The Senate cries “Uncle!” on SLS and big goverment with its latest NASA authorization bill
I usually pay relatively little attention to the NASA authorization bills that Congress passes periodically, because these bills are generally nothing more than opportunities for the loudmouths in Congress to use them as a bullhorn to puff themselves up to the public and press. Almost never do such bills really have any real impact on the future, or if they do, that impact is often unintended and negative, as Congress is by and large ignorant about these matters and has priorities counter-productive to getting anything substantive accomplished.
I pay even less attention to authorization bills that have only been approved by a committee, and have not yet been voted on by either house. Such bills are ephemeral and the stuff of fantasy. It is nice to know what’s in them, but until such bills are actually approved by both houses of Congress and signed by the president, their language is even more unworthy of serious attention.
Have the pigs in the Senate learned to stop gorging themselves?
Nonetheless, the NASA authorization bill that was just approved by the Senate Commerce committee is worth reviewing, but not for the reasons that has interested the rest of the mainstream and even the aerospace press.
True, the bill extends ISS until 2032. True, it fully supports the commercial private space stations being built to replace it. True, it endorses NASA administrator Jared Isaacman’s restructuring of the Artemis program. True, it rejects all of Trump’s proposed cuts to NASA’s science programs. And true, it strongly endorses a Moon base as a first step to colonizing Mars.
All of these facts are significant, but to focus on each specifically — as it appears the entire press has done — is to miss the forest for the trees.
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