Florida’s space industry will be trekking to the state capitol in Tallahassee next month to lobby for support as the industry approaches the post-shuttle era, Florida Today reported Wednesday. Space Day, on March 6, will feature meetings with over 100 state legislators as well as the governor and lieutenant governor. The article is scant on details about exactly what they will be asking for, though: “Recommendations will include a shuttle work force transition program and continued investment in university-based aerospace research and applied technology programs.”
Florida Space Day has an official website that provides the details of exactly what they will be asking
It looks like this initiative is being pushed by a dozen or so aerospace companies. It it too bad that they arent recruiting the general public as some of the Washington DC lobbying efforts are doing. That would get more bodies at the state capitol and it would get more of the public behind the effort as well.
President Bush has asked for ~$17.6 billion for NASA in his current budget proposal. As has been reported in many places, many people believe that number is insufficient to accomplish NASA’s mandates, which includes deploying Ares 1 & Ares V in a timely manner.
President Bush has consistently underfunded NASA in comparison with the bi-partisan 2005 NASA Authorization Act and people such as Bart Gordon have been saying this for years.
In my opinion, if ESAS (Ares 1 / Ares V) is to be saved, Florida’s Congressional delegation (Democrat and Republican) will need to stand shoulder to shoulder and firmly declare that $17.6 billion is not sufficient funding for the current year. If the Republican members do not oppose the number offered by Bush NOW they will have far less credibility seeking increases after the next President is sworn in.
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Underfund ESAS and what we will get is Ares 1 but NO Ares V which kinda is the worst of all possible scenarios.
Ares 1 by itself cannot possible justify the scope of operations currently active at the Kennedy Space Center.
Political Action for Space has a good review of the underfunded budget:
http://actionforspace.blogspot.com/2008/02/house-subcommittee-evaluates-nasa.html
Absolutely. This chart shows exactly how underfunded ESAS has been according to Bush’s own plan!
*Cough* it’s not like ESAS is Bush’s plan, in fact ESAS in its rising demand for NASA resources has become almost the complete opposite of the VSE which the Bush administration proposed and the bipartisan Aldridge Commission supported.
I think Griffin’s NASA will be remembered as getting away with subverting (perhaps by chance perhaps not) just about everything the US President and Congress wanted (and no it didn’t get that way simply because of one or two or even a dozen people).
Now the VSE is underfunded in respect to the intended funding at the outset (write that if that’s what you mean) and it’s underfunded both in the President’s budget suggestion and more importantly in Congress’ budget, but if the ideas and general method within the VSE had actually been followed by NASA then that wouldn’t be such a big deal. The VSE was intended to be a vision that should still work without increased funding (and it still can if one drops ESAS and replaces it with something cheaper and more efficient like Direct v2.0 or EELVs). That’s one of the key points about the VSE in the first place! (And likely how it got broad support instead of suffering the fate of SEI –see? Someone learned the lesson, too bad it wasn’t NASA…).
However that’s not the case with ESAS and I’m unsure how many in the administration or in Congress realizes and to what degree.
I blame the administration not for underfunding the program, but for dropping the ball and assuming that once it hired a rocket scientist to implement its program, it could ignore it and move on to more pressing issues.
I wish that the Aldridge Commission (or at least some members of it) had put together a statement at some point in the last couple years pointing out the degree to which NASA has almost completely ignored its recommendations. I’ve talked to a couple members over the last couple of years, and they think that there should have been a bigger deal made of this, perhaps when ESAS was announced.
I blame the administration not for underfunding the program, but for dropping the ball and assuming that once it hired a rocket scientist to implement its program, it could ignore it and move on to more pressing issues.
I believe the Administration is guilty of both. It is way too bad that one of the only truly positive initiatives to come out of this disaster of an Administration (the VSE) was allowed to become a failure (albeit, to be fair, still a potential, or even a probable failure) along with just about everything else this Administration has touched.
— Donald
I blame the administration not for underfunding the program, but for dropping the ball and assuming that once it hired a rocket scientist to implement its program, it could ignore it and move on to more pressing issues.
But having done this, and submitting a series of budgets based on ESAS, the White House simply has taken ownership of ESAS whether or not it was wise to have done so.
Going forward, what should POTUS #44 do now, be it McCain, Obama or Clinton?
What difference does it make what I think they should do? They’re not going to do it.
Space simply isn’t that important. Jobs are. That’s where NASA faltered in executing the Vision, just as it did in Bush’s father’s plan.
Until people are doing space for their own purposes with their own money, and not hoping for funding from Congress for it, there will be little progress.
Rand, on this point
Until people are doing space for their own purposes with their own money, and not hoping for funding from Congress for it, there will be little progress.
I very much agree with you.