On June 5, 2014 NSS issued an alert to the NSS Political Action Network concerning support for Commercial Crew in the current Senate Appropriations Bill. The alert can be found at:
http://space.nss.org/wp-content/uploads/NSS-Legislative-Alert-2014-Jun-5.pdf.
The alert calls for requesting full funding for Commercial Crew at $848 million as requested by NASA, rather than the $805 million appropriated by the Senate, or the House allocation of $785 million. In addition the alert calls for the removal of language that would impose FAR (Federal Acquisitions Regulations) accounting on fixed price Commercial Crew and Cargo contracts, with the intent of making these programs more expensive and slowing them down. Additional information on Commercial Crew can be found in the recent NSS position paper at:
http://space.nss.org/wp-content/uploads/NSS-Position-Paper-Commercial-Crew-2014.pdf
Very good. With the events in the Ukraine it should be obvious commercial crew needs to be accelerated, not delayed. During the release of the Dragon V2, Elon Musk said the launch escape system should finish testing this year, with unmanned test flights next year, and manned test flights in 2016. NASA needs to do a study to see if with required funding this can be accelerated to also do the manned test flights next year.
Perhaps the NSS can send this out as an alert via email to all NSS members to contact their own Congressman and Senators to support the acceleration of commercial crew.
Bob Clark
Have written to both my senators