Space Politics
Because sometimes the most important orbit is the Beltway…
Archive for April, 2006
April 21, 2006 at 10:01 am · Filed under White House
During a briefing after President Bush’s meeting with Chinese President Hu, Dennis Wilder, Acting Senior Director for Asian Affairs at the National Security Council, threw in a few words at the end of his opening statement about US-China space cooperation:
The President, in the area of trying to deepen the relationship between our two societies and our two cultures, offered to send the NASA Administrator to China to begin to talk about lunar exploration with the Chinese, to talk about some of the things we need to do in space — for example, debris avoidance and other subjects. There are some things that the Chinese also have in terms of sensor technologies and information that we are interested in, in terms of global climate and other issues. So the NASA Administrator will probably go to China later on this year to begin to consult on the subject of space exploration and where we might have common interests and where we might begin to work together as the two nations on the Earth with the most ambitious space programs in the 21st century at this point.
This statement got a little bit of media coverage, including Reuters, SPACE.com, and the Houston Chronicle, which is probably about all that it deserved. China had already offered to host a visit by Griffin, and reportedly the US has already provided orbital debris tracking support for China for its manned Shenzhou missions. The lunar exploration cooperation is a little more interesting, but it remains to be seen how that will play out, particularly given the limited flight opportunities in the near term: it may be too late to fly US instruments on Chang’e 1 (China’s lunar orbiter) or Chinese instruments on LRO, even if both sides agreed to it today.
April 20, 2006 at 4:55 am · Filed under Other
Yes, China continues to be a hot space policy topic. A few items of note:
- Bloomberg News has an article summarizing the perceived threat China’s space program poses to the US. The usual suspects on both sides of the issue are quoted. There are no real new insights here, but it does offer a review of the various claims on this topic.
- The Washington Times had an editorial in yesterday’s edition that sees China as an obvious competitor to the US in space supremacy “if not now, then in the near future.” That, the editorial believes, should keep the US focused on its own space exploration efforts. “If China wants to plant its flag on the moon, then the United States should plant its on Mars,” the editorial concludes.
- A reader pointed out the WSI/China Program/China-US Dialogue on Space, a project of the World Security Institute. The web site includes an extended report on “China’s Space Ambitions”, with contributions from US and Chinese authors. [Note that, as of very early Thursday morning, the web site was not functioning properly; hopefully it will be by the time you read this.]
April 20, 2006 at 4:37 am · Filed under Other
The editors of Florida Today have made it clear on a number of occasions that they believe the state government should do more to support the state’s space industry. They are at it again in Thursday’s edition with an editorial once again calling on the legislature to approve a $500-million investment fund for the space industry:
They’ll either show vision and move ahead with an innovative $500 million investment fund that would help bring 21st century space business to the state.
Or they’ll dump the plan and repeat their failed policies of the past that are making Florida a loser in this rapidly-changing arena.
April 20, 2006 at 4:32 am · Filed under Other
The web site California Chronicle reports that not one but two space-related pieces of legislation made it out of committee in the California State Senate this week. (The article looks suspiciously like a press release from the office of Sen. Roy Ashburn, the sponsor of the bills, although it does not (yet) appear on his official web site.) One, as reported earlier, is SB 1671, the Mojave spaceport loan bill. The other, SB 1698, would provide $2 million for the California Space Enterprise Competitive Grant Program, an effort started in 1997 to “develop space enterprise in California”.
April 19, 2006 at 12:48 pm · Filed under White House
Yesterday President Bush paid a visit to the Parkland Magnet Middle School for Aerospace Technology in Rockville, Maryland (just a few miles from where I live, as it turns out). While at the school, he gave a speech on the American Competitiveness Initiative. He even mentioned to drop NASA’s name twice, although not in any meaningful way:
We saw two scientists who are here from NASA. These are good, hard-working folks who said, I kind of want to lend my expertise to try to convince a child that science is cool.
Later:
As I told you earlier, it’s really important for students to see firsthand what it’s like to be a scientist. [Secretary of Education] Margaret [Spellings] and I didn’t do a very good job of teaching what it’s like to be a scientist. The two guys from NASA did an excellent job of teaching them what it is like to be a scientist.
It’s doubtful this will placate those critics who believe that the President hasn’t paid NASA enough public attention in the two-plus years since the unveiling of the Vision for Space Exploration.
April 19, 2006 at 6:24 am · Filed under Other
In Monday’s issue of The Space Review, Taylor Dinerman contrasted the commercial spaceport situations in New Mexico and California: while New Mexico was investing over $100 million into a new spaceport, attracting Virgin Galactic and the X Prize Cup, California has done little to promote Mojave Airport, an FAA-licensed spaceport that was the site of the SpaceShipOne flights in 2004. As Alan Boyle reports in MSNBC’s Cosmic Log weblog, things aren’t getting better for Mojave: an effort to secure an $11-million loan for a passenger terminal there failed to win enough votes in a California State Senate transportation committee hearing to advance to the full Senate. (See earlier coverage of this legislation.)
The measure, SB 1671, apparently suffered from a report filed by Jennifer Gress, a consultant to the Senate’s Transportation and Housing committee. One concern expressed in the report is whether the East Kern Airport District, which operates Mojave Airport, “has fully explored alternatives to a state General Fund-backed loan.” The report also expressed concern that the funds would be used to support Virgin Galactic, “a company whose owner has a net worth in the billions.” (”Millions for a billionaire”, as the report pithily summarizes.) Stu Witt, Mojave Airport manager, told MSNBC that the bill isn’t dead yet: another committee vote is scheduled for next week.
Update 12:30 pm Wednesday: It turns out the reports of the bill’s near demise were exaggerated: Alan Boyle, in an updated version of his blog entry, reports that the bill’s sponsor, Sen. Roy Ashburn, rounded up four additional votes for the bill a few hours after the hearing, giving it one more than the seven needed to be reported out of committee. So there’s still some hope yet for funding for Mojave.
April 18, 2006 at 12:48 pm · Filed under Other
An article in this week’s issue of Flight International magazine has a provocative headline: “US claims right to set new space tourism regulations globally after treaty examination”. As the opening paragraph summarizes:
US persons or organisations operating suborbital test flights outside the USA will still have to obtain a Federal Aviation Administration permit, according to newly proposed rules. This is because, under existing international treaties, governments are responsible for launches made by their citizens or legal entities beyond their own borders.
Another case of imperialist American hegemony? Hardly. While the Flight International article treats this as something of a revelation, this appears to be simply a continuation of existing policy that requires US operators to obtain launch licenses from the FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation (AST) even if those launches take place outside the US. For example, the HyShot 1 and 2 suborbital launches of an Australian hypersonics experiment required AST licenses even though they took place from Woomera, Australia, because they used a commercially-supplied US rocket, the Terrier-Orion. In addition, the multinational Sea Launch venture, led by a US company, Boeing, performs launches under an AST license even through they use a Ukrainian rocket with a Russian upper stage, launching from a Norwegian-built floating launch platform in international waters. So it’s only natural, under the existing regulatory regime, to extend that policy to cover suborbital space tourism flights.
[Disclosure: my employer performs work for AST, but is not involved in the licensing or rulemaking process. A slightly longer version of this post appears on the Personal Spaceflight blog.]
April 18, 2006 at 7:08 am · Filed under Other
Today’s Orlando Sentinel features an op-ed on China’s space program by Vincent Sabathier and G. Ryan Faith of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. In the essay, they argue that the US would be better served by cooperating with China’s space program, rather than competing with it. The ISS, they believe, could provide an opening for such cooperation, for practical as well as political purposes:
Much as Russian participation in the international space station was preceded by the famous Apollo-Soyuz mission during the Cold War, Chinese participation in the international space station can be a precursor for cooperation in decades to come. More practically, after the space shuttle is retired in 2010 the United States will not have a manned-spaceflight capability for as long as four years. Under current plans, during this gap there will be only one way to get to and from the international space station — via the Russian Soyuz. Having another backup such as the Chinese Shenzhou will be critical to the safety of the international-space-station crew. By the time the shuttle is retired, China will certainly have the ability to provide this backup to the Soyuz until the new U.S. vehicle is ready for flight.
April 17, 2006 at 1:06 pm · Filed under Other
There are a few, well, cranky people out there who don’t seem to care much for spending money on NASA. From today’s Durant (Okla.) Daily Democrat (”Gateway to Lake Texoma”), comes an essay by Harold Harmon, who seems to be having a bad day. Or week. Or longer:
We’ve also decided that 2003 UB313 is just barely larger than Pluto. Xena, as it has been named, could surpass Pluto as the 10th planet.
Could you have slept tonight without knowing that?
Like the trial [of Zacarias Moussaoui], these space-exploration things cost money. Like the trial, American citizens will receive little of value at the end of the road.
Ouch. Meanwhile, an anonymous person writing in the “You Said It” column of the Hagerstown (Md.) Herald-Mail isn’t too happy about the LCROSS lunar impact mission announced last week:
I see that gas just took another hop. Why do we have to depend on foreign oil anyhow? Is it because of the environmental people in the U.S.? I don’t see what they have done as far as clean air. People are still dying at a young age. And the government is going to let NASA put a thing up in space and burn a hole into the moon? What’s the matter with our government?
What is the matter, indeed.
April 17, 2006 at 6:53 am · Filed under NASA
An editorial in the Cleveland Plain Dealer is concerned about the future of NASA’s Glenn Research Center. Interestingly, the focus of its ire is less on NASA headquarters or Congress than on Glenn’s leadership itself, which the paper’s editors believe are not doing enough to promote the center:
It’s hard to escape the feeling that Glenn is rapidly heading toward a last chance to make itself relevant to NASA, which really does have too many installations with too little funding and too little work to do. If it won’t fight for its own survival by shaking things up internally and presenting NASA a center too good to let die, the best congressional delegation in the world won’t be able to prop it up forever.
Greater Clevelanders are rooting for NASA Glenn. But will it get into the game?
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