Commercial Crew Funding Alert URGENT Followup 6/10/15
Space Access Society

This is an urgent followup to yesterday's Commercial Crew Funding Alert (at http://space-access.org/updates/sau141.html ).

This morning's Senate Appropriations CJS Subcommittee markup of the bill that funds (among others) NASA for the fiscal year starting this October did not go well for Commercial Crew.  The program was cut a further $100 million from the House Appropriation of $1 billion, itself a $244 million cut from NASA's request.

There is reportedly an amendment in the works for tomorrow's full Senate Appropriations Committee markup to plus up the overall NASA budget by $500 million, $300 million of that to go to Commercial Crew.  (details at http://spacenews.com/senate-bill-offers-18-3-billion-for-nasa/ )

This amendment is a long shot.  If it is to have any chance at all tomorrow, a significant show of constituent support is needed.

That means you need to care enough to take ten minutes to do this:

If one of your Senators is on the Appropriations Committee (check the list at http://www.senate.gov/general/committee_membership/committee_memberships_SSAP.htm ) and you haven't already contacted them, we ask you urgently to contact them before Thursday morning via one of the methods described at http://space-access.org/updates/sau141.html .

If your Senators aren't on the Committee, it still can be helpful to contact them.  Senators do talk to each other about what they're hearing from back home, and even if it doesn't affect tomorrow's markup, it can help whenever the next step takes place, consideration of the bill by the full Senate.

Thanks for your time, and good luck to us all.