Congress is told, again, that NASA’s exploration plans aren’t sustainble

This is an automatic summary, original reduced by 70%.

Congress loves to set grand goals for NASA. During a full committee hearing Thursday, one member of the House Science Committee said the agency should send humans to Mars in 2033.

While the panel, including two former Apollo astronauts, generally agreed that NASA was on the right track with its Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft, the majority felt like the agency simply didn't have enough resources to complete a compelling exploration plan.

One of the panel members, Tom Young, a past director of Goddard Spaceflight Center, said the space agency's budget is "Clearly inadequate for a credible human exploration program." He said hard choices would have to be made within NASA's existing budget to actually get things done.

NASA spends another $4 billion on exploration, primarily the development of its Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft.

What would constitute a budget that makes good use of the SLS rocket? In his remarks, Harrison Schmitt, a veteran of the Apollo 17 mission to the lunar surface, said that instead of the roughly $9 billion NASA now spends on human spaceflight, it needs more than double that-$20 billion annually-for a meaningful human exploration program.

Most of the participants agreed that if NASA was serious about sending humans into deep space, into lunar orbit or beyond, it needed to end its financial commitment to the International Space Station as soon as possible and apply those funds toward deep space exploration.

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