The House Science and Technology Committee favorably reported out the NASA reauthorization measure that would permit increased funding for the space agency and accelerate the first flight of the next-generation U.S. spaceship, and sent the fiscal bill to the House floor.

Under the authorization measure, $1 billion of extra funds could be provided to NASA to accelerate the first manned flight of the Orion-Ares spaceship system to 2014, instead of the currently-expected 2015.

Whether NASA actually receives that funding would depend on provisions of separate appropriations legislation for the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, 2009.

Rep. Mark Udall (D-Colo.), the committee chairman, noted that "we have heard from witness after witness that NASA has not been given the funding it needs to successfully carry out all of the important tasks that the nation has asked of it."

If that $1 billion extra is provided in fiscal 2009, that "can help narrow the post-shuttle human space flight gap that we are facing."

He referred to the fact that the United States, the only nation to put men on the moon, will retire its space shuttle fleet in October 2010, and won’t have any manned space flight craft to carry astronauts to space for half a decade, until Orion-Ares begins manned flights in 2015.

The $19.2 billion that the measure would authorize for NASA in the next fiscal year includes as well adding an extra space shuttle mission to the existing shuttle flight manifest, with that added mission carrying the $1.5 billion Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer to the International Space Station. Otherwise, the cutting-edge instrument to detect anti- matter and dark matter in the universe will lie uselessly on the ground, those AMS development funds wasted.

Rep. Ralph Hall of Texas, ranking Republican on the committee, praised inclusion of the extra AMS shuttle mission, saying, "This additional investment is more than justified."

And he praised other portions of the bill for fostering formation of a U.S. commercial cargo space transportation industry.

Otherwise, the United States will be dependent upon foreign space transportation providers, such as the Russians and their Soyuz (manned) and Progress (unmanned cargo) spacecraft. And serious amounts of U.S. money will have to be provided to those overseas suppliers.

Another portion of the bill authorizes NASA to detect and mitigate the threat of near Earth objects striking the planet to cause a global catastrophe.

Rep. Tom Feeney of Florida, ranking Republican on the space and aeronautics subcommittee, lauded yet another provision of the bill.

It would direct the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy "to establish an interagency committee [to] study the issues raised by locating a commercial space launch range in close proximity to a federal launch range," Feeney noted.

His state is home to Kennedy Space Center, and many Floridians worry that thousands of employees, mainly contractor workers, will be laid off during the half-decade gap between the shuttle flights ending and the first flights of Orion-Ares. Further, even when Orion-Ares begins flying, many of those workers won’t be rehired.

Some Florida leaders are concerned that as private firms develop commercial space cargo capabilities and space tourism craft, they may fly from areas other than Florida, such as Wallops Island, Va., or spaceports in areas such as the Southwest.

Or, the commercial space industry might go to foreign spaceports.

"This issue is of constant concern to Florida’s Space Coast as it vies with international competitors as a site for launching commercial payloads," Feeney said.

(For details on the earlier subcommittee action on the NASA authorization measure, please see Space & Missile Defense Report, Monday, May 19, 2008.)