Space Politics
Because sometimes the most important orbit is the Beltway…
Archive for March, 2005
March 20, 2005 at 1:55 pm · Filed under Other
I noted in my article in The Space Review last week that Michael Griffin is not yet well known outside of the space community: on Google the top result for “Michael Griffin” was an escape artist who promises “½ intensley [sic] original magic”. Fortunately, over the last week Dr. Griffin is starting to get a little respect. The Michael Griffin search on Google still returns the escape artist at the top result, but my TSR article is now second (!!) and some SpaceRef pages with copies of his Congressional testimony rank fourth and fifth. Still in the top ten, though, are an Irish estate agent, a University of Texas football player, and a British furniture builder. (The results are a little different if you put his name in quotes.)
The same is true if you’re a little more informal and search on Mike Griffin instead: links to articles on MSNBC.com, SpaceRef, and even this blog show up in the top ten. However, the top entry belongs to Big Mike Griffin, a singer who has “taken the biker - blues community by storm”.
March 18, 2005 at 12:45 pm · Filed under Other
Earlier this week I noted that a Senate hearing would likely be one of the last where Peter Teets, the acting Air Force secretary and director of the NRO, would appear. That indeed is the case: the Defense Department announced today that Teets has submitted his resignation, effective a week from today. Teets had been acting secretary of the Air Force for only couple of months; he had been the Undersecretary of the Air Force, as well as the DOD’s “Executive Agent” for space, since 2001. (Teets previously had been president of Lockheed Martin, retiring in 1999.)
The departure of Teets, who was the top-ranking official with the DOD primarily associated with space, threatens to create something of a power vacuum for military space issues within the DOD. Robert Dickman, who had been the deputy for military space within the office of the Undersecretary, left the Pentagon last month to become executive director of the AIAA. All this comes at a time when many major military space programs (like Advanced EHF, SBIRS, space-based radar, etc.) have come under considerable Congressional scrutiny.
March 18, 2005 at 7:52 am · Filed under Other
NASA officials have stated on a number of occasions that they have no plans right now to close one or more of its field centers; instead, current efforts are focused on closing specific facilities at those centers. That, however, hasn’t stopped people from taking preemptive action to fight potential center closings.
The AP reported yesterday that Ohio state senator Robert F. Spada, a suburban Cleveland Republican who is also Assistant Majority Floor Leader, has introduced a resolution to “memorialize Congress to take appropriate action so that NASA Glenn Research Center is excluded from the list of base closures for the Base Realignment and Closure process.” (The full text of the resolution, SCR 12, wasn’t available yet on the Ohio Senate’s web site as of this morning.) Never mind the fact that there is no “Base Realignment and Closure process” at NASA right now. The resolution was mixed in with a number of others designed to protect Ohio military bases that could be subject to an authentic BRAC.
Meanwhile, the Hampton Roads Daily Press, in an editorial Friday, urges its readers to “jump and shout” to let NASA and Congress know not to close the Langley Research Center. The editors don’t take at face value the statement by NASA associate administrator Vic Lebacqz that there are no plans to close Langley, comparing his one-word denial (”no”) to previous infamous statements by Bill Clinton and Paul Wolfowitz (ouch!). The editorial asks Virginia senators John Warner and George Allen to press NASA administrator nominee Michael Griffin on this during his upcoming confirmation hearing.
March 17, 2005 at 7:42 am · Filed under Other
The Japanese newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun reports that the Japanese government is considering a rather bold new space policy for that country that would include manned space flights. (Perhaps the headline “JAXA seeks to bodily go” is really a pun rather than a typo. Then again, maybe not.) The plan, scheduled for approval later this month, calls for modifying the H-2A Transfer Vehicle (HTV) originally developed as an unmanned cargo spacecraft for the ISS into a manned vehicle ready for crewed missions by around 2015. The plan also calls for JAXA “to secure superiority in the use of the moon’s resources” in advance of participation in an international lunar base by 2025.
The plan does not come cheap: the first ten years of the program would cost Japan 250-280 billion yen ($2.4-2.7 billion) a year, compared to JAXA’s current annual budget of 180 billion yen ($1.7 billion). However, many Japanese have felt that their space program has fallen behind China’s: the failure of an H-2A less than two months after China launched its first manned mission in October 2003 was a rather pointed demonstration of those worries. If a new “space race” does develop, it will not be between the US and China, but between China and Japan (and perhaps India and South Korea as well.)
March 16, 2005 at 6:45 pm · Filed under NASA
The Washington Post has an article in today’s issue that goes into more details about the planned cuts both in employees and facilities at the agency’s various field centers. Besides the job cuts, which have been previously reported, the article indicates that 14 facilities at NASA field centers, including ten wind tunnels, could be closed. Also on the chopping block is the US-Japanese centrifuge module for the ISS, currently being built at NASA Ames. One interesting note is that, with the lack of a full-time administrator, the planning for the cuts is currently led not by acting administrator Fred Gregory but by associate administrator for exploration Craig Steidle.
March 16, 2005 at 7:47 am · Filed under Congress
The strategic forces subcommittee of the Senate Armed Services Committee is scheduled to hold a hearing this afternoon on national security space policy and programs in the FY2006 budget proposal. Several witnesses, including acting Air Force Secretary Peter Teets as well as the commanders of the US Strategic Command and Air Force Space Command, are scheduled to testify. Unfortunately, there is no webcast of the hearing available. (Side note: if rumors are true, this could be one of the last appearances of the Hill for Teets, who is expected to announce his retirement within the next several weeks.)
One of the topics that may come up during the hearing, the Washington Post reports today, is the development of the Common Aero Vehicle (CAV), a suborbital vehicle that could carry half a ton of payload—sensors or munitions—thousands of kilometers. The CAV is part of DARPA’s Falcon program (which was formerly FALCON, or Force Application and Launch from CONUS, although the agency appears to no longer use the acronym); most space advocates know Falcon for its other major component, the development of a responsive small launch vehicle (SLV) that could carry the CAV, as well as launch small satellites into orbit. Four companies, including SpaceX and its own Falcon launch vehicle, have Phase 2 SLV study contracts.
March 15, 2005 at 5:58 am · Filed under Congress
The House Science Committee’s space and aeronautics subcommittee will hold a hearing Wednesday at 10 am on “The Future of Aeronautics at NASA”. The NASA associate administrator for aeronautics, J. Victor Lebacqz, is scheduled to testify, along with several other people from universities and organizations. Given the controversy that has surrounded proposed budget cuts to NASA’s aeronautics efforts, and proposed job reductions at NASA centers that focus on aeronautics, this could prove to be an interesting hearing.
March 14, 2005 at 9:19 pm · Filed under NASA
For the longest time (like, about 72 hours) it seemed like no one would speak ill of the Bush Administration’s choice of Mike Griffin as NASA’s next administrator. But this is Washington, so you knew the lovefest couldn’t last forever. In his “ArmsControlWonk” weblog, Jeffrey Lewis, a research fellow at the University of Maryland’s Center for International and Security Studies and an opponent of missile defense and space weaponization, takes aim at Griffin. Most of Dr. Lewis’s criticism stems from Griffin’s role as a member of Heritage Foundation study group that issued a 1996 report arguing in favor of a missile defense system, including space-based systems, for the US. (Interestingly, Dr. Lewis does not mention the year of the Heritage report in his blog entry, perhaps giving the reader the misconception that the report is more contemporaneous than it actually is.)
I will not attempt to debate Dr. Lewis’s critique on missile defense: after all, this is not “Missile Defense Politics” and Dr. Griffin has been nominated to head NASA, not the MDA. However, Lewis does stretch his logic a little too far on China: he argues that since the Heritage report included a passage from an article critical of Chinese arms proliferation, this “likely signals the termination of tentative steps toward Sino-US space cooperation” started by former administrator O’Keefe. Dr. Lewis doesn’t point out, though, that while last year’s Planetary Society assessment of space exploration options, co-chaired by Griffin, was somewhat dismissive of Chinese space capabilities, it does suggest a possible role for Sino-US cooperation:
China is, after the United States and Russia, the third country to have developed an indigenous human space flight capability. At present, the Chinese capability is limited both by lift capacity and by the relative immaturity of their technology, which has so far achieved only one human space flight. The Chinese have, however, indicated that they hope to develop a Mir-like space station by 2010 and plan to launch robotic lunar probes in the same time frame; this latter endeavor is potentially cooperative with U.S. goals.
Perhaps someone will think to bring up this topic during Griffin’s Senate confirmation hearings and enlighten us all.
Dr. Lewis concludes that Griffin’s support of missile defense and alleged opposition to Chinese cooperation “should raise alarm”. Lewis goes further and concludes that this is evidence of “an uncurious mind motivated more by ideology than evidence or reason.” However, given Lewis’s rather poor argument on Chinese relations—not to mention his decision to caption a photo of Griffin with the phrase “He’s nuts, too.”—some might argue that the same conclusion could be applied to Lewis.
March 14, 2005 at 12:50 pm · Filed under Congress
That’s the assessment of a front page article in Monday’s Washington Post, which notes that some Republicans are starting to become at least mildly concerned about alleged improprieties (or at least the appearance of impropriety, which can be just as damning) by the House majority leader. One Republican political consultant said the situation was “negatively fluid” for DeLay; a Brookings Institution fellow warned that DeLay could be in “serious political peril” down the road.
This is, of course, a concern for NASA supporters because it was DeLay’s staunch support for the agency—including holding up an omnibus appropriations bill at the last minute—that ensured that NASA got its full funding for FY05, at the expense of other agencies. If DeLay does not emerge from this web of intrigue unscathed, it could make it harder for him to make a similar stand in this or future years; it could also encourage appropriators already scrounging for funding in a tight budget to raid NASA. While DeLay’s support proved invaluable for NASA last year, this is all the more reason the agency and its backers need to expand its base of Congressional support now and for the future if the exploration program is to remain on track. After all, even if DeLay ends up fully vindicated, at some point in the future he won’t be House majority leader, and his replacement may not be so fond of NASA.
March 14, 2005 at 7:49 am · Filed under NASA
Those of you in Florida’s Space Coast (from which I just returned after a brief but enjoyable trip) may be interested in a public forum scheduled for Wednesday night on “Return to Flight: A Bridge to the Future”. The forum, hosted by the newspaper Florida Today and cosponsored by the Space Foundation, will feature KSC director Jim Kennedy, Space Foundation president Elliot Pulham, and Florida Space Research Institute executive director (and former astronaut) Sam Durrance.
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