SPACE.com has a summary of the comments made by Congressman Bart Gordon (D-TN), ranking Democrat on the House Science Committee, at a breakfast event Friday previously noted here. Gordon believes that supporters of the Vision for Space Exploration will have to fight a two-front battle for it on Congress: against Democrats who would rather see the money spent on “problems here on Earth” and fiscal conservative Republicans who would rather not see the money spent at all. That’s no real surprise, of course, given the prevailing attitudes and comments made in recent weeks. He sees cuts to NASA’s budget over the next few years as a “realistic scenario”; he wants to avoid “blood in the water” in the near term in the form of near-term cuts that could make NASA look vulnerable to cuts down the road.
Gordon said he believes the space industry needs to work harder to sell the program and “explain that we are going to the Moon not just on a tourist expedition but that there are good reasons for it.” That, of course, has been the purpose of organizations like the Coalition for Space Exploration and the Space Exploration Alliance; his comments suggest these and other groups will need to step up their efforts on Capitol Hill in the months to come.
Rep Gordon is reported to have said,
> To counter those weaknesses, he urged the space community to do a better job mobilizing lower tier suppliers to lobby Congress on behalf of the space agency’s agenda… “but that there are good reasons for it.”
I.e., contracts and paychecks?
I do think that the “why should we spend money on this?” question is important, and maybe “wealth transfer via the IRS/NASA route” is the best one. My own favorite reason to do VSE is not nearly as practical.
Sigh. One would hope for better.
I think there are reasons for going to the moon and beyond that would pass cursory inspection.
I don’t think VSE provided any, and I don’t think ESAS will significantly help achieve any. I have serious doubts that NASA could be restructured to pursue such a program anyway.
The wealth transfer argument is a non-starter. If offered explicitly as the justification, NASA and its supporters would be crucified in the press. Of course it’s there behind the scenes, but it can’t be the public justification.
The problem that members of Congress are going to face if they succeed in gutting VSE is that it would mean not having a publically fundeed manned space program. Regardless of the merits of VSE (and I think that a close examination shows that it has considerable merit), politicians are not going to want to cross that Rubicon in an era where other countries are forging ahead.
The libertarian assault on the VSE plan is a non starter. They have no plan as an alternative. Just slogans about “commercialization.” They propose to fight something with nothing.
NASA, on the other hand, needs to articulare better why VSE had benefit. One constant in the space agency’s history is that it can’t seem to do public relations.
The libertarian assault on the VSE plan is a non starter.
But Gordon says it’s being threatened by Democrats and fiscal conservative republicans, not libertarians. Is their assault also a non-starter? If so, why did Gordon feel the need to rally support against it?
Paul, I’m not sure that is a serious post. Of course there is a libertarian assault on the VSE. Have you not be paying attention? A lot of the internet rocketeers have been dripping with disdain all over the internet about the whole idea. And I can see those in Congress using that to say, “Look, even space supporters hate it.” Mind, since there is no alternate plan, the result might be no return to the Moon–at least by Americans.
And, just to offer you a lesson on politics, any move on the budget has to be actively opposed, even ones that might be considered futile. Otherwise it might gather strength.
To counter those weaknesses, he urged the space community to do a better job mobilizing lower tier suppliers to lobby Congress on behalf of the space agency’s agenda. He urged them to build a strong coalition to bolster NASA and do a better job of communicating NASA’s importance to the general public. Part of that coalition’s job will be to “explain that we are going to the Moon not just on a tourist expedition but that there are good reasons for it.”
http://www.space.com/news/051021_budget_fight.html
This is mistaken, for at least two reasons.
(1) Not everyone, including “lower tier suppliers,” agree on what NASA’s agenda should be.
Spend more money on unmanned space, and less on manned, or the other way around? Keep flying the Shuttle or stop forthwith?
(2) NASA itself hasn’t yet decided on the answers to these questions, no matter what this week’s press releases might say. So how are the “lower tier suppliers” supposed to know what the agenda is?
I didn’t even mention the issue of competition for contracts. Rep. Gordon makes the mistake of presuming that there is a mellow harmony of interests among the “space community.” … “Community” — invariably a horsemanure malapropism when spoken by politicians or journalists.
Mind, since there is no alternate plan, the result might be no return to the Moon–at least by Americans. …
Nope, I have an alternate plan. Plans plural, in fact. So do lots of other aerospace guys.
My plans have at least as much detail as the Apollo ON Steroids (TM) PowwerPoint show. For example, have you noticed that NASA has released no, zero, drawings or sketches of the interior of the Steroid Capsule? Why? Probably because no one has drwan any such drawings yet, because no one has designed the interior of the new spacecraft yet.
NASA says they’ll release such drawings … maybe next June. Not exactly in time for the FY 2007 budget process.
VSE is a dead man walking — not because of any details of ESAS or Constellation, not because of the circular firing squad of alt.space, but because any federal expenditure that can be portrayed as discretionary is going to be dead meat over the next 10-15 years, when the current don’t-tax-and-spend-anyway binge ends and the fiscal hangover sets in.
Paul, I’m not sure that is a serious post. Of course there is a libertarian assault on the VSE. Have you not be paying attention?
Yes. In particular, I was paying attention to the posting about Gordon’s comments. Why you have decided to bring up libertarians, I’m not exactiy sure.
Mind, since there is no alternate plan, the result might be no return to the Moon–at least by Americans.
Since my salary doesn’t come NASA, and I don’t see any significant benefit to the country from VSE/ESAS, why should I care? Why should anyone in my position care?
Gordon’s comments about ‘blood in the water’ are doubly appropriate. Bush is weak now, the weakest he’s been as president, and reports are swirling of growing demoralization and dysfunction in the White House. The fiscal conservatives are in open revolt. Is he going to expend any political capital on VSE/ESAS? Does he have the political capital to spend?
Reject the Vision for Space Exploration, embrace the Vision for Space Exploitation. Oh wait there isn’t one.. If there was one the reasons to go would have been obvious and the expendature on space would be better argued that it is in indeed being spent on fixing earth problems.
But alas, they don’t care.. SPace to them is nothing but a tool to get ahead politically. Its an cheap target because so few of the americanvoting public truely care about it. if the AARP endoresed it, it would be supported politically.
I have to disagree with Monte here. I have been hearing that the deficit was just going to swallow the discretionary budget any day now for the past thirty years. It’s not going to happen. Leaving aside that the deficit is quite low compared to the size of the US economy, entitlement reform will happen, in my judgement, seconds before catastrophe ensues.
It’s not that O’Keefe’s plans were or are technically impractical. It’s worse than that: they were technically blank. There was no technical plan from O’Keefe, nor endorsed by O’Keefe. So, politically, there was nothing to criticize, at least not while O’Keefe was still working at NASA.
On the other hand, some other people at NASA did start to fill in the technical void with their own assertions. That was when the plan started to look either impossible, or self-contradictory, or a sham (depending on interpretation). Gerstenmaier said 28 more shuttle flights. Steidle said that NASA did not need heavy lift for many years. If you have 28 more shuttle flights, and you’re not developing heavy lift, how exactly is that going to the moon? O’Keefe never explained that one. Instead, he quit.
I really don’t see the value of a “politically realistic” proposal which is technically blank. If it were home renovation, it would almost be a comedy routine:
Client: “We have a great vision for our kitchen. We want marble surfaces, more room, artistic designs, and a completely new layout.”
Contractor: “Ordinarily that would cost you $20,000.”
Client: “I’m sorry but that’s not politically realistic. We can only spare $5,000.”
Contractor: “Okay, then it will cost $5,000.”
So the contractor makes a contract and some blueprints, then draws a month of pay and quits.
His replacement raises the cost estimate to $10,000 and the clients are annoyed with him.
Mark Whittingon: I have been hearing that the deficit was just going to swallow the discretionary budget any day now for the past thirty years. It’s not going to happen.
Then you should open your eyes to what actually happened. The past 30 years are clearly spelled out in Table 6 of the CBO historical budget data web page. In 1975, discretionary spending was 10.1% of the United States GDP. In 2001, the last budget year before this administration, it was 6.5%. That 3.6% drop is comparable to many of the federal deficits in the same period. So the real history is exactly what you think didn’t happen: deficits swallowed discretionary spending. They only swalled a third of it and not all of it just because that was how big the deficits were.
Mandatory entitlement spending has been fairly constant over the same period.
Enter George W. Bush. He waged war on discretionary spending by cutting tax rates (Table 2), then ramped up discretionary spending (Table 6). He is the great squanderer of discretion. The governments after him will have to pay for it by either raising tax rates or by cutting discretionary spending eventually by half or more. They probably won’t cut entitlements (which are politically equivalent to negative taxation).
Let’s take a poll: Space Politicers, do you agree or disagree with the following:
… Griffin says that based on historic shuttle flight rates, the schedule could be met by the end of December 2009, “well ahead of the planned retirement date, so it allows plenty of time to slip….
Aviation Week & Space Technology
Future Exploration Depends on ISS Completion
By Frank Morring, Jr. and Michael Mecham
10/23/2005 01:36:37 PM
A MATTER OF TRUST
…
… In heads-of-agency meetings with Jean-Jacques Dordain of the European Space Agency, Keiji Tachikawa of JAXA, Marc Garneau of the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) and Sergio Vetrella of the Italian space agency (ASI), Griffin promised to do his best to get the partners’ hardware attached to the station. But in that he is limited both by the demonstrated difficulty of keeping the space shuttle on a schedule, and by ongoing–and secret–budget discussions within the Bush administration.
“I have assured them that at this point administration support remains unchanged,” Griffin says. “I can’t make ‘forward-looking statements’ because Congress and for that matter even the administration have yet to speak.”
Plans call for Europe’s Columbus laboratory to launch on the eighth shuttle mission, counting from resumption of operations next May with STS-121. The May flight would be the second of two test flights to check improvements made since the Columbia accident. If it goes as NASA hopes, the following six missions would emplace the remaining truss elements and solar arrays on the ISS, and position a second pressurized node to receive Columbus and JEM.
JEM itself would require the three shuttle flights after Columbus to install. Then NASA’s “18-plus-one” launch schedule would round out with seven logistics and utilization flights, delivering supplies and smaller hardware elements, and a final mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope. Griffin says that based on historic shuttle flight rates, the schedule could be met by the end of December 2009, “well ahead of the planned retirement date, so it allows plenty of time to slip.
…
But the ISS partners–mindful of the precarious position they’re in because they relied solely on the shuttle to launch their major station elements–are moving away from NASA as their sole means of access to space. Russia is in serious discussions with ESA, and in preliminary talks with Japan, about a joint effort to develop the [ lifitng body, noit a capsule ] Clipper reusable crew vehicle as a backup to the CEV. Like the CEV, the Clipper would be able to carry a crew of as many as six, supporting missions to the ISS and the Moon.
…
http://www.aviationnow.com/avnow/news/channel_awst_story.jsp?id=news/102405p2.xml