Senate Defense Appropriations Subcommittee Adds Small Amount for RD-180 Replacement

The Senate Appropriations Defense Subcommittee approved its version of the FY2015 defense appropriations bill this morning (July 15).   It allocates $25 million to initiate a competitive program to build a new domestic rocket engine to replace Russia’s RD-180, in sharp contrast to the House version of the bill, which added $220 million.  The subcommittee also recommends $125 million for an additional competitive space launch.

Subcommittee chairman Dick Durbin (D-Illinois) said the bill allocates $125 million “to accelerate full and open competition among any certified rocket providers,” but SpaceX is the company he specifically cited.  His enthusiasm is based on a hearing the subcommittee held in March.  Recounting that at the hearing “folks from SpaceX said ‘we’re ready to compete'”, Durbin said “Let’s give them the chance.”  His hope is that competition will reduce launch costs, though he acknowledged that the United Launch Alliance (ULA), which essentially holds a monopoly on most national security space launches today, is “taking good steps to control costs.”  

Durbin said the March hearing also highlighted U.S. dependence on Russia’s RD-180 rocket engine for one of the ULA launch vehicles — Atlas V — used for national security launches.  “America’s access to space should not depend on cooperation” with a country “that sadly has dreams of empire at the expense of its innocent neighbors,” Durbin cautioned.  Therefore the bill “accelerates investment” in a new competition to build a U.S. liquid rocket engine to replace the RD-180.  “Both development and use are directed to be fully competitive so U.S. rocket companies can lead and have a fair shot at developing and using this new technology,” Durbin stressed.

The amount that was added, however, was quite small in comparison to the House-passed version of the defense appropriations bill.  That bill adds $220 million for a new rocket engine development program.  The White House opposed the addition as “premature” while it continues to evaluate options that could lead to multiple awards that would “drive innovation, stimulate the industrial base, and reduce costs through competition.”  The Senate subcommittee allocated only $25 million.  Its action appears to be more in line with the White House position.

The markup was short and sweet, as appropriations subcommittee markups are these days, with most controversial matters debated at full committee markup or on the floor.  Full committee markup of this bill is scheduled for Thursday.

The only other Senator to address space issues during the markup was Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska).  Referring to Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Maryland), who chairs the full Senate appropriations committee (as well as its Commerce-Justice-Science subcommittee), Murkowski said “the chairman of the full Appropriations Committee knows that both Alaska and the Delmarva peninsula are home to private space launch facilities.  We are seeing them play an increasing role … in national security space launch and this bill recognizes their importance, I think, for the first time.  I appreciate what you’ve done here.”

The text of the bill is not yet publicly available, so it is not clear precisely what Murkowski is referring to since SpaceX, which figured so prominently in Durbin’s comments, does not launch either from Alaska’s Kodiak Launch Complex or from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS) at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility on the coast of Virginia.  (That part of the Virginia is on a peninsula that also includes parts of Delaware and Maryland, hence its nickname Delmarva — Delaware, Maryland, Virginia.)   Orbital Sciences Corp. launches its Minotaur and Antares rockets from Wallops.  Orbital also launches Minotaur from Kodiak and Lockheed Martin used Kodiak for a launch of its Athena rocket in 2001 and plans to use it again for Athena now that it is reinstating that program.  What the bill says or does about private space launch facilities, and whether it is only for Kodiak and Wallops or for any private space launch facilities (SpaceX is planning to build one in Texas) is not mentioned in the summary of the bill posted on the committee’s website.