Last week the House passed an Appropriations bill that cut the funding for NASA’s commercial crew program to restore U.S. independent crew access to the International Space Station by $243 million dollars. This sets Commercial Crew at 20% below NASA’s request.
The Senate Appropriations Committee will be marking up the House-passed Appropriations bill containing Commercial Crew funding this Wednesday (10:30 AM Eastern, Subcommittee) and Thursday (full Committee).
Please contact both of your Senators and ask them to support full funding and continued competition for NASA Commercial Crew at the level requested by the Administration – $1.243 billion.
Contacting them by Close of Business (COB) Tuesday June 9th will have the most impact if they are on the subcommittee.
Contacting them by COB Wednesday June 10th will have the most impact if they are on the full committee.
In any case, after these two committee meetings the full Senate will vote, so please contact your Senators by COB Friday June 12th at the latest.
If this is your first Political Action Network (PAN) alert or if you are uncertain who your Senator is or how to contact them, please look at this PAN alert instruction guide: www.nss.org/legislative/congress.htm. This guide tells you exactly how to find your Senator and how to contact them. For this alert, please either send email or call as it is critical that the Senator’s office be contacted by COB Friday June 12th, 2015.
Once you’ve contacted your Senators please let us know so we can follow up with them. You can do so by emailing [email protected]. You can also email any questions you may have at the same address
Thank you,
Dale Skran
Chair, NSS Policy Committee
NSS Executive Vice President
Suggested Message Content:
The heart of the message: “I’m [your name] from [your town in that Senator’s state.] I’m calling/writing to ask Senator [their last name] to support full funding and continued competition for NASA’s Commercial Crew program.”
Your talking points might mention that the Commercial Crew cuts will:
- Cause program delay and disruption
- Prolong dependence on (increasingly unreliable) Russian launches. There have been a number of Russian launch failures recently, including of a Russian Progress cargo flight to the ISS.
- Force NASA to spend more on additional Russian launches than the cuts save
- Potentially end two providers for Commercial Crew. This is important since two competing different providers will:
- Keep prices down.
- Provide assured Station access even if one system has problems.
- You can look at these NSS position papers for more ideas:
