According to a fairly well-informed source, the House Science Committee (most likely just the space subcommittee) plans to hold a hearing next week on NASA’s Centennial Challenges program. No word yet on a specific date and time (although I think we can rule out the 11:30am-2pm time frame on Tuesday) nor on witnesses. It will be interesting to see what tack the committee takes, although I haven’t heard anything to suggest that they are anything but supportive of at least the concept of prizes.
Update 9 pm: According to another source, the hearing is scheduled for next Thursday, although it apparently is not yet on the committee’s official calendar. The witnesses currently planned to testify include Craig Steidle and Brant Sponberg from NASA, the X Prize’s Peter Diamandis, and Molly Macauley from Resources for the Future.
Have they rescheduled the Aldridge hearing?
No reschedueling as of this time that I can find but on June 24, 2004 – Science Committee Chairman Sherwood Boehlert did release the following statement in response to NASA’s “Transformation Plan”:
http://wwws.house.gov/search97cgi/s97_cgi?action=View&VdkVgwKey=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Ehouse%2Egov%2Fscience%2Fpress%2F108%2F108%2D277%2Ehtm&DocOffset=5&DocsFound=5&QueryZip=aldridge&SourceQueryZip=vdkvgwkey+%3Csubstring%3E+%22%2Fscience%2F%22&Collection=comms&ViewTemplate=commview%2Ehts&
My own thoughts are that the Nasa anouncement of change put the committe into a wait and see approach to the final report by the Aldridge commission. Giving Nasa a chance before they can make or ask for any changes.
I don’t think there’s a connection between the hearing delay and the NASA reorganization announcement. Much of the Aldridge Commission’s report goes far beyond what the NASA HQ reorg encompasses, so there’s no reason to “wait and see” how the changes within NASA unfold before discussing the report in a hearing. However, Mr. LaValley, if you have any insider knowledge or other insights regarding why the hearing was postponed, please do share.
Dr. Foust wrote:
“I don’t think there’s a connection between the hearing delay and the NASA reorganization announcement. Much of the Aldridge Commission’s report goes far beyond what the NASA HQ reorg encompasses…”
Let me second that. I cringed whenever I saw someone write that NASA was reorganizing “as recommended by the Aldridge Commission.”
The problem with that is that NASA’s reorganization was well underway before the Commission wrote its report. Now admittedly O’Keefe probably got updates, and he did have a representative working on the Commission. But what the Aldridge Commission called for, particularly the conversion of centers to FFRDCs, is not part of the NASA transformation plan.
http://www.spaceref.com/calendar/calendar.html?pid=3008
My source is House Science Committee staff.
Here is a few sites for Langley changes afoot.
Langley changes reflect ”one-NASA” idea
Top officials at NASA Langley Research Center are shaking up the organization, asking more than 100 supervisors and top managers to compete for management jobs under a new structure.
http://home.hamptonroads.com/stories/story.cfm?story=72753&ran=77712
NASA’s Langley Research Center will cut top supervisor jobs by 20 percent as it reorganizes to pursue new space exploration goals, officials said yesterday.”It’s important that we get into an efficient organization,” said the center’s director, Roy D. Bridges Jr.
http://www.timesdispatch.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=RTD%2FMGArticle%2FRTD_BasicArticle&c=MGArticle&cid=1031776556813&path=!news&s=1045855934842
sorry I just found this one also on Langley:
NASA Langley ‘transforming’
The research center in Hampton announces reorganization plans to streamline and prepare for sending people back to the moon and to Mars.
http://www.dailypress.com/news/local/dp-40644sy0jul08,0,6756913.story?coll=dp-news-local-final
NASA’s new mission: Reignite momentum
With directive from Bush and visions of a luminous future, agency eyes reforms.
Interview with Frederick D. Gregory, NASA’s deputy administrator, serves as the agency’s chief operating officer and reports directly to NASA Administrator Sean O’Keefe. He is responsible for directing and managing many of the programs, as well as the day-to-day operations and activities at NASA. He was in Denver recently and spoke with Thom Beal, deputy editorial page editor.
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/opinion/article/0,1299,DRMN_38_3019263,00.html
That hearing lineup looks like a great set of speakers. I haven’t seen much from Molly Macauley recently.
I don’t know if it’s good from a public policy perspective, but I’m glad that they don’t seem to have a single witness who opposes prizes. It’s a well-stacked deck, to my mind. It indicates that the purpose of the hearing is to focus on not whether, but how.
Regarding the rescheduled Aldridge Commission hearing: I heard this morning that the hearing likely will not take place until after the August recess. I didn’t get a reason for the delay, but with a limited legislative calendar, and a lot of business for Congress to deal with, it may simply be a matter of finding the time.
I can’t recall if Molly Macauley has written anything, pro or con, about prizes in recent years, so it may be premature to say there are no opponents of prizes on the panel. Perhaps someone can recall something she’s written or said on the topic in the past…
Dr. Foust wrote:
“Regarding the rescheduled Aldridge Commission hearing: I heard this morning that the hearing likely will not take place until after the August recess.”
It’s probably a waste of time to simply do an Aldridge hearing alone. What they should do, and could do now that they have more time, is a hearing on NASA reorganization. This could include the NASA administrator discussing the transformation plan, Aldridge on his report, and maybe one or two other witnesses.
My opinion is that what is desperately needed is somebody to discuss FFRDCs, unless that recommendation is already politically dead on arrival. The Aldridge commission really punted on that one–they recommended that NASA adopt the FFRDC model but did not really explain what that model is or why they think it will work. As I understand it, there are many different ways to run an FFRDC. Sandia is not run the same way as JPL, or The Aerospace Corporation. And it is worth noting that Aldridge himself tried to turn Aerospace into a private contractor by merging it with SAIC and the Air Force vetoed this idea. So there are limits to how much you can run an FFRDC as a “commercial” entity. Somebody should discuss those limits.
There has to be an expert on FFRDCs somewhere in the government or academia. And by “expert” I don’t mean someone who was CEO of one, but who can discuss the big picture, as well as the policy issues. (For instance, I do not think it is currently legally possible to simply tell 1000 civil servants at a federal facility that they are all fired and will have to compete for their jobs with an industrial or university contractor. So how exactly can you convert a NASA field center to an FFRDC?)
Something the Aldrigde commission did not touch on is length of mission and what do you do after it has elasped.
We really have not touched on the expense of robotic mission operations personel in any of the discussions thus far.
In this article Analysis: End not in sight for Mars rovers ( http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20040707-031016-2765r )it mentions only suficient funding though to September, or the end of the government’s fiscal year. JPL officials are in touch with NASA headquarters in Washington about providing additional funds in hopes of a mission extension, probably into 2005.
I think it is entirely possible that one or both vehicles will make it through the Martian winter. Opportunity has been using deep sleep for several weeks now to save energy. This mode leaves the rover completely unpowered during the frigid Martian night. The main risk of this is to the mini thermal emission spectrometer, which could be damaged by the cold if its heater is turned off. So far it has not been damaged as of yet on the Opportunity rover.
This does present a problem when funding projects of any kind for Nasa in general not just robotic missions but probes or satelites of any veriety. How long should the item be used for?
That is just one of the possible reasons for ditching Hubble into the ocean also is they have run out of funds with repair and upgrades? Not to mention the safety issue since it does not have a deorbit booster.
Creating FFRDC isn’t an easy or quick project. Finding someone to run an FFRDC is the hardest part because a university is not running Kennedy. It will take NASA at least 6 months to get plan together because it’s a major undertaking.
The Chairman of the Science Committee said “Congress should allow agencies to decide how to organize themselves as long as the reorganization plan does not disadvantage any area of science, particularly Earth Science. O’Keefe and I met for more than an hour on Tuesday (June 22) to discuss NASA’s transformation plans and I am optimistic that we will be pleased when we review all the details”
I don’t think you can compare the NASA of today to even the one 5 yrs ago. Each Administrator brings a lot to the table; Richard Truly was very different than Goldin. Goldin was a great visionary but not very practical. I think O’Keefe has both of these qualities. The commission’s main point was that centers need to change for two reasons; better include private sector including X type prizes and international contribution to the overall long range goal and increase flexibility to meet the changing needs of the future. NASA has many restrictions by federal law; this makes NASA slow to react to changing needs. NASA must go to congress for any major changes which takes time and money. Another solution is to make NASA a department but than Congress would have less control over it’s budget. How about calling them the Department of National Aeronautics, Space and Astronautics.
“Something the Aldrigde commission did not touch on is length of mission and what do you do after it has elasped.”
You are not making sense.
Given the ideological orientation of both Molly and Resources For The Future, I’d be astonished to hear her opposed to prizes…