Space Politics
Because sometimes the most important orbit is the Beltway…
Archive for June, 2006
June 22, 2006 at 6:41 am · Filed under Congress
NASA’s decision to proceed with the July 1 launch of the shuttle Discovery on STS-121, despite the objections of two key officials, has attracted a good deal of media attention. However, in looking through the various news reports, I haven’t seen any comments from members of Congress, although they have not been shy in the past about sharing any concerns they have about shuttle safety. Is this current debate too small of an issue to warrant (public) attention on Capitol Hill, or is something else going on?
June 22, 2006 at 6:31 am · Filed under Congress
The full House Appropriations Committee approved a budget bill Tuesday that includes $16.7 billion for NASA. Florida Today reports that the portion of the bill dealing with NASA was unchanged from what the subcommittee passed last week. The full House will take up the budget bill at some point, while the Senate has yet to start work on its version of FY07 appropriations bill.
June 21, 2006 at 5:53 am · Filed under Uncategorized
And no, it doesn’t appear to be an approaching train. Officials with Lockheed Martin and Boeing confirmed earlier this week that they have received a draft version of the FTC “consent decree” that would permit the formation of the United Launch Alliance, with conditions. The details of the consent decree haven’t been revealed, but according to the Wall Street Journal (subscription required) are expected to include protections for competing satellite manufacturers, like Northrop Grumman, as well as “traditional antitrust safeguards aimed at promoting competition from other rocket providers”, most notably SpaceX. This development came after Michael Wynne, secretary of the Air Force, told MarketWatch that the FTC was taking too long to make a decision about the ULA.
June 21, 2006 at 5:44 am · Filed under Congress
Sorry about the short advance notice about this (complicated by being out of town earlier this week): the Strategic Forces Subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee is holding a hearing this morning (10 am, Rayburn 2212) on “space and U.S. national power.” Scheduled witnesses include:
- Lieutenant General C. Robert “Bob” Kehler, USAF, Deputy Commander, U.S. Strategic Command
- Mr. Ed Morris, Director, Office of Space Commercialization, U.S. Department of Commerce
- Mr. David Cavossa, Executive Director, Satellite Industries Association (SIA)
- Dr. Michael O’Hanlon, Senior Fellow, Foreign Policy Studies, The Brookings Institute
The audio of the hearing will be webcast.
June 19, 2006 at 10:21 am · Filed under Congress
An article in this week’s Space News (freely available online) provides some additional details on the changes a subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee made to the proposed FY07 NASA budget. The subcommittee approved $16.709 billion for NASA, down from the $16.792 billion in the President’s original request. As previously noted, the subcommittee transferred $100 million to aeronautics and $75 million to science: $50 million for research grants, $15 million to begin work on a Europa orbiter mission, and $10 million for the Terrestrial Planet Finder, which NASA had planned to delay. Much of that money is coming from the $150 million cut from technology development efforts within the exploration program; some money was also cut from space station operations and administrative programs. The full House Appropriations Committee hasn’t announced a meeting to take up the budget bill, while the Senate isn’t expected to take up its version of the appropriations legislation until late July or early September, after the August recess.
June 19, 2006 at 10:08 am · Filed under White House
A Reuters article last week reported that a new overall national space policy—something that has been anticipated for months, if not a year or more—may soon finally be released. According to the article, “The White House is due to announce a new space policy this month, the first overhaul in a decade.” However, the article doesn’t provide any other details about the timing of the policy nor its contents.
The statement was included in an article about a speech at the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva by John Mohanco, deputy director of the office of multilateral, nuclear and security affairs. In his speech Mohanco suggested that the US was interested in “the possible role that space-related weapons may play in protecting our assets” in space against possible attack. While nearly all of the 65 countries participating in the conference, with the exception of the US and UK, want some sort of ban on space-based weaponry, Mohanco said there is no need for such steps. “There is no — repeat, no — problem in outer space for arms control to solve.”
June 16, 2006 at 8:08 am · Filed under NASA
An editorial in yesterday’s Boston Globe raises a key question about NASA and the projects it should undertake. The editorial, based on an article that appeared in the Globe last Friday, argues that NASA should be spending more, not less, on Earth sciences programs:
Trips to the moon or Mars, which the president also favors, fit the better-known part of NASA’s mission to explore space. But at a time when climate change, in particular, is threatening the well-being of the planet, NASA should be increasing, not decreasing, funding for projects like the canceled satellite mission to measure global soil moisture. A climate observatory in deep space, which would monitor this planet’s solar radiation, ozone, clouds, and water vapor, has also been dropped.
If you read the editorial and article, you might think that NASA was abandoning Earth sciences research. While there are some notable delays and cancellations, there are several missions still in active development in the near term alone, including AIM, Aquarius, and OCO, not to mention the fleet of Earth-observing spacecraft already in orbit. The overall “Earth-Sun System” theme at NASA, which includes both Earth observing and solar science projects, will get $2.2 billion in the proposed FY07 budget, slowly rising to $2.4 billion by FY11.
On the other hand, the “climate observatory in deep space” mentioned in the editorial (officially known as the Deep Space Climate Observatory, and previously—and better—known as Triana) has had a long and controversial history. And the “canceled satellite mission to measure global soil moisture”? That is apparently a reference to Hydros; however, oddly, neither the editorial nor the original article mention the spacecraft by name. Moreover, neither mention that Hydros was selected as a “backup” mission in the event either Aquarius or OCO ran into problems, and thus “was not confirmed for development” when the other two missions passed their confirmation reviews (although there was apparently some confusion about this between the project team and NASA headquarters.)
Thus the question: how much money should NASA be spending on Earth sciences research? Yes, it is important research—few would deny that—but how much of that should the space agency should be supporting, versus other agencies? Some have advocated in the past removing Earth sciences entirely from NASA, seeing such research as a distraction to its renewed focus on human and robotic space exploration, but that seems unlikely, in part because it’s not at all clear who should take up the burden, or would even be qualified to do so. What is clear is this: despite modest budget increases, NASA’s budget pie is not growing large enough to match the voracious appetites of everyone who wants a slice.
June 15, 2006 at 7:57 am · Filed under Congress
The science, state, justice, and commerce subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee, whose jurisdiction includes NASA, marked up their appropriations bill on Wednesday. Details about the bill are scant, based principally on this statement in the press release about the bill:
National Aeronautics and Space Administration receives $16.7 billion, $462 million above the FY06 base level. Funds the President’s vision for space exploration at $3.8 billion; provides full request for the Space Shuttle; and restores $100 million above the request to aeronautics research, and $75 million above the request for space science.
$16.7 billion is about $100 million less than the President’s original proposal, and it appears that the exploration program suffered the biggest cut, losing about $200 million, with most of that going to aeronautics and space science. (That suggests that other programs also lost month to account for the overall $100-million cut, but the full appropriations bill is not yet available on Thomas.) The Planetary Society, in a statement, notes that $50 million of the additional space science funding will go to research and analysis programs, while $15 million would be used start a new Europa orbiter mission. (As the press release notes, one of the members of the appropriations subcommittee, John Culberson, has been perhaps the strongest Congressional proponent for a Europa mission.)
In his opening statement, subcommittee chairman Frank Wolf (R-VA) said that despite the cut to exploration programs, “This level ensures that the President’s vision for space exploration is adequately funded while at the same time restoring a portion of the damaging cuts that were proposed for NASA’s aeronautics research and science programs.” The full appropriations committee has not announced when it will take up the bill.
June 14, 2006 at 12:53 pm · Filed under Other
What do they have in common? They’re three of ten ways human civilization might meet its demise, according to a documentary airing on the Sci Fi Channel tonight. An article in today’s Washington Post recounts a discussion about those topics, organized by the channel, held yesterday on Capitol Hill. The topic of death by asteroid impacts attracted both astronaut Ed Lu (a member of the board of directors of the B612 Foundation) and Congressman Dana Rohrabacher, who has long had an interest in the threat posed by near Earth objects:
“Why haven’t we suffered more terrible destruction?” [moderator Linda] Douglass wanted to know.
“Space is big,” said Ed Lu, a NASA astronaut.
Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) mentioned an asteroid called 99942 Apophis, which he said might hit the Earth in 2036. There was discussion of something called a “gravity tractor,” which might fix these sorts of problems.
Given the same event also debated the threat posed by “machine rebellion”, it’s not clear this actually helped raised awareness about NEO hazards or not.
June 13, 2006 at 7:17 am · Filed under Other
Reuters reported yesterday that Boeing and Lockheed Martin are still waiting for the Federal Trade Commission to approve the formation of the United Launch Alliance, contrary to a report published Saturday by US Space News, which claimed that the FTC had rejected the merger. (The Reuters article primarily covers separate negotiations between Boeing and the Air Force on a launch contract like the one between Lockheed and the Air Force; that contract is not expected to be finalized before June 30, although that doesn’t appear to play a role in the ULA approval process.) US Space News, meanwhile, published a two-sentence denial of its original report provided by Lockheed Martin, although the site still claims that it has “creditable [sic] data that the FTC rejected the ULA proposal”, although neither the data nor the sources of the data are specified.
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