Texas Congressional Delegation Needs to Get behind Commercial Crew, Not SLS
NASA's FY 2013 budget has been out about a week and already one Senator and various Representatives from Texas are complaining there isn't enough money for NASA's Space Launch System (SLS). In the bizarre world of Congressional rocket science, it makes more sense to accelerate a system that will cost at least a billion dollars per launch to act as a "backup" to commercial efforts for delivering cargo and crew to the International Space Station (ISS) than to simply fully fund a lower-cost program ($830 million per year) designed to provide two (2) different commercial vendors -- one as a "backup" -- for services.