Several media outlets and websites have reported on the letter sent to NASA Administrator Bolden by 27 Members of Congress that has been characterized as alleging that NASA is not complying with the law. The letter actually stops a bit short of that, but does state that NASA’s decision to cancel a solicitation for a contract related to the Constellation program and other actions the agency is taking to begin terminating the program may violate the Impoundment Control Act and the FY2010 Consolidated Appropriations Act (H.R. 3288, P.L. 111-119). The latter includes language prohibiting NASA from spending any funds to terminate any aspect of Constellation or initiate a new program. Whether or not NASA is violating the law will have to be settled by lawyers. However, while any letter from Members of Congress is important, what may be most notable about this letter is who did NOT sign it.

The signatures are from 20 Republicans and seven Democrats, largely from Alabama, Florida and Texas where much of the work on Constellation was planned or is ongoing. Some of the signers are members of the House Appropriations Commerce-Justice-Science (CJS) subcommittee who would have been involved in writing the NASA portion of the appropriations bill. However, the chairman and ranking member of that subcommittee, Rep. Alan Mollohan (D-WV) and Frank Wolf (R-VA) are not among the signers. Nor are the chairman of the House Science and Technology Committee, Rep. Bart Gordon (D-TN), and the chairwoman of that committee’s Space and Aeronautics Subcommittee, Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ). Their Republican counterparts (Rep. Ralph Hall and Rep. Pete Olson, both from Texas) did sign it.

The letter “reminds” NASA that its actions “may” violate the law, and asks or urges NASA to take certain actions and cease others. If Congress wanted to press the case that an agency was violating an appropriations act, one would expect not only House but Senate members to voice such a complaint. A letter from the chairs and ranking members of the House and Senate appropriations CJS subcommittees — or the full committees — would garner much more attention than a letter signed by any number of other members. Also, the letter likely would be addressed to the Comptroller General, head of the Government Accountability Office (GAO), who is responsible for issuing legal opinions on appropriations laws.

The Tranquility Module and its “bay window” — or Cupola — have been successfully attached to the International Space Station (ISS) by space shuttle Endeavour (STS-130) and ISS crews. Repositioning of the Cupola to its final location was achieved in the early hours (EST) of February 15. It now points down towards Earth, providing an impressive window on the world. Endeavour is scheduled to return to Earth on February 21. Meanwhile, the next shuttle launch may be delayed.

Currently scheduled for March 18, Discovery’s STS-131 launch may slip to early April according to NASASpaceflight.com. It remains unusually chilly in the Kennedy Space Center area, slowing the move of Discovery into the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) because the temperatures in the VAB are too cold for some shuttle systems. That means a slip to the launch date, which must be interleaved with the next Soyuz launch to ISS. Hence the shuttle may slip to the first week of April, according to the website.

The following events may be of interest this week. The House and Senate are both in recess for the President’s Day district work period. Both will meet next on February 22. The meeting of the NRC’s Decadal Survey on Biological and Physical Sciences shown on our calendar for Feb. 15-17 is closed in its entirety and therefore is not listed below. For further information, see our calendar on the right menu or click the links below.

Thursday-Friday, February 18-19, Washington, DC

• NASA Advisory Council. An agenda has not yet been posted on the NAC website, but this is what was published in the Federal Register.

Thursday-Saturday, February 18-20, Boulder, CO

• Next Generation Suborbital Researchers Conference being held at the Millennium Harvest House, 1345 28^th Street, Boulder.

Finding the DOD and NASA budget requests is relatively easy, but not so much for space programs in other government agencies like NOAA, DOE, USGS and DOT. FY2011 Budget Documentation: Where to Find Agency Budgets is a SpacePolicyOnline.com fact sheet that provides links to the right spot on those agencies’ websites.

The White House Office of Management and Budget has the granddaddy budget website of them all for the entire federal government. OMB’s volume on Historical Tables is particularly valuable for those who want to see what percentage of the federal budget has been allocated to NASA over time, for example.

In her remarks to the FAA’s Commercial Space Transportation meeting on Thursday, NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver said that turning low Earth orbit (LEO) human spaceflight over to the private sector while keeping NASA focused on technology development would mean that each will be doing what it does best: “Commercial industry will do the things that it does best – designing and building the trains, owning and maintaining the trains, and then making them run on time.”

Are passenger trains the right model to be emulated by the commercial crew industry NASA wants to create?

The title of this Congressional Research Service report — “Amtrak: Budget and Reauthorization” — alone tells the tale. Intercity passenger rail in this country is largely paid for by the government. As the CRS report explains:

“Amtrak is structured as a private company, but virtually all its shares are held by the United States Department of Transportation (DOT). Amtrak was created by Congress in 1970 to maintain a minimum level of intercity passenger rail service, while relieving the railroad companies of the financial burden of providing that money-losing service. Although created as a for-profit corporation, Amtrak, like intercity passenger rail operators in other countries, has not been able to make a profit. During the last 35 years, federal assistance to Amtrak has amounted to approximately $30 billion.”

If NASA wants to convince everyone that commercial crew would relieve the government of a financial burden, not create one, it might want to pick a different model. Congress is all too familiar with Amtrak.

The Wall Street Journal today offers a pro/con debate on NASA’s new plan. Taylor Dinerman faces off against Peter Diamandis. (Much of the Wall Street Journal’s content is available by subscription only; apologies if the link does not work.)

Yesterday we posted an article pointing out two op-ed pieces by Republican or Republican-leaning commentators opposing President Obama’s new plan for NASA. Two other Republicans — former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich and former chairman of the House Science Committee, Bob Walker — published a joint op-ed in the Washington Times supporting the plan. Considering how rarely Republicans praise anything the Democrats do these days, the op-ed is especially noteworthy.

Mr. Walker, who chaired the 2002 Commision on the Future of the Aerospace Industry, cited that commision, a 2004 commission chaired by former Secretary of the Air Force Pete Aldridge, and the 2009 Augustine committee as all recommending greater reliance on the private sector for space activities and criticized NASA for ignoring that advice until now. Mr. Gingrich is identified in the op-ed as being a member of the Board of Governors of the National Space Society (NSS). The NSS came out in opposition to President Obama’s plan to terminate the Constellation program last week, although what it wants is restoration of NASA’s plans to send humans beyond low Earth orbit (LEO). As for whether human transportation to and from LEO should be turned over to the private sector, the main theme of the Gingrich/Walker op-ed, NSS said it makes sense once the commercial services “have been demonstrated to be safe.”

Of the many opinion pieces about NASA’s new plan for human space flight, at least two conclude that Americans no longer care about sending humans into space. New York Times columnist Ross Douthat writes in The End of the Space Age that “‘Avatar,’ not NASA, probably represents the future of the American relationship to distant planets.” In today’s Wall Street Journal, Craig Nelson, author of “Rocket Men: The Epic Story of the First Men on the Moon,” offers that someday “Americans will once again insist on being at the forefront of manned space travel. They do not insist on it in 2010.”

Editor’s Note: NASA wants to convince everyone that its new plan does not mean the United States is abandoning human space flight, just that from now on it will be conducted by the private sector instead of the government. The perception, though, is that it’s the 1970s all over again. Worse, in fact, since then the shuttle was in development so there was a clear path forward even if it meant a 6-year hiatus in U.S. human space flight.

The profound change that the President and NASA are proposing deserves serious consideration. As Congress begins its debate over the proposal, perhaps it should seek a mechanism to more fully involve the public. As Douthat and Nelson make clear, it’s their future.

If nothing else, President Obama’s new plan for NASA has generated a lot of interest on the editorial pages of leading media outlets and elsewhere. Two definite “no” votes are from Harrison Schmitt and Charles Krauthammer.

Schmitt is the only scientist (Ph.D., geology) to walk on the Moon and a former U.S. Senator. A Republican, he hopes this year’s elections will change NASA’s course: “American leadership absent from space? Is this the future we wish for our progeny? I think not. Again, the 2010 elections offer the way to get back on the right track.”

Schmitt chaired the NASA Advisory Council during most of the time that Mike Griffin was NASA Administrator so his support for Griffin’s Constellation program is not surprising. The other op-ed is by Washington Post columnist Krauthammer (M.D., psychiatry). A critic of President Obama, he minces no words in opposing the plan: “Fifty years ago, Kennedy opened the New Frontier. Obama has just shut it.”