Congress presses Nasa chief on threats to agency

During the annual budget request Bolden gets an earful.

What in another year might have been a routine hearing about NASA’s annual budget request turned into a heated, and sometimes partisan, exchange about the agency’s internal security practices and the broad state of the U.S. human spaceflight program.

Congress wants to know why Nasa wants so much money....

Wolf then switched the subject to NASA’s human spaceflight program, questioning the agency’s management of the Commercial Crew Program: NASA’s plan to replace the shuttle with one of three commercially designed systems by late 2017. Since 2010, “we appropriated almost $2 billion for the program, including increases every fiscal year while the [NASA] top line has simultaneously been decreased,” Wolf said. “We protected this program,” the chairman said. Bolden did not see things that way. “The Congress has provided about $2 billion for commercial crew,” the NASA administrator acknowledged. However, “we have requested about $3 billion over time.”

Is Congress trying to pin budget woes on NASA, or are they just trying to diss Bolden? What say you, ATS?

www.space.com...

Well I think everybody found it very odd how NASA stopped launching

Clearly the recession had a large part to play

But perhaps a stop flying missions or cancel the new projects from congress was the reason for this..

I honestly think they have a new generation of spacecraft ready developed and coming through soon, they're also working on a new supersonic commercial airliner so lots of new projects to fund rather than keep old dated projects running

IMO congress are just trying to hamper there efforts or at least push for NASA to get it done cheaper