Last Updated 6/9/97 by Matt Peterson
Chairman Sensenbrenner was the keynote speaker on the second day of the two day National Space Forum, “Forging New Partnerships, Integrating New Architectures,” held at the National Academy of Sciences (prepared text attached).
The speech touched his support of government and industry partnerships to reduce costs and enable new technologies to reach the marketplace sooner and less expensively. He spoke specifically about GPS, communications satellites, spaceports, and launch industry. He spoke at length about his plans for using the budget to help NASA to focus on working more closely with the commercial sector, specifically mentioning Mission to Planet Earth and remote sensing.
He described the Space Station as an example of the mixed results from government-to-government partnerships, and spent the remainder of his time discussing his view that the Administration/NASA has not handled the agreement with the Russian government or the resulting schedule delays/budget problems as he has advised, saying that the Russians “promised a rose garden, delivered a few thorns -- better watch where you sit.”
The first question he received was if he would continue to support ISS; he responded that “with or without the Russians” he would continue to support station. He wanted Russia in, but they could cause huge cost overruns and they still are not fully meeting their promises. He discussed at great length how he had tried to offer constructive suggestions to the Administration on where to get the $200M necessary to recover from the Russian Service Module delay but that all his suggestions had been summarily turned down, saying, “All I hear from NASA is ‘NO NO NO NO NO.’”
An industry representative asked if it would be possible to go through American industry to the Russian subcontractors, rather than involving the Russian government, which apparently is the cause of the financial problems. Chairman Sensenbrenner said that he would prefer that but the agreement was made with the Russian government and that “the cancer eating away at station is the Russian government defaulting” due to their dysfunctional tax system.
Andrew Lawler of Science magazine asked if the Senate will pass its first NASA authorization bill in years. The Chairman responded that he had met with Chairman McCain on Tuesday (6/3) and would be meeting with Chairman Frist that day, along with Congressman Brown, so that it is a bipartisan effort. He said that Chairman McCain assured him that he wants an authorization bill passed so that budget prerogatives would not be taken over by appropriations. His staff is not up to speed yet and there are hearings coming up, but he wants the authorization bill passed as soon as the end of this month. There is not alot of floor time available; he wants the bill to be as non-controversial as possible. He also agrees with Chairman Sensenbrenner’s desire to have a two year authorization bill, and Congressman Brown agrees; Chairman Sensenbrenner believes that it may come to pass.
An Air Force officer suggested that the U.S. should spend the amount of money to maintain peace equivalent to the cost of war, and asked if the U.S. should complain about the station delays caused by the Russians since Congress and the Administration caused delays in the past during periods of requested station redesign. The Chairman claimed that “in my business, if you don’t keep your word, it’s not worth much. The same is true with international -- a deal’s a deal.” He said that all the other partners are on schedule, and that there is no evidence that the Russians are working on their next scheduled items due for station after the FGB and SM. This is a test of new Russia, he said, to see if it can integrate into partnerships with the rest of the world in a major science project. If it fails at this, why do they think they can do other environmental, etc. international projects? NASA’s budget is tight enough , he stated. This type of budget should be coming from the State Department, and use NASA’s money for science.
The Text of the speech can be found on the House Science Cmte. website.