Space Politics
Because sometimes the most important orbit is the Beltway…
Archive for March, 2009
March 10, 2009 at 7:31 am · Filed under Congress
[Update: the hearing has been postponed "until further notice", according to the committee's web site]
The House Armed Services Committee Strategic Forces subcommittee is holding a hearing this afternoon on “space and U.S. security”, according to the brief description on the committee’s web site. The hearing is at 3 pm EDT in Rayburn 2212 and should be webcast. The witnesses:
Mr. Bruce W. MacDonald
Author of recent Council on Foreign Relations study on China, space weapons, and U.S. security
Mr. Michael Krepon
Co-founder
The Henry L. Stimson Center
Major General James Armor, USAF (Ret.)
Owner and CEO
The Armor Group, LLC
A timely topic given how some have tried to portray last month’s Iridium-Cosmos satellite collision as either a deliberate act by the US or a deliberate act by Russia.
March 9, 2009 at 1:19 pm · Filed under Other, White House
In today’s issue of The Space Review, I have an article summarizing a recent space policy roundtable in DC organized by CSIS. (Because of the ground rules of the discussion, none of the comments are attributed to any of the attendees.) A quick summary of the article:
- The problem is not developing policy but actually carrying it out: as one speaker put it, “But as we now understand, policy is not self-actualizing.”
- At least part of that problem with implementing policy is a lack of executive leadership for space, in both a “fragmentation” of authority among various agencies and a lack of strong leadership in the White House. “The bottom line is that the country really isn’t serious about getting a good space program,” one panelist said, resulting in a space program that is “good enough” but not good.
- The panelists were not enthused by President Obama’s proposal to re-establish the National Space Council. Some advocated an alternative approach that would create something like a senior director for space within the National Security Council, with a small staff; that would tie it closer to the national security space community and also allow for short lines of communications into the president’s inner circle.
March 5, 2009 at 6:54 am · Filed under Congress, NASA, White House
A Florida Today article reports on a hearing by the Commerce, Justice, and Science subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee on “The Place of NASA & NSF in the Overall Science Enterprise” (a hearing that, unfortunately, was neither webcast nor summarized by the subcommittee). At the hearing, Congressman Frank Wolf (R-VA) argued that a lack of a permanent administrator was hurting NASA in budget talks. The administration is making major budget decisions for the agency and “NASA needs to be at the table when these decisions are being made,” Wolf is quoted as saying.
If NASA was the only agency without confirmed new leadership (and if that leadership was really effective in negotiating budgets with the White House, a completely different issue), Wolf might have a point. However, many other federal agencies are at a similar disadvantage. As a front-page article in Wednesday’s Washington Post notes, intensified vetting and other delays have kept many appointees from being confirmed for various posts, with just 28 of 71 people “tapped” for positions having been confirmed, meaning that there are a lot of people in limbo, let alone those open positions like NASA administrator who yet to have a nominee. And nominations can be held up for reasons having nothing to do with the nominees themselves: the Post reported earlier this week that the nominations of OSTP director John Holdren and NOAA administrator Jane Lubchenco had been put on hold by Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) “as leverage to get Senate leaders’ attention for a matter related to Cuba rather than questioning the nominees’ credentials”.
This also suggests that even if the Obama Administration nominated someone to be NASA administrator today, he or she would not be in office for some time: the Post article on the nomination delays stated that the average time from nomination to confirmation was 65 days. If the NASA administrator position hewed to that average, that would mean the administrator would not be in place until early May, well after the complete FY10 budget submission makes its way to Congress. However, NASA won’t be the only agency in the same situation.
March 5, 2009 at 6:46 am · Filed under Congress
Give Rep. Parker Griffith (D-AL), the new congressman from northern Alabama, credit for a little humility: “When asked how much his being on the House Science Committee affected a boost in President Obama’s NASA budget outline, Congressman Parker Griffith smiled Friday and admitted, ‘Very little.’” And that’s probably an overestimate.
Also over the weekend, Rep. Pete Olson (R-TX), the new congressman from the Houston-area district that includes the Johnson Space Center, penned an op-ed for the Washington Times about NASA where he have the agency perhaps a little too much credit, writing: “NASA provides the only means our nation currently has to access space with manned and unmanned missions while also performing cutting edge research.” That NASA is the only means for unmanned missions to reach space will be something of a surprise to both the Defense Department and the private sector (the latter, in some cases, hoping to also provide the means for human spaceflight as well.)
March 4, 2009 at 7:17 am · Filed under States
Today is Florida Space Day, when representatives of the state’s space industry as well as Space Florida meet with state legislators in Tallahassee “to discuss the challenges we face in ensuring Florida remains at the forefront of the nation’s space program.” And that challenge, according to an article in today’s Orlando Sentinel, may be based in a neighboring state: unless “some miracle” revitalizes activity at Cape Canaveral in the near future, aerospace workers will leave the state “in droves” to take jobs with the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) in Huntsville, Alabama.
According to the article, United Space Alliance is in discussions with the Huntsville Chamber of Commerce to help secure positions with the MDA once the shuttle is retired; that effort would provide some guarantee for current shuttle workers so they’ll stay with the shuttle program through its final flights rather than leaving sooner for other work. (Exactly what the local chamber of commerce can do to help guarantee those government jobs isn’t clear.) As the article notes, there’s not much Florida officials can do about this other than root for budget cuts to the MDA by the new president, who “has not been a big fan of the system”.
This issue, though, may be something of a distraction from the internal problems facing Florida, including criticism of Space Florida and its effectiveness (as chronicled in The Space Review and the Sentinel in recent weeks.) As the Sentinel reported last week, industry representatives agreed to participate in Florida Space Day only if Space Florida’s $4-million budget request was removed from the agenda.
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