Last week George Washington University hosted the 2007 Planetary Defense Conference, organized by The Aerospace Corporation and co-sponsored by a number of organizations, including NASA. During that meeting NASA released its Congressionally-mandated report on how it would be able to detect 90 percent of all near Earth asteroids 140 meters in diameter and larger by 2020. (The report itself was quietly placed on the web late last week by NASA.) The big news to come out of that conference and the report was that NASA lacks the funding needed to carry out the surveys recommended by the report, with as much as $1 billion needed through 2020 to achieve the stated goal.
Now that conference is being seen by one member of Congress as an example of lobbying at government conferences. An article in Federal Times provides the background, which goes back to a court case about federal funding of conferences by religious organizations. Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) said that if the courts eventually find that such funding is unconstitutional, he would move to block federal funding for any conference that features “political propaganda”. Coburn aide Roland Foster says a prime example is, you guessed it, the Planetary Defense Conference:
He cited as an example last week’s Planetary Defense Conference 2007, partly funded by NASA, where the agency argued it needs more funding for its program to deflect asteroids headed toward Earth. Such calls, while permissible on Capitol Hill, amount to political lobbying that should be banned at federally funded conferences, according to Foster.
From the accounts of the conference (I didn’t attend the whole event), it wasn’t clear that NASA was lobbying for additional funding, only some people who are either employed by or receive research funding from the space agency. One suspects that if someone dropped a billion dollars into Mike Griffin’s lap, enhanced asteroid searches would not be on the top of his list of spending priorities.
Jeff: One suspects that if someone dropped a billion dollars into Mike Griffin’s lap, enhanced asteroid searches would not be on the top of his list of spending priorities.
I suspect he’d find some way to use an Ares-1 launched Orion for this task! (And, if he did, cynical as it may be, I would fully support him in that.)
— Donald
Not much NASA money for asteroid protection. Or environmental protection. Shows where the bushadmin’s priorities lie. Get Aerospace Corp. to do a study then ignore it. It happened before with Hubble. Seems to be happening again.
Bush’s priorities: run out the clock for the next 22 months, let whoever takes over deal with the mess. A fine strategery.
During that meeting NASA released its Congressionally-mandated report on how it would be able to detect 90 percent of all near Earth asteroids 140 meters in diameter and larger by 2020. (The report itself was quietly placed on the web late last week by NASA.)
That’s misleading. As talked openly about at the Conference, the study mandated by Congress is not being released publicly – or even to the Congress. What was released (above) is a 28-page redaction overseen, as I understand it from what was said at the Conference, by the White House OMB. The Study itself – a glossy, 271-page report – has, it was reported last week at the Conference, only been distributed – hardcopy only – to 100 people; many/most of them, members of the NASA-led effort who produced the report.
One person who requested a copy of the ‘real’ report from NASA HQ was told, by email:
“The document you requested was distributed as in hard copy as a “thank you” to team members and is not an official, distributable NASA publication. Copies beyond those for the study team are not available.
An electronic copy will not be distributed or posted by NASA. The document does not meet federal accessibility regulations (Section 508) and the cost of bringing the study document in line with these regulations has been determined to be prohibitive.”
It is my understanding that a Freedom of Information Act request has now been submitted for it. I do not know what the differences are between the two reports.
I believe strongly in the democratic process – if it is allowed to work. The Congressional study mandate was proper, far reaching, and an example of Congress actually doing its job well: asking for a technical assessment, and options, from one of the government’s agencies on an issue of national and planetary safety and security, clearly a government responsibility. It is also correctly not a partisan issue; in fact, it’s primary proponent was (still is, actually) a conservative Republican.
Even if Congress received the full study, and decided to do nothing (e.g, no increase or re-prioritizing of the government budget to add more focus to the NEO issue), at least it would have been publicly debated and decided; so if it needs to be revisited later, everyone knows what was decided, and why. We may only be shooting ourselves in the foot in not openly providing Congress all the information they asked for on this safety issue.
[…] comes more than six months after NASA completed the report mentioned in the hearing’s title, which concluded that significantly more money would be needed to meet the goals mandated by Congress…. That report, which also discussed potential deflection strategies, was criticized sharply by […]