I think we're going to keep bipartisan support. I'm going to give all I can, I believe the Senator from New Hampshire will, too, just like Senator Mikulski and I did work together.

This budget request attempts to navigate a challenging fiscal environment, but would disrupt ongoing missions and delay future exploration for years to come.

Certainty is important.

But NASA for years has been on the cutting edge and has to maintain a cutting edge of science, and we all benefit from that.

The administration has proposed a fiscal year 2018 budget of $19.1 billion for NASA, which is a reduction of 2.9 percent from the current year level.

The Department of Defense is complying with congressional direction to transition national security launch activity from vehicles that use Russian-made rocket engines to those which use a domestically produced engine by the end of 2022.

Is NASA experiencing any pressure from the commercial crew providers to loosen contract requirements to enable flying to the Space Station sooner?

The biggest threat to me is uncertainty.

I believe in the aerospace business, uncertainty equals more cost, at least we have found this on this subcommittee.

What assurance can you give this subcommittee that there will be no more cost increases or delays? Can you do that?

The 2017 omnibus appropriations bill provided no less than $75 million for habitation research activities to support human exploration beyond low Earth orbit.

We don't need to cut this budget, we need to increase it because so many [off microphone] we can all benefit [off microphone].