good morning this hearing will come to order then good morning i want to welcome our witnesses and i look forward to your testimony today's hearing continues the subcommittees oversight of nasa is major program areas and will focus on the agency's exploration initiative in many ways nasa says exploration initiative exemplifies both the strengths and weaknesses of the agency at this point in its history we're going in two thousand and four to implement the president's for space exploration nasa is initiative was conceived to be a broad and sustained program of human robotic exploration of the solar system it was to be a step by step approach to exploration and starting with the completion of the international space station and subsequent retirement of the space shuttle development of a new human space transportation system and a return to the moon as an initial step in a long term journey to explore the solar system it was also to include an ambitious set of robotic exploration activities in scientific investigations yet from its beginning nasa is exploration initiative has suffered from chronic underfunding with a once in a generation project to develop a new space transportation system  shoehorn into a nasa budget that in some years hasn't even kept pace with inflation that same underfunding has led to cutbacks in the space station research and critical exploration technology investments that will be needed if nasa is initiative is to go beyond simply being a repeat of the sixty's era apollo project albeit on a somewhat larger scale this is in no way a criticism of the dedicated nasa team that is developing the systems needed to take america's astronauts below earth orbit they are working hard to make the best of a tough situation and we want them to succeed to that end today we will hear from nasa about what has been accomplished to date and we will examine what nasa is going to have to do to bring those new systems into operation that we also have to take a hard look at what's it's going to take to make the initiative both stay noble and worth the money a good number of my colleagues agree with me that we should be investing more nasa but there is necessarily  consensus on what those funds should be used to accomplish for example i think exploration is a worthwhile endeavor and i do support it howard is also clear to me that nasa score missions in aeronautics and science especially are science and climate research highly relevant to addressing the nation's needs and must be better supported than they have been thus if the next administration keeps nasa budget as constrained as it has been under this administration and i certainly hope it doesn't in the pace of exploration is going to have to be adjusted to ensure that nasa is other important activities do not wind up being cannibalized yet whether or not nasa gets more money we also need to ensure that the money nasa does get is spent as effectively as possible at a minimum nasa needs to follow a good program management practices and do its best to control costs something the g a o witness will discuss nasa also need to do a better job of keeping congress informed of its progress and critical initiatives so we can determine if they're proceeding in the right way and on budget in addition it means that we need to make sure that nasa is program is structured in a way that ensures that the critical long term exploration of research and technology investments will be made it also means that we need to ensure that the activities we carry out on the moon don't become a counterproductive drain on nasa's and the nation's resources but instead help further our long term exploration goals finally it means we need to ensure that we don't succumb to attempt taishan to rerun a space race that we already won nearly forty years ago instead i think we need to be reaching out to fashion a new internationally cooperative approach to exploration that more than any nationalistic lee driven competition will ensure that u s leadership in space is maintained in a way that will deliver the maximum benefits to our citizens for decades to come we've got a great deal to discuss today and we have an expert panel to help us sort through all of these issues and again want to welcome you and we appreciate your willingness to testify before us today the chair now recognizes mr feeney for an opening statement the ranking member thank you mr chairman and i'm grateful for your holding today's same port hearing on nasa's exploration initiative i also want to thank all of our witnesses for coming one of whom is a wearing a proud florida gators cap and we're always glad to see florida gators here in our presence your perspectives and expertise immensely valuable as we carry our oversight responsibilities and prepare the legislature to reauthorize nasa human space exploration defines america as the world's preeminent space faring nation images of shuttle apollo are deeply ingrained in american culture both our domestic version and the version exported to the rest of the world thousands sometimes hundreds of thousands of americans and foreigners come to florida space coast to witness a shuttle launch and for the latest launch altitude twenty eight a sizable congressional delegation flew down after final votes in order to watch the night turn in today in front of their very eyes for all the respect and support i have for nasa satellite missions those launches simply don't draw those crowds  is human space flight program is in the midst of a once in a generation transformation brought about by the columbia accident we're excited by the promise of human exploration beyond low earth orbit for the first time in over thirty five years nasa is constellation program  developing the orion crew exploration vehicle and the aries one the aries five launch vehicles this architecture we have nasa the ability to return americans to the moon by twenty nine hundred and to establish a scientific outpost so we can gain the expertise to advance human exploration beyond the moon but these changes come with significant costs earlier this week nasa released preliminary estimates of the impact of human spaceflight workforce from this transition to a new generation of space flight because i know this hearing is not intended to focus on transition issues but i do want to reiterate my concern about the length of this gap and the potential loss of the skilled work force necessary to continue human spaceflight under the constellation program mr chairman i understand that you intend to hold a hearing later this year to examine nasa's shuttle transition planning and i'm very grateful for that proposed hearing look for to working with you on that hearing because it is of utmost importance to florida's space coast and i believe the nation as well in the wake of the columbia accident the columbia accident investigation board correctly observed that america's human spaceflight program lacked a strategy and a direction we have halted that drift america has established a strategy and an architecture of how to achieve our goals now we need stability without enough turmoil and change if we change the strategy architecture every few years we will revert to pre columbian behavior and we will have similar results including the very real prospect of being grounded for several years while other nations especially china strive for space preeminence and i am grateful for the chairman's remarks about avoiding a unnecessary space race i intend to go to china the third week of april for the first global space some adding this off the script i think it is it is certainly very aggressive of the chinese to host the first global space summit but not very surprising a given their announced intentions to be very aggressively pursuing a space capabilities the columbia accident investigation board correctly noted it is the view of the board that the previous attempts to develop a replacement vehicle for the aging shuttle represent a failure of national leadership since columbia we collectively the president congress and the space community have demonstrated the necessary leadership the chairman's right we haven't funded adequately all of the things we have nasa to do but in terms of establishing a vision that is very doable that will lead us into the next stage of space exploration i think that all of us have done our part in a relatively responsible way over five years we've come a long way since those terrible dark days in february of two thousand and five let's keep that progress in mind as we look forward to the challenges ahead i look forward to hearing from our witnesses thank you mr chairman thank you mr feeney if there are members who wish to submit additional opening statements your statements will be added to the record without objection so ordered let me turn now to our excellent panel of witnesses i'd like to introduce each one of you in turn then we'll return to our first witness and he can begin the testimony this morning first we do have dr richard gilbert who's nasa's associate administrator for the exploration systems mission directorate next to him is christina chaplin who is a director of acquisitions sourcing management the government accountability office third on the panel dr know him hers was a former lockheed martin executive and worked on the apollo program during his tenure at nasa and finally we have a dr kathryn thorton who is a veteran of four shuttle missions and is a currently professor associate dean for the school of engineering and applied science the university of virginia welcome again to all of you as our witnesses should know spoken testimony is limited to five minutes each after which the members of the subcommittee will have five minutes each to ask questions we will start to with dr gilbert thank you mr chairman mr chairman members of the subcommittee thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today as nasa's associate administrator for the exploration systems mission directorate when i joined after i had to dreams one was to be an astronaut and the other was to be part of the next moon landing heart murmur dash my first dream but here i am today thrilled to be leading the effort to achieve my second dream but has happened since americans first landed on the moon today space affects everything we do in more ways than i can count here today the global space economy exceeds more than two hundred twenty billion dollars reinstates r five hundred dollars million five hundred million dollars commitment to the commercial orbital transportation services program it also demonstrates the president's continued commitment to our nation's leadership in space especially during a time when there are other competing demands for our nation's financial resources but just ability is critical to maintaining that march twenty fifteen an initial operating capability for the iranian crew exploration vehicle and the aries one crew launch vehicles therefore i asked for congress of support for this budget request as well as your continued support for massive efforts to besley transition its workforce and infrastructure from shuttle to constellation two thousand and nine budget quest also continues our evers to return americans to the moon by tw twenty on the moon astronauts plan to build an outpost to support a long term human presence there and in doing so the moon will become a proving ground for technologies needed for huge future human missions to mars and other destinations that is put together a team of some of its best scientists and engineers to work on the lunar program and we also are working with thirteen other international space agencies and the commercial sector on this important endeavor today constellation is making real progress we're testing real hard florida together the lunar reconnaissance orbiter and the lunar crater observation and sensing satellite aboard the spacecraft will help nasa scout for potential lunar landing sites and outposts for someone like me who started my career  technology this is an exciting time to be leading the team that has built our nation's next generation of human spaceflight vehicles the future astronauts will ride to orbit in the orion crew capsule on top of the aries one there is one first ages solid rocket booster derived from the shuttle's four segment booster its second stage we use a j two x engine and will provide the navigation guidance control and propulsion for the rockets continued ascent although the data access heritage parts the j two x is essentially a new engine because of the significant right redesign required for the aries one propulsion having grown up around rocket engine stands i am very confident though that nasa will be successful in developing this new engine to support both the upper stage and the eventual departure stage that were turned humans to the moon or with a new rocket development program there will be some technical challenges one of the most recently discovered issues is a problem with rust oscillation produced by the five same first stage boos inside the solid rocket motor similar to the weight that follows a fast moving boat is a problem that is common to all solid rocket motors and one we take seriously when we were in our early analysis indicated there would be high levels of vibration throughout the entire vehicle nasa assigned our best talent investment decisions for the air is one project let me assure you that nasa fully intends to make sure that all of our projects not just the aries one reached the appropriate level of maturity at each milestone before proceed further mr chairman and members of the committee nasa looks forward to continuing with you on this exciting journey of exploration a journey that will drive new technologies and able new economic activity and engage and inspire our technical and engineering workforce we do not live in a static world other countries will explore the cosmos whether the united states does or not and these will be the great nations in the years and centuries to come bold plans and strategies require bold leadership and robust follow through and together we can create a legacy for generations to come thank you for the opportunity to appear before us today and i would be pleased to answer any questions you might have for recognize ms chappell as i notice you have some models here maybe for the viewers in the five segment solid rocket booster that's derived from the space shuttle program as the first stage they are in section up at the top is the new upper stage that will carry the house the j two x engine that we're developing and then the y portion at the very tip is the service aries five which uses a lot of the common hardware that we're using with the aries one we again have the to five segment solid rocket boosters on each side we're using a core stage which has five r s sixty eight engines which are the engines of power the delta five rockets today the delta four rockets today we had their departure stage at the top here which is actually use the same common j two x engine and then we also have a top to ferry and it houses the lunar surface access module we actually have the crew the re it's much more efficient with the lunar program to use the solar arrays and maximize the energy and minimize the amount of batteries and other types of things we have to have thank you for that tutorial chaplain floors yours thank you  thanks for inviting me here today to discuss our work related to nasa future space exploration efforts we have been focusing our work primarily on the aries once launch vehicle and the orion crew exploration vehicle as they are among the first major efforts conducted this part of the constellation program and represent a substantial investment over seven billion in contracts has already been awarded and the only two hundred thirty billion is estimated to ultimately be spent over the next two decades for constellation nasa is currently working toward clinton era design reviews for these vehicles this is a milestone that successful organizations use to make hard decisions about whether a program should proceed forward with development the phase leading up to limit their design review is time for discovery and risk reduction as such it is expected that there will be unknowns as to whether program plans can be executed within scheduled balls as well as what they will ultimately cost best practice organizations close these knowledge gaps by the time they commit to programs which is usually shortly after the plenary design review have identified several issues that should be under close watch for the areas one and the ryan projects leading up to their plenary design review is these include first progress in requirements definition and related impact on weight of the vehicles nasa cannot accurately estimate costs and schedules until requirements are defined at this time requirements such as those relating to how the orion will return to earth are among those still in development can progress in technology development particularly with the j two x upper stage engine and the orion heat shield since they require significant work our reviews of space programs consistently find that the later technology discovery occurs in a program the higher the risk of cost increases and schedule delays the schedule slippage delays and setting requirements and technology development have resulted in some schedule slips which may increase costs moreover there's a high degree of concurrency in both schedules while this approach can save time it can also create delays and cost increases since additional rework may be required to address unexpected problems or progress in resolving thrust articulation problems as dr goldberg has just commented nasa recognizes this is a serious risk and it is taking reasonable measures for dealing with it progress toward adding testing resources existing facilities have been insufficient so far to adequately test the j two x engine and the heat shield for the orion however nasa has appropriately increased attention to this area too in responding to our recent report on aries one nasa agreed that these are high risk areas and committed to delay plenary design reviews if it is not yet attained critical knowledge on them this is important  the long term nature of the vision its inherent challenges and the magnitude of the investment at stake make it vital that the right decisions be made early on and that senior leaders have the right knowledge going forward so they can make informed decisions it is also important that nasa continue to be realistic and open about the progress it is making and to be willing to make changes to the program if technical problems cannot be solved with overly compromising performance this is difficult to do the large government acquisition the need to make adjustments is often unwelcome news particularly if they may require more funding or time than originally promised but pushing off problems and fear of losing commitments to a program invariably leads to much more time delays and cost growth and thus less resources for other needed investments we appreciate the candor of the program officials today and we look forward to continued discussions  statement and i'm happy to answer any questions you have thank you very much dr henderson floors y current architecture and international cooperation mr feeney i appreciate your recognition of the gator also propose that the gator might be a good logo for the congressional protection program ever since sputnik there has been a not always constructive tension between space science and human space flight this is based on the fact that they are largely two different cultures driven by different motivations each has much to offer the other as was early demonstrated in the apollo program during which incredible leaps of scientific knowledge accrued despite the fact that apollo was politically motivated but its also became a major component of skylab shuttle space lab and the international space station the national research council space studies board undertook a major review which i had the honor of chairing a science to human spaceflight in human spaceflight in the one nine hundred ninety s with the goal of improving science contributions to human spaceflight and gaining from it in conducting the study it became evident that there are management principles that if followed improve the return on investment those form part of the basis of the management recommendations in the recent space studies board report the scientific context for the exploration of the moon they were extended to account for specifics of the proposed lunar exploration architecture briefly we propose that nasa develop an integrated human robotic program recognizing the incredible leap of capability in robotics as evidenced by the current mars exploration rovers making clear the priority between multiple is essential to minimizing misunderstandings for example a lunar outpost primarily as a stepping stone preparation for eventual mars human exploration versus the missions which are primarily for science benefit an apollo style management structure can help in productively merging the two cultures of science and human spaceflight given the almost fifty year years between apollo and current plans for return to the moon by two thousand and twenty or so  imperative to bring advanced technology and instrumentation into play both for lunar surface applications and for upgrading the capability to analyze return samples many of these recommendations have major budget implications for both nasa as exploration mission and science mission directorate given the already stressed nasa budget is not at all clear that nasa can implement an effective lunar exploration program its goals are more ambitious than apollo yet without the generous funding that enabled apollo a go as you pay for last will ultimately cost much more than an optimal the funded program as we have painfully seen with the international space station the vision for space exploration contains a goal of eventually exploring mars with humans a goal that today is impossible to accomplish in a technical if not budgetary sense the lunar architecture for based largely on the purse precept of using an incremental approach to developing the eventual capability to explore mars with humans the overall planning implies a leap from lunar exploration to going to mars sometime in the decade of the thirty's even that the lunar program can develop only a very small part of the capability to explore mars the absence of a stepwise approach using for example missions to libration points and or asteroids begs for development of a total exploration architecture so it should include a lunar exit strategy that will avoid the kinds of issues we now face in trying to transition from the shuttle and the space station we must not ignore the contributions we made to eventual human exploration of mars by the robotic mars exploration program it is a highlight of nasa as programs one that has truly captured the public interest is revealing  mars not envisioned a short four years ago and provides further reason to believe that mars holds the greatest likelihood of advancing our understanding of the potential of life originating elsewhere than on earth recent nasa cuts to determining what it is that humans will eventually do on mars and as important obtain data critical to determining the very feasibility of such masters program plans are clearly ambitious required and desirable is that many of them be done now is international collaboration this can take advantage of both the increased abilities and desires of potential partners obtaining program commitments and proper budgetary support in which congress can help and relieving some of the more burdensome aspects of the international traffic in arms regulations can go far to help bring about productive collaboration's thank you mr chairman members of the sub chairman thank you for inviting me to be here today my name is catherine thornton i am a professor at the university of virginia but i appear here today not in my faculty role but as an organizer and co chair of an independent workshop entitled examining the vision balancing exploration and science that was held last february at stanford university the workshop was co hosted by stanford university department of aeronautics and astronautics and the planetary society other organizers were co chair scott hubbard from stanford university lu friedman from the planetary society and wes huntress of the carnegie institution of washington the intent of the workshop was to critically examine the current implementation of the vision space exploration as announced by president bush in january two thousand and four the vision as originally put forth was rich in scientific goals aimed at finding life elsewhere in the universe pointed toward more mars as the ultimate target for human exploration and couched exploration of the moon in those terms four years later implementation of the vision has focused on a small subset of the original concepts finishing the international space station for our international partners retiring the space shuttle by two thousand and ten developing new launch vehicles and a new crew vehicle and the moon as the near term goal of human exploration much of the originally planned funding for the human exploration mandates has not materialized and instead has come from science aeronautics and technology with these concerns is the motivation the workshop was planned as a two day behind closed doors discussion of the goals and implementation of the presidential directive and the issue of balance between exploration and science organizers sought to bring together scientists astronauts engineers policy analysts and industry executives in a single conversation where insides across traditional boundaries could occur invitations were extended to individuals whom the organizers felt would bring great diversity of thought as well as expertise each participant was invited to take off his or her corporate institutional or advocate hat and engage in discussion that will help this nation have the best possible space exploration program to the extent that the outcome might be critical of current plans progress or goals criticism was intended to be constructive and consistent with strong support for space exploration as expected lively discussions ensued there was some doubt that fifty individuals selected specifically for their differing specialties and divergent views could reach a consensus on the goals and directions for america's space exploration program over the course of a two day workshop therefore there was no pre determined workshop report or product rather the expectation that these discussions would lead to further study and output in some forme nevertheless workshop participants did reach a consensus on four substantive statements which in essence indorse the vision as announced in two thousand and four those statements are listed in my written testimony as well as in the workshop joint communiqu i'd like to expand on the workshop consensus from my own perspective it's time for humans to go beyond low earth orbit to be sure the i s f must be completed in order to fulfill obligations to our international partners but in the longer term the space shuttle and the i s f served anchor humans in low earth orbit and orbiting the earth as thrilling as it is is not exploring space this nation must move forward with the development of a space transportation system that will do more than just orbit the earth but will enable humans to explore in space although mars and beyond was as a goal of human exploration is a consensus of workshop participants the question of intermediate steps was debated at great length with no overall agreement a stepping stone approach to mars might include sorties to the moon the sun earth le grand points near earth asteroids in the martian moons the important point is that each of these stepping stones whichever they may be should advance the science and technology needed for the next more ambitious objective and eventually human exploration of mars and none should be considered as permanent outposts that would again ankara's in place for decades exploration should be goal driven not schedule driven practical engineering for meeting exploration milestones is bound by three major constraints budget schedule and requirements if you change one of these three the other two must change accordingly particularly if the budget is over constrained schedule requirements musky of it's important to remain focused on the goal not the schedule and proceed as efficiently and safely as technology and budget will allow sustained human exploration requires international collaboration we can debate the value of science objectives and exploration goals but the value of international cooperation in space ventures over the last decade cannot be challenged inviting meaningful international participation in the exploration architecture may reduce cost accelerate timelines provide additional capability bring a measure of stability to numerous budget cycles and administrations while engaging rivals and allies in a shared commitment to extend the boundaries of humankind into new domains in summary it is time to go beyond with humans as explorers to do so we must have a space transportation system that will enable humans to travel to the moon mars and beyond without any debate of destinations for human exploration is pointless and finally with a goal clearly in focus budgets and schedules must be balanced for an affordable sustainable and successful space exploration program mr chairman i thank you and the subcommittee for your staunch support of the space exploration program and the opportunity to express my views today and i would be pleased answer any questions speaking as a member of this committee i want to express my appreciation for the stanford workshop and you undertook that effort with the same spirit of risk that you undertook for missions to shuttle as an astronaut so thank you and i know the members of the with interest your term lively to describe the discussions you had we have a lot of lively discussions here the united states house of representatives as well at this point will open our first round of questions a chair recognizes him self for five minutes being contemplated that would alter add tasks or change performance requirements and if so what are they why are they needed and what's the cost impact of the changes to questions i know well as you're aware we've got all the stack under contract that we finished all the one contracts by the and of the two thousand and seven we have been working with lockheed martin in the rye in reno we had done one contract pod in april of last year that accounted for point nine billion to four point three billion right now we're in the process of going to p d our so we've got our best take on the requirements that we have and we're negotiate with lockheed martin will inform this committee as soon as we have those negotiations farm those are all negotiated terms that are within the reserves of the of the project so we don't expect that there should be any challenges presented by that and we'll be happy to report those thank you the committee looks forward to those ongoing reports and any additional information you might want to add to fill out that the question i asked is chappell if i could turn to you what do you see as the greatest risks to the successful development of the constellation system and are you satisfied that nasa has developed a sufficiently detailed risk management process to monitor and mitigate risk for aries and we have an assess their risk management process in and of itself but we've certainly relied on it to help us identify the risk areas and it's been very useful in that regard so i think the technical and requirements risks are very well understood when it comes to developing risk mitigation strategies the important thing is to see how they are tied to dollars and schedule and i believe that's what nasa has been doing in terms of the overall risk we just see going forward they're pretty much what i mentioned in the testimony at this point it's making sure requirements are fully defined by the time you pulmonary design review and then gaining all the knowledge you need on technology development especially with the components that are required a bit of new work like the j two x engine and going forward did two things that are will always be looking at is are things like funding commitments and making sure they're sustained we never you have disruptions they have a lot of reverberating effects on a program so if there are future things like continuing resolutions we would be looking to see what the subsequent impacts of those things are things you just mentioned requirements changes or contract changes which are normal at this point in the cycle what we would look at going further once you've committed to the program you've pas commentary design review what kinds of changes do you make at that point and what kind of consequences they have on the program when you mention continuing resolutions of course the united states congress plays a role in getting resolution s and how do you propose to mitigate them yes or mr chairman we've worked with jail in their report and we appreciate the responsibility they have in reporting to congress we always want to maintain visibility and transparency so that you're comfortable that we're spending the taxpayers dollars wisely so we've worked them closely on our reports and we agree with their findings and are implementing the recommendations you asked about risks probably the biggest risk to me is not really technical it's the stability that was mentioned in some of the other opening statements of the program the funding ability for us to stay the course and be able to go through the administration changes in congressional cycles and be able to stay on a longer term pa it really does take that long term commitment to execute a program of this magnitude is the first time we've had a new space policy direction in thirty five years and it doesn't turn on a dime so i again that's kind of my overarching what keeps me awake at night problem but if you get down to the second one technically integration across all the different elements the ryan the first stage stage the arayan making sure that everything is properly integrated is one of the biggest challenges in my mind we have other technical issues new rocket development program we'll have amongst those and we have got some of the thrust oscillation issues that you've been hearing about and i mentioned in my opening statement to me that's nothing that's alarming it's nothing that was unexpected these are the types of things you run across when you start to develop new rockets and try to integrate them and you get smarter as you try to mature towards p t r j two x was also mentioned we've taken strides to add extra hardware to eight to test and to do some more early testing that we know will be challenged to do we typically know that there are as many as twenty nine rework cycles in developing a new engine and so you require an awful lot of testing to do that but we feel like now we have a robust test program and a test plan and we're marching for with that another risk of the launch abort system which is a new system it actually contains three new solid rocket motors they're small scale but they are new new solid rocket development programs but we a have a robust test program to go address that we've been doing some of the early motor firing we actually just have delivered the pad abort one arayan simulator out to dry in flight research facility to be outfitted with avionics that will be sent to white sands national missile range where we will be doing an actual pad abort test by the end of this calendar year and we have a series of those board tests planned to prove out the concepts before we actually fly and put humans on board pointed out some of the challenges as we manage the program into the future you've got an extensive report which we appreciate do you agree with this dr gilbert that despite the technical issues and despite the definitional issues that you describe that the biggest risk to the program is stability in congressional and presidential leadership in the coming years i think because it is a very long term effort that  commitment is absolutely needed through administrations as well as funding stability the one of the number one things that tends to disrupt programs that we review our funding should have stops and starts and it's it's really hampers what the program managers are trying to do in terms of execution especially in space efforts where you have a lot a long lead items that you need to purchase at the same time there's other common things that programs tend to face that don't have to do with funding and those issues are like requirements changes and some technical challenges and i think those are always going to be present and they need to be watched as this program moves forward so some of those you've laid out in your report would you say greta it's fair to say that while your report is very comprehensive it knowing the challenges ahead that there have been no serious or fatal flaws thus far in  advancing towards the program on that's is part none that we have determined to be a fatal flaw of dr gilbert while our best scientists have been preparing to take humans beyond low earth orbit you may or may not have noticed that the americans have been involved in a political election year and one of the potential collateral effects of that is that we may in fact have a continuing resolution which is chapel and a lot of us on this committee you know would like to see something different but if we have a continuing resolution for zero nine that effectively provides a weight funding what does that do for the march twenty fift schedule that nasa is trying to obtain congressman we we've looked at that and it depends on the length of the of the continuing resolution if it's a part year resolution and we do wind up with an  i thought your report was very comprehensive with respect to congress whose role how should we take the challenges that you have laid out and what should congress be focused on should we be focused on de nitional issues milestones critical decision points program review you know if you were the chairman and ranking member what would you be planning to do the next three for y r oversight rather than giving funding records which is a given we always focus on several key milestones in a development program where we know that best practice organizations have gained certain pieces of knowledge at that point that makes them know it it's ok to move forward they have the assurance they need that what they're trying to do can be executed well the the first major milestone is this plenary design review coming up and what we'd like to see at that point is whether new technologies being developed are mature to a point where you can estimate cost and time and whether requirements are stable so do you know what you're setting out to achieve and do you know that you have the resources to achieve that and that would be this upcoming primary design review then the midpoint of a program is usually the critical design review and there we really look to see whether design is stable and the the common measure that uses the number of design drawings that are releasable and  indicator there if there's about ninety percent drawings releasable you have a good assurance that design is stable and you're ready to move forward to the next stage is then when we get close to production we look at some production indicators whether the processes that are going to be used in production are stable or not so but those three key gates there's indicators you can use to see how the programs for grassing in addition to that we always track things like  software growth and whether assumptions about the use of heritage technologies and hardware are still valid in the program and we also track things like growth because in space programs that tends to be a particular issue with weight just creeps up during the development and if it's not addressed mr chairman my time has expired i hope with the indulgence the committee we may have an opportunity for a second round subject of votes but i would like to point out  if i may that ms kaplan is report is very comprehensive she did state in her testimony that she hopes nasa will continue to be as candid as it has been thus far and i think we ought to recognize that candor alluded to a job that all of us here in the committee have been through our presidential potential presidential nominees i'm counting on carson feeney to ensure the center mccain understands the importance of the exploration initiative and i know congressman lampson and i and other members on this so that i will make sure that senator obama and senator clinton know it's not only as important nasa but it's important the country's economic if i can respond just briefly i want to assure the chairman that i along with some great leaders at the space coast and around the on that note it's a great pleasure to recognize the chairman of subcommittee on energy environment the member from texas mr lampson for five minutes thank you mr chairman mr feeney get ready to make that make that presentation again as soon as you possibly can and i think you're certainly right it is indeed time for humans to go beyond low earth are but i just hope that those humans are from the united states of america that we don't lose the commitment that we've been talking about here and let someone else be this to it so obviously that's why we're here and i hope that we can we can keep our focus understand what unbelievable returns we have gotten for our standard of living and quality of life with a significant funding increase to the constellation program on the order of a billion or two billion dollars what would you use the money for it in specific terms and how much of an impact would it extra funding have the initial operating capability at the sixty five percent confidence level that we're currently holding back to september of two thousand and thirteen we would simply have the reserves in the years that we need to address the kind of problems that we see that would bring us back into that twenty thirteen timeframe i personally would like to also look at adding more robust flight test programs that's something that we can never do enough of is is fly what we test what we've you want to always fly and learn in the early test programs because all the ground analysis and ground tests never really quite fill in all the gaps that a flight has programmed if u s access to the international space station was accelerated by this extra funding would this have a commensurate effect on the projected human lunar landing date right now we're just in the early formulations for the lunar humanly return and it was stated our current goal is twenty nineteen to put boots back on the moon so certainly progress in the in the early stages of the aries one in the arayan would certainly make that much more higher confidence and potentially all that but it's a little far in the future for us to put that kind of fideli was that it could accelerate the constellation programs initial operational capability date to twenty thirteen with an additional two billion dollars is highly optimistic you go on to state that given the linear nature of a traditional test analyzed six test cycle even large funding increases offer no guarantee a program acceleration given the difficult situation we find ourselves in with the possibility of a five year gap what credible options do we have for closing that gap if we don't add more money to the constellation program i think i agree with what dr gilbert was saying that the funding could be used to  increase your confidence levels of hitting that two thousand and thirteen date it doesn't necessarily mean it's going to speed up activities that are already laid out on the books because they're already pretty highly compressed and testing does have to occur in a sequence so i'm i'm not doubting that big could have more confidence to the twenty thirteen date but what we meant to say was there's only so much you can do to shrink what's already there for  certain aspects of the program that would be the j two x engine and the upper stage that there's it's highly unlikely you're going to get those things to come what schedules they have now as i understand it the schedules are sort of laid out to to hit the twenty thirty mark actual money would help you have more confidence in that even that a sixty five percent confidence level you still have to recognize that's thirty five percent confidence you might not hit that you won't hit that date do agree with this chap assessment of the feasibility of accelerating the constellation program of more money was added if not what are your thoughts i think we're we're in agreement that the reserves allow us to tackle problems against that and thirteen schedule date but again our external commitment is the march twenty fifth team because we know we can sign up and meet that data at the sixty five percent i don't get hung up on sixty five percent because i really see this is a very cheap architecture people i've worked a lot of programs that have tried to replace the shuttle so i have some scars on underneath my jacket here the x thirty program was the ronald reagan era of the orient express that was an air breathers it was supposed to take us up to orbit a huge technological challenge and a revolutionary leap in technology also work the x thirty three and here again we're trying to go single stage to orbit it was composite vehicle had a linear spike engine which which worked beautiful using stage with j two x engines that have their roots in apollo heritage so for my mind the schedule i have very high confidence in the twenty fifteen date and with the and with the you know if there were additional money the sixty five percent would just mr lampson dr henderson i couldn't help but note that you mention the witness protection program earlier in your remarks and i know of no witnesses coming for this committee that's needed the witness protection program i do have or suggested given what i know about  lampson congressional district and mr rohrabacher congressional districts that they may at some point need the witness protection program and on that note i did want to recognize the general of california who is a very engaged and when i got here twenty years ago the witnesses were all older than i was and it seemed to be younger and over that twenty years i've noticed and i certainly understand and i've heard this before about the instability of our funding back that it has on a long term space program and in the long term goals let me just note that what i perceive is that instability of funding can be traced back to the fact that it's almost impossible for people to prioritize spending if we were able to prioritize to be in the beginning we would have much more stability that lack of ability to prioritize not just part of congress however also on the part of the space community  what i would ask you now martin of course you just came from what areas have been identified as the least justified spending that's going on in space space about things that were not justify that we're spending money on today i don't know that i can say is not justified but i think there was a pretty widespread agreement that what has happened on the space station has not captured the public attention and orbiting the earth over and over and over again is not capturing our holding the public's attention that what we need to do is have these goals maybe mars is too far so you're saying your recommendation would be to cut funds for the space station program has ever been able to tell me what is the least justified spending they're always willing to pay what we want to have they all have their own special program they want to plus up i seventy one john is what i think i said that we needed to balance responsibility it's also the responsibility of you and the rest of the people in the space community to tell us this now all we get is people telling us where we need to spend more well if we want stable spending we've got to find out where we need to spend less and get some good expertise advice on it so we can set priorities one of the things that i've seen that might help us out berms of making sure that we have the resources available to meet the goals which of course people are willing to say w to spend more money on is perhaps an initiative that would not cost money initiatives that would not cost actually more money but actually might give us more bang for the buck one would be terms base exploration and x and orbital sciences recently added we also have five unfunded partners in our space act agreements and we're very encouraged with the progress they're making and we want we would like really like to stimulate this market and get sponsibility of low orbit cargo delivery so i see that as budding and then we also are encouraged by google x prize and some of the other things that are really capturing the time is up of the there wouldn't be one last a lot and quickly  one of the other space commercialization is of course something that could give us another area that i have identified is more expanded space cooperation especially in the moon effort i would think anybody who is committed to this project would think that the present new president of states or the current president or hopefully a future president democrat or republican could go and see our friends in russia and i'll whole new initiative based on a partnership to go to the moon which russians have a lot to contribute which would then open up resources for us to expand our efforts so i call on the new president to make a new major initiative with russia if they can become partners in our thank you very much mr chip any other many other partners probably interested in that mr obama thank you involve that line of questions going on for a minute all had to do is another matter unless the chairman has turned over the gavel to me so i will be sitting in this chair for the next few minutes and with that as we move to the second round of questioning i will recognize my self as actually chair for the for the next five minutes and let me just throw a question out here  for your comments for just a minute i need to make a comment on putting aside for a moment the issues that we've discussed today about the best how best to implement human exploration program it appears to me that each of you thinks it's worthwhile for the one to get it i believe we need to lead space exploration to really be viewed as a global leader and meantime our global preeminence i also see it as a strategic capability whenever you see things that pop up all across  leadership that is probably the key reason as was mentioned here also that the moon is a stepping stone to mars some of the mars missions even if i were told that was my prime directive tomorrow i would not alter the path i'm on today we have so much to learn from the moon and be in three days away from home be able to prove out the technologies we need for a thirty month mission to mars i see that as a most responsible and achievable way we can build that kind of an architect i personally believe there's also a lot of science interest left to be discovered on the moon i mean we had the apollo program for all of its accomplishments we put twelve people on the surface for three day stints at a time and that's  land mass or surface area the size of africa and to say we've exhausted all the scientific discovery there doesn't compute to me anyway also my comment yes i'd like to to add to that even a lot more robotically humans can add to the accomplishment of science and do things which today and even in the near future are not possible to do robotically or would cost almost as much to robotically as they do by having the added cost of humans in space but also add that there is an element of humans that you do not do robotically some thirty years ago i was asked the question to me it was one of you don't transmit the human spirit through an antenna you need to be there in place in person so i do support it and i see that in the young people university of colorado the engineering students and science students they are motivated  space by two things robotics and human exploration but these kids have something in their psyche that says there's something exceptional about humans leaving earth and going out to you why do you feel that i have to say that's not based on any engineering analysis it's a guess based on murphy's law and its corollary that stuff happens in stuff that happens rarely accelerates the scheduler reduces the cost what questions and issues do you think are the most important ones for congress to consider as it examines nasa plans for exploration beyond low earth  well as been stated here the question is we want to get out of low earth orbit and go on to our exploration journey and again as i said that requires stability the also the and the answer trying to provide is not just  an apollo capability we're providing an expanded capability it really does build the architecture to go beyond lunar and on to mars and other destinations so our texture will put four people on the surface of the moon compared to that would be my answer what anyone else comment on that was for release but i would like to to know that everything that we have been in gold in mind and every step that happens for the next thirty prohibits not from doing research development studies on things that are exclusively related to human exploration of mars but has a perverse effect of preventing nasa from constructing an integrated exploration architecture in my mind one would start with requirements for a mars feed back into a lunar architecture rather than the other way around it but i would like to see the congress reverse that restriction so that nasa can better construct an integrated longterm architecture to assure that we're doing the most sensible things in our earlier steppingstones now be happy to give you the name of one or two members of congress who sickly feel very strongly in this area i love to go with you to go visit them i might even arrange that meeting if i could use you to participate as you want to make a comment or  the decision to go beyond low earth orbit it's a very costly endeavor so that kind of decision needs to be weighed against all the other discretionary priorities competing for funding and not just within nasa external to nasa it was mentioned earlier that we have issues with terms of prioritizing programs for funding and that's across the entire government so when you're looking at something like this it's very long the chairs invited me to participate in that meeting too and i'd be glad to go on that but on that note dr gilbert congress last year as a matter of policy for reasons of compromise which is what we have to do to get things done up here actually prohibited any money from being spent on the mars exploration program so at least for this year's budget we are prohibited from doing what dr hitter's has suggested has that significantly impacted n development of the constellation program well as they say it does have a somewhat chilling effect down at the lower levels because they say people engineers see that and they think we're not even to think of mars as opposed to the law the letter the language that says we will not spend two thousand dollars on anything specific that human return or human landing on mars so we're following the law we would hope to see that changed in future years we are trying to develop all of our lunar plans that will be extensible to mars and i think that's one of flexibility of architecture is that all the things that we are going to do need to do to survive in and prove out these technologies on the moon was eventually some day pay off for a mars mission and dr thorton mr lamson just asked a question about why it is important to have humans in space to do this exploration a number of scientists  pointed out that it's less risky it's less costly and more efficient for some purposes to send to send robots or to send machines note that one of the people who participated in your workshop said that humans should replace unmanned opportunities as soon as possible when exploration has transitioned from reconnaissance to meaning when on to say that human solve puzzles and find meaning in data albeit at a higher cost that are robotic surrogates i recently watched one of the new shows suggest that robots are being developed that can the how do i put this delicately become romantic partners for humans i'm delighted to hear somebody defend our species number one and number two where there are other people to participate network shot that gave in addition to what we've heard from dr gilbert and dr hinders reasons why humans need to be part of space we did talk about the goal of the science of exploration being different where humans can help science and science certainly enables the human expansion into the solar system the basic motivations for that is entirely different i had a conversation earlier in the week with a professor of anthropology about the migrations of humans around the planet over the last however many thousands of years in the he told me that it's it's cultures that don't recognize their limits that tend to expand and colonize well i hope that we don't recognize our limits and i hope that this the generation that decides that we've hit our limits we're not going anywhere else so i think it's that inspiration that is part of it i think that drive in us that is part of us and another workshop participant remarked they don't aim high schools after robots and so it's you know i think that is the drive for us to do and certainly we need to enable science the participant who said that humans should replace robots when exploration is transition from reconnaissance to meeting was actually one of the scientists and i was very surprised at the support from the scientist in the group for human exploration as a tool for them some were very adamant that there are things that humans can do that robots cannot and the intellectual the putting together the pieces the understanding you know which rock to go after isn't it to humans and we don't build robots to do that yet well i have some of the same fears you do that it might be if we're not careful twenty instances things do get accelerated around here and i'm afraid that we may need another sputnik type moment the chinese have over one hundred universities working on for example lunar rover equipment that's what they admit to most of it's done with in their defense department which is a very german noodle suggested that we hope we don't get back into a space race the truth matters we just don't know what the chinese long term intentions are they're not part of our international partners one of the reasons i'm going to china is to explore what they're up to and how we can cooperate if possible but if not i hope it doesn't take another sputnik type moment for us to reenergize our human exploration capabilities  and if it does i sure hope it doesn't come too late to put our program and the workforce and the talents back together it's a fear i think about every day so with that all you'll back thank you mr feeney i think i think sp the russians will maintain the world's worst human rights abuse i would be very  wary of any efforts that we have to ensure that the chinese do not overtake us and space endeavors just one of the ways we can do that is make sure they are being realistic limited resources that you have and i just want to make sure that people read this record of this hearing that they do not come away thinking there is any type of consensus that we should be making mars driving force for prioritizing our spending that is about us that would be perverse that would be giving up what we can accomplish today for something that is a majestic dream for few as we march to the future but that's not the way to have a realistic and a responsible policy or america's space exploration let me just for the record to say that i am one hundred percent in favor of that limitation saying that we should not be spending money on things that are exclusively or for pushing a future manned mars mission that we have other things we need to do do we need to fix the hubble telescope the chairman of this t system for identifying near earth objects that may indeed be a threat to the earth and should we establish a system on how to counteract those threats if we find something headed direction answer is yes should we be utilizing space so we can put a greater effort into conserving and utilizing the earth's resources for the benefit of human kind yes all of those things cost money it would be a horrible disservice to the people of the world and especially to the taxpayers united states for us to start prioritize your spending based on the idea of stepping on the stepping human foot on mars of thirty or forty years down the road that would be all horrible misuse of the money when we have other things that we need to do that can help people right now and we've talked about least i brought up today commercialization and cooperation and we talked about cooperation as well so but let me just say that this is not cooperation does not mean the united states of america should step back from developing its own technology and making sure that we are the leaders in space technology we can do to have by relying perhaps with others to help us  produce let's say the less advanced technologies or give us some insights one just one last question i see my time does anyone of this panel have any  me i'm just sorry does anyone on this panel have any information about any federal government agency including being involved in any way in  gravity research yes or no that i do know or don't know this right down the line i don't know i don't know ok this is just from thank you very much i have one question so if you don't mind we can continue our our questioning one of the more controversial decisions in the exploration program was the decision to develop the aries one and aries five launch vehicles rather than modifying the existing evolved expendable launch vehicle the family used by d o t in addition some have criticized nasa for developing two new launch vehicles rather than a single launch vehicle as proposed in the so called direct concept did nasa examine the alternative of using either and l v based architecture or the direct architecture instead of the aries wanted aries approach and if so why did you wind up rejecting those pro just didn't provide more traded very thoroughly in the vault expendable launch vehicle as a starting point for our current architecture it had several weaknesses as far as having a human right that rocket which is been expendable and not been human rated  it had it would have are also required an upper stage development like the aries one rocket so those are some of the challenges it also didn't address the heavy lift element that would required us to go with the aries five development we're doing here  so in terms of call schedule and risk it did not trade equally with the current architecture that we pick and that was reviewed in bed with the department of defense the government accountability office the congressional budget office and all agreed that we had picked the best scenario the other one you mention the direct launcher was there was a similar architecture like that that was in that that exploration systems architecture study the claims for the for the direct launcher we've actually had our projects look at that and we can justify based on laws of physics the performance that are being claimed by that approach so we don't claim to have a market on good ideas but we also like to go investigate and make sure they're credible and we believe we have the best architecture on the books dr gilbert dr sanders testified that bringing potential partners in early in the concept formation phase where they contribute to structuring the basic october and were intentional even the architecture certain elements of that open to international and commercial participation we've cornwallis certain things that we think are critical such as the trans the base transportation infrastructure to get there the  this kind of common to if you fly around the world today air traffic controllers speak english no matter which airline you're on and there's a reason for that so there are advantages to be in taking control of certain aspects of overly exploration but we also are very much engaged we have a global exploration strategy team the star in two thousand and six it was over thousand participants fourteen space agencies have participated we took over eight hundred objectives for the lunar environment both interested in participating with us nasa was involved in formulating the global exploration strategy framework cooperation what if any steps has nasa taken since then is there a concrete plan to implement the strategy and one of the next steps as you see them as there's a follow up working group that will continue to meet and mature ideas we're working with all the agencies as we go through our cycles of what we think the surface and power systems on the moon and all the other elements that are are for cooperation as they mature we want to match each country's desire ours and their strengths to what we believe they can fill in the in our architecture so i think we have communication with the international community and have an open results in an atmosphere of cooperating with you is such a headache i'm not sure i want to do it well to the degree that we can ease some of the restrictions and make it easier for our foreign partners to actually work directly with us and not feel as if they're outsiders that we let in only on a very selective basis i think we would get better cooperation i say this  intended and necessary functions so i'm not just to try to get rid of i don't but to work closely with not on the state department to see if there are ways to make it easier to bring our foreign partners into a closer cooperative environment with us anyone else want to comment mr kaplan i'm not an i tire expert but i know that g a o has issued several reports that show that programs can do a lot  to mitigate all the challenges with by tarp they do planning really very much early ahead and the joint strike fighter program was was one such program that had to learn how to think through what things they had to work with her several years in advance i also believe the space station that has probably given mass a lot of lessons learned in terms of working under i tire so they should go back now and see like what are we what kind of foundation do we need to lay now relief from the situation with respect to the soyuz which unfortunately will be serving the international space station for short period i knows that some folks that like me want to narrow or eliminate the gap have suggested that we e people the people who serve suggesting that must be buying lottery tickets to take care of their retirement years because that's that's a big gamble with respect by the way i think congressman rohrbacher is no longer here i think he said it right when there's no consensus about whether we ought to go to mars i think so that is clearly think that that is a great ultimate destination that will help inform i think as dr here's a suggested help inform the way we take the interim steps but in addition to mars are there other destinations near earth objects for example every dozen or couple dozen billion years we have an asteroid or you know that literally strikes or meter  goals of the vision as set out dr henares or dr thorton do you want to address that there are so there in between moon and mars there are some intermediate goals that we could look at both for technology development and for science one is near those missions could be a year or so and that could be our first step out of the earth's gravity well and longer duration flights also missions to the moons of mars which would be similar duration to mars missions but would not require landing  stress the systems today we would not dare undertake a three year transit to and from mars and developing that capability is not going to be easy but i think doing it incrementally not going for three years but maybe one month to the ground year in point and then many months maybe half a year to a near earth object could cause us to get on a path of incremental development also that would feed back into using  which still has some uses to develop some of these capabilities the international space station in which we have invested somewhere between thirty five and forty billion dollars just in development of launch costs we put a major investment there let us milk that investment not excessively obviously but let us take the best use of that investment to help develop these future capabilities well and on that note dr gilbert getting down into some of the details of the programs that we're working on the cops program was originally conceived to include opportunities for both cargo to the shuttle and crew and we have not funded any of the crew  potential is that a priority for nasa if it's something that you had to some additional funding would you prioritize what is the potential for developing capabilities before twenty fifteen when we have the sea the constellation up and working as a lawyer correct right now we are funding agreements only go through the un crew the cargo capability so we're currently doing analysis on what it would take to accelerate  that crude capability with our current cots partners of the commercial market right now and we're in the final stages of vetting that i would be happy to share that with the details of that with this committee but we view any and all sources to close the gap as ones we should be p specifically you're correct that this is under a different kind of funding mechanism and traditionally government agencies don't get that same kind of insight that they have when it's more traditional contracting mechanism but as i understand it in this case nasa does have some insight into these the gates that the cuts program will be passing through things like critical design review and the flight readiness testing so again just as with the aries and the orion at these key gates you want to take some criteria and see how well the programs bounce up against that including technology readiness design reading this production readiness  there's a pretty important test coming up on space x their return to flight mission for their falcon one vehicle and that will tell us a lot of if they have good standing going forward for participating with th we the first element of cost that we funded in exploration is a space act agreement and that's where the nasa is is basically co investors in developing the technology and we track them and their milestones and that includes the reviews it that that  milestones they're all technical problems that we would normally expect any type of a new rocket development program so that resulted in a six month slip from their original plan demo cargo in september of  here i mention that i'm going to try and i have some real concerns because i don't believe we know the long term intentions of the chinese i think that they'll be fairly friendly until after the summer olympics this year after that we you know a lot of us just don't know what  the their intentions are but their capabilities with respect to developing deep blue water naval capabilities or medic increase in defense funding and especially in space are very impressive and i think we have to pay close attention having said that one area that i sort of lean towards media cooperation with the chinese is to share the potential capability for the chinese shanshu vehicle to look up with the space station without necessarily agreeing to let them do it or not it would be an alternative to relying on the russians for the potential development of cop screw capabilities does anybody have some last minute advice before i head off to beijing on that specific add i would encourage you on your trip i was participating in the seventy's in working with the soviets in a six not so fun trips to russia at that time of soviet union fuck is good in it but in that environment which was not a friendly environment at top levels during the cold war we did make good progress were able to i think use the space program as a political arm if you will and push things jointly that contributed to furthering the eventual soviet union now russia is more democratic open so i look on the space program as an opportunity to help work some of the world's political problems thank you and thank you mr chairman thank you mr feeney good questions will need some beefing up consequently the agency is said to be studying a very of of options to boost the lift capability of a big new rocket and if this is so is this so first of all and if so what what options are under consideration yes sir this is a very challenging mission and as i said before we are putting much much more capability on the lunar surface to be able to go to a six month outpost that requires a lot of lift capability to translate or injection and right now  our current target carries five to sixty five metric tons of left and we see that with the capabilities that were maturing for the lunar architecture that we would like to push that beyond that and we have concepts now to take it up to seventy five metric composite casings for the five segment booster intially making them not recovering them making them expendable and saving some weight in the parachute system so we've got a suite of options that we're considering and again we'll just have to mature those but it is a challenge what's it like to do to the five year funding requirements well there is five funding really doesn't kick in until twenty eleven so right now our current budget these are all just trades that we're looking at and concept trades is a design mature so right now i don't see any impact on our current budget horizon but we certainly would inform the congress if we sell issues that we need to thanks doc what do we need to accomplish on the moon to enable human exploration of mars or other potential destinations us called for in the president's vision for space exploration and what enabling technologies are techniques required for human exploration of mars cannot be accomplished on the moon but what i have seen of the lunar architecture one of the prime things it will contribute is how to even exist and operate for a long time on a planetary surface and lunar habitat at an outpost would help accomplish those those goals what it will not do is develop the capability for the long duration spaceflight that is necessary for a mars mission talked about that previously but there are other elements of mars the environment mars is so different from not at the moon but a lot of things you do on the surface of the moon relatively little applicability  to eventual mars human exploration for example the in situ resource utilization on mars you'd use probably first go around the atmosphere of course on the moon there's no atmosphere developing a technique to use lunar regolith might not have much capability but it would advance some of the engineering well the whole concept of in situ resource utilization is fraught with potential engineering problems that we haven't started to face in many ways i think the lunar exploration is a stepping stone but not the most important one will eventually need if we're going to mars with humans dr thorne but you comment  i agree with dr hitter's about the engineering challenges of building a semi permanent outpost on the moon can can lead us to to solving some of those problems on mars the issues the  physiological issues of getting from earth to mars in long duration spaceflight are something we probably will not solve on the moon but but some of the other intermediate steps of going to the earth sun the garage points or going to near earth asteroids can lead us a step further down the road to solving those sorts of problems dr henderson let me ask some questions regarding nasa explorations hardware architecture gives me what do you see as the greatest risks that need to be addressed in preparing  for human exploration beyond low earth orbit the greatest risk in my view is inadequate budgets that will cause us to either so reduce the requirements that we're not making much real progress in developing a capability or stretching it out so far that we're investing the bulk of our funding and just staying in place and not really making good progress in getting beyond where we are today i wish i had a good answer for you the old proverbial one of the more money obviously there's not an acceptable answer today with the budget situation that we have to be the only alternative is for nasa to very carefully look at its stepwise approach to be sure that we're doing just those things that will lead to the development of the essential ingredients of the lunar architecture let me give you an example and some of my science friends would not be very you know i'm bored with this but the outposts if you're looking at stepping stones as much more utility and science driven sortie missions even though for science sort the missions may give you more immediate return so if one has to make a choice i'd say do the outpost and not the sort of missions might have to make choices like that you believe that nasa is exploration architecture is robust and capable of accommodating risks i can't answer that i don't know enough about the details if you could answer on that would far as being stuck and lunar outpost mode we've talked about that with the loan architecture teams as far as what is logical exit strategies when do we consider we've learned enough to say that we don't need a permanently manned outpost at at the lunar surface  some of the things i always learn on the international space station which has been permanently as humans permanently in space for the last seven half years is we learn a lot more with that extended presence and we do on fourteen day shuttle missions so really the outpost has a lot of value in the fact it will drive out a lot of problems we quit necessarily fine on seven day sortie missions they compliment each other but i think they're both necessary we also are learning a lot on their initial space station about the six month transit time that it takes to go to mars there's a lot of things that we're learning about microgravity bone loss muscle atrophy radiation exposure some of the things we worry about for the astronauts on that long journey the moon is a good analog for mars as far as the gravity affects and the other one six gravity on the moon you have one third gravity earth gravity on mars how how does that counteract some of these bone loss and and other effects that we see in  microgravity so we hope that we can answer some of those long range questions with the learner analog and as far as in situ resource utilization we also want to chase what all the water and if we can find water on the on the moon which is why we're choosing some of our landing sites at the south pole we can learn how to make fuel oxygen and and that we could potentially apply to a martian site if we were to find water on mars thank you very very much to mars and not include that in the mix as we as we go through all of this but my point calling you dr martin was what we learned when there were those who said we shouldn't even be trying to go to the moon but it affected of things we've used the advancements that have been made on heart surgery that had a year ago are significant those things are affecting millions of lives on this planet burn that international space station is as an astronaut i was part of the p r machine started out the next logical step and then it morphed to a permanent outpost in space when we lost sight of what that was a step two and in the process we gauged a lot of scientist in areas of microgravity science and life science to nurture those fields and grew them and funded them because they would be the users of this permanent outpost in space again i was part of that my last mission was a space lab mission and a lot of those experiments were on there only because it was a warm up for their permanent study on a space station with two thousand four we changed our mind and we turned off a lot of those people we don't find a lot of those people we basically ended their career in that field we ended those fields and you know in retrospect not having a view of what this was a step too was not responsible as far as how we treated people nor how we handled the taxpayers money and that's what i'd like to not see on the moon i think there's a lot of things we can learn on the moon on our way to mars but to not  international cooperation front share with the committee and the people in the audience that ten forty five today the t v hooked up with the national space station the european space agency now has a prominent  national space enterprise i think we have some people in the audience from the european space agency if you don't mind raise your hand well congratulations there were we were very thrilled with the news and with that i want to thank the witnesses and the chairman again and thank each and every one of you for being here i think it's been a interesting conversation and i look forward to more of them to future meetings if there is no objection the record will be will will open for additional statements from members and for answers to any follow up questions that the subcommittee may ask of the witnesses without objection so ordered this hearing is now a