It appears that SpaceX’s success with the Dragon spacecraft has won some much-needed space in the US House of Representatives. Congressman Frank Wolf (R-VA) announced Tuesday that his office reached a truce with NASA regarding the Commercial Crew program. Under the agreement, Wolf will lower his opposition to Commercial Crew and hopefully help NASA gain better funding.
Wolf chairs the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science and Related Agencies, which controls NASA’s budget. His subcommittee has consistently hit the Commercial Crew Development program (CCDev) with heavy cuts. NASA Administrator Bolden has stated that the cuts have delayed access to the Space Station by American vehicles by at least a year, with this year’s cuts expected to delay American access again. In hearings, some of Wolf’s subcommittee members have seemed intent on using the coming Space Launch System (SLS) to ferry astronauts to the Space Station, even though this service would come at a price that’s about ten times higher.
In April, Wolf included language in the 2013 spending bill’s accompanying report that stopped just short of requiring NASA to drop its Commercial Crew competition. Wolf wanted NASA to immediately downsize the program from the current four competitors to either a single “competitor” or a well-funded leader and a weakly funded follower. Commercial space backers have worried that the language would succeed in essentially discontinuing CCDev, given that similar tactics have been used in the Senate.
from Ars Technica