Hutchison and Nelson Blast "Campaign to Undermine" Human Spaceflight Program

Senators Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) and Bill Nelson (D-FL) issued a scathing statement today on what they call the “Campaign to Undermine America’s Manned Space Program.”

Referring to the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) story yesterday, the Senators complained that the Obama Administration’s “budget office” — the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) — continues to keep the independent cost assessment of the Space Launch System (SLS) and Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle by Booz Allen “under wraps” while a “wildly inflated set of NASA cost numbers was invented, based on an imaginary ‘acceleration’ of SLS development.” Those “contrived numbers” were “leaked” to the WSJ they assert.

They stress that “No one has proposed to accelerate development,” calling it a “convenient myth.” What they want is only to follow what was agreed upon in the 2010 NASA Authorization Act, an approach they say has been “validated repeatedly.”