Space Politics
Because sometimes the most important orbit is the Beltway…
Archive for January, 2006
January 31, 2006 at 7:14 am · Filed under Congress
The report in Sunday’s New York Times where NASA climate scientist James Hansen claims NASA is trying to prevent him from speaking about global warming has generated a reaction in Congress. Rep. Sherwood Boehlert (R-NY), chairman of the House Science Committee, issued a press release Monday that contained a copy of the letter he has sent to NASA Administrator Michael Griffin asking for clarification about the issue. “NASA is clearly doing something wrong, given the sense of intimidation felt by Dr. Hansen and others who work with him,” Boehlert wrote in his letter. “Even if this sense is a result of a misinterpretation of NASA policies – and more seems to be at play here – the problem still must be corrected.” Boehlert added that his staff “is already setting up meetings to pursue this issue” and asked Griffin for a written clarification; don’t be surprised this comes up the next time Griffin appears before Boehlert’s committee.
However, a Times article Tuesday notes that not everyone in Congress agrees with Boehlert. A spokesman for Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK), a critic of claims about global warming, accused Hansen of “using his government position to promote his own views and political agenda, which is a clear violation of governmental procedure in any administration.”
January 31, 2006 at 6:51 am · Filed under Other
The successful launch of a remote sensing satellite might not seem like the type of event to trigger reflections on national space policy. Yet, in Japan, the launch last week of the Advanced Land Observing Satellite (ALOS), or “Daichi”, generated some editorials expressing some optimism, yet also caution, about the Japanese space program. Both the Asahi Shimbun and Yomiuri Shimbun congratulated the Japanese space agency JAXA on the spacecraft’s launch and plans to use the spacecraft for disaster monitoring and related applications. Yet both expressed concern about the spacecraft’s size and complexity, citing the failures of less-complex earth observing spacecraft. Yomiuri Shimbun in particular hopes that Daichi “helps rebuild trust in Japan’s satellite technology.” That lack of confidence also extends to Japan’s launch vehicle program. Asahi Shimbun seems concerned about a couple of minor technical problems—hardly unusual for any launcher—that delayed the launch, calling them “worrisome”.
Taking a broader view, Yomiuri Shimbun notes that Daichi fits into a new JAXA philosophy that favors “utilizing the fruits of space development widely in people’s day-to-day life” over pure technology development. “[I]t is difficult to win people’s understanding of space development if it is solely for the purpose of technological development. We hope Daichi’s performance will make outer space more familiar to us.” Of course, it helps if this and upcoming missions—JAXA has two more launches planned in the next month—are successful, Asahi Shimbun argues. “If everything goes well, Japan will impress the rest of the world. It will show that it has hit its stride in space exploration technology again after a flurry of problems in its satellites and rockets in preceding years. Success must be achieved by all means.”
January 30, 2006 at 7:35 am · Filed under NASA
Orlando Sentinel aerospace editor Michael Cabbage has started a new blog, The Write Stuff, and has kicked it off with the transcript of a recent interview with NASA administrator Michael Griffin. The interview covers a broad range of subjects, from the shuttle to space science. On the budget, Griffin has this to say:
NASA is very fortunate not to receive outright cuts. I believe that. I take that as a sign of support from the administration. But at the same time, we at NASA – the 2006 budget showed this and the 2005 budget showed this – are not expecting major growth at the top line. Sub-elements like shuttle don’t need to grow. It just needs to do what it needs to do. But exploration is not going to get major growth in its sub-line. Science is not going to get major growth in its sub-line. Aeronautics is not going to see major growth in its sub-line, because if there is no growth at the top line, the elements can only grow by eating each other, and frankly, I won’t support that. I’ll take an order, of course. I’m only an agency head. I’m not a czar. But what I have said since coming on board is that I’ll do everything I can to make sure that our major themes don’t cannibalize each other. So if we’re not rationally expecting major growth in the top line, then you will not see major growth in any sub-element. That’s the strategic picture.
This is not terribly surprising, given recent indications (and other statements by Griffin) that NASA would not get a major increase in the FY07 budget proposal, unlike the past two years.
Later, he had this to say about the schedule for carrying out the Vision for Space Exploration and how that is tied into the budget:
So the nation seems to have decided, if you’ll forgive me for putting it this way, on about what level they want NASA to operate at. Currently, that’s around 17 billion dollars in constant dollars and, of course, as was said last year at the 2006 budget rollout, NASA can expect inflationary growth, not cuts, but essentially constant dollars. So if that’s true, if we have constant dollars for the foreseeable future, then my answer to your question is unequivocally yes. There is money there. There is enough money there to accomplish the goals of the vision for exploration. People keep asking me “Why are you taking until 2018 or whatever it takes us to get back to the moon when we did it in eight years the first time?” The reason is that we’re not being given the kind of money necessary to do that in eight years, but we are being given the kind of money necessary to do that in 12, 13, 14 years. We can meet the president’s goals of not later than 2020 for the moon and not later than 2014 for the CEV [Crew Exploration Vehicle]. We hope to be able to improve upon those goals but those goals were stated as “not later than” and we can meet those with the funding that the nation seems to be willing to allocate to the space program. More would always be nicer. I certainly hope that we don’t get less.
(Side note: an article in this week’s issue of Space News reports that NASA is considering a streamlined version of the exploration architecture, called “Lunar Sooner”, that would move up the first manned lunar landing a year to 2017.)
Also, Cabbage asks Griffin if he will go out and campaign for Congressional candidates in 2006, noting that Sean O’Keefe did some campaigning while administrator. (I’m not sure that he actually did; I recall that he did try to go down to Florida in a personal, not official, capacity in 2002 to appear at an event for Tom Feeney, but airline delays canceled that trip. [Update: Michael Cabbage was kind enough to email me this morning and confirm the cancelled Feeney campaign trip, but added that O'Keefe did put in a campaign appearance in the Alabama governor's race in 2002 as well as some other, less visible work.]) Griffin, citing the Hatch Act, said that he “certainly will not be doing that.”
There are a lot more interesting items in the interview beyond what I’ve cited here; it’s worth a full read.
January 30, 2006 at 6:18 am · Filed under Other
Some updates about the status of various state space initiatives:
Florida: Governor Jeb Bush’s proposal to spend $55 million in the next budget on space initiatives, including efforts to lure CEV work to the state and planning for a new commercial spaceport, have met with a mixed reaction from local newspaper editorial boards. The Orlando Sentinel says that the plan “deserves support”, citing concerns about the loss of thousands of jobs once the shuttle is retired. The South Florida Sun-Sentinel also declares its support, calling the initiative “a giant step to bolster its position in space exploration”. (Quibble: while the editorial says that New Mexico is spending $225 million on its “space program”, the state itself only plans to contribute about $135 million, with the rest coming from local and federal sources.) However, the Naples Daily News expresses its skepticism, noting that a $300-million effort by the state to lure the Scripps Research Institute has foundered, in part because of concerns from neighbors of the planned biomedical center. “[I]f a nice, quiet place such as Scripps has NIMBY trouble, what will an earth-rattling spaceport encounter?”
New Mexico: Governor Bill Richardson reiterated his support for his state’s planned spaceport on Thursday. The Reuters article notes that there is some opposition from state legislators, who either believe that underused or decommissioned Air Force bases might be better choices than the greenfield site in southern New Mexico, or that the money should not be spent on the project at all. Richardson said that he believes that more legislators will come around because of the economic benefits the spaceport will create, including luring space companies to the state. [Disclosure: my employer performed a study of the potential economic impact of the spaceport for the State of New Mexico Economic Development Department; that study estimated the maximum possible impact of the spaceport.]
Wisconsin: The proposal for Spaceport Sheboygan attracted the attention of the Chicago Tribune on Sunday. If you get past the obligatory gee-whiz novelty of a spaceport in Wisconsin, you’ll read that the proposal has the backing of “plenty” of area politicians as well as former astronaut James Lovell. The article adds that the “Federal Aviation Administration has already granted Sheboygan authorization for suborbital flights”, but this is presumably for the low-level sounding rockets launched from Sheboygan by student groups; the site is still years away from an FAA/AST spaceport license.
January 29, 2006 at 9:50 am · Filed under Congress
In just over a week the Bush Administration will unveil its proposed FY2007 budget, and as the Washington Post reports, that budget may not offer as much money for NASA as what Congress anticipated or authorized. There isn’t too many additional information in the article about what the administration is planning for NASA, compared to earlier reports; most of the article focuses on how Congress gradually moved over the last two years to support the Vision for Space Exploration after some initial reservations, culminating late last year with the passage of the NASA authorization bill that includes an explicit endorsement of the VSE.
There are, though, a few notable details in the article, including word from sources that the administration has abandoned an earlier proposal by OMB to cut the number of remaining shuttle flights in half, as well as slipping the introduction of the CEV from 2012 back to 2014, the original deadline when the VSE was introduced. The latter move would reintroduce a lengthy gap in US government manned space access that some members of Congress have railed against, sometimes citing “national security” concerns (although whether such a gap is that big an issue is subject to debate). If the CEV is delayed, expect some in Congress to either attempt to reverse that decision or perhaps seek to extend the shuttle’s lifetime beyond 2010. Either move would likely require more money for the space agency.
January 27, 2006 at 7:12 am · Filed under Congress
That’s the pledge of two Republican senators, Tom Coburn of Oklahoma and John McCain of Arizona, who have pledged to force their Senate colleagues to vote on every earmark in the spending bills that come up this year. Earmarks have become a significant issue for the NASA budget, with dozens of small projects inserted by members for their own districts that sap money from other programs. Earmarks in the overall federal budget have nearly quadrupled since 1994, according to a CRS study. McCain and Coburn have put themselves on a collision course with many of their colleagues, particularly in the House. For example, in his Thursday column in the Washington Post, George Will writes a paean about former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, who has not been shy about earmarks for his district. Will’s dislike for earmarks seems checked by his admiration for DeLay, particularly when the Congressman responds to “censorious” remarks about highway earmarks by channeling Madge from the old Palmolive ads: “You just drove out on one.”
January 27, 2006 at 6:59 am · Filed under Other
At last night’s premiere of the new IMAX movie Roving Mars at the National Air and Space Museum, NASM associate director Ted Maxwell noted that a few years ago the museum decided to retire To Fly!, the first IMAX movie the museum had shown, only to face criticism from museum patrons who specifically came to the museum for that movie; the film has since been restored to the lineup. “I think tonight we’re going to see a film that, maybe 30 years from now, someone will say. ‘Why did they take that Mars movie off? We came here to the museum to see it!’”
Maxwell’s introduction was followed by a few words from NASA administrator Michael Griffin. His response to Maxwell’s comment? “If, 30 years from now, Ted, you’re still showing this movie, you’ll be showing it while there are people walking around on Mars, and they won’t be the first people.” That line generated a modest round of applause, and even a “woo-hoo!” from one audience member. Later, he added, “I, for one, cannot wait until NASA sets up a permanent exploratory base on Mars. But, preceding such an event, we have many preparatory events to execute before we get there.”
January 26, 2006 at 6:38 am · Filed under Other
Thursday’s Fredericksburg (Va.) Free Lance-Star features an op-ed by David Kerr, identified only as a “congressional aide”, that strongly endorses privatization of space exploration. After drawing analogies to the airmail efforts of the 1920s, Kerr cites SpaceShipOne as an example of the ingenuity and capabilities of smaller aerospace companies and then writes:
That’s why America’s manned spaceflight program, rather than pursuing an exclusive investment in heavy-duty, heavy-lift vehicles, made ever so conveniently by large and well-known contractors, needs to start pursuing more innovative alternatives, ones that ask this new and emerging sector of the aerospace industry: How would they propose putting people and material into space? And then, giving them the chance to try it.
At the very least, NASA needs to develop a vision of the future that’s not locked in the glories of its past and most of all, not developed exclusively with a big-space, big-government mentality. For one thing, as we face some of the worst deficits in the past 20 years, the days of the 1960s-style space program, with unlimited budgets are long past. Anything from this point on is going to be spaceflight on a fiscal diet.
Of course, NASA is taking steps in that direction, with COTS and Centennial Challenges (which Kerr does not explicitly mention), although likely not with the magnitude that he desires. The problem, as many critics would note, is that the alt.space/NewSpace community has yet to demonstrate many capabilities along the lines of “putting people and material into space”. That doesn’t mean that they can’t, only that it makes it harder for people like Kerr to make their case to NASA or Congress.
January 26, 2006 at 6:18 am · Filed under NASA
The front-page article in this week’s issue of Space News (not available online) summarizes some technical changes NASA has made to the Crew Exploration Vehicle and Crew Launch Vehicle. Most of those changes have been publicized elsewhere, including a decision to drop the requirement for a methane/LOX engine for the CEV and lunar module ascent module. NASA has also elected to go with a five-segment SRB for the CLV and use a J-2S engine, rather than a modified SSME, for the upper stage. (The heavy-lift launcher will also use five-segment SRBs and J-2S engines for its upper stage.) NASA has also shrunk the CEV somewhat to save weight, decreasing its diameter from 5.5 to 5 meters. (That decision has, according to one source, put the two teams competing for the CEV contract into “total chaos”.)
These decision, particularly the five-segment SRB and J-2S changes, have ramifications for the NASA budget. As the Space News article notes, that propulsion combination “entailed more up-front expense and technical risks, but would be cheaper over the long-run.” That’s why NASA originally went with a four-segment SRB and modified SSME. NASA claims that the amount of technical risk remains the same since the agency has dropped the methane engine requirement, and the five-segment SRB and J-2S are not wholly untried technologies. NASA officials declined to comment on the budget implications of the change in advance of the release of the President’s FY07 budget proposal, but the last thing NASA needs right now—as it grapples with a shuttle funding shortfall of several billion dollars—is additional near-term expense for its cornerstone exploration programs, even if those decisions promise savings over time. Will Congress be willing to open its pocketbook a little wider in such an environment if NASA needs it?
January 25, 2006 at 5:37 am · Filed under Congress
While Scott Hubbard’s departure from the top job at NASA’s Ames Research Center wasn’t a surprise—rumors that he was resigning, or being pushed out, dated back over a month—what is interesting is the support he had among members of Congress. The San Francisco Chronicle reports today that four members of Congress from the Silicon Valley area—Reps. Anna Eshoo, Mike Honda, Tom Lantos, and Zoe Lofgren, all Democrats—sent a letter to Mike Griffin expressing their “deepest concern” about losing Hubbard:
“Since assuming the directorship of Ames Research Center, (Hubbard) has proven time and again to be an invaluable public servant, guiding Ames through difficult times and inspiring confidence in everyone around him,” they wrote. “His rumored removal would send exactly the wrong signal to Ames’ dedicated workforce.
“Furthermore,” the letter continued, “among industry and academic circles, it will signal a lack of confidence in the innovative partnerships director Hubbard has forged and jeopardize their continued success.”
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