Congress Acts on Final NASA FY95 Funding Bill: Human Space Flight

On September 12, the House passed the conference report (House Report 103-715) for H.R. 4624, the FY 1995 VA/HUD/Independent Agencies Appropriations Bill. The Senate is expected to act shortly. This FYI and the next provide details on the provisions for NASA.

NASA will receive a total budget of $14.377 billion for fiscal year 1995. This is greater than the $14.3 billion requested by the Administration, but $150 million (or 1.0 percent) less than the current year funding of $14.527 billion.

The international space station will be fully funded at $2.1 billion, equal to both the request and current year funding. This amount is spread across the Human Space Flight, and the Science, Aeronautics and Technology accounts. The conference report notes that “The conferees agree to cap the space station program’s remaining costs through assembly complete (1994-2002) at $17,400,000,000. The agency should initiate a semiannual project status report on the space station, utilizing the baseline estimates for costs and schedule now in place as a result of the 1993 redesign effort.”

The Human Space Flight account will receive $5.57 billion, somewhat less than the request of $5.72 billion. Within this account, the following (selected) changes are made to the budget request:

+$10,000,000 for spacelab activities.

-$15,000,000 from payload and utilization operations, “to be taken as a generalreduction subject to normal reprogramming guidelines.”

-$94,000,000 from space shuttle operations. “The conferees note offsets of$22,000,000 in reimbursements from the Japanese for a shuttle launch and $13,000,000 not needed for termination costs associated with the advanced solid rocket motor project.”

-$30,000,000 “from launch site equipment upgrades as a result of terminating thecheck-out, control, and monitoring system (CCMS-II) for shuttle processing.”

-$17,000,000 “in space shuttle upgrades to reflect rephasing of the fiber optic cable forthe orbiter payload bay.”

Reductions in the space shuttle program were made in an attempt to fully fund both the space station and NASA’s space science programs within a decreasing budget. The other program to take a major reduction was the Tracking and Data Relay satellite system (TDRSS). Within the Mission Support account, $60,000,000 was cut from the TDRSS replenishment spacecraft program. The conference report states, “This reduction leaves $40,000,000 in new funds for this activity, consistent with the terms of the NASA `decision tree’ provided to the Senate Appropriations Committee earlier this year.”