Passage of Senate’s NASA Bill A Defeat For Retiring Gordon

This week retiring Congressman Bart Gordon suffered a defeat in the debate over the future of NASA and human space flight.

Congress passed the NASA authorization bill right before adjourning for the election recess. Representative Gordon heads the Science and Technology Committee and helped write legislation in the House. And he worked to find common ground with Senators keen on their own version.

“We have spent the last several months in discussions with the Senate to come up with a compromise language that would include the best of both bills.”

Senators made sure their version prevailed. House leaders only brought the Senate version to a vote even though many of their members preferred Gordon’s compromise bill. They say Senators were too heavy handed in prescribing the details for a new rocket. And called an extension of the space shuttle program an unfunded mandate. In the end, Gordon accepted the result.

“For the sake of providing a degree of certainty, stability and clarity to the NASA workforce and the larger space community, I felt it was better to consider a flawed bill than no bill at all.”

The Senate version also provides more support for the private sector in its quest to take humans to space for NASA. And the commercial space industry lobbied hard for the Senate version to prevail.

Congressman Gordon and other critics of the new NASA authorization still have a chance to influence the future of human space flight. That’s because lawmakers are still working out the financial details behind the new legislation and critics are planning to use the appropriations process to influence the final outcome.