Space Politics
Because sometimes the most important orbit is the Beltway…
Archive for March, 2005
March 30, 2005 at 7:27 am · Filed under Other
The Space Frontier Foundation and the Mars Society announced yesterday that they are jointly calling on NASA to mount a shuttle servicing mission to the Hubble Space Telescope. “The Hubble deserters’ embrace of irrational fear as a core ethic threatens a precedent that would preclude any future human accomplishments in space,” the Foundation’s spokesman, Rick Tumlinson, said in the statement. “Indeed, had such an ethic prevailed in our space program the past, we would never have been able to launch or repair Hubble, and the Apollo program would have been inconceivable. Should we embrace it now, the prospects for future human exploration of the Moon and Mars will decline to zero.” While the Space Frontier Foundation and the Mars Society have a lot in common—organizations with influence that goes beyond the relatively small sizes, featuring outspoken (and often polarizing) leaders—they usually have very different views on national space priorities, making joint statements like these relatively rare. (Although both organizations are members of the Space Exploration Alliance.)
Meanwhile, Congressman Steny Hoyer (D-MD) visited NASA Goddard yesterday and called on NASA to restore a robotic servicing mission to Hubble. Hoyer, whose district includes Goddard, said that the robotic servicing plan, dropped by NASA at the beginning of this year, “is a very important mission for us to continue and complete.” NASA associate administrator (and former Goddard director) Al Diaz, on the same tour, reiterated that “We don’t intend on servicing it, that’s where we are.” Hoyer, it should be noted, is the minority whip, the second-highest ranking Democrat in the House.
March 29, 2005 at 7:45 am · Filed under Congress
An AP article Monday discusses the influence two members of Congress from Alabama, Sen. Richard Shelby (R) and Rep. Bud Cramer (D), have on the NASA budget process. Shelby chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee’s Commerce, Justice, and Science subcommittee, which oversees NASA, while Cramer serves on respective subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee.
Most of the article is how the two plan to use their influence to support NASA Marshall. The article notes that Cramer in particular “is prepared to take drastic actions if NASA’s leaders aren’t more forthcoming to the delegation”; Cramer also told the AP that he had a “difficult and not a very satisfying conversation” with Craig Steidle, NASA associate administrator for exploration systems, although the subject of that conversation wasn’t mentioned. Shelby and Cramer are apparently concerned about what Michael Griffin has planned for NASA, since many of “the assurances Cramer and Shelby had received about Marshall’s role had come from O’Keefe.”
The most curious passage of the article, though, might be this:
President Bush wants NASA to focus on sending astronauts to the moon and Mars. However, the agency has been mum on what kind of role Marshall would have in that program and whether it would come at the expense of other programs being done in Huntsville, including plans for an orbital space plane to transport astronauts to the space station.
Um, I hate to break it to Mr. McMurray, the AP reporter, but the Orbital Space Plane program was shut down last year, succeeded by the Crew Exploration Vehicle, which is certainly part of the Vision (although whether it will perform missions to ISS appears to still be uncertain.)
March 29, 2005 at 7:31 am · Filed under Congress
In an op-ed in Monday’s Hampton Roads Daily Press, Rep. Jo Ann David (R-VA) goes to bat for aeronautics programs at NASA Langley. She argues that these aeronautics programs are more important to the nation’s economy and security than the Vision for Space Exploration: “Aeronautics funding is a matter of national security, and last time I checked, the planet Mars was not an emerging threat to United States security.” Indeed, much of her argument centers around the aeronautics advances made by NASA that have benefited the military; if so, perhaps the DOD should be spending more money on aeronautics research itself?
March 25, 2005 at 7:47 am · Filed under Other
The Baltimore Sun published an editorial yesterday proclaiming its support for Michael Griffin as the next NASA administrator. However, the editorial also called on Griffin to put more emphasis on Hubble and less on Mars: “While he is on record backing the Bush plan to send humans as far away as Mars, we hope his reputed reasoned skepticism and grasp of the big picture also lead him to back the mission to repair the Hubble Space Telescope.” The editorial later notes that “Hubble’s data are real, meaningful and cost-effective, something the far-out Mars colonizing plans aren’t.”
Which takes us to The Mars Society, whose leadership clearly rejects the Sun’s either/or in favor of both repairing Hubble and going to Mars. Just as he did last year, Mars Society president Robert Zubrin has spoken out in favor of a shuttle servicing mission to the orbiting telescope. Zubrin’s essay covers a wide range of issues, from the relative risks of shuttle missions for Hubble vs. ISS to the technological readiness (or lack thereof) of a robotic repair mission to a claim that spending $300 million on a deorbit-only mission “amounts to the willful killing of roughly 100,000 people – mostly children.” (This is based on an estimate that one life was saved for every $3,000 spent on tsunami relief, and ignores the fact that a deorbit capability of some kind will need to be developed regardless of what servicing approach, if any, is chosen.)
Zubrin believes that “substantial” damage has been done to the Vision for Space Exploration by NASA’s reticence to repair Hubble. “[H]ow can Congress know that after they spend further tens of billions for human flight systems to the Moon and Mars, that the agency leadership won’t get cold feet again?” Zubrin asks. However, I have heard that Zubrin’s attention to Hubble has been a sore point among some Mars Society members, both last year and this, since they view the effort to save the telescope as a distraction to the society’s larger efforts to promote human exploration of Mars.
March 24, 2005 at 7:53 am · Filed under Other
Most of a Tuesday morning briefing by Mark Albrecht, president of International Launch Services, focused on the state of the commercial launch industry in general and ILS’ performance in particular. However, the conversation did drift to NASA’s exploration program. For that Albrecht could offer some unique insights: earlier in his career he served as executive secretary of the National Space Council during the Bush/Quayle administration, the last time the council existed in any meaningful form, and also during the last time the space agency and the White House were planning a bold exploration program.
Not surprisingly, Albrecht tried to sell the capabilities of the Atlas 5 (marketed by ILS) and potential evolved, more powerful variants of the rocket to carry out much of the exploration vision, although he admitted that these would never have the capability of a clean-sheet heavy-lift vehicle specifically designed to launch as much mass into orbit as possible. “My personal experience is that you tend to compromise and try to figure out what you can do with existing technologies to get the most capability out of it,” he said. He supported the provision in the new national space transportation policy that requires NASA and the Defense Department to work together on recommendations for heavy-lift launch capability. “I’ve been there, and you really don’t want to be sitting in your office in the White House designing space stuff.”
He also cautioned that schedule is a major concern for any launch vehicle or other large development program associated with the Vision. “One of the pressures in dealing with these kinds of exploration initiatives is that time moves at double time, and any part of the project that takes three or four or five years to show any progress is just tough.” He noted that Apollo is particularly remarkable in this respect because its big budgets survived in Congress for years during its development phase with little visible signs of progress. “That’s a tough trick in today’s environment, to have a program that’s going to take six years to really show something that the average Congressman or customer can go look at, and during those years sustain a really aggressive funding profile.”
Albrecht also seemed enthusiastic about the selection of Mike Griffin as NASA administrator, perhaps giving him one of the biggest compliments possible: “Mike Griffin wants to go.”
March 23, 2005 at 7:39 am · Filed under Congress
Could Congress force NASA to repair the Hubble Space Telescope? That’s the suggestion of an article on the New Scientist web site Tuesday, which notes that the House Science Committee “could introduce legislation to force a rescue mission – using either robots or astronauts.” The committee is apparently considering such a move, depending on the contents of a number of reports, including an assessment of the risks of a shuttle servicing mission, it is expecting to receive from NASA as soon as next month. What new administrator nominee Mike Griffin thinks about Hubble—a very big question mark at the moment—will doubtless also play a role. A bigger question, though, may be whether Congress should force NASA to carry out a mission that the agency has, for better or worse, determined to be too risky—particularly in the case of the shuttle option—or otherwise unlikely to succeed.
March 22, 2005 at 7:10 am · Filed under Congress
Two Republican members of the US Senate have spoken out recently to defend NASA centers in their states that could be subject to cutbacks or (as some fear) closing. Tuesday’s Cleveland Plain Dealer reports that Sen. Mike DeWine (R-OH) acknowledged that this year’s budget battle for NASA Glenn “is going to be a tougher fight.” DeWine admits that “we know we’ll lose some” employees, but is worried about cuts steep enough that would bring the center below a “critical mass” needed to carry out research there.
Meanwhile, Tuesday’s Hampton Roads Daily Press features an op-ed by Sen. George Allen (R-VA), writing in response to an editorial the newspaper published Friday asking readers to speak out to Congress in support of NASA Langley. Allen writes that he and fellow Virginian “representatives in Washington share the newspaper’s concern and are acting to reverse the unwise, harmful proposals related to aeronautics research and development jobs that are essential to the Peninsula and America’s future.” He notes that he inserted a “Sense of the Senate” amendment in a budget bill last week which states the Senate’s “belief that $1.5 billion should be allocated to the new aeronautics vehicle systems programs over the next five years.” Of course, belief is one thing, but funding to support those programs is something else entirely…
March 21, 2005 at 7:45 am · Filed under NASA
As previously noted, some localities are bracing for a potential NASA center closing review (or BRAC, to use the DOD terminology), never mind the fact that there is no BRAC process planned for NASA at this time. In this week’s issue of The Space Review, Taylor Dinerman makes that case that a BRAC is a bid idea because of cultural issues. Namely, two of the leading centers that might be closed in a BRAC, Ames and Glenn, are among the few major “Northern” centers the agency has; the rest are in the South. (I would gently disagree with Taylor that Maryland is a Southern state; in my experience living in the Maryland suburbs of DC the last few years, the Baltimore-Washington corridor at the very least has a distinctly Northeastern, not Southern, feel.) Regardless, having all of NASA’s major centers concentrated in one area of the country may not help the agency win support nationwide. Moreover, the process of a BRAC itself would create a political fight that “would cripple the organization for years, just as a badly managed merger can wreck a pair of strong corporations.”
March 21, 2005 at 6:40 am · Filed under NASA
The New York Times reports Monday on how some non-exploration NASA programs, like aircraft flights to monitor tropical clouds, are being threatened by budget changes at the space agency. However, the problem is not just a change in NASA’s priorities given the Vision for Space Exploration (although that is a significant factor), but also the introduction of “full-cost accounting” at the agency. While such accounting is designed to reflect the true cost of programs, the Times reports that “the agency does not always shift money along with this new budget responsibility”, resulting in delays and even cancellation of some programs. Robert P. Kirshner, president of the American Astronomical Society, notes that this change means that any plans for a Hubble servicing mission involving the shuttle now have to account for the full cost of such a mission, but “they don’t charge shuttle trips to the space station in the new way.”
The article also notes some scientists, while personally enthused by the Vision for Space Exploration, are chafing against the “top-down” approach that ignores the research priorities that scientists have laid out in recent years through such mechanisms as the astronomy and planetary science decadal plans. But as Ghassem Asrar, deputy associate administrator for NASA’s science mission directorate, notes, the agency didn’t ask scientists “to pass judgment on the composition of the NASA program.”
March 21, 2005 at 6:22 am · Filed under Uncategorized
A Houston Chronicle article Monday notes that Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) now has considerable influence over NASA in the Senate: she chairs both the science and space subcommittee of the Senate Commerce Committee as well as the commerce, justice, and science subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee, both of which have oversight over NASA. She tells the Chronicle that she has been “very concerned about NASA’s drifting” in recent years, adding that “I think we now have a chance to refocus NASA and fulfill its mission and have a vibrant purpose.”
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