Space Politics
Because sometimes the most important orbit is the Beltway…
Archive for March, 2004
March 31, 2004 at 2:17 pm · Filed under Other
Al Franken is the latest to comment on the omission of the new space exploration plan from the President’s State of the Union address, in a commentary in Wednesday’s Los Angeles Times. “Unveiling a mission to Mars and then not mentioning it less than a week later in the State of the Union address suggests a certain casualness in our president’s approach to governing the world’s only remaining superpower,” he claims. He also thinks the media hasn’t taken Bush to task for the silence since then, arguing that if a Democratic President had done the same thing, he would have been constantly ridiculed by the “right-wing media”. It’s an interesting suggestion, but the President has been criticized to some degree for his silence regarding the plan since he announced it in mid-January. The lack of a greater furor in the media likely has more to do with the relative importance of space versus the economy, terrorism, Iraq, and the like. Those other topics will provide far more fodder for Franken’s radio show on the new Air America network—which Franken plugs in the second half of the commentary—than space ever will.
March 31, 2004 at 2:03 pm · Filed under Congress
The Orlando Sentinel reported Tuesday that Sen. Sam Brownback (R-KS), chairman of the space subcommittee of the Senate Commerce Committee, wants to hold a hearing in the near future regarding whether the shuttle should be phased out earlier than the currently scheduled date of 2010. An earlier retirement of the shuttle, he argues, would save money that could then be used by the exploration initiative, including accelerating development of the Crew Exploration Vehicle. This hearing would take place in the next couple months outside Washington, “in a community where the shuttle is a part of the local economy.” The article is based on a statement issued Monday by Brownback’s office, although that statement is not available on his web site (indeed, there has no press releases added to his site since early March, and it’s difficult to imagine any politician staying quiet that long…)
March 30, 2004 at 5:14 pm · Filed under Other
The President’s Commission on Moon, Mars, and Beyond (better known as the Aldridge Commission) has announced that its next public hearing, scheduled for April 15-16 in San Francisco, will take place at a local high school, the Galileo Academy of Science and Technology. The list of speakers or topics for the hearing haven’t been announced yet, but the location and the comments made by Aldridge in the press release suggest that education will be a major topic.
March 30, 2004 at 5:07 pm · Filed under Congress
The space subcommittee of the House Science Committee has scheduled a hearing for Thursday, April 1, at 1 pm to discuss “Lunar Science and Resources: Future Options”. The witnesses for the hearing haven’t been formally announced by the committee on its web site, but according to a University of Arizona press release the current list of speakers is:
- Donald Campbell, Cornell University
- Dan Lester, University of Texas
- John Lewis, University of Arizona
- Paul Spudis, Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory
- Tim Swindle, University of Arizona
Spudis is also one of the members of the Aldridge Commission. The timing of this hearing is unfortunate, as that same afternoon the space subcommittee of the Senate Commerce Committee is holding a hearing on the NASA budget, with Sean O’Keefe scheduled to appear. The two hearings don’t completely overlap (the Senate hearing starts 90 minutes after the House one), but they are close enough together in time and far enough apart in space to make it difficult to attend both without missing substantial portions of one.
March 29, 2004 at 10:14 am · Filed under Congress
This Thursday—April 1, April Fool’s Day—the space subcommittee of the Senate Commerce Committee is scheduled to hold a hearing on NASA’s proposed FY2005 budget. NASA Administrator Sean O’Keefe is the only announced witness. Given that Sen. Sam Brownback (R-KS), who chairs the subcommittee, is also a co-sponsor of the Senate version of the Hubble resolution (S. Res. 324), one can expect the topic to come up during the hearing. The hearing will be at 2:30 pm in Russell 253, and will be webcast on the committee’s web site.
March 28, 2004 at 12:55 pm · Filed under White House
Much has been made of the omission of the President’s new space initiative from his State of the Union address in January. On at least one occasion NASA Administrator Sean O’Keefe defended the omission because the President had devoted an entire speech to the plan less than a week earlier and because the address is not a “tick list” of all the President’s initiatives. However, the New York Times reports Sunday that any mention of the plan in the speech may have been removed at the behest of Karen Hughes, the former White House communications director who still serves as an advisor to the President:
Ms. Hughes also advocated dropping from the State of the Union address any mention of the president’s ambitious proposal to send humans to Mars, which was attacked by members of his own party as extravagant folly. “At some level the policy gesture didn’t pass the communications straight-face test,” the Bush adviser said.
(The advisor quoted above is an unnamed Bush advisor that the article says earlier “asked not to be named because he did not want to be seen as criticizing Mr. [Karl] Rove,” who reportedly had a less-than-cordial relationship with Hughes when both worked in the White House.) Given that the proposal didn’t “pass the communications straight-face test” less than a week after its introduction, one wonders when—if ever—it will.
March 27, 2004 at 9:39 am · Filed under Other
The National Capital Section of the AIAA has scheduled a luncheon on April 22 with Bill Adkins, staff director of the House Science Committee’s space subcommittee, as the speaker. Adkins will “share his views on the Nation’s space exploration vision, and discuss the Committee’s plans for a NASA authorization bill this year,” according to the meeting announcement. (Go to the calendar section of the web site for the full meeting details, including location and cost.) While it looks interesting, I won’t be able to go since I will be on travel that day.
March 26, 2004 at 12:04 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
The Senate resolution calling for an independent study of the SM4 cancellation decision, introduced Thursday afternoon, is now available as S. Res. 324. A quick comparison of it with the House version, H. Res. 550, shows what appear to be, primarily, only cosmetic differences. One interesting difference is that clause two of the Senate version includes the language “and assess alternative servicing methods” that is not present in the House version.
March 25, 2004 at 6:55 pm · Filed under Congress
SPACE.com reported late Thursday that two Senators have introduced a resolution in the Senate that calls for an independent review of the SM4 Hubble servicing mission cancellation. The resolution was introduced Thursday afternoon by Sens. Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) and Sam Brownback (R-KS). The article doesn’t provide any specific details about the resolution (which is not yet available on Thomas), but suggests it is essentially the same as H. Res. 550, the resolution introduced three weeks ago by Rep. Mark Udall (D-CO). That resolution now has 40 cosponsors; among the most notable new cosponsors is Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), the one-time Democratic Presidential candidate.
March 24, 2004 at 12:53 pm · Filed under Congress
The Marshall Institute is organizing a roundtable discussion about the role the private sector could play in the new space initiative. Right now the only speaker listed is Pete Worden, the retired Air Force general currently working for Sen. Sam Brownback (R-KS), chair of the space subcommittee of the Senate Commerce Committee. Brownback has been pushing for greater commercialization of the initiative: during a hearing a couple weeks ago about NASA’s Mars exploration efforts, he queried the NASA officials about their planned 2008 lunar orbiter and suggested that things like “sponsorships” by companies could play a role in the mission. The talk is scheduled for Wednesday, April 7, at noon in room G-11 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building.
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