Space Politics
Because sometimes the most important orbit is the Beltway…
Archive for March, 2006
March 31, 2006 at 7:13 am · Filed under Congress
The only press coverage of Thursday’s hearing of a subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee about the NASA budget request was from Florida Today, which devoted the entire article not to the budget itself but the claim by some members of the committee that “the United States and China are in an unacknowledged space race that this country could lose” without adequate funding for the agency.
Ah, here we go again: a race between the US and China. The article includes some of the usual claims, including that China “has set a goal of putting an astronaut on the moon by 2017″, even though there has been no official pronouncement by the Chinese about such plans and all indications are that China’s space program is still proceeding at a slow pace (China, for example, has pushed back its next manned mission, Shenzhou 7, from 2007 to 2008.) There’s also as of yet no overt sign of development of a new heavy-lift launcher that would likely needed for such a mission, nor the development of a new spaceport on Hainan from which the launcher would operate, two things that are difficult to do without being noticed, as Dwayne Day noted last fall.
That didn’t stop the Congressional rhetoric, though. “We have a space race going on right now and the American people are totally unaware of all this,” said Tom DeLay. “We had a 40-year lead in space and we’re giving it up… The U.S. is quibbling over $3 billion to $5 billion. It’s amazing to me.”
Rep. Mark Kirk (R-IL), who traveled to China earlier this year, said: “The American people have no idea how massive the China space program is.” Interestingly, another congressman who went to China with Kirk, Tom Feeney (R-FL), said last month that he didn’t expect to see a space race developing between the two countries.
The chairman of the subcommittee, Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA), asked Griffin to produce in the next 30 days an unclassified report about the Chinese space program and its goals; Wolf added that “he would hold a hearing on the subject to coincide with the report’s release.” (Is an examination of the Chinese space program really within the purview of an appropriations subcommittee? This sounds more like a job for the House Science Committee.) NASA can start that research on Monday without leaving DC: the Center for Strategic and International Studies is hosting Luo Ge, China National Space Administration Vice Administrator, and other senior Chinese space officials for a discussion about the Chinese space program at 3 pm at the St. Regis Hotel.
March 31, 2006 at 6:46 am · Filed under NASA
Some of the coverage about yesterday’s release of NASA’s new “information policy” (which says, in essence, that NASA employees are encouraged but not required to coordinate media interviews with public affairs officers) focused instead on NASA administrator Michael Griffin’s apparent, if not intended, endorsement of Rep. Tom DeLay last Friday night in a speech in Houston. NASA has not yet released a transcript of the speech but the agency did provide NASA Watch with the relevant snippet of Griffin’s remarks:
The space program has had no better friend in its entire existence than Tom Delay. He’s still with us and we need to keep him there. There just are no better people.
According to the New York Times, Washington Post, and Reuters, Griffin blamed an “inartful choice of words” for any confusion, and that he meant to say that “we need to keep him as a friend” to the space program. (Is there any real danger that he will no longer be a “friend” of NASA in the foreseeable future?) There may be something to the “inartful choice of words” argument: when I first saw the phrase “he’s still with us”, I wondered who could have thought that Tom DeLay was, in fact, dead.
Reuters noted that Griffin also said, “I’m not endorsing anybody, I don’t intend to (but) I remind you that I can if I want.”
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March 30, 2006 at 1:13 pm · Filed under Other
The Wall Street Journal [subscription required] reports today that the federal government—both the Defense Department and the Federal Trade Commission—are wrapping up an agreement that would permit the formation of the United Launch Alliance (ULA), the Boeing-Lockheed Martin joint venture that would combine the government launch operations of the two companies. That agreement, due to be completed in the next few weeks, would apparently address concerns by Northrop Grumman in particular that the ULA would give the satellite manufacturing divisions of Boeing and Lockheed a leg up on competing for government satellite contracts. The article adds that the deal will include “safeguards” for the Air Force regarding “future launch costs, corporate investments and how to deal with potential future competitors.” That last point would seem to address SpaceX, the only domestic launch services company that is targeting the EELV-class market in the foreseeable future, although the report doesn’t mention SpaceX by name and what role, if any, they’ve played in getting that provision in place. (Remember that SpaceX has sued Boeing and Lockheed, trying to block the formation of the joint venture.)
While the Journal is optimistic that a deal is nearly complete, the Chicago Tribune takes a more pessimistic tack, noting that there has been no overt progress on such a deal, and that unless the government approves the deal by Friday (unlikely), either side can pull out. Even if the deal wins government approval, the Tribune notes, that “does not guarantee the deal will be completed” depending on the terms of the agreement.
March 30, 2006 at 6:17 am · Filed under NASA
The Houston Chronicle weighs in on the comments made Friday night by NASA administrator Mike Griffin that appeared to many to be an endorsement for the campaign of Rep. Tom DeLay. According to the Chronicle, Griffin said the following at Rotary National Award for Space Achievement event Friday night: “The space program has had no better friend in its entire existence than Tom DeLay. He’s still with us and we need to keep him there.” That’s a more complete quote than what the Galveston Daily News published Monday. (See previous coverage.)
Sounds like an endorsement for the embattled congressman? No, said NASA spokesman Dean Acosta. “He did not make an endorsement and will not get involved in any political campaigns,” Acosta told the Chronicle. “If his words of thanks to Tom DeLay were misconstrued as an endorsement, then he regrets that.” DeLay’s spokesperson added that DeLay also did not consider Griffin’s statement to be an endorsement. NASA Watch also has an email from Griffin, responding to a person upset with Griffin’s perceived endorsement. Griffin told the person, “I did not issue the quote you cite”, referring to the Daily News article. Curiously, Griffin said that the “event was recorded”, but the agency, which is normally very good about posting the administrator’s speeches, has not published a transcript of his remarks Friday, even though it has posted a speech he gave Monday at Mississippi State University.
If Griffin did endorse DeLay, did he violate the Hatch Act, which forbids federal employees from campaigning while acting in an official capacity? Griffin writes in his email that since he is a political appointee, the Hatch Act does not apply to him. However, the Chronicle reports that the Office of Special Counsel, which enforces the Hatch Act, plans to investigate this event.
March 29, 2006 at 6:25 am · Filed under Other
Yesterday Caspar Weinberger passed away at the age of 88. Weinberger was best known as Ronald Reagan’s defense secretary, but prior to that served several roles in the Nixon Administration, including deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget. It was in that capacity, Dwayne Day recalls in an article in The Space Review in January, that he may have saved the country’s human spaceflight program. In an August 1971 memo to Nixon, Weinberger argued that NASA’s budget was being cut too much and that proposed programs like the space shuttle offered “substantial scientific fall-out for the civilian economy”. Weinberger later wrote: “America should be able to afford something besides increased welfare, programs to repair our cities, or Appalachian relief and the like.” Nixon signed off on the memo, scribbling “I agree with Cap” on the memo, and the rest is history.
March 29, 2006 at 6:15 am · Filed under Congress
The Capitol Hill newspaper The Hill has a special section today on aerospace, and three of the four essays contributed by members of Congress deal with space issues:
- Rep. Tom DeLay (R-TX) argues in support of the Vision for Space Exploration, calling it the beginning of “a new age of human space exploration.” DeLay on the shuttle: “I worked with the administration to ensure that increased funding was specifically designated in this budget for the space shuttle program, allowing for 16-17 shuttle missions. Though some have criticized this robust series of flights as an impossible goal, the ‘impossible,’ after all, is NASA’s business.”
- Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), whose district includes JPL, advocates continued support for robotic space missions. He mostly rehashes the past accomplishments of robotic missions and their effect on technology and education, but ends with a request for continued support for such missions. “Now, even as NASA accelerates work on the Crew Exploration Vehicle and moves forward with plans to return to the moon, the space agency and Congress must take care to continue to provide adequate resources to support the robotic exploration of space.”
- Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL) takes a more circuitous approach, covering the history of the space program and its effect on the country before tackling milspace acquisition problem, then discussing his support of two bills designed to improve education and competitiveness. “In anticipation of the 50th anniversary of the launch of Sputnik, we must start a new space race – not with another country but with our students. It will be a race toward excellence that will inspire new dreams of space exploration and its promise.”
March 29, 2006 at 6:01 am · Filed under Other
Reuters reported yesterday that the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), the ruling party, “is moving to end a decades-old ban on military involvement in space development”. An LDP panel believes that getting the Japanese military more involved in space, including funding the development of military satellites, “would boost Japan’s space industry while improving the country’s ability to defend itself.” This move is a little puzzling since Japan already has military satellites: the country launched two pairs of reconnaissance satellites, called “Information Gathering Satellites”, in 2003 (although one pair failed to reach orbit because of a launch vehicle failure); another pair is slated for launch later this year. It’s not clear what other types of military satellites the country would need: communications is one option, but it may be more cost-effective to simply purchase transponder time on commercial satellites. That may be why an AFP article about this topic calls the proposed law—which the Diet will not take up until next year—”symbolic”.
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March 28, 2006 at 7:25 am · Filed under NASA
A couple bits of good news for space scientists yesterday: NASA reversed its earliest decision to cancel the Dawn asteroid mission, reinstating it after a review at NASA headquarters. NASA also announced Monday that it has partially restored funding cut from the agency’s astrobiology program.
Good news for scientists, right? Well, sort of. It’s definitely good news for those working on the Dawn mission, and also for some astrobiologists. However, there doesn’t appear to be any net increase in science funding in the agency’s FY06 operating plan or FY07 budget proposal. Instead, NASA will scrounge up money from other programs to pay any additional costs for flying Dawn (which is funded in the FY07 budget, but may still need additional money to be ready for launch next year), most likely from other projects in the Discovery program. The increase in astrobiology funding is modest (on the order of $10 million a year for the next few years) and presumably at the expense of other research and analysis programs, although the details weren’t clear as of yesterday in part because the plans are still being finalized.
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March 27, 2006 at 6:16 am · Filed under Congress
In an interview with Orlando Sentinel space reporter Michael Cabbage in January, NASA administrator Mike Griffin said he “certainly will not be” campaigning for Congressional candidates this year, as his predecessor, Sean O’Keefe, did (or tried to do) in 2002. However, it appears to be a different story when it comes to simply endorsing candidates. The Galveston Daily News reported Monday that Congressman Tom DeLay got a “surprisingly out of the norm endorsement” for his tough reelection campaign from Griffin, who “asked those in the space community to send DeLay back to Washington.” The final graf of the Daily News article about the race for the 22nd district in general:
In his keynote speech to the Rotary National Award for Space Achievement Friday night, Griffin said DeLay was “the best friend NASA has” in Congress. He also said every effort should be made to re-elect him to office.
NASA has been good about putting the text of Griffin’s speeches online, although this speech has yet to appear there as of early Monday morning, perhaps because of its timing (Friday night). Seeing the full text of the speech would help put Griffin’s comments above in context. In some respects those comments are not that surprising, since Griffin has previously acknowledged DeLay as being “incredibly helpful to NASA”.
March 27, 2006 at 6:01 am · Filed under Other
Probably the most important Congressional hearing scheduled this week with space policy relevance is a hearing Thursday morning by the House Appropriations Committee’s Science, State, Justice, and Commerce subcommittee on NASA’s FY07 budget request. Mike Griffin is scheduled to testify at the 10am hearing in room H-309 of the Capitol. Two House Science Committee hearings are scheduled, but with only tangential links to space policy: the space and aeronautics subcommittee will tackle the future of air traffic control with a witness less that includes NASA aeronautics associate administrator Lisa Porter, while deputy administrator Shana Dale will be one of several witnesses at a full committee hearing Thursday on K-12 math and science education.
Off the Hill, this week the NASA Astrobiology Institute is holding its annual conference at the Ronald Reagan Building downtown. The agenda includes a “NASA Town Hall Meeting” Monday night; that should prove interesting, to say the very least, given the agency’s plans to slash funding for astrobiology.
And no, there are no Space Transportation Association breakfasts scheduled for this week. At least, none that I’m aware of.
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