Senator Hutchison is going to be a distinct downgrade from Sam Brownback, when it comes to space policy, though she'll probably be good news for JSC. It also means that one of her nicknames should be "Senator from ISS."

In an article in which Bill Readdy says that NASA plans to accelerate the development of the CEV (not intrinsically a bad thing, given that it's going to be built at all, and certainly in line with the new administrator's desires), note this:

Sen. Kay Hutchison (R-Texas), subcommittee chair, said that NASA must work to avoid being caught without the ability to launch its own human missions to the ISS and low-Earth orbit.

“I think that we cannot allow that kind of hiatus right now,” Hutchison said to a panel of NASA program managers, astronauts and scientists. “I think of it as a national security threat to our country and I intend to pursue everything I can to look at ways to shorten that time period.”

A "national security threat to our country"? To not be able to get to the space station? Could she elaborate? What is it, Battlestar Galactica? Last time I checked, it was purely a civilian program, with no military significance. In what way is not being able to get to it a "national security threat"?

What's interesting about this is that the ISS mission has been the elephant sitting in the living room that no one working the exploration studies has been talking about, or at least required to talk about. The requirement to go to ISS has never appeared in the Level 0 requirements for CEV, and adding it means a different design, for both it and the launcher (though the differences aren't humungous). But it would sure be helpful to the contactor community if NASA (and Congress) would make up its mind on this and decide whether this is supposed to be a (partial) Shuttle replacement, or an exploration vehicle for trips beyond LEO.

The missions can be performed by the same system, in theory, but that has to be understood up front, and it should also be understood that making it both a dessert topping and a floor wax will render it less effective at performing both missions. This kind of mission creep was one of the things that made the Shuttle (and station, for that matter) such a programmatic disaster.

# snark #

Just buy half a dozen Klipers for a small fraction of the projected CEV spending and use the savings to buid an honest-to-God RLV.

# /snark #

The CEV is surely going to have to have the ability to dock with other hardware.

If the CEV uses a different docking ring standard than the ISS currently supports, can't some kind of bridge adapter ALA Apollo/Soyuz be built and attached to ISS for CEV?

There are X-38 prototypes sitting in warehouses...

Although I find her comments about ISS access and "national security" to be slightly odd, I think it is possible to imagine a linkage that makes some sense. You may disagree with it, but it's still there.

Simply put, _if_ the United States decides that it desires access to ISS, and _if_ there is a gap, then the only current way to maintain that access is to buy Soyuz. This then places the U.S. at the mercy of the Russians. And it means that the U.S. may have to ignore things like Russian proliferation to Iran and elsewhere. In other words, that gap forces the U.S. into a dependency situation that requires unpleasant choices with national security implications.

If the U.S. has full ISS access, however, then it has a freer hand to decide how to address Russian proliferation efforts.

That or it could just be an attempt to use the hot button issue "word of the day" to get attention.

Step 1: Collect underwear
Step 2: ?????
Step 3: Profit!!!