Space Politics
Because sometimes the most important orbit is the Beltway…
July 2, 2009 at 3:42 am · Filed under Congress, NASA
[Note: apologies for the lack of posts recently; I'm actually on vacation this week.]
The Senate Commerce Committee formally announced yesterday what had been expected for some time: they will hold a nomination hearing for NASA administrator nominee Charles Bolden and deputy administrator nominee Lori Garver next week, on the afternoon of July 8. It had been clear for some time that they were not going to be able to squeeze in a nomination hearing before Congress went on recess this week, but there is a desire to get the two confirmed in advance of the Apollo 11 40th anniversary events later in July. Also note that Bolden and Garver are just two of the five nominees that will be the subject of the hearing.
It’s worth noting that despite all the claims made when the nominations were announced on May 23 to confirm them expediently, the two will take longer than confirm than Mike Griffin, who took about one month from the time his nomination was announced in mid-March 2005 to when he was confirmed by the full Senate. And that doesn’t factor in any potential complications that could delay the confirmation (not likely at this stage, but always possible when any member of the Senate can put a hold on any nomination for any reason, regardless of whether it’s related to the nominee or not.)
June 25, 2009 at 12:38 pm · Filed under Congress, NASA
The Commerce, Justice, and Science subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee marked up their FY2010 appropriations bill yesterday and appear to have more closely followed the White House’s request than the House did earlier this month. According to the summary, the bill provides $18.68 billion for NASA overall, equal to the administration’s topline request. The summary doesn’t give the full breakout of funds by account so it’s hard to tell how closely this matches the president’s request (especially if they created a “Construction and environmental compliance” account like the House did.)
Also unclear is the fate of some smaller programs, like Centennial Challenges and related innovation efforts that are feared to be on the chopping block despite their small ($20 million) price tag. However, we do know thanks to the Orlando Sentinel that the bill includes three earmarks for Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL) totaling $1.6 million, primarily for facilities at the Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.
The full Senate Appropriations Committee is scheduled to take up the bill at 3 pm this afternoon.
June 24, 2009 at 7:32 am · Filed under Congress, NASA
The Senate Appropriations Committee is scheduled to take action this week on an appropriations bill that includes funding for NASA. The Commerce, Justice, and Science (CJS) appropriations committee will markup its version of the bill at 2:30 pm today (138 Dirksen); the full appropriations committee will then deal with the bill tomorrow at 3 pm (106 Dirksen). Recall that the full House passed a CJS appropriations bill, HR 2847, last week that funded NASA at $18.2 billion for fiscal year 2010, including a significant cut in exploration.
June 18, 2009 at 11:10 am · Filed under Events, NASA
I was at the Augustine committee meeting in DC yesterday, the first public meeting (of four currently planned) to solicit input on the future of NASA’s human spaceflight plans. Since the process is just now underway, it’s hard to draw too many conclusions about the meeting, but I did want to pass along some thoughts and observations from the meeting for those who weren’t there:
* The meeting was very much an information-gathering meeting, and at times seemed like drinking from a firehose: they went from 9 am to 5 pm with only a short break (originally 30 minutes, but stretched out in practice to more like 45) for lunch. The meeting was a series of presentations, ranging from the status of Constellation to proposals for alternatives, as well as perspectives from the White House (science advisor John Holdren), Congress (Rep. Pete Olson and Sen. Bill Nelson, with submissions read for the record from Rep. Ralph Hall and Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison) and international partners (ESA’s Jean-Jacques Dordain and Roskosmos’s Anatoly Perminov).
* If the committee members had any initial opinions about the current status of NASA’s activities, they largely kept them to themselves, instead keeping to asking questions or making some basic concluding comments at the end of the day. Three of the ten committee members - Charles Kennel, Lester Lyles, and Sally Ride - had prior commitments and were not at the meeting.
* The afternoon session was largely devoted to either alternatives to the current Constellation system (EELV, DIRECT, and a shuttle-derived side-mount proposal) and COTS/ISS commercial resupply. A lot of attention in particular was devoted to the DIRECT concept, presented by Stephen Metschan. Depending on your point of view the committee seemed either interested in or skeptical about the idea (I heard both reactions afterwards) although the latter seemed evident in Leroy Chiao’s question to Metschan: “Who are you guys?”
* More interesting than the DIRECT presentation, though (since the merits and demerits of DIRECT have been widely discussed for some time now) was United Launch Alliance’s presentation on EELV alternatives to Ares, perhaps the most detailed public presentation to date by the company on this. Michael Gass, president and CEO of ULA, said that a modified Delta 4 Heavy could launch Orion as early as 2014 with a performance margin in excess of 20%. That would require $800 million for a new pad and $500 million in human-rating work, and then $300 million a launch. He also said Atlas 5 could start commercial crew missions to ISS in 2013 (with another company providing the spacecraft); that would require $400 million in non-recurring costs and then $130 million a launch. Gary Pulliam of the Aerospace Corporation then followed with a summary of their EELV-vs-Ares study previously reported.
* In brief comments early in the day, Holdren reiterated that President Obama is interested in space, noting his conversations with the crews of the last two shuttle missions, adding that Obama would continue the practice in the future. Obama, Holdren said, “is excited by human spaceflight… this is a president who gets it, he understands the importance of space, he understands the importance of human spaceflight.”
* Several people, including Sen. Nelson, said that they believed that the committee has particular power to shape the future of the country’s human spaceflight effort with their recommendations. “In essence, what you decide is going to be the significant influence for the White House, and therefore also for the Congress,” he said in brief remarks just before lunch. However, what the committee will provide is just that: recommendations. Augustine said in a press conference after the meeting that they would provide the White House with a number of options, graded against a set of criteria (risk, cost, capability) they are still developing. Like so many other panels in the past, it will be up to the White House and Congress to turn those recommendations into policies, plans, and legislation. And the historical track record is not necessarily promising.
June 17, 2009 at 5:57 am · Filed under NASA
Today is the first public hearing of the Review of U.S. Human Space Flight Plans Committee (aka the Augustine Committee), to take place at the 400-seat auditorium at the Carnegie Institute in Washington, DC. NASA published the agenda for the meeting yesterday and shows that this meeting will look at both the current status of Constellation as well as various alternatives, including EELV and DIRECT, as well as the status of COTS and ISS commercial resupply. (And it is a full day: only a half-hour for lunch, and no other breaks during the full-day meeting.)
A couple of recent (or recently released) studies will likely come up in the committee’s deliberations today. On Monday Aerospace Daily revealed that an Aerospace Corporation study for NASA found EELVs could be cheaper than Ares 1 in some circumstances. Specifically, a human-rated Delta 4 Heavy could be cheaper than the Ares 1, but only if the heavy-lift Ares 5 is deferred. Going with the Delta 4 could also extend the post-shuttle gap by up to two years, according to the unreleased study obtained by the publication.
Yesterday the Government Accountability Office (GAO) issued a report on the status of NASA’s COTS program, The report finds that the two funded COTS companies, Orbital Sciences and SpaceX, have met most of the milestones in their agreements on time but “both companies are working under aggressive schedules and have recently experienced schedule slips that have delayed upcoming demonstration launch dates by several months.”
June 16, 2009 at 6:01 am · Filed under Congress, NASA
This week the full House is scheduled to debate and vote on the Commerce, Justice, and Science appropriations bill (HR 2847), beginning as early as today. Also available now is the text of the committee report with some more details about the spending plan. For example, this is how the report explains the creation of the new construction account in the bill:
The Committee proposes establishment of a new construction account to fund all institutional and programmatic construction. As shown in the Committee’s review, the longstanding arrangement of funding construction within other accounts without specifying an amount for construction has resulted in a lack of discipline in NASA’s planning for programmatic construction and a lack of transparency in presenting and justifying construction projects. The new account will fund discrete construction projects, minor revitalization and construction projects, facility planning and design, demolition, and environmental compliance and restoration. Appropriated funds shall be available for five years, as requested.
If debate remains on schedule, the House will vote on (and likely approve) the bill by tomorrow. On Thrusday, though, the space subcommittee of the House Science and Technology Committee will hold a hearing titled “External Perspectives on the FY 2010 NASA Budget Request and Related Issues”, which seems a bit oddly timed given the schedule for the passing the appropriations bill. The scheduled witnesses are:
Mr. John C. Marshall
Member
Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel (ASAP)
Dr. Kenneth M. Ford
Chair
NASA Advisory Council (NAC)
Mr. Robert M. Hanisee
Chair
Audit and Finance Committee
NASA Advisory Council (NAC)
Dr. Raymond S. Colladay
Chair
National Academies’ Aeronautics and Space Engineering Board (ASEB)
Dr. Berrien Moore III
Member
National Academies’ Space Studies Board (SSB)
Mr. J.P. Stevens
Vice President for Space Systems
Aerospace Industries Association (AIA)
Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ), chair of the subcommittee, briefly discussed the budget during a Space Transportation Association luncheon last week. “I trust [approprations subcommittee] Chairman [Alan] Mollohan. I think he’s a very strong supporter of NASA and space,” she said, referring to comments made by Mollohan in the approprations bill markup earlier this month about giving exploration funding a “time-out” in the FY10 spending bill but continuing to express support for the overall effort. “I think his perspective is, yes, we had a mission, we had a vision, but we didn’t have adequate funding to go along with that.”
Later: “We are now entering a very difficult period of at least five years. We’re going to have think very creatively and strategically about how we explain that to the American people,” many of whom, she thinks, don’t realize that the shuttle is about to be retired, leaving NASA without its own access to the station for the next several years.
June 12, 2009 at 7:34 pm · Filed under Congress, NASA
The House Appropriations Committee document earlier this week that appeared to show a $113.9 million rescission in NASA’s FY9 budget for COTS got a lot of people up in arms and wondering exactly happened. The committee hasn’t provided any additional information, such as the report to go along with the actual appropriations bill, to clarify exactly what has gone on. But as it turns out the cut might only be imaginary.
As Jim Muncy explained in an email late today, COTS got $153 million in FY09 (plus $150 million in stimulus funding, if and when Sen. Shelby relents). The FY10 budget request included $39.1 million for COTS, which the committee apparently fully funded (it does not show up in the list of programs that got cuts in the FY10 bill). What’s $153 million minus $39.1 million? $113.9 million, or exactly the amount of the “reduction” that appears on the committee’s list.
While this explains the amount and the rationale (”program phase out”, as COTS is winding down), one problem with this logic is that this doesn’t really represent a cut: the funding was supposed to go down as SpaceX and Orbital completed work on their funded Space Act Agreements with NASA under the program (and also because NASA was not funding any Capability D, or crew transportation work, as a part of COTS.) Would the committee really take credit for a $113.9 million “reduction” of a program that was supposed to go down by that much anyway? Stranger things have happened…
June 12, 2009 at 12:55 pm · Filed under NASA
The Associated Press published today an interview with former NASA administrator Mike Griffin, settling into his new position as a professor at the University of Alabama Huntsville. Some highlights, starting with what he thinks of the Review of US Human Space Flight Plans Committee (aka the Augustine committee):
“This review is not, in my judgment, necessary from a technical point of view,” he said. “But it does seem to be necessary if we are going to quiet some of the criticism of what NASA is doing, and if we are going to get the new administration on board.”
[...]
Griffin said he doesn’t think the administration’s review will mean any major changes for Constellation, “unless someone moves the goalpost” away from completing the space station, returning to the moon and then sending people to Mars.
But such studies can lead to funding uncertainties and a loss of momentum, he said, and NASA underwent a “seminal change” after the Columbia disaster in 2003, one that led to the current plan to astronauts back to the moon and on to Mars.
“The space agency had its change you can believe in,” said Griffin, referring to Obama’s campaign theme. “What it needs now is to be left alone to execute well.”
Griffin also offers praise for his nominated successor, Charles Bolden—at his own expense:
Griffin was pleased with Obama’s selection of former astronaut Charles Bolden as his successor. Griffin — who was sometimes faulted for what some described as a prickly personality — said Bolden has the experience, smarts and people skills for the job.
“It would be very hard to think more highly of him,” he said. “He’s way better with people than I am.”
June 12, 2009 at 7:43 am · Filed under Other
If you thought Esquire was only about fashion and women and lifestyles (or supermodels on the cover wearing only the opening lines of a Stephen King story), think again. In an essay on the magazine’s web site, Thomas P.M. Barnett (described as “a top Washington policy expert” although one who focuses more on foreign policy issues) offers his prescription for getting the US out of its current space rut and engaging the private sector. His approach boils down to three key points:
- Support a treaty to ban weapons in space, as desired by Russia and China (thus ending “pointless demonstrations of China’s growing military capabilities” in space);
- Working with Russia, China, and Europe “in a joint effort to retake the moon as a quasi-launching site” for future missions to Mars and beyond, avoiding duplicity of efforts and engendering “mutual transparency” between the US and China in particular;
- With NASA focused on deep space exploration, “do everything possible to open up all nearer space (up to and including the moon’s surface) to commercial ventures”.
The first point is actually closely aligned with current administration policy to seek a ban on space weapons (which Barnett notes in his essay). However, one of the issues that has come up in debates on the topic is what exactly is a “space weapon”; it’s possible, for example, that a ground-based interceptor like the one used by China in its January 2007 test might not qualify. Moreover, there are concerns about verification of such a ban that would have to be addressed.
The second point is also not that different from NASA’s plans (now in limbo thanks to the Augustine committee review) to return to the Moon and (maybe) establish an outpost there, only this would explicitly include China and Russia. The idea of engaging with China has been discussed before, typically with near-term options like ISS cooperation, but that assumes that both China is interested (versus focusing their efforts on indigenous capabilities) and that technology transfer and other issues can be overcome.
The third point no doubt strikes a favorable chord with the NewSpace industry and other commercial space advocates (particularly an earlier comment where he claims that “if not for the Cold War and the ‘race to the moon’ and ’star wars’ and so on, we’d have a far larger and more accessible private-sector space industry than the puny one we’ve got now.”) Unfortunately, he falls short on any specific approaches to “open up all nearer space” to the private sector. Is he seeking regulatory changes? Export control reform? More support for COTS and commercial ISS resupply? More funding for Centennial Challenges? It’s all very vague, and not very actionable should someone in the White House or Congress decide he’s right—assuming they notice this in Esquire without getting distracted. By Stephen King, of course.
June 12, 2009 at 7:01 am · Filed under Congress, NASA
If all goes well, the space shuttle Endeavour will lift off Saturday morning on the STS-127 mission to the International Space Station. Among those planning to watch the launch is a bipartisan Congressional delegation led by Rep. Suzanne Kosmas (D-FL). Those members planning to attend the launch with Kosmas are:
Mike Conaway (R-TX-11)
Jim Costa (D-CA-20)
Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ-8)
Parker Griffith (D-AL-5)
Ralph Hall (R-TX-4)
Randy Neugebauer (R-TX-19)
Pete Olson (R-TX-22)
Aaron Schock (R-IL-18)
“With so few launches left before Shuttle retirement, I want my colleagues to fully grasp what it would mean for our country to have a prolonged period of time without direct access to space or the International Space Station,” she said in a statement. “I am confident that after this experience, many more will join in my fight to minimize the gap and ensure that we continue to have a robust human spaceflight program.”
Speaking at a Space Transportation Association luncheon Wednesday on Capitol Hill, Congresswoman Giffords discussed the challenges in getting members to take time from their schedules to attend a launch. “I was not happy to see so few members at the Hubble launch” last month, she said. “We can’t do this for every launch, but I’m really pleased to get a critical mass for members coming down.”
“If we’re going to get people excited about space, trust me, there is no easier way, with all the demands on our time and all the people who come to see us, than to go to a shuttle launch,” Giffords added. “It’s amazing.”
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