Space Politics
Because sometimes the most important orbit is the Beltway…
Archive for December, 2007
December 16, 2007 at 5:37 pm · Filed under Other, White House
This afternoon I was finishing up the second volume of Astronautics, a two-volume history of the Space Age by Ted Spitzmiller published this fall by Apogee Books. A section about the future of the ISS and its overall viability states that NASA administration Michael Griffin had said that he would not have chose to build the ISS in its current configuration and orbit. Such statements, Spitzmiller writes, “call into question not only continued support for the ISS but funding for the return to the moon as requested by President Bush. Bush himself stated—perhaps with tongue-in-cheek—‘We plan to either hold an auction on Ebay [sic] or give it away to our international partners.’”
Had Bush really joked about selling the ISS on eBay? I didn’t recall Bush making such a statement, and Spitzmiller doesn’t include endnotes in the book. So I did a little research, and turned up this SpaceDaily piece that includes the quote used in the book. The problem is the article’s lede: “US President George W. Bush declared today that he had signed a rare Presidential Decree canceling any further expenditure of Federal funds on the US Space Shuttle program.” Not to mention the article’s publication date: April 1, 2005. Oops.
The irony of all this is that, in the long run, NASA might well turn over the ISS to its international partners, depending on how the Vision for Space Exploration and the agency’s finances unfold in the years to come. Selling it on eBay, though, still seems a little unlikely…
December 15, 2007 at 4:32 pm · Filed under Campaign '08, Congress, Lobbying
The Space Exploration Alliance (SEA) is planning an annual “legislative blitz” in February, bringing together to people to meet Congressional staffers on space policy issues. The February 10-12 event will be focused on the FY2009 budget proposal, which will have been released about a week earlier. “Participants will be the first members of the space advocacy community to visit Congress to discuss the FY09 budget,” the announcement reads (unless someone gets there the week before). The effort will also be directed at “numerous efforts in Congress to either delay or derail NASA’s Moon-Mars plans”. The irony of all this is they could be meeting about the FY09 budget proposal before the FY08 budget is actually enacted, given the slow rate of progress on that effort so far.
Meanwhile, the SEA is also paying attention to the presidential campaign, asking the candidates to provide details on their space policy positions. “The Space Exploration Alliance applauds Senator Hillary Clinton for releasing her comprehensive space policy,” the SEA release notes, “and calls on all of the other candidates to release the details of their policies for space exploration and NASA.”
December 15, 2007 at 4:23 pm · Filed under Other
Since this issue has come up in the comment threads of more than one post, I’ll briefly mention it here. There is no way to prevent a determined individual from posting comments here, regardless of what you think of them. Thanks to anonymizing servers, people can comment without leaving any trace of where they actually came from, thus making any blocking attempts futile. Short of moderating all comments (which would significantly restrict the flow of discussion, not to mention put a huge burden on me on top of all my other work) or simply turning off comments all together, the best approach I can recommend to objectionable comments is the lesson I learned in school many years ago when dealing with bullies: ignore them, and soon enough they’ll direct their attention elsewhere. After all, it’s not like they’re going to be receptive to your arguments and logic…
If you have specific technical recommendations on measures that can improve the quality of comments here, of course, feel free to email me.
December 13, 2007 at 7:33 am · Filed under States
[Cross-posted from Personal Spaceflight for your reading convenience.]
The attorney general of New Mexico has concluded that a local tax increase passed this spring to help fund development of Spaceport America should not be collected starting January 1 as originally planned because of a lack of a mechanism to spend the revenues. Voters in Doña Ana County, which includes the city of Las Cruces, passed the quarter-cent gross receipts tax increase in April; at the time the tax was set to take effect on January 1. However, county officials had asked that the introduction of the tax be delayed because the money can’t be spent until a spaceport tax district is created, and that district can’t form until at least one other county also approves a similar tax. Two other counties in southern New Mexico, Otero and Sierra, also plan to hold tax referenda, but not until spring 2008 at the earliest.
December 13, 2007 at 7:25 am · Filed under Congress, NASA
The day after NASA awarded the last major contract for the development of the Ares 1, Florida Today weighs in on a recent GAO report on the vehicle, saying that the report raises “signs of trouble” about not just the vehicle but also the overall exploration architecture. “At this early juncture, the Ares and Orion programs are starting to look like a repeat of NASA’s dismal performance on its last two major programs: The shuttle fleet and International Space Station, both of which came in far behind schedule and far over budget,” the editorial claims. More money could at least ease the problems, but the paper is skeptical that the White House and Congress would be willing and able to so, given the “enormous costs” of Iraq and growing pressure on Medicare and Social Security. “That puts NASA advocates in Congress — including Florida Sens. Bill Nelson and Mel Martinez, and Space Coast Reps. Dave Weldon and Tom Feeney — in the impossible position of trying to push the funding boulder up hill.”
December 11, 2007 at 8:03 am · Filed under Congress
The Washington Post reports today that a deal on an omnibus domestic spending bill has fallen through after Congressman David Obey, chair of the House Appropriations Committee, complained that the Republicans were “bargaining in bad faith” on the proposal. The Democrats had proposed a $520 billion spending bill that would include additional domestic spending that the Democrats want but would have also included additional money for Afghanistan and Iraq that the White House has been pressing. The proposal triggered a strong response from OMB director Jim Nussle, who said that if Congress passed such a bill, “the President would veto it”, causing Obey to announce the deal was off.
Obey said he would instead press for a bill that heeded the administration’s spending limits by cutting out earmarks, Iraq and Afghanistan funding, and “most of the Bush administration’s top priorities”. And what might those priorities be, the Post asks? “One possibility would be funding for abstinence education. Other targets could be nuclear weapons research and development in the Energy Department, NASA programs and high-technology border security efforts that have come under criticism for being wasteful and ineffective, said Steve Ellis of Taxpayers for Common Sense.” How much, if anything, Obey would cut from NASA isn’t mentioned in the article.
In any case, don’t expect a resolution soon. “If anybody thinks we can get out of here this week, they’re smoking something illegal,” Obey said.
December 10, 2007 at 7:08 am · Filed under Campaign '08
Using the lackluster response to a question about human Mars exploration in a recent Republican debate as a springboard, Daniel Handlin asks why candidates aren’t more proactive about space exploration policy issues in an article in this week’s issue of The Space Review. Noting Mike Huckabee’s statement that “Whether we ought to go to Mars is not a decision that I would want to make”, Handlin writes:
However, despite Hucakbee’s exceedingly poor choice of words, the reason Huckabee made his statement was obviously not because he has a fear of making decisions. His answer is, of course, code for “I would decide not to support a Mars mission by failing to support one actively,” which for space exploration is tantamount to actively deciding against supporting spaceflight. For the President to hold NASA’s budget flat for a few years would be enough to nix a Mars mission for another 10 or 15 years. But why does this escape attention in the media?
The root cause, Handlin argues, is not one of lack of public interest, but one of poor outreach by space advocates to the public, focusing on minutiae like choice of launch vehicles and propulsion systems than an overall vision of humanity in space:
In the end, the public—those who set the agenda by voting—doesn’t care whether the Ares 1 uses J-2Xs or SSME derivatives, or what kind of propellant the CEV uses. Most people have never heard of either of these vehicles. They care about the emotional impact of space exploration—the excitement of doing something new and wonderful—and that is what needs to be presented to the public.
So how should advocates present “the excitement of doing something new and wonderful”? And how effective would that strategy be in influencing presidential politics?
December 10, 2007 at 6:55 am · Filed under Campaign '08
An article in the Nevada newspaper Pahrump Valley Times (“Nye County’s Largest Newspaper Circulation”) covers a recent visit by Elizabeth Kucinich, wife of presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich. Mrs. Kucinich had this to say about her husband’s priorities with regard to NASA:
Kuchinich said her husband’s 12 point plan includes a Works Green Administration, similar to the Works Public Administration of the Depression years. She talked about an ambitious plan to retrofit American homes with wind turbines and solar panels. Mass transit systems are also desperately needed, she said.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) should be put to work on these projects, instead of sending people to the moon, Kucinich said.
Kucinich’s energy policy backs this up to a degree:
There has to be a renewable energy portfolio of at least 20% by 2010. And that means introducing wind, solar, hydrogen, geothermal, biomass, and all of the options that must be available and need incentivizing… And I’m willing to do that through NASA, which has been of singular importance to our economy by developing technologies for propulsion, for aerospace, for materials, for medicines, and for communication. We need to fund NASA in, among other areas, a mission to planet Earth.
Before human lunar exploration advocates get too perturbed, note that Kucinich’s odds of winning the Democratic nomination are, well, astronomical…
December 6, 2007 at 7:42 am · Filed under Congress, NASA
As the 2010 retirement date for the space shuttle looms, it’s not surprising that some people want to keep the shuttle flying for at least a little bit longer. The Orlando Sentinel reports today that some members of Congress are prepared to take legislative steps to extend the shuttle’s life. A group of Texas members of Congress, led by Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, are preparing legislation that would require NASA to add another shuttle mission to launch the AMS. According to the article, 32 members of Texas’ congressional delegation—all but two of its members—signed a letter sent to President Bush last month asking him support their cause; the members also met with NASA Administrator Mike Griffin to try and convince him to add the AMS to the shuttle manifest. “We didn’t leave with everyone jumping up and down and cheering,” admitted Rep. Nick Lampson (D-TX). “We think that he’s under a good bit of pressure to not fly the shuttle after 2010. There’s a lot of money involved.” (Indeed.)
Also, Rep. Dave Weldon (R-FL) is proposing legislation that would require NASA to keep the shuttle flying until a replacement system is ready to fly—a move that would require a huge increase in the NASA budget, and also raise questions about the safety of the aging shuttle fleet. “We just don’t believe there should be a gap,” Weldon’s spokesman, Jeremy Steffens, told the Sentinel, adding that Weldon’s legislation would address safety issues and recertification of the shuttle fleet, a recommendation made by the Columbia Accident Investigation Board if the shuttle was to continue flying after 2010.
Not surprisingly, Griffin isn’t fond of any proposals to extend the shuttle’s life. “If you keep flying the shuttle… you will never finish [Constellation] on the money that we have,” he told the paper. From a technical standpoint, he added, “It is difficult to envision flying much past 2010.” Some in Congress, though, appear willing to try.
December 5, 2007 at 5:43 pm · Filed under Congress
The Republican leadership of the Senate Commerce Committee announced this afternoon that Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison would be leaving her post as ranking member of the Space, Aeronautics, and Related Sciences subcommittee to take the same position on the Aviation Operations, Safety, and Security subcommittee. That post had been held by Sen. Trent Lott, who is retiring at the end of the year. Succeeding Hutchison as the ranking member of the space subcommittee is Sen. David Vitter of Louisiana. Vitter has not been outspoken on space issues, to the best of my recollection, but his state is home to the Michoud Assembly Facility, whose future is arguably riding on the current implementation of the Vision for Space Exploration.
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