(Washington, D.C.) –Today, Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) issued its weekly spending cut alert aimed at NASA’s multibillion dollar Moon/Mars initiative called the Constellation Program.  As CAGW has urged in a previous Issue Brief and noted in the June 2010 Porker of the Month, the Constellation program is program that has morphed into just another wasteful government that taxpayers cannot afford.  

Despite having spent more than $10 billion on the program to date, NASA is no closer to sending an astronaut to space than it was when the program began, according to the widely regarded Augustine Commission.  In 2010, the President signed into law legislation cancelling major components of the program, including the Ares 1 rocket.  However, due to a provision included in NASA’s FY 2010 Appropriations Act, NASA will spend an estimated $500 million on the rocket.  As recently noted by the Chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Congressman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), “in the last days of last congress they funded five hundred million dollars for a rocket program at NASA that’s already been shut down. That can’t be too hard to undo.”  

In addition, the Orion space capsule has already cost the U.S. Government $4.8 billion and requires another $1.2 billion in FY 2011 alone and will not be operational until 2014.  As news outlet WESH noted, commercial providers have already demonstrated the same capabilities at one tenth of the cost of the still in development Orion capsule.

NASA could save on costs by utilizing existing commercial launch vehicles such as Delta IV and Atlas V.  Instead, it appears that NASA plans to spend $11.5 billion over the next five years to initiate the development of its own heavy-lift launch vehicle, utilizing the same contracts as those initially granted for the now canceled Ares 1 program. 

“Taxpayers now recognize that President Obama and his congressional allies will say anything to sound fiscally rational, but their actions tell a different story.  The spendthrifts in Washington, D.C. cannot continue to sink tax dollars into this black hole; the Constellation program should be a prime target for the new Congress as it seeks ways to cut wasteful spending and reduce the deficit,” said CAGW President Tom Schatz. 

Citizens Against Government Waste is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to eliminating waste, fraud, mismanagement and abuse in government.