Hey,
So, I know its been a few days since the chairmen of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform released their initial proposal. I wanted to highlight one piece of their proposal, that IMHO, really shows they don't knoow what they are doing.
Join me over the fold
Now, if you are proposing the elimination of a program, I think its not unreasonable that you should have some idea about what the program does - forget everything else, I think thats not unreasonable (I personally would add something else in there, like how we are going to avoid the unpleasantness that may result, but lets leave that to the side for the moment).
One of the proposals targeted by Bowles & Simpson is a NASA program called Commercial Crew. Here is their comment on that program
Eliminate funding for commercial spaceflight. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) plans to spend $6 billion over the next five years to spur the development of American commercial spaceflight. This subsidy to the private sector is costly, and while commercial spaceflight is a worthy goal, it is unclear why the federal government should be subsidizing the training of the potential crews of such flights. Eliminating this program would save $1.2 billion in 2015.
(emphasis mine)
Now, I wasn't at all aware that we were funding the training of private crews to go to space. In fact, I seem to remember Commercial Crew doing something else. Lets actually look at the budget proposal
The Commercial Crew Program will provide $6 billion over the next five years to support the development of commercial crew transportation providers to whom NASA could competitively award a crew transportation services contract analogous to the Cargo Resupply Services contract for ISS.
Yea, um, I'd like to know how they get from developing transport vehicles to training private space crews. Further, I'd like to know what they are proposing we do to have access to the International Space Station. Are we to keep relying on Russian transport? I have no problem, but we'd better at least be honest about what is actually going on.
Guys, if you don't know what the program actually does, you should at least find out before you start cutting it. Just a suggestion.
