“Let’s have a stable space program that can survive a change in administration, change in administrator, change in Congress, that can get us back to the moon and explore deep space,“ he insists.
The NASA Authorization Act of 2019 now working its way through Congress also offers another way to provide greater stability for the space program, adds Olson, who has announced he is retiring at the end of this session.
The legislation, which has already passed the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, would extend the life of the International Space Station and codify the goal of going to the moon as a step to a human mission to Mars.
Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson, the Texas Democrat who chairs the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, has said she intends to pass a NASA authorization bill, the first since 2010, by the end of the year. The annual NASA appropriations bill for fiscal 2020 became law in late December.
Olson, who has served in Congress since 2009, also spoke to POLITICO about how he’s making sure Houston continues to play an important role in space exploration even after the NASA’s winds down its role in the International Space Station.
This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.
What are your top space priorities on the space and aeronautics subcommittee?
For the first time since July 2011, NASA is going to be launching American rockets from American soil with American astronauts. … We’ve been waiting for nine long years to make sure we can go to space, go to the space station, service the space station, and not be limited by … depending on [Russian President Vladimir] Putin to get there.
Any efforts you’re working on in Congress?
The big thing is just to make sure we don’t backslide. … We were sort of floundering. We lost two space shuttles, 14 heroes died. Then President Bush said we’re going back to the moon with the Constellation Program. People back home [at the Johnson Space Center] were jazzed. Then the administration changed, and Obama whacked that program.
The main goal is to get this program going to the moon and make it happen. We can’t go to Mars without going back to the moon. … We’ve been there less than three days total. We don’t know what we don’t know about the moon. When Gene [Cernan, an Apollo astronaut] was walking on the moon, we had no idea there’s water on the moon. If you’re going to deep space, you have to have water for astronauts. Getting one pound of water out of orbit takes 10 pounds of rocket fuel. … We need to get the Artemis program going, get back to the moon, then start thinking about deep space and Mars. I’m going to push like heck to make sure we get that done by 2024.
What role can Congress play in providing stability for the space program amid administration changes?
We need to do the same thing we do for the Department of Defense. They have multi-year appropriations for things like fighter jets or nuclear weapons. … They are funded for years instead of a one-year cycle. How about doing that for NASA? A former director of Johnson Space Center had this great graph. It was of 40 programs that NASA was working on that were assigned by Congress and they got whacked. … Let’s have a stable space program that can survive a change in administration, a change in administrator, a change in Congress, and that can get us back to the moon and explore deep space.
What are you doing to ensure Houston remains a major player in space even after the International Space Station program ends?
I’m making sure people know what contribution Houston makes to the space program overall. People talk about the space station, but they don’t realize that is maintained and watched, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year since November 1998 by personnel at Johnson Space Center. Every single human being who has gone up on … to the space station or on the space shuttle, whether foreign or American, have trained for a couple years at Johnson Space Center. Johnson Space Center has a neutral buoyancy lab, a big massive pool to do spacewalking prior to going to the space station. That’s irreplaceable…. That’s why we should always be the heart and soul of American human space flight.
Why should Houston have a role in future projects like the Gateway?
The expertise of going to the moon came from Johnson Space Center. The Gateway is a great idea. It’s a lunar command and control center. … Johnson Space Center is there. The expertise is there. It has not been used since 1972 directly.
Why is it important to pass a new NASA authorization this Congress?
We started working on our bill, but Democrats aren’t going for it yet. We have great people from Houston working on it, [like] Chairwoman Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-Texas.). She gets it. Rep. Lizzie Fletcher (D-Texas) is very involved in this. My chairwoman from Oklahoma [Rep. Kendra Horn (D-Okla.)] is very involved in this. We have to have something.
If you go to Johnson Space Center, right next to us is the Space Center Houston museum. We have a big Saturn V rocket there, 25 stories tall, laying on its side. Why is that rocket there? That was Apollo 18, the next mission to the moon. There was Apollo 19 planned as well. After Apollo 17, we said, “Cool, we’ve been there done that.”
These people back home, they are stars. They are the best we’ve got, going to work every single day with one focus of making America dominant in space. … So let’s reward them by keeping these projects viable. A 10-year authorization is a great start. Let’s work together Democrats and Republicans to make our human space efforts the best they’ve been.
Source: politico.com
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