The result was an effort aimed at trimming NASA budgets by $2 billion per year, beginning with the FY2000 budget formulation in two years. Space planners were looking at ways to take most of the self-inflicted cuts out of the U.S. space shuttle budget, about a $4-5 billion per year total program. Total privatization of the shuttle to commercial industry, plus releasing restrictions on shuttle payloads, possibly allowing the craft to once again fly commercial satellites, were among the options to generate the savings. The monies thus gleaned from shuttle and other agency programs would then be directed to the new exploration plans. One option called for use of liquid fly-back boosters now being proposed for the shuttle in the post-2000 time frame forming the basis of a new heavy-lift space booster for Mars bound astronauts called Magnum Lifter. But there's only one problem about diverting the NASA budget cash to Mars: Capitol Hill found out about it this week- and blasted the plan.

"This will never pass my committee!", thundered Rep. Dana Rohrabacker (R-CA.), chairman of the House Space Science Subcommittee, when he heard about the internal study. Rohrabacker warned NASA that if it found millions to move towards new manned exploration projects, he would seek to redirect the money to additional X-rockets. The current main X-rocket project, the X-33, is aimed at development of a new all-reusable single stage vehicle whose low-cost operations could supplant and replace the space shuttle early in the next decade. Rohrabacker had tried earlier last week- and failed by a wide margin - to strip away $100 million from the Russian space station funding to divert to a second X-rocket, a back-up to the X-33 initiative. "If NASA can find new money, it should spend it on new X-rockets, and cheap access to space," Rohrabacker told a Washington DC conference on low cost space transportation this week. His opposition raises the classic case facing any federal bureaucracy: if it finds funds by internal budget cutting to spend on new programs, Congress might take the money away and spend it on what it sees fit, leaving the effected agency with nothing for its cost-cutting efforts.

How NASA Administrator Dan Goldin deals with the Congressional opposition may shape the future of long term human spacelfight in the years just ahead. And determine in large measure if human footprints may one day be added to the Sojourner Rover's Martian wheel tracks. Stay tuned!