Todd May
NASA Marshall Space Flight Center Director Todd May briefs reporters on the White House 2017 budget proposal for NASA. (Lee Roop/lroop@al.com)
President Obama's 2017 NASA budget proposal - the last he will offer as president - would cut $800 million from this year's spending on the new deep space rocket being developed in Alabama.
It's an "eyebrow-raising decrease," one national space blogger said Tuesday.
It's also a decrease likely to be dead on arrival in the Republican Congress, where support for the new rocket is strong. The Republican chairman of the House NASA budget authorization committee was blunt in his first reaction Tuesday afternoon.
"This administration cannot continue to tout plans to send astronauts to Mars while strangling the programs that will take us there," Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas said in a press release.
The president proposed spending $19 billion on NASA. Of that, $1.2 billion would go to the rocket called the Space Launch System being developed by Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville.
Elsewhere, the president's budget reflects his continued concern about climate change. Spending on Earth Science would top $2 billion for the first time in 2017 if the budget proposal stands. Click here for a full look at the budget plan.
At Marshall Tuesday, new center Director Todd May said the budget's $19 billion top line is "a tremendous signal of national support for NASA."
May also reflected the general attitude in Washington and inside the space agency that the president's request marks the beginning of the budget process, not the bottom line.
"We've got plans laid out for the rest of this year, and we're moving out," May said. "We'll just see where it ends up."
May said that the push and pull between Obama and Congress over NASA has played out for four years in a row.
"We've been able to hold our critical path now for over four years, and we don't expect (next year) to look much different," May said.
"I think the team's so excited about what they're doing, they're really not paying attention," May said. "Which is what I need them to do right now - not worry about those kinds of things. They just need to execute on their mission."
May said Huntsville will see "major pieces of the rocket showing up here" in 2016 for testing.
NASA plans to launch SLS for the first time in 2018 without a crew. A crewed launch could come as early as 2021 or as late as 2023 depending on how the budget plays out.
The president's proposal allocates $206 million for space operations at Marshall, where payload specialists manage science experiments on the International Space Station around the clock.
It also includes money for a second new administration building. The new building will replace a building dating to the 1960s with a new structure cheaper to heat, cool and light.