Space Politics
Because sometimes the most important orbit is the Beltway…
Archive for June, 2007
June 29, 2007 at 8:07 am · Filed under Lobbying
Even though House and Senate appropriators are moving ahead with bills that provide modest funding increases for NASA, some organizations are still pressing Congress for a much larger budget increase. Yesterday a group of organizations led by the AIAA formally asked Congress to increase NASA’s budget by $1.4 billion, about five to ten times the increase that currently exists in the two versions of the appropriations bill. That increase would bring NASA up to its authorized level, and would mitigate the current problem of NASA “being asked to accomplish too much with too little.” The organizations also play the education and competitiveness card, citing “a shrinking workforce in the science and engineering disciplines, and a calamitous decrease in the number of students choosing to carry on this commitment in the future.” (The House letter and Senate letter are posted on the AIAA public policy web site.)
June 28, 2007 at 8:25 pm · Filed under Congress, NASA
The full Senate Appropriations Committee today approved an appropriations bill that includes $17.45 billion for NASA. The press release doesn’t offer many details about the NASA portion of the bill, although at first glance it appears that the committee made few, if any, major changes to what the subcommittee approved on Tuesday. Space News reports that Sen. Barbara Mikulski proposed, and then withdrew, an amendment for a $1-billion increase for NASA as Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WV), chairman of the full committee, objected (as expected, since the amendment would have exceeded the spending limits agreed by appropriators earlier this year). Byrd suggested that Mikulski instead offer the amendment when the full Senate takes up the bill.
June 28, 2007 at 12:41 pm · Filed under Lobbying
As you may recall, last week The Mars Society went to battle stations in response to a provision in a House appropriations bill that would prevent NASA from spending any money on programs directly associated with the human exploration of Mars. In a less hyperbolic followup this week, the organization reports that its members have sent “almost 400″ faxes and made “numerous” phone calls to members of Congress asking them to remove that provision in the bill. The Mars Society’s goal is 1,000 faxes in the next couple of weeks, around the time the full House Appropriations Committee is expected to take up the spending bill.
June 26, 2007 at 8:39 pm · Filed under Congress, NASA
The Commerce, Justice, and Science subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee marked up an FY208 appropriations bill this afternoon that includes $17.45 billion for NASA, according to Space News (subscription required), about $150 million more than what the administration requested but about $150 million less than what their House counterparts approved earlier this month. Full details about the budget aren’t available yet, but it appears that most of the increase will go to Earth sciences programs, with $130 million increase. Exploration systems, aeronautics, and shuttle and ISS operations are all fully funded, according to both Space News and a press release from subcommittee chair Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-MD).
The full Senate Appropriations Committee is scheduled to take up the funding bill this Thursday. It’s not clear yet whether Mikulski will use that hearing as the opportunity to introduce an amendment to add $1 billion to the NASA budget, similar to the “Mikulski miracle” maneuver last year. She told Space News that she is looking at “what are our best options” fur such an effort, which could come later in the appropriations process.
One little item in the budget with some significance for exploration plans: Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL), the ranking member of the subcommittee, said in a press release that he has added money for a robotic lunar lander mission to the budget. The funding bill includes $48.7 million for a “Lunar Lander” mission plus $20 million for the lunar robotics program office at NASA Marshall, which Shelby fought to keep open earlier this year. The Shelby press release also points out funding he won for a number of other, smaller programs, like an “Advanced Space Propulsion Material Research and Technology Center”, “Composite Material Research for Space Exploration” (for the “Marshal [sic] Space Flight Center”), and “Radially Segmented Launch Vehicle (RSLV) LOX/Methane Technology Maturation”, among others.
June 26, 2007 at 12:54 pm · Filed under Congress
To follow up on Sen. Mel Martinez’s visit to KSC, Florida Today reports today that the senator will work to “minimize” the gap between the shuttle and Orion. It’s a little unclear at first whether this means he’ll try to shorten the existing period between the two programs (currently projected to run from late 2010 to early 2015) or just try to keep it from getting any longer; his comments as quoted in the article suggest the latter. “[W]hat we need to do is make sure that we continue to be there and fight for the program… to ensure that the worst-case scenario doesn’t happen. We don’t want to get there.” That sounds more like playing defense than offense.
Sen. Martinez added that he’ll work with other members of Congress to build “coalitions with other states” that have a stake in NASA’s exploration program to help secure funding. “We’re returning to the Moon. America doesn’t quite know that that’s happening, and we need to make sure the story gets out,” he said. “That’s my job — to get the story out of NASA and to make sure that the members of Congress are informed and interested in what it can do for our country to continue a viable space program.”
June 26, 2007 at 7:04 am · Filed under NASA
Today NASA plans to officially release a long-awaited new strategic communications plan. I was able yesterday to preview a copy of the plan, which goes over the market research NASA performed to see how the agency is perceived by the general public, how the agency plans to tailor its message to address weaknesses uncovered in that research, and strategies for implementation.
The market research (which Robert Hopkins, chief of strategic communications at NASA, discussed in some detail in a presentation last month at the ISDC in Dallas) found that, not surprisingly, NASA has broad public support, but a smaller fraction of the public believes that NASA is relevant to their lives. However, a far larger percentage of respondents believed the agency was relevant after being told about technologies (from smoke detectors to weather satellites) that the agency had a hand in developing. Poll results also showed limited excitement about, or even awareness of, NASA’s Moon and Mars exploration plans. Men and younger audiences tend to be more interested in such exploration, although the plan identifies its base audience as the “Apollo Generation”, those 45-64 years old.
Using those survey results, NASA has crafted a new “core message” that emphasizes not exploration or missions in and of themselves, but on the benefits accrued from them: “NASA explores for answers that power our future.” In the document, “future” is defined as the sum of three things: inspiration, innovation, and discovery. “Why explore?” the plan asks. “Because exploration powers inspiration, innovation, and discovery.”
The plan also introduces a more specific message for highly-targeted audiences called “The Space Economy”, which the document defines as “the full range of activities and the use of resources that create and provide value and benefits to human beings in the course of exploring, understand and utilizing space.” The plan calls for NASA to establish “thought leadership” around this concept that further enhances the agency’s relevance in specific audiences.
The implementation of the plan will primarily be structured around the year-long 50th anniversary celebration for NASA that will begin this October (NASA was formally established on October 1, 1958.) Many different events and other work are planned, from “Future Forums” around the country to new public service announcements to a “Web 2.0″ redesign of the NASA web site that will incorporate social bookmarking, tagging, user-generated content, and even a “NASATube” and “NASApedia”.
It’s far too early, of course, to tell how effective this is going to be. Even if NASA convinces the public that the agency is more relevant to them, will the public respond in turn by demanding more money for NASA from the White House and Congress? Or will the public simply be more satisfied that they’re getting their money’s worth at current spending levels?
June 26, 2007 at 6:02 am · Filed under Events
A few events this week related to space policy:
The Marshall Institute is hosting a “Forum on National Security Space: Examining Codes and Rules for Space” this Wednesday on Capitol Hill. The all-morning event features three panels of speakers discussing “ongoing efforts, established rules, and options for the future with respect to collision avoidance, debris mitigation, and harmful interference resolution” in space. The event is free, but if you haven’t yet registered, good luck: I tried to RSVP for this last week and was told I’m on a waiting list.
Thursday morning the House Science and Technology Committee’s space subcommittee will host a hearing on NASA’s 2008 budget request for earth sciences programs. Scheduled to testify will be officials from NASA, academia, and other organizations.
On Friday morning CSIS will host a presentation by Jean-Jacques Tortora, space attache to the French Embassy in Washington and US representative for the French space agency CNES, on “The Future of French Space Policy”. (I did not find details about the event on the CSIS web site, but the event is scheduled from 9-10:30 am at the CSIS offices at 1800 K St NW).
June 25, 2007 at 7:57 am · Filed under Congress, NASA
Despite representing Florida, Sen. Mel Martinez (R) has been far less vocal on space policy issues than his fellow Floridian, Sen. Bill Nelson (D), who chairs the space subcommittee of the Senate Commerce Committee. However, Central Florida News 13 reports that Sen. Martinez will visit the Kennedy Space Center on Monday, meeting with NASA officials there “about funding for the space agency”. The article is short on specifics other than that he apparently wants to avoid further delays in the development of Orion and Ares 1.
June 21, 2007 at 10:04 pm · Filed under Congress, Lobbying
They’re manning the battlestations at the Mars Society, which issued a statement with that title to protest the inclusion of language in the House appropriations bill that would prohibit any spending on human exploration of Mars. “THIS ANTI-MARS LANGUAGE MUST BE REMOVED!” the society argues (emphasis in original.) “Otherwise, the program may turn into [a] MOON ONLY program. We can’t let that happen.” The society is calling on its members to contact their representatives and ask them to remove the offending language from the bill.
June 21, 2007 at 9:59 pm · Filed under White House, Congress
Key leaders of the House Science and Technology Committee issued a press release criticizing the White House for its lack of interest in Sen. Barbara Mikulski’s “space summit” proposal. The statement, by full committee chairman Bart Gordon and subcommittee chairmen Mark Udall and Nick Lampson, said they were “deeply disappointed” in the response by the White House to Mikulski’s summit idea. “We intend to work with NASA supporters on both sides of the aisle in Congress to try to give NASA the resources it will need to carry out the tasks that the nation has asked it to undertake,” they add. “However, the President’s disengagement will make that effort immeasurably more difficult.” The choice of “immeasurably” is interesting: one assumes they used that word in the sense of “extremely”. However, one might argue that the president’s “disengagement” will have an immeasurable—as in negligible—effect on the overall budgetary process.
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