Space Politics
Because sometimes the most important orbit is the Beltway…
Archive for October, 2008
October 31, 2008 at 7:24 pm · Filed under Campaign '08
Remember when I complained back in late August that the AP was still claiming that Barack Obama would delay Constellation by five years if elected, although early that month he made it unequivocally clear he would not? (Whether he’ll follow through on that pledge, of course, is a different manner, but one beyond the scope of this post.) At the time it seemed a little embarrassing: you’d expect the AP to know better, but then again, space is a relatively minor policy issue. By now, though, one assumes everyone is clear what his campaign’s official stance is—except for the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, it seems, talking about Obama’s education plan:
Obama would pay for his plan by ending corporate tax deductions for CEO pay and delaying NASA’s moon and Mars missions.
It looks like the Star-Tribune is simply running the AP issues comparison piece from August (there’s only a vague “News Services” credit near the end), although the piece does begin “As both campaigns enter the final days before the Nov. 4 election…”
October 31, 2008 at 7:21 am · Filed under Campaign '08, Congress
While both major presidential candidates have promised to increase NASA’s budgets, those promises are just that. It will be up to the next Congress to pass budgets that incorporate—or not—that additional funding, and at least one key House member is expressing his opposition not just for additional NASA funding, but for current spending levels. In an October 26 debate, Congressman Barney Frank (D-MA) said he would seek to cut back spending in a number of areas, including human spaceflight, according to a report by PolitickerMA.com:
Reducing the amount of money spent on sending humans into space would be another priority, Frank said. “Space exploration is very important and has great scientific and practical results, but sending human beings to Mars and back will cost hundreds of billions of dollars for very little scientific worth.”
Frank is already infamous in the space community for pushing for measures that would prohibit spending money on human Mars exploration. The language in the debate suggests that he might take more aggressive measures in the next Congress to slash NASA funding, particularly for programs like Constellation.
October 31, 2008 at 7:07 am · Filed under Campaign '08
As the Orlando Sentinel earlier this week put it, “My astronauts are better than yours”. Both the Obama and McCain campaigns have signed up a number of former astronauts as supporters and even campaigners. The so-called “Obamanauts” have signed up former Apollo astronaut Rusty Schweickart as well as former shuttle astronauts Kathy Thornton and Dan Barry. That’s in addition to the Sally Ride endorsement of Obama earlier this week. In addition to the endorsements, Schweickart plans to do some door-to-door campaigning Saturday in Titusville, Florida.
Schweickart isn’t the only former astronaut doing some campaigning. The Sentinel article noted that former Apollo 7 astronaut Walt Cunningham “toured cities around Florida” last weekend in support of McCain. (Cunningham, readers may recall, also represented the McCain campaign in an August debate at the Mars Society convention in Colorado.) There are other former astronauts serving as “surrogates” for the McCain campaign; I had been in contact with a campaign official to try and arrange an interview with one or more of them, but it doesn’t appear that will come through before Election Day.
Obama supporters have also picked up endorsements from space- and science-related people<, including Bill Nye, the science educator and vice president of The Planetary Society; Lon Levin, the co-founder of XM Satellite Radio; and Peter Diamandis, chairman of the X Prize Foundation. Diamandis also wrote a brief editorial supporting Obama, saying that the Democratic candidate “seems to understand the challenges we face in space, and has put forward a policy that is refreshingly broad and specific.”
October 29, 2008 at 9:19 pm · Filed under Campaign '08
Remember last week when McCain was criticized by Democrats for not mentioning NASA in his list of programs that would be exempt from a budget freeze, less than a week after vowing to add $2 billion to the agency’s budget? The campaign, it appears, has learned its lesson, based on a speech McCain gave Wednesday in Miami:
I will freeze government spending on all but the most important programs like defense, veterans care, NASA, Social Security and health care until we scrub every single government program and get rid of the ones that aren’t working for the American people. And I will veto every single pork barrel bill Congresses passes.
Miami is far from the Space Coast, but it seems the campaign wanted to avoid giving the Obama’s Florida campaign any ammunition. It should be noted, though, that the passage above is similar to speeches McCain has given elsewhere, in recent days, like Hershey, Pennsylvania on Tuesday and Dayton, Ohio on Monday; neither of those speeches, though, included NASA in that list of “important programs”.
October 29, 2008 at 7:53 am · Filed under Campaign '08
Former astronaut Sally Ride, the first American woman in space, made clear her support for Barack Obama in an Orlando Sentinel op-ed Wednesday. Part of her reason for supporting the Democratic candidate is his stance on space:
Obama also has impressed me with his grasp of the challenges our space program faces and his agenda for where we go from here. Obama clearly understands the importance of human spaceflight and exploration. That is why he supports increasing NASA’s budget to close the gap in American spaceflight capability.
However, he also sees the potential for NASA to expand its research capabilities to study things like global warming and aeronautics. And most important to me, he has included plans to integrate our space program into educational curricula around the country so students can experience the thrill of science through remotely controlling cameras on the international space station or, perhaps one day, rovers on the moon.
Related: this week’s print issue of Aviation Week claims that Ride’s name “has come up on both candidates’ lists” of potential replacements for NASA administrator Mike Griffin. (Essays like this, though, would presumably not help her chances in a McCain administration.) However, the same report also claimed that Chirinjeev Kathuria—one of the backers of MirCorp and current chairman of PlanetSpace, a small company partnering with ATK, Boeing, and Lockheed Martin to win a commercial ISS resupply contract—is also on Obama’s shortlist to replace Griffin. (Kathuria, as readers may recall, ran for the Senate from Illinois in 2004 but lost the Republican primary; that was the seat won in the general election by none other than Barack Obama. Kathuria also made a failed bid for lieutenant governor of Illinois in 2006, also as a Republican.)
October 29, 2008 at 6:19 am · Filed under Campaign '08
Democratic vice-presidential candidate Joe Biden did not have much of a reputation as a space advocate during his long tenure in the Senate. However, he’s learning the language of space policy on the campaign trail, particularly in places like Florida and even Colorado that are both key to the general election and also have concentrations of voters with strong interest in the subject. Last night Biden was speaking in Melbourne, Florida, and the campaign supplied this excerpt from his speech:
When John F. Kennedy challenged the nation to go to the moon, he noted that the space industry not only demanded the best minds, it also created the best jobs.
Ladies and gentlemen, the objective was not just to go to the moon. But it was to get another 435,000 engineers and scientists and mathematicians.
When the Shuttle is retired, NASA estimates that 3,500 jobs could be lost – and that doesn’t count the impact on local businesses or the long-term cost of allowing our global leadership to atrophy. The Bush Administration has left our space program in a very difficult position. And John McCain, as Chairman of the Commerce Committee hasn’t helped. He oversaw the plan to retire the Space Shuttle before a replacement was ready.
Barack Obama and I have a different idea. We’re going to work with Bill Nelson; we’re going to invest an additional $2 billion in NASA to reduce the gap between when the Shuttle is retired and the when the next generation of space flight is introduced.
We want to reinvigorate our national space program and that includes creating an environment for a vibrant commercial space program.
What John F. Kennedy said 46 years ago, still resonates with us today: “Now it is time to take longer strides… for this nation to take a… leading role in space achievement.” That’s as true today as it was then. Folks, that’s the goal that Bill Nelson, Barack, and I share.
As it did in the Kennedy Administration — it will help create a new generation of engineers, mathematicians, scientists… and a few more astronauts – like Bill Nelson, as well. It’s a goal that will not only inspire the nation, it will also create jobs.
[emphasis above in original]
A few days earlier, Biden was interviewed on the “Your Show” program on Denver TV station KUSA. The very first question he was asked was from a Lockheed Martin employee who said her colleagues were convinced that an Obama administration would mean “budget cuts for NASA and other science-based research”. Biden’s response:
Absolutely the opposite. I was just down in Florida, and we were talking about what we’re going to do, how we’re going to pump and how we’re going to make jobs available within the space program. We think there should not be this hiatus piece between the present vehicle we have and the new vehicle. We think we should be investing right now. John McCain’s the guy that’s going to interrupt this flow. So the fact of the matter is, the people of Boeing, as it relates to our NASA programs, will do much better under Barack Obama and Joe Biden than they’re going to do under John McCain, and he has so stated.
A similar message, even if the language isn’t terribly precise (and not to mention confusing Lockheed Martin and Boeing).
October 26, 2008 at 3:07 pm · Filed under Campaign '08
On Friday New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson paid a visit to Las Cruces International Airport to participate in a press conference with the Rocket Racing League and Armadillo Aerospace about their new joint venture to develop suborbital vehicles (with support from the state to help develop facilities at the airport for manufacturing the vehicles). At the tail end of the press conference a reporter asked Richardson if he would take a position in an Obama administration.
“I am very happy where I am,” Richardson replied, then added, “But here’s what I want to be sure of: that the Obama Administration is pro-commercial space. [applause] We’re going to push that. We’re going to make sure it’s pro-space: pro-government space but also pro-commercial space. I think it’s in the interest of our national space industry that commercial space be properly developed. So I’ll be an advocate wherever I am, hopefully here still as governor of New Mexico, but you never know.”
Richardson’s visit coincided with Armadillo Aerospace’s effort to win Level One of the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge; in fact, the press conference took place as the Armadillo team was on the pad prepping their vehicle for the flight that would win them the $350,000 first prize. Richardson stayed around the flight, which took place a few minutes after the press conference ended, then departed for other commitments in town.
October 24, 2008 at 7:46 am · Filed under Other
A reader passed along a notice that Congressmen Tom Feeney and Dave Weldon will be meeting with state and local officials in Brevard County, Florida to “discuss local, state and federal partnership opportunities for Florida’s Space industry”. The meeting will take place Monday, October 27th at 10 am at 2725 Judge Fran Jamieson Way in Viera, on the third floor of Building C. The meeting will feature a number of speakers besides Feeney and Weldon, including KSC deputy director Janet Petro and Space Florida president Steve Kohler. The meeting is designed to serve as a followup to a Florida Space and Technology Forum held last month.
October 24, 2008 at 7:39 am · Filed under Campaign '08
On Thursday John McCain gave a speech in Ormond Beach, Florida, that included many of the themes the candidate has repeated countless times now on the campaign trail, such as a one-year budget freeze. However, the Barack Obama campaign seized upon one part of that speech, notably what McCain didn’t say:
Days after attempting to clarify his ever-changing position on space funding, John McCain returned to the region this morning and reinstituted his call for a spending freeze – without an exception for NASA. Speaking in Ormond Beach, McCain promised to freeze spending on “all but the most important programs like defense, veterans care, social security and health care,” pledging to “veto every single pork barrel earmark.”
Notably absent was any exception for space funding, muddying a position McCain tried to clear up last week.
“It seems Senator McCain isn’t committed to exempting NASA from his proposed spending freeze. After talking about space for all of 53 seconds in Melbourne last week, now he’s returned to the area and neglected to mention space at all, going so far as to reinstitute his spending freeze pledge without a NASA exception. It’s no wonder Florida Today has called McCain ‘downright schizophrenic’ about space,” said Obama’s Florida Policy Director Ian Bassin. “Barack Obama has pledged an additional $2 billion to reduce the spaceflight gap and save Florida jobs and was recently praised for his ‘leadership’ on space issues by NASA Administrator Michael Griffin. That’s the change Florida’s Space Coast needs.”
So did the McCain campaign really go back on its pledge just last week to provide $2 billion more for NASA? One can argue that McCain was not trying to provide a complete list of “important programs” that would be exempt from the freeze, and just listed the highest-profile ones. However, while Ormond Beach is not usually considered part of the “Space Coast” region of Florida, it’s close enough—just north of Daytona Beach—that the McCain campaign could have avoided any controversy and negative publicity by simply adding “and NASA” to that list, if in fact the candidate is still committed to that budget increase.
October 23, 2008 at 8:20 am · Filed under Campaign '08, Congress
Yesterday Florida Today formally endorsed Suzanne Kosmas in her bid to unseat incumbent Congressman Tom Feeney in Florida’s 24th district. While Feeney has a reputation as a strong space supporter in Congress (”No one disparages Feeney’s record as an advocate for NASA since his election in 2002,” the editorial notes), one of the reasons the newspaper cites for endorsing Kosmas is her stance on space:
She promises to work diligently for Brevard residents in Washington, and nowhere is that more clear than in her strong support for NASA’s moon exploration program and willingness to fight for the funding required to build a new fleet of post-shuttle spacecraft.
We’re also impressed with her strategic vision to leverage the Space Coast not just as the nation’s hub for manned and commercial spaceflight but also as a nucleus for alternative energy and technological research to help end America’s dependence on foreign oil.
That’s a goal we support as KSC heads toward the shuttle fleet’s retirement in 2010 and an estimated 3,500 lost jobs.
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