Congress snubs Bush; bumps up research funding for aeronautics at NASA.

Aiming to prevent spending on aeronautics research at NASA from going into the steep dive charted for it by the Bush administration, Congress has set funding levels for aeronautics activities in its latest NASA authorization bill that exceed by at least $250 million per year those projected for 2007 and 2008 in the president's 2006 budget request.

The NASA Authorization Act of 2005 (S. 1281), sent to the White House for signature on December 23, also explicitly "reaffirms" what it calls "the national commitment to aeronautics research," emphasizing its importance both to the nation's security and to its economic competitiveness.

In passing the NASA authorization, lawmakers confirmed the support for NASA aeronautics provided by the 2006 appropriations bill (H.R. 2862), which allocates $912.3 million for aeronautics. This amount improves on the 2005 figure by only $6.1 million but is $60 million above President Bush's 2006 request (MTN, Nov. 14, p. 3).

The sums authorized by Congress --$962 million for 2007 and $990 million for 2008--would set a trajectory opposite to that plotted by the administration when it projected annual levels for the period 2007-2010 of between $718 million and $731 million. In responding to an earlier version of the bill, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) said the 2007 aeronautics authorization was "contrary to the President's Budget," but did not threaten a veto.

Lest there be ambiguity as to the meaning of its numbers' upward direction, S. 1281 created a separate section, "Governmental Interest in Aeronautics Research and Development," to underline that "aeronautics research and development remains a core mission of NASA.... The government of the United States shall promote aeronautics research and development that will expand the capacity, ensure the safety and increase the efficiency of the Nation's air transportation system, promote the security of the Nation, protect the environment and retain the leadership of the United States in global aviation."

To this end, the NASA Authorization Act also adopts, nearly verbatim, language from the 2006 appropriations bill that calls upon the president to develop a national policy aimed at guiding U.S. aeronautics R&D programs through 2020.

NASA's aeronautics research program "has been recast several times...in recent years," noted House and Senate conferees in an explanation accompanying S. 1281. "In concert with the national aeronautics policy, [the authorization] should help NASA engage in an aeronautics program that is not radically reformed each fiscal year."

Indeed, a reorganization undertaken by NASA's Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate (ARMD) in the face of the funding profile sketched out in the administration's 2006 budget and announced along with it has been scrapped under Michael Griffin, who assumed the post of NASA administrator in April. Aeronautics programs are now being reshaped again under Associate Administrator Lisa Porter, whom Griffin brought in to head ARMD.

The abandoned plan would have concentrated the resources of Vehicle Systems, the largest of ARMD's three programs, on four technology-demonstration programs in an apparent attempt to impress legislators, OMB, or both with spectacular breakthroughs at regular intervals. Now, ARMD is adopting a "new focus on fundamental aeronautical sciences," Griffin told the House Science Committee on November 3.

This transition and an injunction in the Authorization Act calling upon the NASA administrator to "establish a program of long-term fundamental research in aeronautical sciences and technologies that is not tied to specific development projects" appear, thus, to be in synch.

The Fundamental Aeronautics Program, Vehicle Systems' new name, "will create projects that provide continual, long-term investment in the fundamentals and that build upon that investment to develop system-level, multidisciplinary capabilities that will enable both the civilian and military communities to build platforms that meet their specific needs," the NASA administrator testified.

Core competencies in rotorcraft and hypersonics--two fields that were to be axed under the previous restructuring--would be preserved under the Fundamental Aeronautics Program, he said. Provisions of S. 1281 authorize research and technology programs in both areas, as well as in commercial aircraft noise, energy consumption, and emissions; supersonic transport, "revolutionary aeronautical concepts" for subsonic fixed-wing vehicles and propulsion; fuel-cell powered aircraft; and Mars aircraft.

Congress and NASA seem to be on the same page when it comes to a second ARMD program--Airspace Systems--whose domain is the improvement and modernization of the nation's air-traffic management system. S. 1281 requires that the program be aligned with the objectives of the interagency Joint Planning and Development Office's Next Generation Air Transportation System (NGATS), a step that Griffin told the Science Committee in November was already in progress.

The act also calls for the third program to focus on aircraft safety and will focus on areas related to integrated vehicle health management, resilient aircraft control, intelligent flight deck technologies and aging aircraft.

But even if NASA and congressional authorizers are heading in a similar direction, the real test is apt to take place in the appropriations arena. As observed at the November 3 hearing by Rep. Mark Udall (D-Colo.), the ranking minority member of the House Science Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics and a strong backer of aeronautics at NASA, in light of "the administration's current budgetary plan" ARMD may be opting, in its latest reorganization, for too much of what he himself sees as a good thing.

"While I am encouraged that NASA recognizes the importance of rebuilding its fundamental research and technology program in aeronautics," he said, "the budgetary constraints imposed on the aeronautics program would appear to make that rebuilding come at the cost of significantly shrinking NASA R&D that is more directly relevant to the needs of the aviation industry and society as a whole. That makes little sense to me, and I hope that NASA will embrace a more balanced portfolio."