Space Politics
Because sometimes the most important orbit is the Beltway…
Archive for September, 2007
September 30, 2007 at 1:00 pm · Filed under NASA
NASA administrator Mike Griffin is known for speaking his mind in plain language, be it in industry forums or in front of Congress. However, AFP may be taking things too far:
“When we celebrate 100 years of Sputnik, we might celebrate the 20th anniversary of man landing on Mars,” Frank Griffin, NASA’s chief administrator said recently.
[Emphasis added, of course.] This is from an article that tries to build a case that some in the US think that Asia could win a new space race (although what that space race would be, and how “winning” is defined, is apparently left as an exercise for the reader.)
September 28, 2007 at 6:41 am · Filed under Campaign '08
There’s an interesting post at RLV and Space Transport News that features some comments by Democratic presidential candidates on the nation’s space vision. Armin Ellis, who attended a presidential campaign debate in New Hampshire this week, posed the question “What is your vision for America’s space program?” to several of the candidates after the debate. The three leading candidates—Clinton, Edwards, and Obama—didn’t hang around, but Ellis was able to talk with Joe Biden, Chris Dodd, Dennis Kucinich, and Bill Richardson.
Not surprisingly, the answers the question elicited weren’t terribly deep. Dodd said that “we’re doing okay” and left it at that. Biden professed his support for robotic programs, and when asked about human spaceflight, said, “With clear leadership we can do anything, good luck.” Kucinich said he would double spending “across the board on civilian projects and privatize where we can”, and gave a shout-out for NASA Glenn Research Center, in his district. Richardson said spaceflight was “important” and added that “we should also encourage private companies”, as he has been doing in New Mexico.
Of course, this is all largely an academic exercise: none of the four have and realistic shot of winning the nomination, barring a massive upheaval at the front of the race. (Bill Richardson, though, could be a leading vice-presidential candidate.) Nor is it unexpected, given how low space policy ranks in the long list of issues in the 2008 election. Still, the small group of people interested in space policy now knows a little bit more about where some of the candidates stand…
September 27, 2007 at 7:37 am · Filed under Other
On Saturday American Solutions for Winning the Future, the organization created by Newt Gingrich to, in its words, “provide real, significant solutions to the most important issues facing our country”, will be hosting a Solutions Day featuring a number of workshops on various policy topics. (The event actually kicks off tonight with a speech by Gingrich in Atlanta.) Among the workshop sessions will be one titled “Space - The Race to the Endless Frontier”, hosted by former Congressman Bob Walker:
Future national greatness depends on leading the world in the creation of new knowledge and nowhere is the potential for new knowledge development more evident than on the endless frontier of outer space. Yet, our national space efforts and programs have become politicized and bureaucratized in ways that retard rather than enhance our access to that endless frontier. Sparking entrepreneurial, scientific and exploratory interest in space demands an agenda that recognizes the need for significant private sector involvement and investment, and further recognizes the national security imperative of space leadership. Former Congressman Robert Walker will discuss ideas for fundamentally changing our space policy.
The workshop, from 4-5 pm Saturday, will take place at the University of West Georgia, but will be streamed on the Internet. There will apparently be an option for interaction with the audience; perhaps someone can ask Walker what he thinks of NASA administrator Mike Griffin’s thoughts about prizes.
September 27, 2007 at 7:26 am · Filed under Other, NASA
You probably remember that, around the time the Vision for Space Exploration was first released, a number of media reports estimated the cost of the perceived ultimate goal of the effort—a manned Mars mission—at a trillion dollars. (See Dwayne Day’s “Whispers in the echo chamber” article in The Space Review in March 2004 for a discussion about this.) Since then, fortunately, those 13-digit price estimates have faded away, especially as the focus on the Vision has narrowed on a return to the Moon.
Or maybe not. The online publication Grist (”Environmental News & Commentary”) features a blog post this week that greatly inflates the cost of returning to the Moon. Andrew Dessler, a professor in the Department of Atmospheric Sciences at Texas A&M, takes issue with the roughly $100 billion that NASA estimates it will take to return humans to the Moon. “There is no way that setting up a semipermanent lunar base will be anything other than many times more expensive. That would put the total cost at one to a few trillion dollars.” Prof. Dessler, though, doesn’t explain his rationale for why the effort will cost many (apparently at least ten times) more.
Dessler also argues that the current level of funding for exploration programs, a few billion dollars a year, is “something like 1 percent of the money they would need to spend each year to actually accomplish this task, well short of the $100 billion or so actually required. Given this reality, there is no way we will ever actually do this.” Of course, the level of funding devoted to the exploration program is supposed to increase once the station is completed and the shuttle is retired (but will fall far short of the “trillions” Dessler thinks are needed.) Remember the sand chart?
Prof. Dessler is concerned, as are some other scientists, that NASA’s focus on exploration is depriving science programs of critical funding: “As someone who gets much of his research funding from NASA, I have seen the dollars for climate research getting harder and harder to find over the last few years.” But surely there are better ways to argue that than through hyperbolic cost estimates…
September 25, 2007 at 1:10 pm · Filed under NASA
In yesterday’s issue of The Space Review I published an article on recent comments by NASA administrator Mike Griffin on the roles of the public and private sectors in spaceflight. These comments include not just the ones he made during his “Space Economy” speech at a luncheon on September 17 but more informal remarks during a meeting that evening of the MIT Enterprise Forum. In both cases he made the point that the government needs to help foster the development of new space industries through mechanisms like the COTS program, likening it to government incentives for aviation in the 20th century.
However, at the MITEF event, he went farther, discussing how he felt that the government, including NASA, could be major customers for the emerging suborbital spaceflight industry: “If I was still at the helm of NASA when such a service became available, I would guarantee you that we would use it to begin entry-level training of astronauts,” he said. He said, though, that he didn’t want to go too far away from traditional government models, rejecting concepts like extremely large prizes for Mars exploration: “The people who suggest that we should put up a $100-billion prize for the first company to take us to Mars are idiots.” (Speaking of Mars prizes, the New York Times’ John Tierney touches on them in an essay in the ScienceTimes section today, but in the context of billionaires funding them to attain a measure of immortality.)
Griffin’s conclusion: “We need an appropriate balance between government sector activity and private sector activity. My point is that, for fifty years in the space business, we have not had that appropriate balance. We need to move more towards the middle.”
September 20, 2007 at 6:47 am · Filed under Other
When the public-private partnership that was originally envisioned to pay for the development of Europe’s Galileo satellite navigation system fell through earlier this year, it became clear that if Galileo was to continue, it would have to do so entirely at the expense of European taxpayers. Now it appears that EU has found a way to make that happen: it “found” over €2.4 billion (US$3.3 billion) needed to finance Galileo from other programs, notably “Preservation and Management of Natural Resources” (aka agricultural programs), which has a sizable surplus. Proponents of Galileo say that this approach allows them to continue the program without seeking additional money directly from national governments or cutting other programs.
The decision has to be ratified by EU member nations, and it appears from media reports that there will be at least some opposition to that approach. Ordinarily any budget surplus would be distributed back to EU member nations, and some farmer groups want the money spent on additional agricultural programs, not Galileo. The International Herald Tribune also noted that, in the eyes of some, Galileo has become “a personal quest” for EU transportation minister Jacques Barrot.
The EU transport ministers are scheduled to meet again in early October to review the proposal, although it may take much longer to win over some governments. In the meantime, one wonders if it was any coincidence that, on the eve of the EU announcement, the White House announced that equipment designed to degrade GPS signals would no longer be included on future GPS spacecraft. “Although the United States stopped the intentional degradation of GPS satellite signals in May 2000,” the White House statement read, “this new action will result in the removal of SA [selective availability] capabilities, thereby eliminating a source of uncertainty in GPS performance that has been of concern to civil GPS users worldwide.” Like, for example, in Europe.
September 17, 2007 at 5:16 pm · Filed under NASA
Earlier today NASA administrator Mike Griffin gave a luncheon speech in Washington to talk about the “space economy”,
a concept part of the agency’s new strategic communications plan. His most noteworthy comment, though, came near the end of the Q&A session after his talk, when he was asked about the potential for cooperation and competition with other emerging space powers, including (but not limited to) China:
I personally believe that China will be back on the Moon before we are. I think when that happens, Americans will not like it, but they will just have to not like it. I think we will see, as we have seen with China’s introductory manned space flights so far, we will see again that nations look up to other nations that appear to be at the top of the technical pyramid, and they want to do deals with those nations. It’s one of the things that made us the world’s greatest economic power. So I think we’ll be reinstructed in that lesson in the coming years and I hope that Americans will take that instruction positively and react to it by investing in those things that are the leading edge of what’s possible.
It wasn’t explicitly clear from his comments whether he was referring to robotic or human exploration of the Moon, but most people in the room appeared to interpret it as referring to human lunar missions.
Update Tuesday 12:30 pm: Griffin told Aerospace Daily that he indeed was referring to human lunar exploration in his comments, particularly if China elects not to develop a heavy-lift vehicle: “If one is willing to make use of multiple Earth-orbit rendezvous, a really big rocket is not required,” he told Aerospace Daily in an email. “It’s pretty cumbersome, but it can be done.”
September 13, 2007 at 11:18 am · Filed under Congress, NASA
The Huntsville Times reports today on comments made by Reps. Bud Cramer (D-AL) and Bart Gordon (D-TN) at an all-hands meeting at NASA MSFC yesterday. The two said they were particularly concerned that NASA might have to operate under another continuing resolution, depending on what the Senate does with its version of appropriations legislation. Cramer: “There is a probability of another temporary continuing resolution. We still have to work that out.” Presumably any continuing resolution would be short-lived, unlike the year-long continuing resolution that has funded NASA and many other federal agencies in FY07, although the article doesn’t make that point clear.
The article does include this odd passage: “Some are concerned that as much as $100 million in NASA cuts could delay lunar exploration programs such as Marshall’s Ares I rocket and probes aimed at finding water on the moon.” The “some” mentioned above is vague, although the preceding paragraph mentions “NASA and congressional leaders”; the article also doesn’t specify who was responsible for these potential “$100 million in NASA cuts”. It’s possible this is just a reference to the decreased funding level NASA operated under this fiscal year compared to what was expected, but it’s hard to be certain from the language of the article alone. While both Gordon and Cramer think NASA’s funding should be increased, neither specifically mentioned supporting something like the so-called “Mikulski miracle” to add $1 billion to NASA’s FY08 budget.
One other interesting quote from Gordon, about the strains on the agency created by all the agency’s priorities and its limited budget: NASA is trying “to squeeze $23 billion or $24 billion worth of science and research into an $18 billion budget.”
September 12, 2007 at 12:55 pm · Filed under Congress, NASA
The Mars Society sent out an alert to its members last week regarding language in the House version of the FY2008 NASA budget that would prevent NASA from spending money on projects exclusively intended for human Mars exploration. (It’s not clear exactly how many projects this would affect, although it’s unlikely to be more than a few small technology development efforts.) The Senate version of the budget, approved by the appropriations committee but not yet acted upon by the full Senate, doesn’t have that language, but the Mars Society is concerned that the language could make its way into the final version after a House-Senate conference. “It is highly likely that actions taken in the next few weeks will determine whether the anti-Mars language will end up on the final budget,” the announcement stated. “Although we have done an amazing job thus far – more than 1,000 faxes sent, numerous Congressional meetings organized, innumerable phone calls made, and 200 letters signed at the Mars Society Convention in Los Angeles – we need to intensify our efforts for the next few weeks.” The society is calling upon its members and others to fax and/or call their members of Congress to request that this language not be included in the final version of the bill.
September 12, 2007 at 12:47 pm · Filed under Other
Almost immediately after a Proton-M rocket failed and crashed on Kazakh territory downrange from the Baikonur Cosmodrome last week, the Kazakh government moved to ban Proton launches from Baikonur. This isn’t the first time the Kazakh government has moved to ban Proton launches after an accident, in part because of environmental concerns associated with the Proton’s rather noxious mix of propellants, nitrogen tetroxide and unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine. (The Kazakh government put a similar ban in place after the failure last year of a Dnepr, a converted ICBM that uses similar propellants.) Typically the bans are lifted after the investigation into the failure is completed.
An editorial in the Russian newspaper Vedomosti (via the English-language paper The Moscow Times) argues that—surprise!—the failure will also become an issue in Russian-Kazakh relations. The failure took place while the Kazakh president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, was not far from the impact site, and hence have also banned any launches when “the president is in an area falling under a rocket’s planned trajectory”. The editorial suggests that the Kazakh government may use the accident to revise the Russian lease on Baikonur, for which the Russian government pays Kazakhstan $115 million a year in rent. “These announcements look like they were made as a signal that the Kazakh government is getting ready to lodge some serious complaints with Moscow,” the editorial states. “The complaints will undoubtedly come with a price tag.”
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