With celebrations underway marking the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission, the NASA administrator is warning that a full-year continuing resolution like one recently floated by the Trump administration would be “devastating” to U.S. efforts to get back to the moon.
Administrator Jim Bridenstine, who was at the Senate Commerce Committee Wednesday for a hearing on space exploration to the moon and Mars, was asked about the consequences of a stopgap spending bill rather than a full fiscal 2020 spending plan by Chairman Roger Wicker, a Mississippi Republican.
“What we lack right now is a lander. The United States right now has not had a moon lander since 1972, the last time we landed on the surface of the moon. That’s something that we need to develop,” Bridenstine said.
The administrator praised the efforts and spending by private-sector partners, but he noted that significant federal investment is needed for the new lunar lander.
“If we end up in a CR, that lander doesn’t continue to get developed, and we don’t have money in the budget right now to develop a lander. It takes a good bit of time, which is why we need to get started right away,” Bridenstine said. “If we end up, sir, in a CR for a period of a year or even more it would be devastating for trying to achieve the goal of landing the next man and the first woman on the south pole.”
Bridenstine, who was previously a fiscally conservative Republican member of the House from Oklahoma, also noted that a long-term CR could basically force the space agency to continue work on projects and programs that they would like to steer away from in order to focus on the moon mission.
“The reality is we then do not make investments that we need to make, but even worse, we continue to make investments that we don’t need to make, so it is in fact a waste of money,” he said.
Later in the hearing, Sen. Jerry Moran implored Bridenstine to make sure the Trump administration and Bridenstine’s own former colleagues in the House understood the importance of being able to get a deal on top-line spending to move fiscal 2020 appropriation bills.
Like acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney, Bridenstine was a member of the House Freedom Caucus.
Moran is responsible for the NASA budget as chairman of the Commerce-Justice-Science Appropriations subcommittee.
“I need everyone to know that if we’re going to pursue a more bold plan at NASA, we have to have a budget agreement that allows us to spend the money, and a CR is, as you indicated, is devastating to this cause,” the Kansas Republican said.
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