Space Politics
Because sometimes the most important orbit is the Beltway…
Archive for May, 2005
May 31, 2005 at 7:17 am · Filed under Congress
The Baltimore Sun reports today that the billion-dollar cost overrun for NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has gained the attention of Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-MD). She told the Sun that she was “shocked” with the news earlier this month about the cost increase. “There should be no disruption to the program, the science or the work force at Goddard,” she said. “I expect nothing less than a thorough and independent review to get to the bottom of these problems and fix them.” Mikulski’s attention is not surprising, given that the program is run out of NASA Goddard and science operations of JWST will be run out of the Space Telescope Science Institute, both located in Maryland. Also not surprising is the concern noted by scientists in the article about the budget flexibility granted to NASA in its current budget, which breaks down old barriers between science and manned spaceflight programs. “That NASA could use any of its money in any way it chooses has pretty serious ramifications for space science at NASA,” said one astronomer.
Update 12:45 pm: An alert reader pointed out this page which lists presentations to a meeting earlier this month of the Board on Physics and Astronomy of the National Academies. Included is this brief presentation titled “JWST Cost Growth”, which features a breakdown of the $1.08 billion increase in the program’s cost.
May 27, 2005 at 8:25 am · Filed under Other
Every other spring, including this spring, I say to myself, “Wouldn’t it be cool to go to the Paris Air Show?” Then I realize that I have no time and no budget for such a trip (and the current lousy dollar-euro exchange rate doesn’t help matters.) So I’ll have to be content staying on this side of the Atlantic again this summer, and instead offer a quick update on European space policy.
Earlier this week the European Commission announced that it had completed the “first elements” of an overall European Space Policy. The policy’s two flagships with be the Galileo satellite navigation system and Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES). The policy also features continued development of advanced satellite communications technologies, and calls on ESA to continue space technology development and scientific exploration. The policy expects that Europe will “maintain and develop” cooperation with the US but also “build up its space partnership” with Russia. Along those lines, the British newspaper The Observer reported Sunday that ESA may cooperate with Russia on the development of Kliper, a proposed successor to the Soyuz spacecraft, potentially giving Europe independent manned access to space. The policy is scheduled to be completed by November and, as one might imagine, its programs will “be subject to normal budgetary and programmatic approval procedures.”
However, one of those cornerstones of the European space policy may be in danger. On Sunday the French will go to the polls in a referendum on the EU constitution; polls suggest that voters will reject the constitution. Such a vote could disrupt a number of European initiatives, including Galileo, Space News reported this week (subscription required). The no vote would not kill the project, according to the report, because it is not tied to the constitution, but the effect of a French rejection of the constitution could at least cause some temporary disruption.
May 26, 2005 at 5:56 am · Filed under NASA
Remember the on-again, off-again, sorta-on-sorta-off strategic roadmapping process? A reader notes that some of the fruits of this effort have been released: some of the science roadmap reports have been published on NASA HQ’s web site. These cover topics like Mars exploration, planetary science, astronomy, and the like. Missing, it appears, is the lunar exploration roadmap, as well as those on ISS, space transportation, and other non-science efforts. I have not had a chance to read any of these reports yet, which average about 50-60 pages each, but they do look interesting.
May 25, 2005 at 6:11 am · Filed under Uncategorized
The good news for supporters of NASA is that the Science, State, Justice, and Commerce subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee provided effectively full funding for NASA when it approved a FY2006 appropriations bill Tuesday. In fact, it added $15 million to the President’s request, a far cry from the sharp cuts the subcommittee proposed last year in the FY05 budget. According to a committee press release, the subcommittee provided full funding for the shuttle program, added $40 million for NASA science programs, and restored funding for NASA’s aeronautics programs to the FY05 level of $906 million, $54 million that what Bush requested.
The bad news becomes evident once one does the math above. Adding $94 million to aeronautics and science programs, but increasing the overall NASA budget by $15 million, means that there’s a net $79 million of cuts to other NASA programs, not specified in the press release. Space News (subscription required) picked up on this as well, but a House Appropriations Committee spokesman was not able to provide details on where those cuts were made.
May 23, 2005 at 7:25 am · Filed under Other
After last week’s New York Times report that the US Air Force and the Bush Administration were considering policy changes that would permit the deployment of weapons in space, the issue is still reverberating among columnists. A prime example is a syndicated column by Ann McFeatters, the Washington bureau chief for two newspapers. She believes that deploying space-based weapons would cost “hundreds of billions of dollars”, although she doesn’t back up that claim with any detailed estimates. She noted that retiring acting Air Force secretary Peter Teets “did not spell out the secret projects already under way to use space to launch weapons.” (If they’re secret, how does she know how much they’ll cost?)
Ms. McFeatters also used the column to take a swipe at the Vision for Space Exploration, noting that since the president’s January 2004 announcement (which included “robotic missions on the moon in 2008″, a misreading of the his statement) “we haven’t heard much about going to Mars from the president.” Fortunately, the column includes her email address if you’d care to correct any of her misconceptions about milspace policy or the VSE.
Offering a useful reality check is Dwayne Day, who writes in The Space Review that Air Force officials have often promised unrealistic space systems without the broader support of the Air Force, but critics of such systems fail to pick up on this. All the discussion of “rods from God” and other fanciful systems, he argues, obscures the real problem with military space programs: chronic, severe cost overruns and schedule delays on programs like SBIRS that have hurt the Air Force’s credibility with Congress.
May 21, 2005 at 6:56 am · Filed under Other
The International Space Station is facing a number of key policy issues: how to maintain US access to Soyuz spacecraft in spite of the Iran Non-proliferation Act, managing an assembly schedule that has to wrap up when the shuttle retires in 2010, finding the best alternatives—commercial or otherwise—for cargo access to ISS, and so on. So it’s reassuring to see that ESA is doing its part by starting a study on “possible future cultural utilization” of ISS. The study, to be performed by Arts Catalyst, an independent arts organization based in London, will consult with “artists and cultural practitioners from a broad spectrum of disciplines” on how they could take advantage of the ISS as well as ground-support facilities. To their credit, Arts Catalyst is not new to the use of space, or at least microgravity, to support art, having explored the issue for several years. Given all the issues facing the station, though, it makes one wonder if ESA’s priorities should be focused more on ensuring that there will be a complete, accessible station in the first place.
May 21, 2005 at 6:46 am · Filed under Other
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), widely billed as the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope, is facing some serious problems that could lead to scaling back or even canceling the mission. Denver’s Rocky Mountain News and Sky & Telescope magazine both report that JWST is facing potential cost overruns of up to $1 billion, raising the total cost of the mission to over $3 billion. Part of that cost is associated with overruns by prime contractor Northrop Grumman and its subcontractors, while the rest is because the launch of the telescope “could cost more than expected”. (While not explicitly stated, this last statement suggests that NASA is no longer expecting to launch JWST for “free” on an Ariane 5 in exchange for giving ESA a share of the telescope’s observing time, a move that would have required Bush Administration approval under both the old and new space transportation policy.) In response, NASA has asked scientists to consider shrinking the telescope’s diameter from 6.5 to 4 meters, and to remove some of the planned instruments. (Original plans for the then-named Next Generation Space Telescope called for an eight-meter mirror.) Scientists, though, are against such a move, telling S&T that a descoped JWST “wouldn’t be able to compete scientifically with the next generation of giant ground-based telescopes” except in small portions of the infrared. If other efforts to change the telescope or otherwise reduce its costs fail, “outright cancellation is a very real possibility” according to S&T.
May 20, 2005 at 5:23 am · Filed under Congress
Earlier this week the House Science Committee approved several bills, including a couple of minor bills with implications for NASA. One bill, HR 426, would authorize $15 million a year from FY2006 through 2010 for NASA to fund “pilot projects that use government and commercial remote sensing capabilities and other sources of geospatial information to address State, local, regional and tribal agency needs.” The other, HR 1022, would support a program for NASA to track near Earth objects (NEOs) as small as 100 meters in diameter (current tracking efforts are focused on objects one kilometer or larger), authorizing $20 million in FY06 and 07. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), the sponsor of HR 1022: “This bill would direct NASA to expand their current program to track and detect potential threats and would provide a funding authorization. Any threat that would wreak havoc on or world should be studied and prevented if possible. We have the technology, we need the direction—this bill provides that.”
May 19, 2005 at 7:18 am · Filed under Congress
You know how some of those old game shows would have a “lightning round” where contestants would have to answer as many questions as they could in a minute or so? Yesterday’s Senate hearing on the shuttle and the future of human spaceflight was something along those lines. The hearing started about 15 minutes late because of a previous Commerce Committee confirmation hearing, and had to end at 11:30 am—just 45 minutes after it started—because of some Senate rule. So, instead of trimming some portions of the hearing, like the second panel of witnesses, or simply postponing the hearing to a future date, the subcommittee managed to squeeze in the entire hearing in 45 minutes. Time was so short that the second panel was asked to condense their opening remarks to two minutes instead of the customary five.
Because the hearing was so brief, there wasn’t a lot of consequence said during it. There was some gentle verbal sparring between Griffin and the two senators in attendance, Hutchison and Nelson, about how changes to the ISS assembly schedule might impact research on the station; Hutchison in particular is concerned that there may be less of an emphasis on ISS research, making it difficult to, for example, find a cure for breast cancer.
On a related note, Griffin spoke later in the day at the Space at the Crossroads conference in Washington. I wasn’t there, but one person who was—Robert Zubrin, who gave his standard spiel Wednesday night at the Ethics and Public Policy Center—said that Griffin stated that he plans to make a decision on development of a heavy-lift launch vehicle (HLLV) by some time next year. Given Griffin’s past statements, he would likely lean in favor of a shuttle-derived system. Left unsaid, though, is the provision of the new US Space Transportation Policy that requires NASA to coordinate with the Defense Department on HLLV requirements; DOD will likely have a preference for an EELV-derived system.
May 19, 2005 at 6:54 am · Filed under White House
As you might expect, the New York Times report yesterday that the Bush Administration was considering a space policy revision that would permit the deployment of weapons in space got some traction in the media. The White House offered some clarification on that policy revision yesterday, saying that the proposal was still in an interagency review and “has not risen to the presidential level; it has not risen to the level of the National Security Advisor; it has not risen to the level of department heads,” in the words of Scott McClellan.
McClellan also noted that the policy was not “looking at weaponizing space” but added that the administration wants “to make sure that those space systems are protected.” This suggests that a revised policy could endorse what is sometimes called “defensive counterspace” (DCS) systems designed to protect satellites from attack. There have been studies along these lines within the Air Force and industry on both DCS and offensive counterspace (OCS), which, as the name suggests, involves attacking enemy satellites. However, I think we’re a long way from “rods from God”, or other weapons deployed in space for use against targets on Earth.
At least one newspaper editorial has sounded off on the proposed policy change: the Seattle Post-Intelligencer finds the proposal, as reported in the NY Times, to be “substantial and alarming”.
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