Lawmakers command Documents Behind Human Spaceflight Plan

Frustrated by a lack of visibility into the planning and study underpinning NASA's dramatic shift in course for its human spaceflight program, House lawmakers have agreed NASA Administrator Charles Bolden until June 25 to deliver all records, charts, e-mails, voice messages and other supporting materials used in drafting the agency's 2011 budget proposal.

Last week the House Science and Technology Committee gave NASA until June 16 to flesh out behind analysis for the agency's controversial shift in course, which would abandon the group program, a five-year-old effort to develop new rockets and spacecraft to replace the space shuttle and later, deliver astronauts to the Moon. The new plan entails support a commercial crew taxi service to the global space station and developing enabling technologies for deep space exploration.
"Since NASA has failed to give the Committee with any detailed supporting materials with which Congress can judge the proposed human spaceflight plan, Congress must insist upon the production of all materials NASA relied upon in formulate its proposal," the committee's chairman, Rep. Bart Gordon (D-Tenn.), wrote in the June 17 letter to Bolden. The letter was co-signed by Rep. Ralph Hall, the committee's ranking member, and by Reps. Gabrielle Giffords and Pete Olson , the chairwoman and ranking member, respectively, of the panel's space and aeronautics subcommittee.

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