NATION'S DEEP SPACE
EXPLORATION CAPABILITIES
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON SPACE
COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND TECHNOLOGY
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED THIRTEENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
DECEMBER 10, 2014
__________
Serial No. 113-98
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology
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Available via the World Wide Web: http://science.house.gov
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COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND TECHNOLOGY
HON. LAMAR S. SMITH, Texas, Chair
DANA ROHRABACHER, California EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas
RALPH M. HALL, Texas ZOE LOFGREN, California
F. JAMES SENSENBRENNER, JR., DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois
Wisconsin DONNA F. EDWARDS, Maryland
FRANK D. LUCAS, Oklahoma FREDERICA S. WILSON, Florida
RANDY NEUGEBAUER, Texas SUZANNE BONAMICI, Oregon
MICHAEL T. McCAUL, Texas ERIC SWALWELL, California
PAUL C. BROUN, Georgia DAN MAFFEI, New York
STEVEN M. PALAZZO, Mississippi ALAN GRAYSON, Florida
MO BROOKS, Alabama JOSEPH KENNEDY III, Massachusetts
RANDY HULTGREN, Illinois SCOTT PETERS, California
LARRY BUCSHON, Indiana DEREK KILMER, Washington
STEVE STOCKMAN, Texas AMI BERA, California
BILL POSEY, Florida ELIZABETH ESTY, Connecticut
CYNTHIA LUMMIS, Wyoming MARC VEASEY, Texas
DAVID SCHWEIKERT, Arizona JULIA BROWNLEY, California
THOMAS MASSIE, Kentucky ROBIN KELLY, Illinois
KEVIN CRAMER, North Dakota KATHERINE CLARK, Massachusetts
JIM BRIDENSTINE, Oklahoma
RANDY WEBER, Texas
CHRIS COLLINS, New York
BILL JOHNSON, Ohio
------
Subcommittee on Space
HON. STEVEN M. PALAZZO, Mississippi, Chair
RALPH M. HALL, TEXAS DONNA F. EDWARDS, Maryland
DANA ROHRABACHER, California SUZANNE BONAMICI, Oregon
FRANK D. LUCAS, Oklahoma DAN MAFFEI, New York
MICHAEL T. MCCAUL, Texas JOSEPH P. KENNEDY III,
MO BROOKS, ALABAMA Massachusetts
LARRY BUCSHON, Indiana DEREK KILMER, Washington
STEVE STOCKMAN, Texas AMI BERA, California
BILL POSEY, Florida MARC VEASEY, Texas
DAVID SCHWEIKERT, Arizona JULIA BROWNLEY, California
JIM BRIDENSTINE, Oklahoma FREDERICA WILSON, Florida
CHRIS COLLINS, New York EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas
LAMAR S. SMITH, Texas
C O N T E N T S
December 10, 2014
Page
Witness List..................................................... 2
Hearing Charter.................................................. 3
Opening Statements
Statement by Representative Steven M. Palazzo, Chairman,
Subcommittee on Space, Committee on Science, Space, and
Technology, U.S. House of Representatives...................... 10
Written Statement............................................ 12
Statement by Representative Donna F. Edwards, Ranking Minority
Member, Subcommittee on Space, Committee on Science, Space, and
Technology, U.S. House of Representatives...................... 14
Written Statement............................................ 15
Statement by Representative Lamar S. Smith, Chairman, Committee
on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House of
Representatives................................................ 16
Written Statement............................................ 17
Witnesses:
Mr. Bill Gerstenmaier, Associate Administrator for Human
Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate, NASA
Oral Statement............................................... 19
Written Statement............................................ 22
Ms. Cristina Chaplain, Director, Acquisition and Sourcing
Management, Government Accountability Office
Oral Statement............................................... 28
Written Statement............................................ 30
Discussion....................................................... 49
Appendix I: Answers to Post-Hearing Questions
Mr. Bill Gerstenmaier, Associate Administrator for Human
Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate, NASA........... 70
Ms. Cristina Chaplain, Director, Acquisition and Sourcing
Management, Government Accountability Office................... 95
Appendix II: Additional Material for the Record
Prepared Statement Submitted by Representative Eddie Bernice
Johnson, Ranking Member, Committee on Science, Space, and
Technology, U.S. House of Representatives...................... 106
AN UPDATE ON THE SPACE
LAUNCH SYSTEM AND ORION:
MONITORING THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE
NATION'S DEEP SPACE
EXPLORATION CAPABILITIES
----------
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 10, 2014
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on Space
Committee on Science, Space, and Technology,
Washington, D.C.
The Subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 10:03 a.m., in
Room 2318 of the Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Steven
Palazzo [Chairman of the Subcommittee] presiding.
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairman Palazzo. The Subcommittee on Space will come to
order.
Good morning. Welcome to today's hearing titled ``An Update
on the Space Launch System and Orion: Monitoring the
Development of the nation's Deep Space Exploration
Capabilities. In front of you are packets containing the
written testimony, biography, and truth-in-testimony disclosure
for today's witnesses.
I recognize myself for five minutes for an opening
statement.
I would like to welcome everyone to our hearing and
particularly our witnesses. Thank you for your appearance here
today.
Anyone who pays attention to the media at all is no doubt
aware of the spectacular launch of the Orion crew vehicle last
week. I want to congratulate Mr. Gerstenmaier and his entire
team at NASA, as well as the teams at Lockheed Martin and
United Launch Alliance for an outstanding test flight.
While we will hear today about the preliminary results from
this test, the scientists and engineers at NASA will continue
to analyze the data for quite some time. I look forward to
hearing more about the progress of this analysis in the future.
The successful test launch of Orion demonstrates that we
are on the right track for sending humans back to the Moon and
Mars within our lifetimes. Across the nation, people were
watching with the same hope and pride that all Americans had in
the early days of our space program. In my Congressional
District children were bussed to Stennis Space Center to watch
a live feed of the launch. Events like this are what we need to
inspire the next generation of astronauts and engineers, and
SLS is a giant leap forward in making America the leader in
space once again. The tremendous ongoing work at NASA and our
industry partners is beginning to produce tangible results. The
nation can be proud of what was accomplished last week. It was
certainly a job well done.
The purpose of our hearing today is to examine the
challenges and opportunities facing the Space Launch System and
Orion programs. It is no secret that this Committee is
concerned that the support within NASA for the SLS and Orion is
not matched by the Administration. While this lack of
commitment is somewhat puzzling, it is not at all surprising.
The President has made clear that he does not believe space
exploration is a priority for the nation and has allowed
political appointees within the Administration to manipulate
the course of our human space flight program. These decisions
should be made by the scientists, engineers, and program
managers that have decades of experience in human space flight.
As everyone here knows, this is not an easy field; we
cannot ramp up capability or prepare for these missions
overnight. Space exploration requires a dedication to advanced
preparation and research, and this Committee and this Congress
are dedicated to supporting that requirement.
The Administration has consistently requested large
reductions for these programs despite the insistence of
Congress that they be priorities. Most recently, the
President's budget for Fiscal Year 2015 included a request to
reduce these programs by over $330 million compared to the
Fiscal Year 2014 enacted appropriation. Additionally, in the
2013, 2014, 2015 budget requests, the Administration asked for
reductions of $175.1 million, $87 million, and $144 million
respectively for the Orion program relative to the enacted
appropriations.
Had Congress agreed to the requests, Orion and the SLS
would have incurred hundreds of millions of dollars in
reductions and would likely face significant delays and mass
layoffs. Thankfully, Congress listened to the program managers
and industry partners to ensure these programs were
appropriately funded.
Congress has once again demonstrated support for the SLS
and Orion by providing funding well above the President's
budget request in the Omnibus for Fiscal Year 2015. While these
priority programs may not enjoy support within the
Administration, they certainly do from Congress. Let me be very
clear, on my watch Congress will not agree to gutting the SLS
program; not now and not any time in the foreseeable future.
The human exploration program at NASA has been plagued with
instability from constantly changing requirements, budgets, and
missions. We cannot change our program of record every time
there is a new president. This committee is consistent and
unwavering in its commitment to human exploration, a tradition
that I appreciate and am confident will continue into the
future.
While this hearing is certainly an opportunity for us to
celebrate the great progress of the SLS and Orion programs,
particularly last week's test flight, the Committee has ongoing
concerns about the challenges facing these vital programs. In a
letter to the NASA Administrator, Chairman Smith and I
expressed our concerns for potential delays of Exploration
Mission-1 that had been slated for 2017 and is now potentially
delayed to as late as Fiscal Year 2018. The Administration's
letter back to the Committee was strangely unresponsive and did
not inspire a lot of confidence in NASA's ability to meet the
original timelines laid out. Congress needs answers to these
questions. At the very least, we need to know, what are the
true funding needs and schedule expectations for the
development of the SLS and Orion Programs, and is NASA on track
to meet these expectations?
In addition to consistently submitting insufficient funding
requests, the Administration also appears to be limiting the
usefulness of funding it does receive. For example, the
Administration's treatment of termination liability prevents
hundreds of millions of dollars from being used for meaningful
development work. Also, the Committee has learned that the
Administration has given direction to the SLS and Orion
programs to plan spending rates consistent with the President's
budget request instead of the higher continuing resolution
level. Combined, these efforts are undermining the successful
development of these national priority programs.
In a recent report titled ``Space Launch System: Resources
Need to be Matched to Requirements to Decrease Risk and Support
Long Term Affordability,'' the Government Accountability Office
highlighted technical and schedule risks that NASA had not
previously brought to the attention of the Committee.
Specifically, GAO states that ``According to the program's risk
analysis, the agency's current funding plan for SLS may be $400
million short of what the program needs to launch by 2017.'' It
was surprising for the Committee to hear about this shortfall
since the Administrator had previously testified that ``If we
added $300 million to the SLS program, you wouldn't know it.''
It is not unreasonable for Congress to expect the
Administration to be straightforward about the risks and costs
associated with national priority programs. As we look to
continue pushing towards Mars, we must talk honestly and
realistically about these programs and what we can accomplish
with them. We want to be partners moving forward, not
competitors; unfortunately, the Administration has simply not
allowed for that cooperation.
The test last week of Orion was an important milestone in
the future of America's space program. It was a fully
commercial mission licensed by the Federal Aviation
Administration and conducted by the private sector. In the
future, Orion and SLS will serve as the tip of the spear for
our nation's space exploration program.
Recently, some have argued that the government shouldn't be
involved in space exploration at all and suggest that the
private sector alone is capable of leading us into the cosmos.
I certainly hope that this will someday be possible, but right
now, space exploration requires government support. This is a
worthwhile investment for the taxpayer. It inspires the next
generation of explorers to pursue science, technology,
engineering, and math; advances U.S. soft power and
international relations; reinforces our aerospace industrial
base; increases economic competitiveness; and advances our
national security interests. Orion and SLS, the vanguard of our
nation's space program, are key to advancing these interests.
I look forward to hearing from Mr. Gerstenmaier and Ms.
Chaplain today about the challenges and opportunities facing
these important programs.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Palazzo follows:]
Prepared Statement of Subcommittee on Space
Chairman Steven M. Palazzo
Good morning, I would like to welcome everyone to our hearing and
particularly our witnesses. Thank you for your appearance here today.
Anyone who pays attention to the media at all is no doubt aware of
the spectacular launch of the Orion crew vehicle last week. I want to
congratulate Mr. Gerstenmaier and his entire team at NASA as well as
the teams at Lockheed Martin and United Launch Alliance for an
outstanding test flight.
While we will hear today about the preliminary results from this
test, the scientists and engineers at NASA will continue to analyze the
data for quite some time. I look forward to hearing more about the
progress of this analysis in the future.
The successful test launch of Orion demonstrates that we are on the
right track for sending humans back to the Moon and Mars, within our
lifetimes. Across the nation people were watching with the same hope
and pride that all Americans had in the early days of our space
program. In my congressional district children were bussed to Stennis
Space Center to watch a live feed of the launch. Events like this are
what we need to inspire the next generation of astronauts and
engineers; and SLS is a giant leap forward in making America the leader
in space once again. The tremendous ongoing work at NASA and our
industry partners is beginning to produce tangible results. The nation
can be proud of what was accomplished last week. It was certainly a job
well done.
The purpose of our hearing today is to examine the challenges and
opportunities facing the Space Launch System and Orion programs. It is
no secret that this Committee is concerned that the support within NASA
for the SLS and Orion is not matched by the Administration. While this
lack of commitment is somewhat puzzling, it is not at all surprising.
The President has made clear that he does not believe space exploration
is a priority for the nation and has allowed political appointees
within the administration to manipulate the course of our human space
flight program. These decisions should be made by the scientists,
engineers, and program managers that have decades of experience in
human space flight. As everyone here knows, this is not an easy field,
we cannot ramp up capability or prepare for these missions overnight.
Space exploration requires a dedication to advance preparation and
research, and this committee and this congress are dedicated to
supporting that requirement.
The Administration has consistently requested large reductions for
these programs despite the insistence of Congress that they be
priorities. Most recently, the President's budget for Fiscal Year 2015
included a request to reduce these programs by over $330 million
compared to the Fiscal Year 2014 enacted appropriation. Additionally,
in the 2013, 2014, 2015 budget requests, the Administration asked for
reductions of $175.1 million, $87 million, and $144.2 million
respectively for the Orion program relative to the enacted
appropriations.
Had Congress agreed to the requests, Orion and the SLS would have
incurred hundreds of millions of dollars in reductions and would likely
face significant delays and mass layoffs. Thankfully, Congress listened
to the program managers and industry partners to ensure these programs
were appropriately funded.
Congress has once again demonstrated support for the SLS and Orion
by providing funding well above the president's budget request in the
Omnibus for fiscal year 2015. While these priority programs may not
enjoy support within the Administration, they certainly do from
Congress.
Let me be very clear, on my watch Congress will not agree to
gutting the SLS program; not now and not anytime in the foreseeable
future.
The human exploration program at NASA has been plagued with
instability from constantly changing requirements, budgets, and
missions. We cannot change our program of record every time there is a
new president. This committee is consistent and unwavering in its
commitment to human exploration, a tradition that I appreciate and am
confident will continue into the future.
While this hearing is certainly an opportunity for us to celebrate
the great progress of the SLS and Orion programs, particularly last
week's test flight, the Committee has ongoing concerns about the
challenges facing these vital programs. In a letter to the NASA
Administrator, Chairman Smith and I expressed our concerns for
potential delays of Exploration Mission-1 that had been slated for 2017
and is now potentially delayed to as late as fiscal year 2018. The
administration's letter back to the Committee was strangely
unresponsive and did not inspire a lot of confidence in NASA's ability
to meet the original timelines laid out. Congress needs answers to
these questions. At the very least, we need to know, what are the true
funding needs and schedule expectations for the development of the SLS
and Orion Programs and is NASA on track to meet these expectations?
In addition to consistently submitting insufficient funding
requests, the Administration also appears to be limiting the usefulness
of funding it does receive. For example, the Administration's treatment
of termination liability prevents hundreds of millions of dollars from
being used for meaningful development work. Similarly, the committee
has learned that the Administration has given direction to the SLS and
Orion programs to plan spending rates consistent with the President's
Budget Request instead of the higher Continuing Resolution level.
Combined, these efforts are undermining the successful development of
these national priority programs.
In a recent report titled Space Launch System-Resources Need to be
Matched to Requirements to Decrease Risk and Support Long Term
Affordability, the Government Accountability Office highlighted
technical and schedule risks that NASA had not previously brought to
the attention of the Committee. Specifically, GAO states that quote
``According to the program's risk analysis . . . the agency's current
funding plan for SLS may be $400 million short of what the program
needs to launch by 2017.'' It was surprising for the Committee to hear
about this shortfall since the Administrator had previously
testifiedthat quote ``If we added $300 million to the SLS program, you
wouldn't know it.''
It is not unreasonable for Congress to expect the Administration to
be straight forward about the risks and costs associated with national
priority programs. As we look to continue pushing towards Mars, we must
talk honestly and realistically about these programs and what we can
accomplish with them. We want to be partners moving forward, not
competitors; unfortunately the Administration has simply not allowed
for that cooperation. The test last week of Orion was an important
milestone in the future of America's space program. It was a fully
commercial mission licensed by the Federal Aviation Administration and
conducted by the private sector. In the future, Orion and SLS will
serve as the tip of the spear for our nation's space exploration
program.
Recently, some have argued that the government shouldn't be
involved in space exploration at all and suggest that the private
sector alone is capable of leading us into the cosmos. I certainly hope
that this will someday be possible, but right now, space exploration
requires government support.
This is a worthwhile investment for the taxpayer. It inspires the
next generation of explorers to pursue science, technology,
engineering, and math; advances U.S. soft power and international
relations; reinforces our aerospace industrial base; increases economic
competitiveness; and advances our national security interests. Orion
and SLS--the vanguard of our nation's space program--are key to
advancing these interests. I look forward to hearing from Mr.
Gerstenmaier and Ms. Chaplain today about the challenges and
opportunities facing these important programs.
Chairman Palazzo. I now recognize the Ranking Member from
Maryland, Ms. Edwards.
Ms. Edwards. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and good
morning and welcome to our witnesses.
I want to join Chairman Palazzo in congratulating NASA,
Lockheed, United Launch Alliance, and the entire government and
contractor team on successfully conducting the Exploration
Flight Test, EFT-1, of the Orion capsule last week. I think it
was truly exciting and I know that around the country and
around the world there were many of us looking on television
for the first time in a long time at a U.S. space program that
really is very forward-looking. The flight subjected Orion and
its systems to the rigors of outer space beyond low Earth orbit
to test key systems, verify the Orion design, reduce technical
risks, and test recoverability operations.
Mr. Chairman, I believe that this test flight shows
Americans that tangible progress is in fact being made on
returning humans to exploration beyond our Earth's neighborhood
and a goal that this Committee and the Congress as a whole have
embraced through multiple NASA Authorization Acts, despite some
of the challenges that the Chairman laid out.
I would also note that I think we were in this hearing room
just three years ago wondering whether Orion was really going
to be possible or not and I think that we have addressed that
question in what is a remarkably short period of time. And so
while I look forward to looking at the challenges and taking on
some of those challenges, I don't want us to lose sight of the
fact that we have great capacity and that the American people
can get greatly excited by that and I think then lead those of
us who are the policymakers to do the right thing when it comes
to robustly funding our exploration program.
The development of the Space Launch System, SLS, and the
Orion crew vehicle are necessary next steps in reaching our
goals for human space exploration, including the long-term goal
of sending humans to the surface of Mars, as stated in our
bipartisan House-passed NASA Authorization Act of 2014. And so
I also thank you, Mr. Chairman, for holding this hearing so we
can obtain an update on the status of the SLS and Orion
programs.
And it was indeed just those three years ago that we sat in
this room and we were pressing NASA for a decision on a final
design of the SLS rocket. There was great debate between the
Administration and this Committee and the Congress, and I think
today we are going to hear of the program's approval to enter
into the full-scale development, as some of us had envisioned.
This is indeed a significant accomplishment, even in the midst
of major challenges, especially those related to constrained
budgets. Very often Congress has been supportive of SLS/Orion
and has appropriated funding above the President's request, as
the Chairman has indicated.
I don't know that I necessarily share the Chairman's view
about where all the faults lie. However, the programs have been
challenged by the flat funding levels provided for SLS and
Orion over the past years, a situation that departs
significantly from the typical funding growth profiles of major
development programs, and that is why we have recognized the
critical need to authorize a robust top-line funding level for
NASA in the 2013 Democratic NASA authorization bill that
included healthy increases for the exploration program.
The National Academies Committee in fact recently released
its report on human space exploration and also recognized that
sending humans to the surface of Mars would include and require
sustained increases. They said, ``Increasing NASA's budget to
allow increasing the human spaceflight budget by five percent
per year would enable pathways with potentially viable mission
rates greatly reducing technical, cost, and schedule risk.''
And so, Mr. Chairman, we can work together to overcome
these challenges. And as we work over this next Congress to
reauthorize NASA, I look forward to working with you to ensure
that this Committee authorizes the appropriations that the SLS
and Orion programs require to achieve the expeditious
development and testing of these vehicles for their use at the
earliest possible date and that we obtain a human exploration
roadmap to focus the SLS and Orion systems on long-term mission
goals. And because when I see the excitement of the EFT-1 test
flight, as demonstrated by the flight's coverage as a leading
media story--I think in fact it did lead the broadcast news--I
am reminded that the SLS and Orion programs really do belong to
the American public and that they will in fact embrace them. We
need to honor this thirst for exploration.
And finally, though the 113th Congress is rapidly drawing
to a close, I encourage our colleagues in the Senate to seek
quick passage of the House-passed NASA Authorization Act of
2014 so that NASA and its industry contractors, all of them,
have the direction and stability needed to plan for continued
progress.
And then finally, I will just reiterate what I have said
many times before and that is we cannot have one set of goals
for NASA and for our human exploration programs and then not
match those goals with the resources that are required to
commit to the work on a timely basis. It is unfair to the
agency, it is unfair to contractors, and it is a false
expectation for the public.
And with that I yield back and I look forward to hearing
the testimony today.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Edwards follows:]
Prepared Statement of Subcommittee on Space
Ranking Minority Member Donna F. Edwards
Good morning and welcome to our witnesses. First, I want to join
Chairman Palazzo in congratulating NASA, Lockheed Martin, United Launch
Alliance, and the entire government and contractor team on successfully
conducting the Exploration Flight Test--EFT-1--of the Orion capsule
last week.
The flight subjected Orion and its systems to the rigors of outer
space beyond low Earth orbit to test key systems, verify the Orion
design, reduce technical risks, and test recoverability operations. Mr.
Chairman, this test flight shows Americans that tangible progress is
being made on returning humans to exploration beyond our Earth's
neighborhood, a goal that this Committee and the Congress as a whole
have embraced through multiple NASA Authorization Acts.
The development of the Space Launch System-SLS-and the Orion crew
vehicle are necessary next steps in reaching our goals for human space
exploration, including the long-term goal of sending humans to the
surface of Mars as stated in our bipartisan House-passed NASA
Authorization Act of 2014. So I thank you, Mr. Chairman, for holding
this hearing to obtain an update on the status of the SLS and Orion
programs.
It was only three years ago that we sat in this room pressing NASA
for a decision on a final design for the SLS rocket, and today we'll
hear of the program's approval to enter into full scale development.
That's a significant accomplishment, even in the midst of major
challenges, especially those related to constrained budgets.
Congress has been supportive of SLS and Orion and has appropriated
funding above the President's requests. However, the programs have been
challenged by the flat funding levels provided for SLS and Orion over
the past years, a situation that departs significantly from the typical
funding growth profiles of major development programs.
That's why we recognized the critical need to authorize a robust
top-line funding level for NASA in the 2013 Democratic NASA
Authorization bill that included healthy increases for the exploration
program. The National Academies committee that recently released its
report on human space exploration also recognized that sending humans
to the surface of Mars would require sustained increases. They said,
``Increasing NASA's budget to allow increasing the human spaceflight
budget by five percent per year would enable pathways with potentially
viable mission rates, greatly reducing technical, cost, and schedule
risk.''
Mr. Chairman, we can work together to overcome these challenges. As
we work to reauthorize NASA during the next Congress, I look forward to
working with you to ensure that this Committee authorizes the
appropriations that the SLS and Orion programs require to achieve the
expeditious development and testing of these vehicles for their use at
the earliest possible date, and that we obtain a human exploration
roadmap to focus the SLS and Orion systems on long-term mission goals.
Because, when I see the excitement of the EFT-1 test flight as
demonstrated by the flight's coverage as a leading media story, I'm
reminded that the SLS and Orion programs belong to the American public.
We need to honor their thirst for exploration.
And, finally, though the 113th Congress is rapidly drawing to a
close, I encourage our colleagues in the Senate to seek quick passage
of the House-passed 2014 NASA Authorization Act so that NASA and its
industry contractors have the direction and stability needed to plan
for continued progress.
Thank you and I yield back.
Chairman Palazzo. Thank you, Ms. Edwards.
I now recognize the Chairman of the full Committee,
Chairman Smith.
Chairman Smith. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And first, I want to congratulate Bill Gerstenmaier and
those at NASA and also at Lockheed Martin, and United Launch
Alliance, who I see represented in the room today, on a
spectacular flight test last week of the Orion crew vehicle. I
know a lot of hard work went into making that test flight
successful.
At a fundamental level, space exploration--the mission of
NASA--is about inspiration. This inspiration fuels our desire
to push the boundaries of what is possible and to reach beyond
our own pale blue dot. The successful Orion launch last week is
one step in a long journey.
The purpose of today's hearing is simple: We wish to send a
loud and clear message that space exploration is NASA's number
one priority, and last week's test flight demonstrated many
firsts. We are also here to ensure the next steps in this long
journey are on track and will be just as successful.
There is bipartisan support within Congress that NASA stay
on track with the Orion crew vehicle and Space Launch System,
including the omnibus appropriations bill that we plan to vote
on tomorrow. The Orion and SLS are essential elements for
astronauts to eventually travel beyond low Earth orbit.
The omnibus appropriations bill made public last night is
the latest example of Congressional support for these programs.
Funded well above the President's budget request, the SLS and
Orion are receiving the resources they need to ensure their
success.
Fortune favors the bold. Last week's test flight was
necessary to answer the naysayers and critics who claim that
America's best days on the frontier of space are behind us.
Last week's mission answered those critics. The Apollo program
demonstrated that we could reach the moon. And Orion and SLS
will ensure that America continues a sustained series of
missions as a space-faring nation for decades to come. The
technologies that are developed for these programs exemplify
our greatest breakthroughs and demonstrate American ingenuity.
We must continue to push forward.
Great nations do great things. Everyone in today's hearing
wants to ensure that the first flag flying on the surface of
Mars is planted by an American astronaut. And they will have
arrived there onboard an Orion crew vehicle, propelled by the
Space Launch System. Let's work together to make that happen.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Smith follows:]
Prepared Statement of Committee on Science, Space, and Technology
Chairman Lamar Smith
First I want to congratulate Bill Gerstenmaier and those at NASA,
Lockheed Martin, and United Launch Alliance on a spectacular flight
test last week of the Orion crew vehicle. I know a lot of hard work
went into making that test flight happen.
At a fundamental level, space exploration--the mission of NASA--is
about inspiration. This inspiration fuels our desire to push the
boundaries of what is possible and to reach beyond our own pale blue
dot. The successful Orion launch last week is one step in a long
journey.
The purpose of today's hearing is simple: We wish to send a loud
and clear message that space exploration is NASA's number one priority,
and last week's test flight demonstrated many firsts. We are also here
to ensure the next steps in this long journey are on track and will be
just as successful.
There is bipartisan support within Congress that NASA stay on track
with the Orion crew vehicle and Space Launch System, including the
omnibus appropriations bill that we plan to vote on tomorrow. The Orion
and SLS are essential elements for astronauts to eventually travel
beyond low Earth orbit.
The omnibus appropriations bill made public last night is the
latest example of Congressional support for these programs. Funded well
above the President's Budget Request, the SLS and Orion are receiving
the resources they need to ensure their success.
Fortune favors the bold. Last week's test flight was necessary to
answer the naysayers and critics who claim that America's best days on
the frontier of space are behind us. Last week's mission answered those
critics.
The Apollo program demonstrated that we could reach the moon. And
Orion and SLS will ensure that America continues a sustained series of
missions as a spacefaring nation for decades to come. The technologies
that are developed for these programs exemplify our greatest
breakthroughs and demonstrate American ingenuity. We must continue to
push forward.
Great nations do great things. Everyone in today's hearing wants to
ensure that the first flag flying on the surface of Mars is planted by
an American astronaut.
And they will have arrived there onboard an Orion crew vehicle,
propelled by the Space Launch System.
Let's work together to make that happen.
Chairman Palazzo. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
If there are Members who wish to submit additional opening
statements, your statements will be added to the record at this
point.
Before I introduce our witnesses, I would be remiss if I
did not point out that we are missing one this morning, NASA
Chief Financial Officer David Radzanowski. The CFO or his
designee was invited to participate in today's hearing to
answer questions regarding NASA's budget development and
guidance. Unfortunately, despite numerous invitations and
attempts to secure his attendance, the Administration refused
to make him available.
Mr. Radzanowski holds a Senate-confirmed position at NASA
and is obliged to testify before the agency's oversight
committees. We are aware of the many demands on his schedule,
and for that reason the Committee was willing to allow any
other employee from the CFO's office to appear. Unfortunately,
NASA prohibited any other CFO representative from appearing
today. This is unfortunate because Mr. Gerstenmaier may not be
the appropriate person at NASA to explain many of the policies
and practices being advanced by the CFO's office. I look
forward to Mr. Radzanowski's appearance before the Committee in
the near future to answer our questions.
At this time I would like to introduce our witnesses. Our
first witness today is Mr. Bill Gerstenmaier. Mr. Gerstenmaier
started his work with NASA in 1977 as a researcher on
aeronautics. Today, he is the Associate Administrator for the
Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate at NASA
headquarters here in Washington, D.C. Mr. Gerstenmaier has
received many awards for his work on space exploration,
including the distinguished Executive Presidential Rank Award,
the National Space Club von Braun Award, the Space
Transportation Leadership Award, and several NASA awards. He
received a bachelor of science in aeronautical engineering from
Purdue University and a master of science degree in mechanical
engineering from the University of Toledo.
Our second witness, Ms. Cristina Chaplain, has been a U.S.
Government Accountability Office employee for 23 years and
currently serves as Director of Acquisition and Sourcing
Management at GAO. In this capacity she is responsible for GAO
assessments of military space acquisitions and NASA. She has
led reviews of the Space Launch System, the International Space
Station, and the James Webb Space Telescope, among others.
Prior to her current position, Ms. Chaplain worked with GAO's
Financial Management Information Technology Teams. She received
her bachelor's in international relations from Boston
University and a master's degree in journalism from Columbia
University.
Thanks again to our witnesses for being here today.
As our witnesses should know, spoken testimony is limited
to five minutes each, after which members of the committee will
have five minutes each to ask questions.
I now recognize Mr. Gerstenmaier for five minutes to
present his testimony.
TESTIMONY OF MR. BILL GERSTENMAIER,
ASSOCIATE ADMINISTRATOR FOR HUMAN EXPLORATION
AND OPERATIONS MISSION DIRECTORATE, NASA
Mr. Gerstenmaier. Thank you very much for having me here. I
would like to again thank you on behalf of the entire team that
works in the exploration program and I would like to start off
my testimony with some videos and pictures that we provided
earlier. These videos and images capture the work that has been
accomplished in the exploration program. And I will narrate
some of the video as it is shown. So if we could start the
video, please.
[Video shown.]
Mr. Gerstenmaier. Again, the program is made up of three
major components, ground systems operations down in Florida,
which is preparing a launch site. These are the images that you
are seeing here on the screen. Again, the purpose of this video
is to show how much work is actually being accomplished, kind
of behind the scenes.
You can see the launch of the EFT-1 but you don't often get
a chance to see all the work that is occurring at the various
field centers and the various areas that are making these
things happen.
This is the Delta IV. There are some Delta IV images
showing up down at the Kennedy Space Center. This is the
fabrication and manufacturing of the Orion capsule that was
launched on EFT test flight. Again, you get to see the
technicians, the folks at the various centers working to make
all this activity happen. It is not only in Florida, but it is
also in Houston, where the control center team got to monitor
the capsule, actually send some commands to the capsule. There
was a team in Florida that also monitored the launch, so they
got to participate in that activity and participate in the
Orion capsule activity.
Again, you can see the capsule coming together. Some of the
hardware came from the Marshall Space Flight Center that was
actually manufactured. The interface between the Delta IV
rocket, and the Orion capsule came from the Marshall Space
Flight Center. So again, I would say this is an entire NASA
team coming together to make this happen.
This is some work at the--again in Florida preparing for
the capsule, and also down at MAF, at the Michoud Assembly
Facility, where the SLS will be put together. I think you were
there for the Vertical Assembly Weld Center that got put
together that will manufacture the large external tanks. That
activity is occurring. There are several sections all ready to
be test-welded next January, this--in about a month; that has
moved forward. Also, the test was--a substantial amount of test
occurred before the test to make sure the parachute systems
would work.
We are preparing for the future exploration activities to
look at the Asteroid Redirect Mission, and now you can see some
of the work of actually, you know, transporting the capsule out
to the launch pad to be integrated eventually with the Delta IV
rocket.
So again, I think the important message and takeaway from
all these images is there is a tremendous amount of work going
on. It is being accomplished pretty much on schedule. There are
challenges to this work; it is not easy work. The teams are
very dedicated. They are working very hard to make this--things
occur and I think the results of the test flight show evidence
that we are making significant and substantial progress as we
move forward.
[Video shown.]
The next video that is getting queued up now is the actual
video from the test flight. Many of you got to either see it in
person or you got to see it on television. Again, I will
describe some of the activities that occurred there. And again,
the point here is that this test flight didn't come about just
as a happenstance. There was lots of preparation before. We did
many drop tests to the parachute systems; we did many recovery
activities. We have done the abort system testing down at White
Sands earlier again to verify and make sure that when we took
this test we were ready to go do this test.
So we didn't have all the questions answered. There was
still significant risk with this test. There were still things
that we could not test in any other environment other than a
test flight, but this test flight confirmed that those other
pieces, at least at first look, fit well and we understand the
data and things look very good from an overall standpoint.
Again, a lot of folks got to witness this. This was
exciting to see people show up in Florida to be there. As you
talked about in some of your opening remarks, the encouragement
to the science, technology, engineering, and math students is
really strong. To interact with many of the students down in
Florida was really exciting for me to see their enthusiasm to
move forward.
This is the actual launch activity. That umbilical up at
the top was unique to Orion. That was added by United Launch
Alliance just specifically for this flight. That umbilical did
not exist before this flight on the Delta IV launch. Again, the
launch went extremely well. The vehicle gave us a great ride to
space, ejected the capsule exactly where it needed to be. The
upper stage did all of its activities to accelerate the vehicle
to the right entry conditions. All of that worked extremely
well and went really, really flawlessly.
In terms of kind of first results from the test, nothing
major was really learned. One of the video processing units had
to be recycled, most likely caused by a radiation event, so we
got to understand the radiation environment that the capsule
will fly through. The heat shield looks in very good shape. As
we returned, we removed some plugs from the heat shield out in
California yesterday. The capsule is about ready to get on the
truck to head towards Florida for a more detailed evaluation
and all the data has come off the capsule.
The images at apogee are pretty impressive when you look at
the small Earth and you see the horizon. I think what was more
important was that when you see it through a window where
someday a crew will be, it makes that tie between a human
spaceflight and the robotic spaceflight even stronger.
This is the capsule again successfully floating in the
water that--we expected to see five airbags deployed. In this
situation we see two. There is something that didn't work in
that system. We know the pyros fired, we know the pressure came
out of the system, and we will understand what occurred.
But again, overall, just a tremendous testimony to the work
that the program has put together and I look forward to your
questions as we move forward in this activity. So thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Gerstenmaier follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairman Palazzo. Thank you.
I now recognize Ms. Chaplain for five minutes to present
her testimony.
TESTIMONY OF MS. CRISTINA CHAPLAIN, DIRECTOR,
ACQUISITION AND SOURCING MANAGEMENT,
GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE
Ms. Chaplain. Chairman Palazzo, Ranking Member Edwards,
Chairman Smith, and the Members of the Subcommittee, before I
begin I would like to congratulate NASA on the successful test.
It indeed does help demonstrate the design and technologies for
the Orion and it is an important event.
As you know, we have recently reviewed preliminary cost
estimates for the systems being discussed today. We performed
an in-depth review of the Space Launch System and we have been
covering the Orion program through our annual assessment of
NASA's major programs. In conducting this work, at the time we
reviewed SLS, the program was approaching a critical milestone
known as KDP-C where it makes formal commitments to the
Congress in the form of costs and schedule baselines. This gate
represents the point at which a program begins full-scale
efforts to fabricate the space system and the point at which
technical and/or funding problems can have widespread effects.
We found that SLS was generally doing a good job at maturing
design, keeping requirements stable, and putting a high
priority on quality. The program is also acting to manage
costs. However, it did take longer than recommended to
definitize contracts, which can create conditions for cost
growth.
The program still faced inherent technical design and
engineering risks, as all space programs do, but it was
actively managing them in a transparent fashion. However, the
program still faced a resource gap in that the agency's funding
plan for SLS was insufficient to match requirements to
resources for the December 2017 flight test at the high
confidence level. The agency's options were largely limited to
increasing program funding, delaying the schedule, or accepting
a reduced confidence level for the initial flight test.
The SLS program calculated the risk associated with
insufficient funding through 2017 as 90 percent likely to
occur. Further, it indicated the insufficient budget could push
the December 2017 launch date out six months and add some 400
million to the overall cost of development. After our report
was issued when NASA established formal baselines for SLS, NASA
committed to a launch readiness date of 2018 so that it could
have more confidence in meeting this date. In our opinion, this
was a good step as NASA still has low confidence, 30 percent,
that it can meet the earlier date.
Going forward, we have short- and long-term concerns about
NASA's human space exploration programs. In the short-term, the
programs are entering the most risky phases of development.
There are still technical hurdles to overcome, particularly
with the Orion spacecraft, which is addressing challenges with
the parachute system and the heat shield, among others. There
is also still considerable development and testing ahead for
Orion in terms of the human support systems.
Meanwhile, SLS is continuing to pursue the earlier launch
date of December 2017. While NASA's urgency is understandable,
the schedule for achieving the earlier date mostly with respect
to the core stage is very aggressive. There is little room to
address problems. Moreover, it does not appear that Orion and
the ground system can achieve the earlier date.
In the long-term we have concerns about the cost estimating
for human space exploration programs. NASA has only produced
estimates for SLS in the ground system through the first flight
test and for Orion through the second flight test. There would
still be significant development ahead for SLS after the first
flight and significant operations and sustainment costs for all
three programs.
Moreover, there is still uncertainty about missions that
will be undertaken after the second test. Without knowing the
missions formally, NASA is limited in its ability to plan for
the future and is at risk for making choices today that will
not make sense later. Affordability for the long-haul is a real
issue and one that this Subcommittee has already had hearings
on, but to garner the long-term commitment from the Congress
and taxpayers that is needed to make this program a success, we
need transparent and realistic estimates about the resources
that will be needed to achieve the Nation's goals for human
space exploration.
Thank you. This concludes my statement. I am happy to
answer any questions you have.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Chaplain follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairman Palazzo. I thank the witnesses for their testimony
and reminding the Members that Committee rules limit
questioning to five minutes, the Chair will at this point open
the round of questions.
The Chair recognizes himself for five minutes.
Mr. Gerstenmaier, the written testimony provided by GAO and
Ms. Chaplain states that GAO found that NASA's proposed funding
levels had affected the SLS program's ability to match
requirements to resources since its inception. GAO also
reported that the SLS program is tracking a $400 million
shortfall in funding as its most significant risk. NASA
officials have testified multiple times before this committee
that the President's budget request was sufficient to keep the
SLS and Orion on budget and on schedule.
I realize this is a tough question for you to answer
because you have to defend the President's budget request, but
Congress is ultimately responsible for funding this program and
ensuring taxpayer dollars are efficiently spent. But given that
NASA has now delayed the initial launch of SLS due to funding
pressure, what funding level would keep the 2017 date on track?
Mr. Gerstenmaier. Again, I would say that the recent review
we did, the programmatic review that Cristina talked about, we
committed to a joint confidence level of 70 percent on a
November of 2018 launch, and that is consistent with the
budgets that we have submitted to Congress through the
Administration. So that is a consistent plan.
We have been trying to work to an earlier schedule and that
is based on the risk mitigation for the extra funding we have
received from Congress, so we have kind of kept both plans in
place so we take the funds that we are--have been given by
Congress and use those in an effective manner in trying to hold
the earliest launch date that we can potentially hold moving
forward. We need to be aware of the concerns that GAO brought
up and make sure that we don't overly pressure that schedule
and try to work too fast and do things that end up in--wasting
the funds or wasting of resources.
So our current planning we were holding December of 2017. I
would say we have now moved off of that date. We will be
somewhere in the 2018 time frame now with our current planning
and that is just based on the reality of problems that have
come along in the program and some uncertainty in funding. So
we will move a little bit into--probably with our planning
dates into I would say maybe June kind of time frame of 2018,
and that is still ahead of our commitment consistent with the
budget level in 20--of November of 2018 that is consistent with
the President's budget request.
So I would say we are managing it in this kind of
interesting environment where we get different funding levels.
The teams are making tremendous technical progress. SLS is
entering into probably one of the more critical phases where
they actually go in to manufacture of hardware and we will see
how that goes over the next couple of months here in January,
February, and March. But again, I think we have been able to
balance the budget needs that we have overall to try to deliver
a program as effectively as we can for the Nation and for the
Congress.
Chairman Palazzo. Ms. Chaplain, GAO has noted in the past
that the SLS and Orion programs do not have integrated
schedules for development and launch. How is NASA currently
managing the schedules for these two programs so that they will
launch not just on time but at the same time?
Ms. Chaplain. At present there are still different dates in
the final launches and Orion is a TBD you could say right now
because they are about to go into the process where they look
at their resources, their schedules, and they set a launch
date. At this time it does not look like they could make 2017
and 2018 is even a challenge in and of itself. So we look
forward to seeing what that date really is and then how do the
dates of the other programs align. It is important to plan to a
single date as early as you can so you can align tasks
appropriately to meet that date. You don't unnecessarily expend
resources trying to meet dates that other people or other
systems can't meet. So we will have to see what happens after
this next KDP-C cycle for Orion and see how the dates shake
out.
Chairman Palazzo. I now recognize Ms. Edwards.
Ms. Edwards. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And again thank you
for the testimony.
Mr. Gerstenmaier, We have all recognized that resources for
Orion/SLS programs have been constrained and I think we can
acknowledge as well that flat budgets are not optimum for
carrying out major development programs like Orion and SLS, but
I am impressed with how much progress has been made on these
programs given these constraints. And as you know, the
Committee has had the goal of having SLS and Orion operational
at the earliest possible date. You indicated that--you have
also indicated the slippage based on the budget constraints.
We are going to be authorizing NASA again--well,
reauthorizing next year, so I want to understand what the
additional progress could be made on the SLS and Orion programs
if we were to authorize additional resources and whether or not
the impact on the exploration program--whether there would be
any impact if there were inflationary increases, as recommended
by the National Academies' report of a five percent increase,
say.
And would a sustained increase of this kind of magnitude be
sufficient to accelerate the progress that you describe for
projected launch dates for EM-1 and 2, or would it only be
enough to reduce the risk of those dates being pushed even
further to the right? I guess I am just trying to figure out
what would get us back to a 2017 target. You seem to have
indicated that it is not just resources but even Ms. Chaplain
acknowledges that the 2018 dates are at risk as well because of
the uncertainty around budget constraints.
Mr. Gerstenmaier. Okay. And I think one thing that could be
very helpful to us is to get some stability in understanding
what the budget is. It is difficult for the programs to plan
for potentially what could be a Congressional budget versus the
Administration budget. To get some agreement between the
Administration and Congress so we know what to plan for in
terms of budget would be helpful to us overall, as well as the
absolute level.
In terms of the technical work, again, I think we have
really probably moved off of December 2017 when I look at the
work so I don't think funding will pull us back to that date. I
also respectfully have a difference of opinion with GAO. I
think it is perfectly fine to complete one of these programs
ahead of the others. They don't need to all sync up at exactly
the same time. If you think about when you take a vehicle to
launch down at the Kennedy Space Center, typically the rocket
is ready to go well before the payload is; then the payload
comes later. And I think it is actually to our advantage to
have some difference in schedules between those. So I think SLS
coming first, having the ground systems ready in Florida, and
then Orion showing up at the third-place is perfectly fine. It
is not going to waste resources on--if EM-1 is complete, if SLS
is ready to go fly, we will beginning to work on the next core
for the second flight of SLS so that workforce will transition
immediately from the EM-1 activity to EM-2, so there is not a
need to have all these programs synced up. So I think we needed
to be careful and think about that. If we put that extra
constraint in where I have to sync all these programs up and
match all these schedules, I think that puts another burden and
that can make an inefficiency.
So again, I think again from a technical standpoint we are
probably in 2018 somewhere with SLS and the first part with the
funding levels we have seen. We have made the commitment in the
KDP-C activity to November of 2018, ground ops is in June 2018
with our commitment, and we are in the process of doing the
Orion evaluation now to pick a date for Orion.
Ms. Edwards. Thank you. And, some have criticized the SLS
and Orion program as kind of a rocket and spacecraft without a
mission. We have set a long-term goal of a House-passed NASA
Authorization Act of 2014 of sending humans to Mars and we need
a roadmap from NASA of the best way to get there, and it seems
to me that now is the time for that. What role do you see SLS
and Orion have in reaching that goal and when will we have a
strategy for getting there?
Mr. Gerstenmaier. I think both SLS and Orion play a key
role in that strategy you described. SLS is the heavy lift
launch vehicle. It is the--we need that kind of ability to
launch that much mass to go do a Mars class mission. Orion will
have to return at velocity similar to what you saw in the
flight test, actually higher from at least lunar return
velocities, which most capsules have not. So those two
components are really critical to our Mars strategy.
There are others that need to be added, a habitation
module, and we are actually using the space station today to
buy down risk on the human performance and how well systems
work. So I think it was talked about, the life support system
of Orion; it is actually being tested on space station today so
we are actually getting a chance to see how the Amine Swingbed
operations work onboard space stations. So we can use all these
pieces to continue to advance us towards Mars but I don't think
there is any question that these two pieces fit squarely in any
plan for Mars activity.
Ms. Edwards. So we should just set aside that criticism,
right?
Mr. Gerstenmaier. Yes.
Ms. Edwards. Thank you.
Chairman Palazzo. I now recognize Mr. Bridenstine from
Oklahoma.
Mr. Bridenstine. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for
your leadership on this very important committee. Thank you to
our witnesses for providing testimony today. It is an honor to
be with you and certainly to hear your testimony.
Gene Cernan was the last man to walk on the moon. He took
off the moon December 17th, 1972, three years before I was
born. He was a naval aviator, a naval officer. He was an
aeronautical engineer, an electrical engineer, a fighter pilot,
a test pilot, and an astronaut. He and so many others that
accomplished that pinnacle feat never went back to the moon,
and I think that is a tragedy and certainly something that this
committee needs to be aware of. It hasn't happened in my
lifetime. My parents remember exactly where they were the first
time it happened with Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin.
This committee, before I got here, and certainly Congress
as a whole, commissioned a report that cost $3.2 million. They
spent 18 months. It was a group of individuals led by Governor
Mitch Daniels and they came up with a report that is called
``Pathways to Exploration.'' And one thing that I thought was
telling in this report is they talk about a horizon goal. What
is the horizon goal for NASA? And their horizon goal, according
to them, NASA's horizon goal ought to be Mars. And of course
there are steppingstones, pathways to get to land a human on
Mars and to bring humans home from Mars. And interestingly, he
says, ``The current program to develop launch vehicles for
spacecraft for flight beyond LEO cannot provide the flight
frequency required to maintain competence and safety.'' I am
going to read that again: ``cannot provide the flight frequency
required to maintain competence and safety.''
I took a trip down to Houston, I visited the Johnson Space
Center, I talked to them about SLS. Of course everybody was
looking forward to the first launch. It was going to be
December of 2017; now we are hearing 2018. But what was
interesting is what the follow-on launch after that was going
to be. It was going to be a human launch that was going to be
in 2021, and my initial reaction as a Navy pilot--remember,
Gene Cernan and these guys inspired a guy like me. Even though
I hadn't been born yet, I read about these folks. They became
heroes of mine and inspired a guy like me to join the United
States Navy to become a pilot. It was aspirational. This is the
kind of benefit that this has to the United States of America.
And they said 2017 would be the first launch, 2018 could be
what it slips to, and then ultimately we are going to launch
man--a manned Orion mission in 2021. Now, it would appear that
would have to slip as well. But my initial reaction was we are
going to go four years without a launch and then we are going
to put men in the vehicle and women in the vehicle and send
them into space.
My question for you, Mr. Gerstenmaier--sorry, my name is
Bridenstine so I live with the same problem--my question for
you is do you agree with this assessment that the current
program to develop launch vehicles and spacecraft for flight
beyond LEO cannot provide the flight frequency required to
maintain competence and safety? Do you agree with that?
Mr. Gerstenmaier. We are looking very closely at those
concerns. I am not--first of all, I would say that the fact
that EM-1 has moved into '18 doesn't mean that EM-2 has moved
also. We will continue to look at ways of holding that. We are
trying to look at building a system that we can fly repeatedly
and fly for reasonable cost and we still owe answers to GAO on
those activities.
Our goal is, once we fly a crew in '21, we would like to
fly roughly a flight rate of about once per year, and we are
off analyzing that once-per-year flight rate to see if we can
achieve that within our budgets and we think if that--does that
provide enough frequency of flight that it answers those safety
concerns, and we are off analyzing both of those activities
right now. So our intent would be to take this period between
the first un-crewed flight of Orion to deep space on the SLS
and then the second flight with crew and then follow that with
roughly one flight per year after that.
Mr. Bridenstine. Do you agree that the horizon goal of the
United States ought to be landing humans on Mars?
Mr. Gerstenmaier. Yes. And the way we see it at NASA is we
see three phases. There is what we call the Earth-reliant
region, which is a station which we use today to test out
systems like I described. We also understand how the human body
performs in microgravity. We will do a one-year expedition next
year with crew members to see that the human can tolerate the
kind of duration in microgravity to go to Mars.
Then we see the next region of space, the proving-ground
region of space that is around the moon. That is where we are
now days away from return, we can test the systems, look at
orbital mechanics, we can see deep space radiation, we can do
rendezvous without communications to the ground, we can verify
and validate the concepts that will be needed to take us
eventually to Mars.
Then the last phase is Earth-independent or the Mars-ready
phase, and that is this horizon goal you described. But we
think we have at a macro level an orderly process beginning in
low Earth orbit going to cislunar space and then eventually
moving on to the Mars class mission.
Mr. Bridenstine. And, Mr. Chairman, if you will entertain
me for just a few seconds here, I would like to ask one last
question, which is the report here that we commissioned, $3.2
million, 18 months, a lot of experts, they indicate that given
our flat funding for the human spaceflight directorate that we
are not going to accomplish that mission of getting to the
Mars. Given where we are with flat funding, do you agree with
that assessment?
Mr. Gerstenmaier. We are going to need some funding level
above flat funding.
Mr. Bridenstine. Would you be willing to come back and
provide us what kind of funding level is necessary in order to
accomplish the objective?
Mr. Gerstenmaier. We could--we can provide that and we can
take that for the record and describe that to you. Again, it is
going to be a function of the time frame and the time frame is
driven not only by the funding requirement but it is also by
have we gained enough experience in cislunar space, have we
bought down enough technical risk, have we--are we ready to
take that next step? So there are several components. It is
more than just a budget discussion; there is also the technical
speed and the assurance of what we can learn during this period
moving forward.
Mr. Bridenstine. And that obviously would require more
flight frequency than what we are currently getting?
Mr. Gerstenmaier. Potentially, yes.
Chairman Palazzo. The gentleman's time is expired. We may
have a second round of questions----
Mr. Bridenstine. Thank you, sir.
Chairman Palazzo. --if the Member would like to--at this
time I recognize Ms. Bonamici for five minutes or six or seven.
Ms. Bonamici. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
And thank you so much to the witnesses for being here
today. It is really a pretty exciting time for the U.S. space
program. I know that my colleagues and I all watched the Orion
test launch with great interest.
And I want to also join my colleagues to congratulate NASA,
Lockheed Martin, United Launch Alliance, and everyone who
participated in this test flight. I heard from some of my
constituents who really applauded this, saw this as a big step
in our leadership in space, and that comes as welcome news as
we are trying to inspire and spark interest in the next
generation of young scientists.
In our previous Space Subcommittee hearings, we have talked
about the challenge of communicating the importance of NASA's
work and mission to our constituency who support the mission
with their hard-earned tax dollars. And as Mr. Bridenstine was
saying, we have a lot of people who are inspired looking back
to the Apollo missions and the Moon landing, but that public
outreach is really important. And I noticed that you gave us a
publication here that has--``It Takes a Country'' that talks
about all the places across the country where the parts and
pieces were supplied and purchased and that shows a broad range
of States and businesses I am sure that participated in that.
That kind of thing is important to convince our constituents of
the importance economically as well.
I want to make sure Mr. Bridenstine saw the Congressmen On
Board picture in this publication, too. We have some of our
Congressmen pictured in there.
Also, I know that the budget challenges and the lack of
certainty is very, very important and, Mr. Gerstenmaier, you
talked about that need for stability and it is certainly
something that we talk about here on a regular basis, that that
certainty in decision-making is--and long-term thinking--is so
important, especially more so for NASA than perhaps many of the
other decisions that we make here. And also we know about the
importance of safety. Acknowledging, as we all know, that space
exploration involves risk, there are safety concerns and I know
that NASA does a lot to address those.
So, Mr. Gerstenmaier, some have said that outfitting the
Orion with the necessary life support equipment on the first
crewed mission will cause the spacecraft to be overweight, so
should we be concerned about that? What options does NASA have
to mitigate this possibility?
Mr. Gerstenmaier. And we--in the flight test we just flew,
the next flight of Orion will be significantly lighter. We have
done a major redesign of some of the structures to actually
lower the weight of Orion and that wasn't easy to make those
changes but they have done that. We have also--are starting, as
I described earlier, testing some of the life support systems
on board space station so we will know how much they will
actually weigh and some of those systems are in place.
So I think we have a sound approach to address the concerns
that you raised. We know what it will take to add the life
support system and we will make sure that it can be added and
still not exceed the mission weight.
Ms. Bonamici. Thank you. And then also, Mr. Gerstenmaier, I
want to follow up on your response to Ms. Edwards' question.
You know, we tend to focus on the SLS and Orion when we think
of the exploration program, but I want to talk a little bit
more about the ground infrastructure at the Space Center, which
is also undergoing some significant development to support the
SLS and Orion launches. I know there has been work on the
mobile launcher, the tower, the vehicle assembly building, the
Launch Pad 39B underway, so where does that ground
infrastructure work stand relative to the progress being made
on SLS and Orion? Are they in sync so that they will be ready
at the same time?
Mr. Gerstenmaier. Again, I think you saw in the video a lot
of activity that is going on down in Florida. That work is in
progress and we completed the KDP-C review for ground systems
and it shows a 70 percent confidence level for that equipment
to be ready in Florida to support a launch in June of 2018, so
it is on schedule to move forward.
It has challenges that need to be worked as well, and again
I would stress I don't see that all these activities have to
line up. Even if SLS is ready a little bit early and the ground
system isn't fully there, it is still the right thing to do to
move the rocket down to Florida and begin checking out
umbilical interfaces to see how it is going to fit within the
launch tower, to see how it will fit within the launch pad.
That still fits from an overall schedule standpoint so there is
not a disconnect in this schedule. Even though they don't--
everything doesn't arrive at precisely the same time, it is
perfectly appropriate to have one component arrive before.
Ms. Bonamici. Thank you. And I am going to squeeze one more
question in here.
As demonstrated by the House-passed NASA Authorization of
2014, there is a strong sentiment for NASA to have a policy on
termination liability that really maximizes the use of
appropriated funds to make progress in meeting those
established technical goals and schedule milestones. How is
NASA currently handling potential termination liability for SLS
and Orion?
Mr. Gerstenmaier. It is actually not a NASA policy. We
believe it is part of the Anti-Defamation Act where the
termination liability is required by all agencies to be handled
in a similar manner to which the agency does. So, you know,
that is where we are. So it is not unique to NASA and unique to
what we have done in the past.
Ms. Bonamici. Thank you very much and I am--yield back.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Palazzo. I now recognize Mr. Rohrabacher from
California.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and
thank you for holding this hearing. It is vitally important
that we have a responsible oversight of the various NASA
projects that are the responsibility of this Subcommittee. Many
of us were very skeptical about this SLS commitment when it was
made. We said there would be funding problems; I had no idea
the funding problems would come on so quickly. And, sir, you
noted that you said the funding levels now are interesting.
Interesting? They are not interesting; they are insufficient,
insufficient to reach your goals. And why are they
insufficient? Because we didn't have enough money for this
project to begin with.
Am I correct in assuming that there are large commitments
of finances that will be necessary to develop other
technologies that are yet to be developed for this spacecraft,
for the SLS to move forward on its mission to Mars? We don't
even know if those expensive technology development projects
will succeed. To say we have got the cart before the horse is
an understatement. And there is an expense to that and I hope
my colleagues on this Subcommittee understand that with a $10
billion--and that is a minimum expenditure that we are talking
about here in developing this monstrous rocket project that
won't have a real mission until we are ready to go to Mars,
which could be two decades or three decades from now depending
on if we can actually ever get over the technological hurdles
that we haven't gotten over yet, that by doing that we have
committed ourselves not to do a bunch of other things, not to
identify all the near-Earth objects that could be hitting the
Earth and murdering millions of people from some object hitting
the Earth, much less setting up a system for how we can deflect
a near-Earth object.
We are not going to have that because we are going to have
a big, huge rocket that we can be so proud of that won't even
have a mission for two decades. We are not going to be building
ways to deflect those rockets. We are not going to be building
a way and a technology developing a way, Mr. Chairman, to clear
space debris. Space debris is going to end up strangling
humankind's involvement in space in order to improve the
condition of human beings, which is a good investment to make,
not an investment in a huge rocket that doesn't have a mission
for 20 years.
And we basically have canceled--just even recently we have
canceled this solar cell project. We are not going to have a
refueling system in space that could incredibly increase our
abilities to do things in space, and basically we could be
perfecting our ways of repairing satellites. All of these
things are going to be defunded because we are spending
billions of dollars on a rocket that may not fly to Mars two
decades from now.
This is--I was going to say to say this is the cart before
the horse is an understatement that I have ever heard and we
are already having budget crisis talks about it right now
because what you are telling us today is that things aren't
going to work out with the budget that we have got. It is not
just interesting; it is insufficient to achieve the goal. And
even if we do then pump more money into the SLS project, we
have pumped it into a project that is providing a rocket that
will be useless to us for two decades as compared to all those
other things that can be done in space.
Mr. Chairman, we need to be serious; we need to be
responsible. We should not be blaming the people at NASA and
our professionals and the executive branch. We made a wrong
decision when we went down this road and I think that
unfortunately the American people and the people of the world
are going to pay for it not just out of their pockets with
money but out of things that we could of been doing in space
that would have been so beneficial to the human race.
With that, and I guess you have got 30 seconds to answer
that, but go right ahead. Is there any refutation you have of
that observation? Please feel free. My feelings won't be hurt.
Mr. Gerstenmaier. My only comments would be we don't have
very--we have--I can't think of any real major technical
challenges in terms of SLS development.
Mr. Rohrabacher. How about the radiation challenge with
going to Mars?
Mr. Gerstenmaier. That is----
Mr. Rohrabacher. Have we met that?
Mr. Gerstenmaier. We have not met that----
Mr. Rohrabacher. Yeah, we have got a whole bunch of those
type. I am not talking about the challenges of developing the
SLS; I am talking about the challenges of once we have it and
we have spent those billions of dollars whether it is going to
be able to go to a mission which it is supposedly for. We don't
even know how we are going to land on one of those moons on
Mars yet, do we? We don't have the exact systems set up and how
much that is going to cost us to develop it and how it is going
to be put on the rocket. We have a list of these technological
achievements that are necessary for this rocket to have been
useful in any way and we are not even halfway there. Please
feel free.
Mr. Gerstenmaier. And then the only other thing I would add
is we are doing some activities in the area as you described.
On board space station we have a refueling demonstration----
Mr. Rohrabacher. Um-hum.
Mr. Gerstenmaier. --package on the board outside of space
station where we have actually robotically serviced the outside
of a satellite----
Mr. Rohrabacher. Right.
Mr. Gerstenmaier. --and we have transferred some propellant
back and forth.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Right.
Mr. Gerstenmaier. We are also looking at cryogenic
servicing on station.
Mr. Rohrabacher. Right.
Mr. Gerstenmaier. There is a package on board station----
Mr. Rohrabacher. Those are the good things. Okay.
Mr. Gerstenmaier. And then we also have solar electric
propulsion and--as part of the Asteroid Redirect Mission and we
are also looking at techniques where we can use a gravity
tractor----
Mr. Rohrabacher. So----
Mr. Gerstenmaier. --to deflect some asteroids. So we are--
--
Mr. Rohrabacher. They are wonderful but let me just note
all of those projects were financed in budgets before the SLS
became part of our budget. All of those things that you said we
now are testing, they were done in the research and development
stage long before we started taking all of our money out to put
it in one big rocket. And we don't even know, do we, whether we
are going to have the money to finish all those projects that
you just talked about in their development because this is how
at $10 billion, and by all of the experience we have had, it is
likely to go up to double that by the time we finish with this
rocket. And I say finish, that is just when the rocket is ready
to take off for the first time.
This was a rotten decision on the part of this committee.
It is not your fault. You are good soldiers and you are doing
your very best with what the Members of Congress are giving
you. We have given you an undoable task and thank you very much
for your hard work.
Chairman Palazzo. I now recognize Mr. Posey.
Mr. Posey. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am glad that didn't
stop Apollo.
We are all excited about the Orion launch, Mr.
Gerstenmaier, and I think we are seeing more public awareness
of SLS now and that is something we all look forward to. Can
you take a moment, following up on Congresswoman Bonamici's
comments, to discuss the importance of another special aspect
of the SLS program and that is the exploration ground systems.
I am sure many folks are not up to speed on the importance of
the ground systems aspects of the SLS.
Mr. Gerstenmaier. Yeah, the ground systems team plays a
critical role in the Space Launch System. They are working on
the mobile launch platform to interface with the rocket to
provide propellant to that to fuel the rocket and they will
actually launch off it. They are also working on a launch pad;
a significant amount of work has gone into the pad.
We have looked forward to trying to lower our operations
costs so there are many activities on the launch pad. It is a
clean pad which should help lower launch costs. We also have
the firing room down at the Kennedy Space Center. That is going
in place with a lot of software development activities there.
We have also made the launch pad a multipurpose launch pad so
it can not only support SLS but it can support other rockets so
the fiber cables that run out to that launch pad can support
multiple rockets launching off of that pad, which is a good
thing. So there is a tremendous amount of work going on at the
Kennedy Space Center.
The recovery activities that occurred for the EFT-1 flight,
those were all managed at the Kennedy Space Flight Center by
the ground systems folks that worked with the Navy and the
Anchorage to pick up the capsules. So again, the ground support
activities, and as you saw in the video, are absolutely
critical to what we are doing with the heavy lift launch
vehicle and the Orion processing and manufacturing.
Mr. Posey. Thank you. Following up little bit, can you
explain the thinking behind the President's budget request
calling for funding increases for exploration ground system in
the years 2016 to 2019 and what happens if these funding
targets are not met?
Mr. Gerstenmaier. Again, we need the funding levels that we
have requested to meet the schedules that we have put forward
or there will be slippages in activities, as I have described.
Mr. Posey. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.
Chairman Palazzo. I now recognize Mr. Brooks.
Mr. Brooks. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
As you can discern from the comments of Representatives
Donna Edwards and Dana Rohrabacher, the mission for SLS and
Orion is a certainly a concern for this committee and for
Congress as a whole. Mr. Gerstenmaier, it seems that you are
uniquely situated as Associate Administrator for Human
Exploration Operations to answer some of these questions about
SLS's missions. It is one thing for us to test whether SLS and
Orion components work; it is another thing to actually give SLS
and Orion a substantive, a real mission such as going to the
moon or Mars, capturing an asteroid, space station resupply if
that is what is necessary, or whatever. In your opinion, what
should SLS's first real mission be?
Mr. Gerstenmaier. I think the SLS and Orion's first mission
will be to this proving ground, this space that I described
around the moon amid we call it cislunar space in the vicinity
of the moon. That is a very necessary step for us to move
forward as we push human presence into the solar system. So it
is a place for us to hone skills, to understand techniques, to
prepare, much as the early flights did in Mercury and Gemini to
prepare for the Apollo activities. These flights around the
moon will help us prepare to get ready to go do these Mars
missions decades later. But the first flights will be to the
vicinity of the moon. The rocket is capable of doing that.
Orion is capable of doing that without any additions and we can
learn the skills, bring our level of expertise up to where the
risk is then appropriate to take bolder steps beyond the
cislunar space.
Mr. Brooks. For clarity, you are saying around the moon.
Does that include landing on the moon or simply going around
the moon?
Mr. Gerstenmaier. We didn't--in our budget we don't have
funding for landing on the moon; we just have in the vicinity
of the moon. We use potentially the gravity of the moon to help
with doing trajectory design as we would look for Mars. We have
an international community that is very interested in
potentially doing lunar activities and maybe we can partner
with the international community if they choose to develop the
lander. But in our concept we don't have funding in our plans
for a lander to the moon.
Mr. Brooks. Okay. After we go around the moon, what should
be the second mission of SLS?
Mr. Gerstenmaier. Again, I think it is going to take more
than one mission around the moon it to build these skills that
we need to----
Mr. Brooks. Okay. After all the around-the-moon missions,
what should be the second mission for SLS?
Mr. Gerstenmaier. Then we are ready to start heading
towards Mars, and whether we go to an asteroid as an
intermediate destination or we go all the way to the vicinity
of Mars and go to potentially a moon of Mars, those are things
yet to be decided.
Mr. Brooks. Can you please give me a timetable sequencing
of what you believe is appropriate for NASA and SLS with
respect to the missions you have just enumerated?
Mr. Gerstenmaier. Again, we kind of think of them in broad
terms so that the decade of the '20s to the '30s, that is this
proving ground region that I described to you where we learn
these capabilities between 2020 and 2030. But beyond 2030 we
are ready to go do these other activities, to an asteroid
potentially in its native orbit or potentially all the way to
the moons of Mars or to Mars in that time frame.
Mr. Brooks. So for clarity, for the next decade or two you
are talking about circling the moon and then roughly two
decades thereabouts in the 2030s you are talking about then we
can think about going to Mars. Is that your testimony?
Mr. Gerstenmaier. We need--it is not just circling the
moon; we are actually doing activities around the moon with the
intent that we are building the skills, understanding the
hardware, understanding the techniques, understanding the
environment that we are operating in that prepares us to go to
distances as far as Mars with a reasonable risk assessment.
Mr. Brooks. Is additional funding needed to speed up the
mission platform that you have just expressed?
Mr. Gerstenmaier. Additional funding can help with that
activity.
Mr. Brooks. How much additional funding would be required,
by way of example, to speed up the Mars part of the mission
scope to somewhere in the 2020s, around 2030?
Mr. Gerstenmaier. Again, I think I would like to take that
question for the record. It is more than just funding. It is
not only funding but it is also how long it takes us to
actually get proficient at these skills to go take that next
step, and to give you a real answer I need to spend some time
with our teams looking at how long we think those activities
take and then back into the funding discussion that you have.
Mr. Brooks. Well, I hope you can understand this
Subcommittee's concerns when it took us less than a decade not
only to go around the moon but to land on the moon under Apollo
and with what I am hearing you testify to it is going to be 10
to 20 years to just go around the moon, not actually land on
the moon. So those kinds of timing issues are of concern.
And, Mr. Chairman, if I could ask Ms. Chaplain a question,
is that okay?
Chairman Palazzo. That is okay.
Mr. Brooks. Thank you.
Chairman Palazzo. You may proceed.
Mr. Brooks. At this past year's hearing on the President's
Fiscal Year 2015 budget request for NASA, Administrator Bolden
indicated that providing more funding for SLS would not be
helpful for completing the first version of SLS by 2017.
However, your testimony states that the ``top risk'' for
meeting its deadline for EF-1 in December 2017 is insufficient
funding. Would you please explain this discrepancy and would
additional funding make meeting the 2017 test flight possible
or at least more likely?
Ms. Chaplain. So the cost risk we identified in our report
comes from NASA's own documents and was also raised by their
Standing Review Board so there was indeed a very high risk that
there was not enough money to help meet the 2017 date.
That said, as Mr. Gerstenmaier has already testified, just
putting in money now won't help you get there any quicker.
There are a lot of sequential activities that are needed to get
some of the critical path items done for SLS like the core
stage. The money at this point would be helping out with
reserve and possibly doing testing and some other activities
that couldn't be done earlier in bringing them forward.
Mr. Brooks. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you, Mr.
Gerstenmaier and Ms. Chaplain.
Chairman Palazzo. I now recognize Mr. Schweikert.
Mr. Schweikert. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Part of this is going to be a little bit of a follow-up on
both what Dana and Congressman Brooks were--Ms. Chaplain, help
me get my head a bit--from your report and I am assuming much
of the--woven into your report was actually taken from the
documents from NASA and others, and then when we start to look
at timelines, any--and this--I will let you do it as a personal
opinion because you have been doing this for a while. How short
are we financially? And then I will go to Mr. Gerstenmaier and
ask how short we are technologically.
But if I came to you and say, hey, here is the robustness
of what we are trying to do, I am looking at, you know, a
number of tables that have, you know, all these moving pieces
and projects, and I came to you and said here is where we are
over the next 20 years, here is what we are seeing Congress'
appetite for funding, what is an honest number of shortfall?
Ms. Chaplain. I think there are various numbers to pay
attention to here. First are the kind of short-term numbers
laid out in the documents for SLS and Orion. For SLS they
ranged anywhere from 400 to 900 million, but with pushing out
the date and doing some other things, those numbers have been
reduced. There is still a funding risk for Orion that is
considerably high----
Mr. Schweikert. Well--and--but--and I am actually after
something for the robustness of the system. Is that just Orion
itself? Is that also ground control, personnel costs? I mean
every step you need to make this work instead of just this
individual silo, has that been actually looked at through the
totality of the system that is required?
Ms. Chaplain. Right. So the problem we identified in a
different report on cost estimating is we don't really know the
total number now of how much it is going to cost to do
everything we are looking for them to do. And second, we don't
know really what the pathway is and that pathway has a big
effect on numbers. Like Mr. Gerstenmaier mentioned a landing
system. It is very costly. There is not money to do it right
now. If you want to move things up, you have to pay for a
landing system. How much is that? So it is very, very important
to kind of layout the roadmap now and see all the different
pieces that you need. We don't know that and we don't have cost
estimates beyond the first test for some of the systems.
Mr. Schweikert. And, Ms. Chaplain, you understand sort of
the--you know, when we are looking at CBO-type numbers, you
know, we have here is our best guess, here is our optimistic,
and here is when we are in trouble, I mean, sort of those
variants. We understand for every step of technology, every
additional incremental piece of timeout, the variance grows
because it is unknown. But we are trying in a number of
discussions to get some idea of what the exposure is and are we
about to cannibalize everything else?
Mr. Gerstenmaier, technologically if I came to you and said
the goals that are here on the timeline over the next ten
years, 20 years, where do we have things where we don't
actually have the technology yet but we are working on it?
Mr. Gerstenmaier. I would say the biggest technology areas
that we need to work on are we need to work on radiation for
the human being and look at radiation shielding. We can only
shield so much and--but I think again that is a manageable
risk, but will there ultimately be some risk associated with
galactic cosmic radiation that we will have to deal with on
humans.
The other big thing is if we are going to Mars, the entry,
descent, and landing into the Mars--to the surface of Mars is a
big technology leap. Today, we have landed Rovers on the order
of one metric ton on the surface of Mars. For our human class
mission we are going to have to land about 20 times that, at
least 20 metric tons. We don't know exactly how to do that. We
did some tests off the--in Hawaii to go look at some inflatable
reentry heat shields. We are working on that technology.
And then kind of going back a little bit to the other
questions about Mr. Brooks and why we are not sprinting to the
moon like we did before, I am really building systems that are
modern manufacturing, so the equipment we are putting in down
at Stennis is going to allow us to have a system that can be
reproduced and flown multiple times for minimum cost.
Mr. Schweikert. Okay.
Mr. Gerstenmaier. So we are spending extra time, I would
say, to prepare a system that is affordable in the long-term.
GAO wants more details on that. We need to provide that
information to them. But we are looking forward that we are not
just building a single system that sprints to a destination. We
are building an infrastructure that allows us to have sustained
presence beyond low Earth orbit.
Mr. Schweikert. All right. Thank you.
Mr. Chairman, as you have had a number of conversations
with staff and the rest of us, we still think there is so much
variability, exposure, and costs, and we all know what is about
to hit us in the entitlement crisis over the next decade cost-
wise. What is going to happen to future Federal Government
spending? Somewhere here we are going to have to have a much
more robust and much more brutally honest--of what we have cash
for and what we don't.
With that I yield back.
Chairman Palazzo. At this time we will go into our second
round of questions.
Mr. Gerstenmaier, when did NASA first begin tracking the
$400 million risk identified by GAO?
Mr. Gerstenmaier. Probably that got identified back in
2013, 2014 time frame. I would say if you asked my teams now,
they would say that that $400 million risk, because of the
appropriations we have received in 2014 and the pending bill
that we saw last night, that $400 million risk will be retired.
Chairman Palazzo. Well, you said in 2013, we had
Administrator Bolden sitting where you are telling us that if
we threw another 300 million at SLS and Orion, we wouldn't even
notice it. I mean it wasn't needed at that time so you
recognized this risk. If we would have--if you would have come
to us, say, a year ago or when you first started tracking it--
because it feels like we are just finding out about this risk,
this 400 million since the GAO's report has come out. Has--and
you are telling me NASA has known about this for a much longer
period than that?
Mr. Gerstenmaier. It was in their earlier reports that GAO
picked up and it is one of many risks. We carry technical
risks, programmatic risks, and budget risks. And it was again
to meet a specific launch date and we--and again, we have moved
the launch date, which gives us some margin as well and then we
have also--we actually know what the budgets are now in 2014
and we will know what the budget is when it gets approved here
in '15. Those remove that uncertainty and that lowers the level
of the risk. So as we identify those, we carry those and bring
those forward as soon as we can.
Chairman Palazzo. And are you going to be matching your
expenditure of funds based on Congress' budget or the
President's request, which has been quite lower than what
Congress has been appropriating for the past several years?
Mr. Gerstenmaier. This is the dilemma we have, right. So
the reality is the program plans to some variance between those
two limits that you just described.
Chairman Palazzo. And if we--if you would have come to us
for, say, additional funding a year or two years ago, would you
have been able to mitigate the risk or buy down the technical
risk or would we still be having this same conversation that
the test is going to slip to the right regardless of the amount
of funding we may have been able to appropriate to the program?
Mr. Gerstenmaier. That is a very difficult question to
answer. And the other thing that is hard for me is that I look
at human spaceflight as the total, which is SLS/Orion, also
commercial crew, commercial cargo, and International Space
Station. I see human spaceflight as really the combination of
all those activities. We are using space station today to buy
down a lot of risk for Mars so I have to look at a balancing
across all those programs. I can't optimally find any one of
those programs so I effectively balance across those in the
risk and I try to weigh the budget and the technical risk
associated with those programs to give what we think is the
best approach to deliver hardware for the lowest cost for the
Congress and the taxpayers.
Chairman Palazzo. I now recognize Ms. Edwards.
Ms. Edwards. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you again
for a second round of questions.
I want to go back to something that I raised earlier and it
is regarding the recommendation by the National Academies about
a five percent inflationary increase in the budget. And
although I understand that for this specific purpose of looking
at 2017 slippage to 2018, that that is not what we are talking
about, but I want to know about the program and would it be
useful for both the Administration to recommend and Congress to
incorporate this margin that the National Academies has
recommended so that we, over a period of time--that we are not
looking at the questions that are being raised today? Just give
us some guidance. Okay. Flip a coin. Yes, Ms. Chaplain.
Ms. Chaplain. I would just add that is not the first time a
recommendation like that has been made. It was made at the tail
end of the Constellation program by the Augustine Commission
and I think they recommended about three billion additional a
year, which was pretty significant, and that was their view of
what was needed over a number of different paths that you would
take, not just the Constellation path. They mentioned a path
similar to what is being done here.
Ms. Edwards. And that would provide a lot more stability
than what we are seeing now, wouldn't it?
Ms. Chaplain. Yes, and the other thing to remember is
programs like this have spikes in terms of their funding needs
so Constellation program itself, when that recommendation was
made, was asking for about $3 billion a year but in their
budget they went up to as much as $7 billion a year in terms of
their needs. So there are spikes depending on what you are
developing and when activities come up.
Ms. Edwards. I want to just ask really briefly in
Department of Defense large-scale programs, they don't go
through this. They say--they set out kind of a goal. It crosses
Congresses. They know that there is a difference in these kind
of large-scale development programs. Why is it that we are
funding a scientific program that has a lot of uncertainties
year by year and in some cases a few months by a few months?
Don't we actually end up wasting way more money over the long
term by doing that than just setting out a goal of making sure
that we fund this program in the most robust way possible
across Congresses so that the goal is achieved? Why aren't we--
why isn't there modeling for these large-scale science programs
the same way that there is that kind of modeling for defense
programs? And has GAO ever analyzed that and what the impact
would be to the success of the programs?
Ms. Chaplain. We have never analyzed NASA funding compared
to DOD funding but we do know when the funding stretched out,
the problems you are describing do occur. It is not like all
the DOD systems don't experience some kind of instability. It
is rare when Congress is trying to give more money than what
they are asking for. Sometimes there is the reverse case where
Congress gives a little less. But with programs with a lot of
schedule pressure and everybody recognizes----
Ms. Edwards. And experimentation?
Ms. Chaplain. Yes, but programs where everybody recognizes
a date is important to deliver, there tends to be more support
funding-wise and it tends to be more stable.
Ms. Edwards. Mr. Gerstenmaier, do you have a comment about
that?
Mr. Gerstenmaier. No, I think again the discussion is good.
Some understanding and stability in budget would be helpful. At
least matching inflation would be helpful.
But again, I think the problem is we deal, as you describe
very succinctly that--with essentially a year budget, sometimes
months. You know, we throw in furloughs and other things just
to make--and those are real impacts to us. When we had--we
stood down effectively for two weeks where we couldn't do any
work on Orion during that time and how you plan for that in a
programmatic sense is extremely difficult.
So it is a tribute to my teams to take this environment
that is very dynamic and figure out a way to make as
significant progress as we can, not waste funds, not use funds
in an inappropriate manner, but it is difficult for the teams
to do that but they have done a fairly good job, as we have
seen through this activity. It could be eased if we got some
more certainty.
Ms. Edwards. Well, Mr. Chairman, I really--I am on a
mission that we have to think differently about the way that we
do these large-scale programs. We faced it with James Webb. We
are looking at it here with SLS/Orion. This is just really not
smart, and at the end of the day, the technologies expire, the
technologies change over a period of 10 or 20 years as we are
stretching things out, and then it is like starting all over
again. And I just think it is about the dumbest way to do
science.
And with that I yield.
Chairman Palazzo. Ms. Edwards, I think there are several
people that would agree with you.
I now recognize Mr. Bridenstine.
Mr. Bridenstine. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And, Ms. Edwards, I do agree with you and your comments are
certainly well recognized on both sides of the aisle so thank
you for that. And we would like to work with you on how we can
remedy this.
I just had a quick question about the international
implications of our direction for human spaceflight. The report
that Ms. Edwards referenced from the National Academies
indicated that if we were to do this Asteroid Redirect Mission,
we would be not in alignment with the international community,
most of which is focused on getting to the moon, namely the
lunar surface and then on to Mars, and that this misalignment,
according to the report, again headed by Governor Mitch
Daniels, indicated that this misalignment could actually result
in us spending a whole lot of money on dead-end technologies
rather than actually accomplishing the objective of getting to
the moon. Mr. Gerstenmaier, could you address that?
Mr. Gerstenmaier. I would say the global exploration
roadmap is the plan that the international partner community
has agreed to, along with NASA, as the basic framework of how
we want to head forward. I think in that roadmap Mars is a
horizon destination, as we have described. The internationals,
as the report describes, have a stronger interest in the moon.
The Asteroid Redirect Mission places this asteroid in the
vicinity of the moon, which is consistent with what the
international partners would want to do. The SLS rocket, the
Orion capsule, they fit very well in this lunar activity, in
this proving ground I described, that the partners then have a
desire to do lunar activities. We could very easily work with
the partners and support that activity.
The Asteroid Redirect Mission also fits into the long-term
goal of what we want to do. We believe for a Mars class mission
we need solar electric propulsion to move large masses to the
vicinity of Mars. We are going to move essentially a 50 metric
ton asteroid through space. That could be the same cargo we are
delivering to Mars so that space tug that we are building for
the Asteroid Redirect Mission is a piece of the tug that would
be used for the human class missions to Mars so it fits in that
other architecture moving forward.
So it is not a diversion, it is not--from our overall goal.
So we look at each piece we are developing within human
spaceflight. We look how it fits in terms of international
partner needs, we look how it fits in our horizon goal of Mars
needs, and we only move projects that we can continue to keep
moving forward in that direction. We don't want to spend
resources on items that are one-of-a-kind use----
Mr. Bridenstine. Do you know----
Mr. Gerstenmaier. --much as the report said.
Mr. Bridenstine. Do you know offhand specifically which
technologies they are talking about that would be dead-end
technologies as we pursue this path?
Mr. Gerstenmaier. I think we didn't have a chance to
discuss with the Committees significantly how we were going to
use this cargo capability for Mars. I think if we would have
had a chance to describe that with them, they would not have
seen that as a dead-end capability. And so we--I think we
needed to have more dialogue with the Committee. We ran out of
time towards the end. They didn't get a chance to see some of
our latest thinking of how all these pieces fit together
towards the ultimate Mars horizon goal.
Mr. Bridenstine. Okay.
Mr. Gerstenmaier. But I can't judge what their answer would
have been.
Mr. Bridenstine. Last question--we are down to about a
minute-and-a-half--we noticed that the WARN Act--notices went
out for the WARN Act recently associated with the SLS program.
Can you explain why, given the fact that we are spending more
money than expected and everybody seemed to be telling us that
things were ahead of schedule and we are spending more than
what was anticipated, why did these WARN Act notices go out?
Mr. Gerstenmaier. One reason for the WARN Act was there
is--again, they are issued by the contractors based on the
activity and the direction we give them. There is a natural
change in the development lifecycle of the SLS. We are
essentially ramping down on the heavy design phase where there
is a lot of engineering, a lot of drawing development, analysis
kind of activities that now is terminating naturally.
Now we are getting ready to go manufacture so they are
going to be buying long-lead items, large aluminum forgings.
The work occurs down at the Michoud facility down off--by New
Orleans to actually do manufacturing, so we are shifting from
design to manufacturing, and during that shift, there is a
natural ramp-down of the skills that the overall workforce will
come up but it will come up in other areas and it will show up
in materials. It will not show up in personnel. So this is a
piece of that. Warren Act activity is supporting this natural
progression from design to manufacturing.
Mr. Bridenstine. Roger that. Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
Chairman Palazzo. Thank you, Mr. Bridenstine.
Two stories below us is the House Armed Services Committee
room and Mr. Bridenstine and I also serve on that same
committee, and we have had testimony presented to us that the
number one threat to America's national security is our
national debt, and I am going to have to say that the number
one threat to America maintaining its leadership in space is
also going to be our national debt, and many Members on both
sides of the aisle recognize that we have to address the
pending fiscal problem that is going to be facing our Nation
and hopefully we can overcome that.
Once again, Mr. Gerstenmaier, congratulations to you and
your entire team at NASA, to Lockheed Martin and ULA for a very
successful outstanding test flight.
And I want to thank the witnesses for their valuable
testimony and the Members for their questions. The Members of
the Committee may have additional questions for you and we will
ask you to respond to those in writing. The record will remain
open for two weeks for additional comments and written
questions from Members.
The witnesses are excused and this hearing is adjourned.
Thank you.
[Whereupon, at 10:30 a.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]
Appendix I
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Answers to Post-Hearing Questions
Answers to Post-Hearing Questions
Responses by Mr. Bill Gerstenmaier
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Responses by Ms. Cristina Chaplain
Appendix II
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Additional Material for the Record
Prepared Statement of Full Committeee
Ranking Member Eddie Bernice Johnson
Good morning. I'd like to join my colleagues in welcoming our
witnesses to today's hearing. We have much to discuss, so I will be
brief in my opening remarks.
Last week, NASA achieved an important milestone with the successful
EFT-1 flight test of the Orion crew capsule, and I want to congratulate
you, Mr. Gerstenmaier, and the entire NASA and contractor team on a
very impressive achievement.
I look forward to hearing more about EFT-1 and the significance of
what you are learning from it. Equally importantly, I want to hear what
lies ahead for the nation's human exploration program, because EFT-1
demonstrates that NASA's exploration program is no longer simply
something NASA would like to do-it's now a reality, with hardware being
built, facilities being prepared, and vehicles being tested.
Yet there is much more that will need to be done to achieve the
long-term goal of landing humans on Mars. As we prepare for the 114th
Congress, I think we need to heed the words of the distinguished
National Academies panel that testified before us earlier this year. At
that hearing, former Governor of Indiana and co-chair of the panel, Mr.
Mitch Daniels, stated the panel's consensus view that the goal of
sending humans to Mars ``justifies the cost, risk, and opportunities''
of doing so.
However, Mr. Daniels also made clear that the panel believed that
``any pathway that could successfully land humans on the surface of
Mars would require funding above constant dollars.'' That is pretty
clear guidance. And yet, to date we have asked NASA to achieve its
exploration goals on a budget that doesn'teven keep pace with
inflation. We in Congress have the ability to correct that deficiency
if we have the will to do so. I want to work with my colleagues on both
sides of the aisle in the next Congress to provide the funding that
NASA will need to carry out a robust human exploration program as well
as its other important tasks in science, aeronautics, and technology
development.
It is our choice as to whether we will do so, and I hope we will
choose wisely. As I said after last week's successful EFT-1 mission,
EFT-1 demonstrates that America's best days in space exploration still
lie ahead of us. NASA and its contractor team are working hard to
achieve challenging goals-we in Congress need to do the same.
Thank you, and I yield back.
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