Space Politics
Because sometimes the most important orbit is the Beltway…
Archive for March, 2007
March 29, 2007 at 12:48 pm · Filed under Congress, Pentagon
Tucked away in the Missile Defense Agency’s 2008 budget request is a small amount of money dedicated to beginning study of space-based missile defense component. Air Force Lt. General Henry “Trey” Obering III, director of the MDA, included this passage in his opening statement before the Strategic Forces Subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee earlier this week:
Finally, I am deeply concerned about future threat uncertainty and worldwide ballistic missile proliferation. I believe the performance of the BMD system could be greatly enhanced by an integrated, space-based layer. Space systems could provide on-demand, near global access to ballistic missile threats, minimizing the limitations imposed by geography, absence of strategic warning, and the politics of international basing rights. A space layer would apply pressure on launches from land or sea, depriving the adversary of free rides into midcourse with advanced countermeasures. While deployment of such a system must be preceded by significant, national-level debate, that debate must be informed by science. To that end, we are ready to begin a focused investigation of the feasibility of having an integrated space-based layer, and I am requesting $10 million for FY 2008 to begin concept analysis and preparation for small-scale experiments. These experiments will provide real data to answer a number of technical questions and help the leadership make a more informed decision about adding this capability.
This got major play in an article by the Russian news agency RIA Novosti yesterday, but little else, primarily because it’s a small part of a much larger program, with more concern about the status of near-term terrestrial elements. (And because the Russians have been beating the drum pretty hard recently about US proposals to place regional missile defense systems in Eastern Europe.) Space-based missile defense has been a sensitive issue for years, out of concern by some that the same system that could be used to knock down enemy missiles could also be used to disable or destroy satellites, hence the statement by Gen. Obering that any space-based system “must be preceded by significant, national-level debate.”
March 28, 2007 at 6:30 am · Filed under Congress
The space subcommittee of the Senate Commerce Committee will hold a hearing this afternoon about “Transitioning to a Next Generation Human Space Flight System”. Speakers include William Gerstenmaier of NASA, Ron Dittemore of ATK, John Karas of Lockheed Martin, Allen Li of the GAO, Johnny Walker of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, and Michael McCulley of USA. The hearing should be webcast on the committee web site.
March 27, 2007 at 7:24 am · Filed under Congress
Congressman Nick Lampson (D-TX) is recovering well from quadruple bypass surgery he underwent on Sunday. The surgery, performed in Houston, took place after he reported experiencing chest pains last week; tests found a blockage in a key coronary artery. Lampson is expected to remain in the hospital for nearly a week and be away from Congress for at least a few weeks, although after this week Congress will be in recess for two weeks. Lampson serves on the House Science and Technology Committee; his district includes JSC.
March 24, 2007 at 10:38 am · Filed under Congress, Other
The Space Access ’07 conference is filled with talks from a variety of individuals and companies involved in the development of new space transportation systems. However, like seemingly every other space industry meeting these days, there was also a session about export control (aka ITAR). Export control is a major issue for many of these small ventures, which don’t have the resources of larger aerospace companies to deal with the regulatory process and run the risk of running into problems. So there was a useful presentation by export control lawyer Kerry Scarlott about the ins and outs of ITAR and questions about what is and isn’t covered, plus the usual exchange of “horror stories” about companies than ran into unexpected ITAR problems.
That presentation was followed by a panel featuring Scarlott, Randall Clague of XCOR Aerospace, Jim Muncy of PoliSpace, and Rand Simberg of Transterrestrial Musings. A major topic of discussion was this: is there any realistic chance of getting some sort of export control reform passed in the near future to lessen the regulatory burden on the space industry? The panel was skeptical, in part because while the Democrats are in control of Congress, Republicans need to take a leading role in pushing through change to avoid having any reform effort being criticized as evidence that the Democrats are weak on national security issues. “Unless we can find a way to get some Republicans to take the lead and inoculate Democrats from any flanking maneuvers by other Republicans, I don’t see anyone taking the lead and actually trying to fix this in a serious way,” said Muncy. Scarlott, in his presentation, said, “There are a lot of changes potentially afoot in ITAR. I emphasize ‘potentially’ because it’s unlikely significant changes will occur in the next couple of years.”
But it could be worse. As Simberg put it, referring to a noted critic of export control reform: “I’m very glad to see Duncan Hunter running for president. I hope he does it for a long time. I hope he doesn’t win, but as long as he’s running for president he might be too distracted to keep us from doing something useful.”
March 23, 2007 at 11:20 am · Filed under NASA
I’m at the Space Access ‘07 conference in Phoenix, a meeting popular with the entrepreneurial (aka NewSpace) space transportation community. One person who stood out was someone who is at the other end of the spectrum: Steve Cook, director of the Exploration Launch Projects Office at NASA Marshall, who talked about the status of the development of the Ares 1 and Ares 5 vehicles. Early in his presentation he said the following about the overall space community:
You are all here because you are all space advocates. We’re all space advocates or we wouldn’t be in this business. Space, in the grand scheme of things, is a small community, relatively speaking. We all need to work together if we’re all going to be successful… This is such a small, but such an enthusiastic community. If we’re going to be successful, this is really a watershed time for all of us.
Cook said this in the context of various government and commercial space access efforts in progress at the moment, but some got the impression that he was talking about some of the criticism of the Ares program from within the community in recent months. Part of that criticism has been that NASA should have instead selected a human-rated EELV derivative for at least the Ares 1. Cook said that during the ESAS study effort the Defense Department “had a lot of interest” in using the EELV, but after looking at the idea for a couple months, “that they came to the same conclusion that we did, that that did not make sense from a cost, safety, or reliability perspective.” In response to a question later in the presentation, he said they didn’t pick an EELV because “it wasn’t intended to be a human-rated launch vehicle.” (Ironic, since Lockheed Martin is currently studying human rating an Atlas 5, although they are looking at the smallest version, the 401, and Cook said they were looking at much larger versions given the size of the CEV.) Cook also said that the marginal cost of the Ares 1, excluding the Orion spacecraft (as well as all the sunk development and infrastructure costs) will be $100 million, which led to a lot of discussion of what the real price of each launch would be, which Cook said he wouldn’t have a good handle on until the preliminary design review.
Much of Cook’s talk focused on technical issues with the Ares development, including some of the changes they made after settling on the initial Ares 1/Ares 5 design (like use of RS-68 and J-2X engines in place of the SSME). But what about the Ares 4 concept that leaked out early this year? We’re “not doing anything right now” with the idea, but he has a small advanced concepts team looking at various ways to “mix and match” Ares stages.
March 22, 2007 at 2:39 pm · Filed under States, Lobbying
Pity the poor Florida state legislator who ventured outside his or her office at the wrong time Wednesday, the Tallahassee Democrat reported, as “representatives from NASA, Lockheed-Martin and the city of Titusville, among others, focused on tracking down and buttonholing the Legislature’s newest lawmakers.” It was “Space Day” in the Florida Legislature, and about 60 “space delegates” were meeting with legislators as well as the state’s lieutenant governor, Jeff Kottkamp, trying to win support for measures to support the state’s space industry, such as workforce training, funding for the state’s new space agency, Space Florida, and a life sciences “center of excellence”. Or, as one United Space Alliance lobbyist bluntly put it, “Send me money.” Hopefully they were a little more diplomatic in their meetings with legislators, buttonholed or otherwise.
March 20, 2007 at 7:12 am · Filed under Congress
When the House Appropriations Committee approved a supplemental appropriations bill last week to cover spending on Iraq and Afghanistan, it declared the bill to be free of earmarks. Yet, as the New York Times reported late last week, it does have some provisions that look an awfully lot like earmarks, including $35 million for NASA’s Stennis Space Center. (The NASA funding isn’t mentioned in the committee statement about the spending bill, but is presumably part of the “Gulf Coast Recovery” section.) The money isn’t considered an earmark as currently defined by Congress since it is going to a federal agency and not a local government or entity.
Over the weekend, President Bush singled out the NASA money and a couple other earmark-like additions to the appropriations bill in his weekly radio address, saying that such provisions “do not belong in an emergency war spending bill.” But then, the president has much bigger issues with the bill than a seemingly out-of-place $35 million for Stennis.
March 19, 2007 at 7:40 am · Filed under Congress
Back in the late 1990s, when he was chairman of the House Science Committee, Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-WI) was a staunch critic of Russian involvement in the International Space Station, saying that their inclusion had failed to yield the promised cost savings and had delayed the overall effort. Sensenbrenner, who left the committee after the 2000 elections to chair the House Judiciary Committee, returned to the House Science and Technology Committee this year, and talks about some space policy issues in an interview in this week’s issue of The Space Review. Sensenbrenner still calls the Russian involvement in the ISS a “disaster”, but believes that there has to be some kind of international cooperation in NASA’s lunar exploration plans “because we can’t afford to do it alone”. Some other items:
- China’s recent ASAT test is “a deal breaker” for any kind of future US-China cooperation on space or other science projects.
- He was noncommittal on whether now was the right time for some kind of export control reform.
- He said he didn’t know enough about NASA administrator Michael Griffin and overall agency leadership to determine if they’re making the best decisions for the future of the space agency.
- Sensenbrenner is skeptical of NASA’s role as an inspiration for youth to study math and science, saying instead the real problem is “a disconnection in math and science in education” at an early age.
March 19, 2007 at 7:29 am · Filed under Congress
From the Zanesville (Ohio) Times Recorder: “Space co-sponsors resolution honoring John Glenn”. This is, of course, freshman Rep. Zach Space (D-Ohio), and the resolution referred to is H.Res. 252, designed to honor the 45th anniversary of John Glenn’s historic orbital flight. Why Rep. Space and his colleagues (the resolution has 10 cosponsors) waited nearly a month after the actual anniversary to introduce the resolution, which has been referred to the House Science and Technology Committee.
March 16, 2007 at 6:38 am · Filed under Congress, NASA
Yesterday’s hearings by the House Science and Technology Committee and the CJS subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee covered a lot of the issues that had already been covered in previous hearings this week, including plenty of hand-wringing by both Democrats and Republicans about the lack of money to meet all of NASA’s priorities. There was even a proposal by Sen. Barbara Milkulski to hold a bipartisan summit with the White House to create “a national commitment to our space program to put it on a path for success.”
Perhaps the most interesting comments, though, came by Mike Griffin late in the House hearing Thursday morning, in response to a question by ranking member Ralph Hall about the various delays in the CEV/Orion program. Griffin explained that when he became administrator he set a goal of having the CEV enter service in 2012. However, funding cuts to cover ISS and shuttle operations, Hurricane Katrina repairs, and other issues, pushed the start date back to late 2014. After Lockheed Martin won the Orion contract last year, Griffin said they re-baselined the program and budgeted “to a 65-percent confidence level”. All of those factors pushed the start date back further, to March 2015. In other words, NASA had missed the end-2014 deadline for putting Orion in service before the final FY07 budget cut more money from the program. That budget caused a six-month delay, but Griffin said that this had been negated by terminating lower-priority programs, like the follow-on missions to LRO in the robotic lunar exploration program, moving the start date back to March 2015. This is a bit different from earlier testimony, such as before the Senate Commerce Committee’s space subcommittee, which suggested that the FY07 cut was the reason for missing the 2014 deadline. (One can argue that NASA would have still made the 2014 deadline had it received full funding in FY07 and made the cuts in other programs, but this makes it clear that the program was not in the best of fiscal health well before the 2007 budget was approved.)
Unfortunately, the major media accounts of the hearing opt for sensationalism over substance: the Washington Post and Houston Chronicle instead lead with comments by Griffin, in response to a question by Rep. Ken Calvert, that China might beat us (back) to the Moon. Because, of course, if the Chinese did somehow land humans on the Moon before the US returned, they would… uh, do something. Like steal all the Moon’s helium-3 for their fusion reactors. Yeah, that’s it.
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