Doug Mohney wonders why the Texas congressional delegation seems to have its collective head up its fundament:
Two problems exist for the Congressional delegation from Texas if they continue to push SLS funding at the expense of fully funding NASA Commercial Crew program. First, it would appear that they advocate a policy that has the United States continue to purchase transport to ISS from Russia until SLS is built — rather than “insourcing” the dollars and work to American companies.
Second, if Russia’s spotty track record with the pieces to its manned launch system continues, a Soyuz failure leaving the $100 billion space station unmanned and untended — or worse, deorbited — could have a significant impact on the 15,000 employees employed at Houston’s Johnson Space Flight Center (JSC). If ISS goes down, there’s no need to have a Mission Control Center for its operations or the many other NASA employees and contractors supporting space station operations.
SLS mostly benefits Alabama, Florida and Utah — there is very little in it for Texas, which just makes this all the more stupid.
Rand,
You’re assuming that Texas politicians are only being motivated by support for their geographical constituents (ie those actually living in Texas), and not by their “fiscal constituents” (ie those who send checks to politicians in Texas)…
~Jon
Or maybe experts they trust are telling them that heavy lift is the only viable option.
There is little doubt the members of the Texas delegation are being told three things by “experts they trust”: A new Heavy Lifter is required to throw Orion where JSC wants to send it beyond LEO, SLS as conceived today is the best, cheapest, and fastest Heavy Lift design for throwing Orion to where JSC wants to send it, and, if they do not vote for SLS the Alabama and Utah delegations will not vote for Orion. The Texas delegation may or may not understand and agree with the first two things, but I’m guessing they (and JSC management) fully understand the “technical details” of the third one.