Space Politics
Because sometimes the most important orbit is the Beltway…
Archive for April, 2005
April 12, 2005 at 1:22 pm · Filed under Congress
That’s perhaps the best description of this morning’s confirmation hearing for Michael Griffin. The hearing lasted over an hour, but Griffin’s hearing was held in parallel with that for Joseph Boardman, the nominee to run the Federal Railway Administration; Griffin probably got a majority of the attention, but not an overwhelming amount. There were plenty of platitudes, and even a joke or two, but here weren’t too many questions from the senators, although some promised to submit their questions in written format to Griffin for inclusion in the record. A few highlights:
- On Hubble, Griffin pointed out that until his nomination was announced last month, he had chaired an independent technical review committee of the proposed robotic servicing mission. He concurred with the conclusion that a robotic mission was not feasible on the timescales required, saying that the robotic option should be taken “off the plate.” However, he seemed open to restoring a shuttle servicing mission, but wants to wait and see what NASA learns after the shuttle return to flight.
- Griffin agreed with Sens. Hutchison and Nelson that the gap between the end of the shuttle program and the introduction of the CEV needs to be shortened. He seemed to favor finding ways to shorten the development time of the CEV, noting that the entire Gemini development program took about 39 months. (Hutchison and Nelson have complained about this gap in the past, but tended to favor extending the shuttle program beyond 2010.) Shortening the gap, he said, would be his second priority, after return to flight.
- He said he believed that NASA should “bring the space station to a level of completion consistent with our obligations to our international partners.” That, some might argue, offers some wiggle room to end station assembly at some point earlier than current plans, so long as ESA and JAXA in particular get their modules in place.
- At least three senators (Mikulski, Nelson, and Sarbanes) called him a “rocket scientist”; Mikulski added “Thank God!” Both Mikulski and Sarbanes pointed out Griffin was from Aberdeen, Maryland, the birthplace of Cal Ripken. Mikulski went so far as to claim that Griffin embodied the “Ripken Way” of being the best that you can be.
For some more details see the writeup at SpaceRef. The Senate Commerce Committee seemed eager to act on Griffin’s nomination, agreeing to a request by Sen. Hutchison to expedite the nomination, getting it approved by the committee as soon as today and approved by the full Senate by the end of the week.
April 12, 2005 at 7:55 am · Filed under Congress
Michael Griffin is expected to lead off a Senate confirmation hearing this morning; he has to share the hearing with several other non-NASA nominees, and according to reports the committee will spend no more than about an hour with Griffin before moving on to the others. As Florida Today reports, the hearing is part formality—there’s no opposition to the nomination—but is an opportunity for senators to query Griffin on some key issues.
There are a couple options for watching the hearing, if you’re not going to be there in person. The Commerce Committee provides its own live webcast of the hearing. Additionally, the audio of the hearing is available on CapitolHearings.org, a C-SPAN service. (C-SPAN itself will not carry the hearing on TV, instead covering the confirmation hearings of John Negroponte and John Bolton.) NASA TV is not scheduled to show the hearing, but its schedule is always subject to change.
April 11, 2005 at 8:37 pm · Filed under Congress
While Tom DeLay doesn’t have an official role in the confirmation of Michael Griffin as the next NASA Administrator, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison—chair of the Senate Commerce Committee’s space subcommittee—certainly does. On Monday her office issued a terse press release endorsing Griffin’s selection. “I have spoken with Dr. Griffin about working together to reauthorize NASA and implement our vision for NASA’s future,” she said in the statement. “I look forward to his hearing tomorrow and, hopefully, a smooth confirmation.”
Meanwhile, there’s a report that some space activists will hold a rally Tuesday morning in support of Griffin and manned spaceflight in general. Let’s just hope they show up at the right place: the report says the group, including some NSS and Space Generation Foundation members, will meet at 9am at the “Russell House Office Building”; presumably they mean the Russell Senate Office Building (where the confirmation hearing will take place), although where in the vicinity of the building hasn’t been announced.
April 11, 2005 at 8:01 am · Filed under Congress
While House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX) won’t have a direct role in the confirmation of NASA administrator nominee Michael Griffin, he has given Griffin his seal of approval. In a meeting late last week on Capitol Hill, DeLay and Griffin discussed NASA legislative strategy as well as “the importance of reaching out to the public on the important work NASA is doing and the need for commercialization of space.” DeLay said he was “excited” by Griffin’s nomination, concluding that he “has the background and the passion to lead NASA in the right direction.”
April 8, 2005 at 8:05 am · Filed under Uncategorized
Rep. Ken Calvert (R-CA), chairman of the space subcommittee of the House Science Committee, gave an address at the National Space Symposium this week. This is perhaps his most detailed address on space issues to date; he is also scheduled to give a press conference next week where he will outline his plans for the space subcommittee for the year. Some highlights from his talk:
- The major theme of his address is that the barriers between the civil, commercial, and military space efforts need to come down. “We no longer have the luxury of each sector of our Nation’s space program working in isolation from the others,” he said, adding that closer cooperation is needed to reduce “expensive duplication of effort”.
- The one comment that attracted the most attention, including a Space News article, was his preference to proceed with a Hubble deorbit mission rather than a robotic or shuttle servicing mission. “Although we will have a gap of coverage” until the James Webb Space Telescope is launched, he argued, “Hubble has delivered volumes of data that will keep scientists busy for years to come.”
- One of his highest priorities this year is to get a NASA authorization bill passed, although he acknowledges “how difficult that it is to get a NASA Authorization through the Congress.”
- Calvert said he supports NASA’s current “small prize program” and adds that the NASA authorization bill now under development will include prizes.
- NASA, he said, “needs a Human Capital Strategy that retains the best people and encourages the next generation to pursue careers in science, engineering and technology.” Before that, though, the agency needs “a clearly defined mission” that includes space exploration, aeronautics, and other core missions. That might involve something like a Zero-Based Review “to create a new, requirements based organization.”
- Calvert strongly supports Michael Griffin as the next NASA administrator. “He is a free thinker, a rocket scientist, and a business man who understands the government. What a great combination to lead NASA at this critical time!”
- One quizzical comment he made was that “when it comes to the newest and most exciting field of commercial space, human space transportation, the leader in the field deliberately chose not to have any involvement with our civil space program.” Presumably he means—but does not explicitly name—Scaled Composites, developer of SpaceShipOne. Yet for all of Burt Rutan’s “Nay-Say” bluster, Scaled is part of the team led by Transformational Space Corp. (t/Space) that won a $3-million NASA “concept exploration and refinement” contract last year to study lunar exploration architectures.
April 7, 2005 at 1:12 pm · Filed under Congress
The Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee has scheduled the confirmation hearing for Michael Griffin, the president’s nominee to be the next NASA administrator. The hearing is scheduled for 10 am on Tuesday, April 12, in the committee’s regular hearing location, Russell 253. The timing of the hearing is interesting, coming on the anniversaries of both Yuri Gagarin’s first flight as well as the launch of STS-1, although I imagine the timing is just coincidence. (However, perhaps Dr. Griffin will stick around and attend Yuri’s Night that evening.) Griffin is actually one of several nominees who will appear before the committee at the same time: the others are for primarily transportation-related bodies, like the Federal Railroad Administration, as well as Consumer Product Safety Commission.
April 6, 2005 at 8:09 am · Filed under Other
According to a report in a California newspaper, the California State Assembly has approved a resolution congratulating the SpaceShipOne team for winning the Ansari X Prize and opening the door for space tourism. Of course, this is six months after SpaceShipOne made its X Prize-winning flight; by comparison, the US House of Representatives passed a similar resolution just days after the October 4, 2004 flight.
The resolution in question, ACR 7, was actually introduced in January. The one the Assembly passed is slightly different: if you carefully compare the original and amended versions you will find one notable difference: the amended version has deleted all the references to Sir Richard Branson made in the original version of the legislation. No reason for the change has been reported.
April 5, 2005 at 12:54 pm · Filed under Congress
On Friday Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) appeared on a talk show on a Cleveland PBS station to discuss a variety of issues, including potential job cuts or even the closure of the NASA Glenn Research Center. (The official site of the show doesn’t have a transcript, but one is available here, oddly enough, at a site that appears to cater to European leftists; scroll towards the bottom for the section on Glenn.) During the interview Kucinich made an interesting comment:
Well, the administration has decided that it’s more important to go to the Moon and Mars and forget civil aviation in the United States, forgetting of course that the reason why we have a space program is because it came through the evolution of flight with civil aviation.
I think you can make a strong argument that the space program’s ties with civil aviation are pretty weak, at best: rocketry has been a very distinct field from aviation, and didn’t evolve from it.
In a related story, the Cleveland Plain Dealer reported Tuesday that a bipartisan coalition of Ohio politicians, which includes Kucinich, said they are willing to play what Rep. Steven LaTourette (R-OH) called the “Ohio card”: reminding President Bush that he is still president “because he won Ohio,” according to the article, in order to stave off cuts at Glenn.
April 4, 2005 at 7:38 am · Filed under NASA
There are a couple of articles in this week’s issue of The Space Review that deal with some of the thorny issues of shuttle and station. Dwayne Day examines the plans for the shuttle in its final years, noting that squeezing 28 flights by the end of 2010 may prove difficult, particularly with only three orbiters available. This could force NASA to make some hard choices about the shuttle and the ISS, including offloading some station missions onto other launchers (which may not help much to solve schedule problems), delay the 2010 retirement date, or cut short the assembly of ISS.
Meanwhile, Taylor Dinerman explores some of the consequences of the standoff between the US and Russia regarding ISS access. Is the US Congress willing to continue spending billions of dollars a year on a station that will have a limited US role in the years to come? On the other hand, will it be willing to allow Russia to effectively control the station after already spending tens of billions on it already? (Not surprisingly, this gets entangled with the future of the shuttle and its own issues described above.) In a related MSNBC article, Jim Oberg explores the current state of the “game of space chicken” between the US and Russia on US access to Soyuz after this year. Among other things, NASA is turning the tables on Roskosmos, planning to charge the Russians if they want to fly a cosmonaut on the STS-121 shuttle mission later this year.
April 1, 2005 at 7:50 am · Filed under Other
Reason magazine has published an excellent interview with Burt Rutan that focuses squarely on regulatory issues involved with commercial human spaceflight. Rutan, as many readers know, is not a big fan of the FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation, and has made it clear on a number of occasions that he would prefer to have vehicles like SpaceShipOne regulated as aircraft, through a certification process, rather than licensed like launch vehicles. (A view that puts him at odds with much of the rest of the nascent suborbital industry.) As Rutan puts it:
…we actually are asking for more regulation than the new legislation edicts. We do feel that the FAA needs to be accepting or proving the safety of the ship as it pertains to the passengers that get flown. Whereas their focus has been on only protecting the non-involved public who live on the ground below. We think that the industry will prosper only if there is some acceptance of [responsibility for] the safety of the ship as it pertains to the passengers.
Many industry advocates have argued that people should be allowed to take risks and fly in licensed vehicles to help open markets that promise to lower the cost of space access. Rutan doesn’t agree:
Now I don’t believe that it’s right to say, listen, we’ll let people take risks and we’ll go and build the kind of systems that have been used historically for manned space flight, and somehow solve the affordability problem, and that’s the only problem. We strongly feel that the biggest problem is the safety problem, not the affordability problem. If you fly dozens of people every day, you’ll get affordability with almost any kind of system. The safety problem is the biggie, and that’s why we think the most significant thing that came out of the SpaceShipOne program was not just showing that the little guy can fly above a hundred kilometers, without government assistance, and government technology, and government funds.
Rutan adds that although he disagrees with the current emphasis on the safety of the uninvolved public over passengers, he supports the other aspects of the Commercial Space Launch Amendments Act, although he would like more specifics for the experimental permit authority granted in the legislation “to force FAA to regulate these tests more like airplane research rather than like they did our program.” Be sure to read the whole interview: Rutan provides a number of interesting insights into regulatory issues, flight testing, and related matters.
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