At this afternoon’s hearing of the space subcommittee of the Senate Commerce Committee, subcommittee chairman Sen. Sam Brownback (R-KS) announced that he was introducing today NASA authorization legislation for FY 2005. (The legislation hasn’t yet shown up on Thomas.) Brownback said the legislation “would provide the necessary authority for NASA to implement the exploration commission’s recommendations.” A few highlights of the legislation he pointed out during the hearing:
- The bill would call on NASA to implement a “private sector managed robotic mission to the Moon in three years”;
- The bill also asks the administration “to clarify US positions on private property rights for those seeking to develop space resources and infrastructure”;
- It includes provisions to enable NASA to offer prizes (presumably to allow NASA specifically to award prizes bigger than the current $250,000 limit it currently has). Brownback also said he would suggest that NASA’s first “big” prize would be a manned orbital flight; he has previously suggested a “Glenn Prize” like that with a purse of $100 million.
Brownback also said that he and his colleagues in the House have asked the GAO to investigate the possibility of commercial ISS resupply, saying that he had not, in his opinion, received a sufficient response on that topic from NASA.
Of course, actually getting this legislation passed will be a major challenge, given the limited schedule and the host of other legislation Congress has to deal with it; it’s been several years since Congress has approved a NASA authorization bill. At the COMSTAC meeting last month, Pete Worden, the retired Air Force general currently working in Brownback’s office on space issues, said that he felt there was a “pretty good shot”, or at least a 50-50 chance, of getting the legislation passed. We shall see…
Alright! $100 million prize to orbit is exactly what I was hoping for. I hope this all works out and we do end up seeing 5% of NASA’s money going towards Centennial Prizes. I hope Rutan follows suit with his outrageous eight 747 engine powered, 300 ton launcher!
Could you provide a link to any information on this “eight 747 engine powered, 300 ton launcher”? It sounds very interesting, to say the least . . .
http://www.popsci.com/popsci/aviation/article/0,12543,458498-3,00.html
Upon reading it again, I realize that he actually hopes to be doing something MORE exciting than this. Still, I hope someone follows up with this idea.
Just the tip of the resistance to change.
Officials shun KSC- university concept
Converting Kennedy Space Center into a university-run research facility won’t work, Florida lawmakers said Thursday
the only NASA center where humans are launched into space.
http://www.floridatoday.com/news/space/stories/2004b/spacestoryN0618NASAREPORT.htm
“Kennedy is an operational center,” Weldon said. “It’s not going to be workable.”
Well, the very same report recommends for NASA to get out of the operations. Make your own conclusions.
Even after a bill were to be signed allocating the funds.
Who would define the mission parameters, NASA or the Private sector?
What would the mission investigate, search for or build?
Is it just to prove that robots can do what man can not, or is it to lead the way for man?
I have more questions than answers for who will control space exploration.
Even if the Brownback bill doesn’t pass, it represents an evolution in the way some in Congress are willing to think when it comes to space activities. Rohrbacher’s bills also demonstrate this.
I certainly share the frustration with others that we seem to be plodding along and getting very little done, but on the other hand we appear to be moving slowly in the right direction conceptually – recognizing that the commercial sector will ultimately represent the bulk of space activities in the future. We will likely not see this day come to pass in our lifetimes, but we will witness the first grappling hooks sail over the wall separating the Earth from the great black yonder.
So ok I am no rocket scientist but I will still try to learn as I can. Here is a link that sort of explains why we can not cobble design a rocket from existing parts and why a design review of selected parts would need to be done.
“Off The Shelf” To Orbit Doesn’t Exist
http://www.rocketmanblog.com/2004/02/off_the_shelf_t.html
I am frankly not surprised at the apparent contradictions in the Aldridge report, and the Columbia Accident Investigation report, with regards to operations vs. outsourcing. The entire system of social, economic, political, technological, and other systems are in a state of radical change, like it or not. Dynamism and Network Means theory explain a lot of this, and only through experimentation, trial and error, and working on specific projects via Networked Means will the Space Community as a whole, not just NASA management, and society as a whole who are potential converts to the spacefaring cause, will change this. This will answer the questions as to what specific missions would investigate, search, or build. Robots and people must work where each has a comparative advantage, in the economic sense, to be truly efficient and effective. But only the trial and error of a dynamist approach will do this, not just the skeletal beginnings of government master planning.
In the book Space, The Dormant Frontier, Joan Johnson-Freese stated towards the end of the book that profit slowly was taking precedence over politics in driving space activity, and it was inevitable. And the prize commentary is very encouraging; I hope we see much more of it.
Trans Orbital has a spacecraft nearly ready to go to lunar orbit this fall, I wonder if it qualifies as a “non-government”, private sector managed robotic missions to the moon in three years qualifies. By my reckoning, I think it does.
And most importantly, If I had a chance to exert my property rights in space via a mechanism that gives me title to and asteroid, or part of the moon, and this property right is a real thing, not an artificial construct to make someone else rich, that would be the best thing that happens for space settlement/development in the first decade of the Twenty First Century, in my opinion.
I just hope the Oligarchy and the Demopublicans, and Republicrats will allow this to happen. They have a very bad, entrenched habit of strangling new things in their cradles, particularly where threats to their control and power over life on earth, commerce, industry, etc, they now have, emerge. Space is a very big threat to geocentric oligarchy, and I can only hope the Space Community comes together to support with no compromise anything and everything that gets real hardware that is Frontier Enabling into space, and establishes space property rights.
Here is a tid bit that is a hint of what Nasa might also do with the commissions report.
NASA Ponders Shuttle Flight Without Two Key Changes
NASA is considering whether it can return its space shuttles to flight without making two safety improvements that have so far proved to be high hurdles for agency engineers, top officials said on Friday. After the space shuttle Columbia disintegrated over Texas last year and killed.
NASA engineers are working on a repair kit that could fix a large hole in a shuttle wing’s leading edge. They are also trying to build a boom to inspect the orbiter’s underside.
The tasks have proved challenging, so the space agency is considering whether it can launch the shuttles without those two upgrades.
http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsArticle.jhtml?type=scienceNews&storyID=5461206§ion=news
Back to the NASA Authorization bill…
It’s title is “a bill to reauthorize and restructure the National Aeronautics and Space Administration”.
Sponsors: McCain, Brownback, Hutchison, Allen
That means it has backing from the full spectrum of (GOP) space views on the Commerce Committee:
reformer, visionary, JSC defender, and aeronautics defender.
I just read it. I’m not to impressed with how what the Commission said was translated into legi-speak. Especially as it relates to Section 305 and 306.