Space Politics
Because sometimes the most important orbit is the Beltway…
Archive for July, 2007
July 31, 2007 at 6:38 am · Filed under Other
Aviation Week has a letter in its July 30th issue (summarized in a blog post on Aviation Week’s web site) from Apollo lunar module manager Joseph P. Gavin who is critical of the current direction of the Vision for Space Exploration: not because of the choice of architectures, but because of the decision to go back to the Moon instead of directly to Mars:
“I have been somewhat surprised to see the lack of active criticism of the administration’s vision for space exploration,” says Gavin in his letter to Aviation Week. “It seems to me to be more concerned with the ‘how’ as opposed to the ‘why’,” he says.
Gavin thinks that, after the ISS, the next major priority for NASA should be enhanced robotic exploration of Mars to determine if human missions there would be “warranted”. Given NASA’s, and the administration’s, current commitment to the Vision, it seems unlikely such a reconsideration would be made before 2009, if even then.
July 28, 2007 at 10:06 am · Filed under Congress
With Friday’s release of reports on astronaut health care issues, which included the bombshell allegations of intoxicated astronauts, the House Science and Technology Committee is planning a hearing on the studies and claims immediately after the August recess. Committee chairman Bart Gordon said that his interest lies beyond just the claims of alcohol usage: “you only have to read the report to know that something clearly seems to be broken in NASA’s system of astronaut oversight. I hope the agency will take the review team seriously, and not just fall back on the tired bromide that the review team’s findings are ‘unproven allegations.’”
In a separate statement, Rep. Tom Feeney, ranking Republican on the space subcommittee, said he was “confident” that the administrator and his staff “will rise to this challenge”, adding, “Congress will also conduct appropriate oversight.”
July 27, 2007 at 7:19 am · Filed under Congress, NASA
On a day that was pretty awful on space topics in general—be the news embarrassing, bizarre, or horribly tragic—there was a one positive development. The full House passed the Commerce, Justice, and Science appropriations bill, which would give NASA $17.6 billion in FY2008, $300 million more than what the Bush Administration requested. There were no floor amendments to alter NASA’s funding that I found, although there was one by Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee (D-TX) that would “prohibit the funds made available in this Act may be used in violation of Subtitle A of Title VIII (International Space Station Independent Safety Taskforce) of the NASA Authorization Act of 2005.” The amendment was a non-controversial one, and approved by voice vote.
Congressman Mark Udall (D-CO), chairman of the space subcommittee of the House Science and Technology Committee, called the budget “a step in the right direction” in a statement. “While this funding level does not reach the amount authorized under the 2005 NASA Reauthorization Act, it will help balance NASA’s many responsibilities and represents a step forward in tight budget times.” As for funding of the Vision for Space Exploration, specifically the Orion CEV, Udall noted the impending gap between the shuttle and Orion. “It is within the Administration’s power to send over budget requests in FY 2009 and FY 2010 to address this gap within the context of a balanced overall NASA program, and I hope that the Administration will do so.”
The Senate has yet to take up its version of the budget, which is about $150 million smaller in total than the House version (and with a different distribution of funding), but also holds the promise of a “Mikulski miracle” if Sen. Barbara Mikulski and her allies are able to push through a billion-dollar increase for the agency during floor debate, However, keep in mind that earlier this week the Office of Management and Budget issued a statement of policy that strongly opposes the House version of the bill, and threatened a veto if submitted to the president in its current form.
July 26, 2007 at 1:02 pm · Filed under Congress
The Senate Budget Committee is holding a confirmation hearing today on the nomination of former congressman Jim Nussle as the director of the Office of Management and Budget. In an effort to get Nussle’s opinion on NASA funding, Rep. Mark Udall, chairman of the space subcommittee of the House Science and Technology Committee, sent a letter to Sen. Kent Conrad, chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, asking Conrad to take up the issue during the confirmation hearing. In the letter, Udall says he is “concerned about the growing mismatch between the resources being provided to NASA by the Administration and the tasks that NASA is asked to carry out.” Udall also brings up the administration’s reject of calls for a “space summit” by members of Congress earlier this year. (Udall also includes a personal, handwritten message at the end of the letter: “Kent Thanks for taking a look at this!”) Whether Conrad will follow Udall’s request isn’t clear (the hearing is ongoing and Udall’s press release didn’t go out until after the hearing started), although Sen. Bill Nelson, a major NASA supporter who also serves on the budget committee, is copied on Udall’s letter.
July 24, 2007 at 5:13 am · Filed under Congress, NASA
The space and aeronautics subcommittee of the House Science Committee will hold a hearing today about the shuttle and station programs at 10 am in Rayburn 2318. Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA associate administrator for space operations, will be among the witnesses, along with former NASA official Tommy Holloway, who chairs the ISS Independent Safety Task Force; the other witnesses are a Georgia Tech professor and a GAO official. The hearing is intended to take on a number of issues, ranging from the ability of NASA to complete the assembly of the ISS by 2010 to the station’s post-2010 utilization to the status of the shuttle servicing mission to the Hubble Space Telescope next year.
July 23, 2007 at 8:01 am · Filed under Campaign '08
In today’s issue of The Space Review I have an article about what the future may hold in store for NASA when the next president takes office in about 18 months. The article is based on a panel session during the NewSpace 2007 conference on Friday. (Rand Simberg has his liveblogged summary of the session as well.) There was a lot from that session that I could not fit into the article, including a discussion of how NASA is treated by campaigns and transition teams (and how people would prefer NASA be handled), concerns about the overall structure of government and the appropriations process, and a comment by Alan Ladwig skeptical of the long-term potential of ISS commercial resupply: given all the difficulties with outsourcing NASA parabolic flight services, how likely is it that commercializing ISS resupply will be any easier?
July 23, 2007 at 7:50 am · Filed under Campaign '08
Last Thursday Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas and a Republican candidate for president who has been trailing in the polls, held a conference call with reports and bloggers to discuss a wide range of issues. One of the participants, who runs a Colorado-based pro-Huckabee blog, asked the candidate a rare question about space policy: with the news that the House Appropriations Committee has passed a budget that includes a provision prohibiting spending on human exploration of Mars, what is his stance about human space exploration, and what is his vision for the space program?
Huckabee started with a feeble joke:
Let me begin by saying that there are several people I’d like to send to Mars, so if we could get a vessel on that way, I’d like to put together a passenger list. Only thing is, I probably would only provide enough fuel to get them there, I’m not sure we’d get them back. By the way, don’t ask me the followup of who I’d like on that list, that would be a very closely guarded secret.
Then Huckabee described his past interest in space, and the benefits he sees space exploration in general providing the country, including a discussion of space-based air traffic control systems [emphasis added]:
I’m a child of the Space Age, born in 1955, and remember well, as a small child, John F. Kennedy’s vision to get us to the Moon. I remember sitting in my living room floor in July of 1969, when Neil Armstrong put his foot on the Moon. I’m also a person, as a 15-year-old kid, I was selected to go and spend two weeks at Cape Kennedy space program, part of Hugh O’Brian Youth Foundation. One kid from each state was selected, ten from foreign countries, it was an amazing experience. It reignited my passion about the space program. I’m saying all that as sort of a preface.
I believe that the space program has brought about far more benefits than simply the exploration of space. The side benefits in medical technology, navigation technology, digital technology, audiovisual, you know, it’s endless. And largely it was launched from the scientific research that was done in order to help us in the space race. So I think there are tremendous benefits that we would gain from an accelerated space exploration program that would help us in energy independence, that would help us in future technologies, perhaps better managing, I think, for example, that if we had a satellite-based air traffic control system, we would be far better off, in fact I know we would, that we would under the current system that is absolutely logjammed and is creating an enormous expenditure in both financial and social capital as people sit on runways for hours and hours and flights are delayed, and it’s costing companies and individuals extraordinarily amounts of money and time. So, I don’t have a dollar figure for you at this point. I’m trying to develop the national budget. But I certainly would be in strong favor of increasing our efforts in space exploration and technology.
Huckabee was then asked a followup: what would he say to those who prefer robotic spaceflight over human spaceflight? Huckabee sees a balance (and in the process dabbles in some creationism language):
I think there’s got to be a combination. We want to make sure that when we have human exploration it’s safe. We don’t want to start putting people in unnecessary risk, although space exploration is always going to be risky. But there is still a value of human exploration. Robots are wonderful, and there’s a lot of artificial intelligence that can be created in robotics, but you know I always argue that when God created the human eye, there’s never been a better camera, when God created the human nose there’s never been a better sensory device, when God created the human ear there’s never been a better listening device. There’s ultimately value in human exploration simply because you have all the tools that exist within the human capacity that simply are unmatched by any technology at this point.
One final question [again, emphasis added]:
Well, I don’t know if we could do it right away, because I don’t think we’ve got the technology to get them there and back in any period of time. So I’d want to see where we are, but if we came to the place in my tenure where that was a reasonable possibility and one that made sense, I’m not opposed to it, I’m just not quite ready to say, because I can just see the headline now, “Huckabee Proposes Mars Mission”. Again, there are some people I’d like to send over there, but probably not for the same reason you’re thinking of right now.
[The transcription above is from audio posted on Huckabee's campaign web site; go to part 3 of the July 19 conference call, about three minutes into that section. Any errors in the transcription are solely my responsibility.]
What Huckabee thinks about space policy is, in the long run, not necessarily very relevant, given his standing in the polls these days. Nonetheless, it’s interesting to see him shy away from proclaiming his clear support for human Mars missions because of his concerns about the headlines it would generate, even while cracking jokes about sending people on one-way trips to Mars.
July 20, 2007 at 8:29 am · Filed under Other
If you are looking for something to do this Sunday afternoon, you can tune into The Space Show at 3:00 pm EDT, where I will be Dr. David Livingston’s guest for the 90-minute show. One thing we will be talking about during the show will be the NewSpace 2007 conference, which wraps up Saturday, but with all that time there will be opportunities to talk about space policy and other topics. And if, for some reason, you actually have better things to do Sunday afternoon than listen to an Internet radio show, the show will be archived for later listening.
July 20, 2007 at 5:57 am · Filed under Other
In his luncheon speech Thursday at the NewSpace 2007 conference, Ed Morris, director of the Office of Space Commercialization within the Department of Commerce, was asked about what could be done about the export control problems facing the domestic space industry. ITAR, like the weather, is a topic everyone in the industry loves to gripe about, but about which little is done. Or is there? Morris noted that Commerce distributed a questionnaire to industry to gauge the effects of ITAR on the overall space industrial base, including both prime contractors and lower-tier suppliers. “That survey, and the results of that survey, provide the quantitative backbone for what I hope is still going to be some action on the executive branch side in the not-too-distant future,” he said. “I’m really talking around it,” he admitted, and didn’t offer any other details about what sort of action could be taken (and, unfortunately, I didn’t get a chance to followup with him after his talk, since it’s not clear exactly what the executive branch can do, since it would take legislation to remove satellite components off the Munitions List.) “It’s a long answer, and it’s probably going to get me in trouble,” he said, “but I hope to see something happening, at least some policy actions and some policy discussions, using that quantitative data and quantitative analysis in the near term.”
July 20, 2007 at 5:39 am · Filed under Other
Often here, such as with this post from earlier this week, the comments evolve (or, perhaps, devolve) into a discussion about whether the US will be perceived as falling behind other countries, China in particular, should they send humans to the Moon before the US returns there. In that theme I offer the following comments on the topic by Charles Miller in his opening remarks at the “Commercial-Military Spaceplane Day” during the NewSpace 2007 conference in Arlington, Virginia on Thursday:
I hear politicians on the Hill, and even some of the space industry’s lobbyists, talk up the possibility that China will beat us back to the Moon. I can only hope they try, because, in my mind, the technology to put a few humans on the Moon in a race is a strategic dead end that delivers little benefit to national security or economic wealth. I am much more fearful that China will make a national decision to develop totally-reusable spaceplanes. That would be a Chinese capability with major commercial and national security consequences.
It should be noted that, in this context, “spaceplane” refers to any launch vehicle with aircraft-like characteristics (reusability, high flight rate, low cost per flight, high reliability), regardless of whether the vehicle is winged or not.
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