ProSpace response to Wired News article

Marc Schlather, president of ProSpace, has responded to the Wired News article Wednesday that insinuated that the organization had paid lobbyists working to promote space weaponization. His letter to the editors of Wired News is reprinted below with his permission:

To the editor:

I am writing to correct the record on our organization, ProSpace, as set forth in the article “Space Hawks Chase Death Rays” by Jacob Lasker that appeared on Wired.com this week.

I spent a great deal of time on the phone assisting Mr. Lasker with his article. He was fully informed on ProSpace, our members and our agenda. He instead chose to mischaracterize our organization and must have known that he was doing so since we had covered all of this information in our conversations.

By far his most grievous mischaracterization is this sentence: �Some of the lobbyists represent the aerospace industry, but most have been hired by smaller space startups and entrepreneurs.�

I was very clear with Mr. Lasker about the fact that our members are volunteers and private citizens. For instance, at this week�s March Storm those in attendance included:

• Ten college students (from the University of Michigan, University of Illinois, University of Colorado and Embry-Riddle Aeronautical).
• An emergency room doctor
• A materials scientist (who does not work in the aerospace industry).
• A software engineer
• A corporate training specialist
• A Wall Street executive

We do have one member in long standing who is employed by a major aerospace company as a systems engineer on the Hubble Space Telescope, which could hardly be described as a weapons system.

In addition each of our members pays their own way to Washington. As some came from as far away as California that represents a substantial expense. No aerospace company paid the airfare or hotel bills of our attendees, nor was any member compensated for attending March Storm (except this author, who is the only paid employee of ProSpace).

This is the way we have done things since our founding twelve years ago. And it is chief among the reasons we are warmly welcomed back by members of Congress and their staffs each year � they know our agenda is one that is not based on any possible personal gain for our members, but rather a genuine concern for the direction of our nation�s space efforts.

To suggest otherwise, especially when one is aware of the true facts, is an insult to the dedication of these good people.

Mr. Lasker also chose to mischaracterize our agenda, which is freely available on our website at www.prospace.org, when he states that �The big talking point? How the private sector can help the U.S. military build space-based weapons a lot faster and with a lot less of taxpayers’ money.�

Even a brief review of the documents on our website demonstrates the fallacy of this contention.

Our big talking point was about prizes for space accomplishments.

Our second big talking point was to reinforce the need for a secondary domestic means of transferring cargo and eventually crew to the International Space Station.

In our third point we did recommend that the Congress appropriate $5 million for a small pilot program at the Air Force Research Lab (AFRL). We assume this is the point to which Mr. Lasker refers. This program would be called The AFRL Center for Entrepreneurial Space Access (ACES).

The goal of ACES is simple. The Department of Defense is spending a great deal of money to meet a goal they call Operationally Responsive Space (ORS), which would permit launches of vital payloads in hours or days instead of the months or years required at present.

At the same time, entrepreneurs are spending hundreds of millions in the private sector to do essentially the same thing � to launch payloads and paying passengers into space on demand.

Those two groups � DOD and the entrepreneurial space companies � have no structure for communicating with each other, even though both are working similar issues. It made sense to the members of ProSpace that some enabling of direct communication between them would be useful, for both their programs and for the taxpayer. And that is what ACES will accomplish if the Congress enacts it.

That is what the members of ProSpace spent the first three days of this week talking about to their elected representatives on Capitol Hill. They are justifiably proud of this work and invite your readers to review our entire agenda at www.prospace.org. Information about our work in past years is also available. We believe you will find it both interesting and illuminating.

Our members are somewhat puzzled by Mr. Lasker�s motives in writing as he did. As suggested by another website, perhaps he was looking for a hook for his article and, being unable to find one, decided to manufacture one. We do not know the answer to this question.

We do hope that Wired will post this prominently (as prominently as the incorrect information was posted) so that your readers can learn the true story of ProSpace and our work.

Sincerely,
Marc Schlather
President
ProSpace