Space Politics
Because sometimes the most important orbit is the Beltway…
Archive for March, 2004
March 24, 2004 at 12:45 pm · Filed under Other
A Florida Today article on Wednesday describes efforts by the state’s space industry to lobby state legislators and governor Jeb Bush to for additional incentives. Members of industry, along with representatives from NASA, the Air Force, and the Florida Space Authority, made the rounds in Tallahassee on Tuesday trying to line up support for additional money for various efforts. The group is looking for, among other items, $1.3 million for the Florida Commercial Space Financing Corporation, a nonprofit organization that serves as “clearinghouse for innovative financing for aerospace industry projects”, and $500,000 to continue work on a hangar at KSC that the article says would be used for “NASA’s next space vehicle after the shuttle is retired at the end of the decade.” (One wonders what happens if that vehicle turns out to be an expendable Apollo-like capsule.)
March 23, 2004 at 10:21 am · Filed under Other
Tuesday’s Los Angeles Times has an article [free registration required] about an effort by a state legislator to expand an existing tax break for launch vehicles and spacecraft built in and launched from California. The bill, heard in the State Assembly’s taxation committee for the first time Monday, would extend the tax break to cover launch facilities and related ground equipment. The bill would cost the state about $1.6 million a year in taxes, according to its sponsor, Abel Maldonado, an assemblyman from Santa Maria, not far from Vandenberg Air Force Base.
Maldonado is pushing for the tax break because he argues that although 43% of satellites worldwide are made in California, only 20% are launched from the state. (The article didn’t specify a year or years those statistics cover, but given that companies like Boeing, Space Systems/Loral, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman all have facilities for building commercial and/or government satellites in the state, it doesn’t seem unreasonable.) However, geography and orbital mechanics suggest that it will be difficult for the state to increase its share of the launch market. Vandenberg can’t support launches to geosynchronous orbit, which is where the bulk of commercial launches are today, and Europe, Russia, China, and other spacefaring nations are all going to use their own launch facilities for government missions. The tax break bill would cover Sea Launch, which is based in Long Beach although its launches actually take place on the Equator in the Pacific Ocean, several thousand kilometers away.
It would be interesting to know if the bill includes any provision for suborbital launch services. I did a quick check of the California Legislature’s version of Thomas and couldn’t find the bill this morning.
March 23, 2004 at 9:57 am · Filed under Uncategorized
This week’s issue of The Space Review has a couple of articles that will be of interest to readers. Dwayne Day has a very detailed look at the claims promulgated in the media that the new space initiative would cost $1 trillion. He went back through all the articles to find the very first time the price tag was attached to the concept, by an AP writer. He also illustrated why many of the explanations for that figure are simply very wrong. I also have an article noting that NASA has not been very proactive in providing information both about the new initiative nor their decision to cancel the SM4 shuttle mission to Hubble. By not being more open, I argue, NASA (and the administration) are letting their critics dictate the terms of the debate, putting the agency on the defensive.
(I had planned to post this yesterday, but The Space Review was slashdotted for much of the day Monday because they linked to Dwayne Day’s article. You can read their discussion of it, although I recommend it primarily only for the humor value.)
March 22, 2004 at 2:11 pm · Filed under Other
The President’s Commission on Moon, Mars, and Beyond (aka the Aldridge Commission) has issued a press release and schedule for its next public meeting, scheduled for Wednesday afternoon through Thursday in Atlanta. Wednesday afternoon’s session will be devoted to entrepreneurs, public-private partnerships, and some speakers from the host school, Georgia Tech. Thursday’s session will feature workforce issues, safety issues associated with human missions to Mars, commercial space, and the media, with Buzz Aldrin scheduled to testify as well. As with previous hearings, the event will be broadcast/webcast on NASA TV.
March 21, 2004 at 7:45 pm · Filed under NASA
A front-page article in Sunday’s Washington Post describes the outpouring of public sentiment in support of Hubble in the wake of NASA’s decision to cancel the SM4 mission. The article argues, as many have, that the SM4 cancellation threatens the agency’s focus on the new exploration program:
What emerges from this outpouring is an “us-vs.-them” truculence that views the Hubble’s demise as collateral damage in what many see as the administration’s misguided march to the moon and Mars.
The article also notes that NASA offices “report a brisk traffic in Hubble mail”, and even quotes Sean O’Keefe as saying that his “e-mail system is clogged every day.” Oddly, though, in an article in Sunday’s Boston Globe, NASA spokesman Don Savage claims that “the agency has not received many direct calls and letters about the telescope.” Perhaps Mr. Savage should check with his boss…
March 20, 2004 at 9:47 am · Filed under Congress
I attended Thursday afternoon’s hearing of the House Science Committee’s space subcommittee regarding DOD-NASA cooperation on space transportation issues. There wasn’t too much from the hearing that was newsworthy, but here are a few random tidbits that may be of interest:
- The one news item from the meeting was that Craig Steidle, the NASA Associate Administrator for the Office of Exploration Systems, revealed that the agency had cancelled the X-43C hypersonic vehicle program as well as the RS-84 reusable engine project because neither fit the needs of NASA’s exploration efforts. I wrote up a small blurb about this for Spacetoday.net; see also Aerospace Daily.
- Elon Musk (who testified from California via a video link) likened the US launch industry to the US automotive industry of the 1970s, but added that at “no point during that period did General Motors decide, as Boeing has recently done, that they would only service government customers.” (The comparison is a little unfair, since Boeing still commercially markets the Delta 2 and is the lead partner in Sea Launch, which is entirely commercial.)
- One point Musk did make was that biggest thing that NASA and the DOD could do in the form of cooperation was cross-certification: if a new launch vehicle was good enough for the DOD, it should be good enough for NASA, and vice versa. Right now vehicles are independently certified, so a vehicle that has proven itself with one agency is not automatically considered satisfactory by the other. Later, during the question period, Karen Poniatowski, the NASA official responsible for procuring launch services, said the agency is willing to take risks by using untried launch vehicles for certain spacecraft, but has no payloads to assign to such vehicles: a potential Catch-22 for new vehicles.
- When the hearing started at 1 pm, there were six Congressman in attendance: chairman Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), ranking member Nick Lampson (D-TX), and four others. After about 20 minutes the hearing recessed for over an hour because of a series of votes on the House floor. When the hearing resumed only three members were present: Rohrabacher, Lampson, and Tom Feeney (R-FL), who wasn’t there when the hearing started.
March 19, 2004 at 8:01 am · Filed under Other
After observing the events of the last two months and talking with some people, it’s become clear that the new space initiative announced in January is missing one critical thing: a name. If you go to NASA’s web site you’ll find that the section associated with the exploration program is titled “NASA’s Future: Exploration and Discovery”. You’ll also see phrases like “To Worlds Beyond” and “The Vision for Space Exploration”. When President Bush unveiled the plan, it was titled “A Renewed Spirit of Discovery“: that’s not a name, that’s an attribute of the effort. As you can see, there’s no official title for this exploration program, unlike past proposals like the Space Exploration Initiative.
Why is a name important? At the Goddard Memorial Symposium this week, a number of speakers pointed out that this needs to be a national exploration initiative if it is to survive the inevitable political changes throughout its planned life. Yet, lacking a name, the program is often called the Bush space initiative (or plan, or agenda, or whatever.) That could pose problems for the program in 2005 or 2009 when a new president takes office, or potentially in between should the Democrats regain control of one or both houses of Congress. It also gives the appearance that the plan is fairly amorphous and undefined, which could be a near-term obstacle.
Having a catchy, politically-neutral name won’t alone solve those political problems, but it could help, in a small way, make the plan more palatable. I don’t have a good suggestion for what that name should be, but perhaps you do…
March 18, 2004 at 8:43 pm · Filed under Congress
The number of cosponsors for H. Res. 550, a House resolution calling for an independent review of the NASA decision to cancel the last Hubble servicing mission, has now crossed the 30 mark. The Mars Society announced in an email message today that the resolution now has 34 cosponsors. A check of Thomas revealed that the official list of cosponsors has been updated for the first time since the resolution was introduced two weeks ago. The official list has 33 cosponsors; the discrepancy may stem from the Mars Society calling the original sponsor, Rep. Mark Udall (D-CO), as one of the cosponsors, or one more may have signed up in the last day. The list also shows that most of the Maryland delegation is now on board (no surprise, given that the state is home to NASA Goddard and the Space Telescope Science Institute.) Given that NASA has largely acceded to one of the resolution’s key requests—establishing an independent panel, under the auspices of the National Academy of Sciences, to review the decision—it will be interesting to see if this resolution proceeds much farther.
March 17, 2004 at 8:37 pm · Filed under Congress
The House Science Committee issued a “media advisory” late Wednesday regarding the space subcommittee’s hearing Thursday on DOD/NASA cooperation on space transportation issues. The extensively-revised list of witnesses now reads as follows:
- Rear Admiral (Ret.) Craig Steidle, NASA Associate Administrator for the Office of Exploration Systems
- Major General (Ret.) Robert Dickman, Deputy for Military Space in the Office of the Under Secretary of the Air Force, Department of Defense
- The Honorable Ron Sega, Director of Defense Research & Engineering, Department of Defense
- Mr. Elon Musk, Chief Executive Officer of Space Exploration Technologies or SpaceX
The hearing is scheduled for 1pm Thursday in Rayburn 2318, and will also be webcast on the committee’s web site.
March 17, 2004 at 7:36 am · Filed under Congress
There are few stauncher proponents of space exploration in the House than Rep. Nick Lampson (D-TX). The congressman, whose district includes the Johnson Space Center, introduced the Space Exploration Act in both this Congress and the previous one. The bill (HR 3057) would set a series of ambitious space exploration goals for NASA. You would think, then, that he would be a strong supporter of the new space initiative introduced by Bush two months ago. While he was “pleased” by the announcement, he told attendees of a luncheon at the Goddard Memorial Symposium on Tuesday that a set of “less than auspicious circumstances” pose serious problems for the plan:
- The plan has been introduced during an election year, with all the politics associated with it;
- There are growing concerns among both Republicans and Democrats in Congress regarding the size of the budget deficit (he said that there is “serious talk” within Congress about a year-long freeze of all discretionary spending programs except defense and homeland security);
- The plan is seen as the President’s initiative, not the nation’s (a point made by several other speakers at the symposium). Worse, the president has said nothing about the plan since his January 14 speech;
- There has a been a lack of details about the plan, which Lampson said has made some people uneasy;
- The plan leaves some NASA programs with “an empty wallet”, notably some earth and space science efforts;
- The plan is based on some other policy decisions that are questionable, such as shutting down the shuttle program before the CEV comes online.
In short, he said, he has “serious concerns regarding how to implement the space initiative” but later said “I’m going to vote for it regardless.” He added that he planned to talk with John Kerry in the near future about space issues.
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