Space Politics
Because sometimes the most important orbit is the Beltway…
Archive for April, 2009
April 5, 2009 at 10:15 am · Filed under Congress, NASA, White House
If one believes the conventional wisdom, Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL) has effectively blocked the potential nominations of Scott Gration and Steve Isakowitz to be NASA administrator for one reason or another. If true, that makes a comment that Nelson told the Washington Post in an article Sunday about the search for an administrator and a clarified space policy particularly interesting. “I am frustrated, because I don’t know what the delay is,” Nelson said “recently”, according to the article.
The article also gets a comment from Nick Lampson, the former congressman who may, or may not, be in the running for the job, who at least gives the appearance of not knowing what is going on. “If they do, indeed, have a plan that might involve asking me to do something, I’d like to at least know what that is.”
The rest of the article talks about the uncertainty about what direction the new administration might take NASA, but at the times the article itself appears to be confusing. The article discusses the FY2010 budget outline that endorses the overall goals of the Vision for Space Exploration, including shuttle retirement in 2010 and returning humans to the Moon by the end of the next decade. Then, however, it adds:
Then Obama fogged up the picture during a visit to Central Florida. The president said in an interview, “I think it’s fair to say that there’s been a sense of drift to our space program over the last several years.”
The article doesn’t state when that trip took place, but the quote is from a March 11 briefing with “regional” reporters, including Mark Matthews from the Orlando Sentinel, that took place at the White House, not in Florida.
Towards the end of the article is this passage:
A long-standing debate in the space community is whether resources are best devoted to manned spaceflight — which is expensive and risky — or to unmanned programs that include robotic space probes, orbiting telescopes and satellites that monitor Earth’s environment.
Obama did not pick sides in that debate, saying at a town hall gathering in Florida last month, “I want to review with NASA what are we doing in terms of manned flights to the moon or to Mars versus are we better off using things like Hubble that yields us more information and better bang for the buck.”
Obama did indeed make those comments in a Florida town hall meeting—last May, as the primary campaign was winding down and nearly three months before he issued a detailed space policy. Did he really repeat them word-for-word last month, or did the Post get their dates mixed up?
April 4, 2009 at 12:06 pm · Filed under Congress, NASA
While former Congressman Nick Lampson may not be in the running to be NASA administrator, he has picked up an endorsement of sorts from the current Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, the Orlando Sentinel reports. “I think he is a great person” for the NASA administrator job, she told the paper. “I really know Nick Lampson. I think he would be fantastic.”
The article adds that Pelosi is less supportive, though, of proposals to extend the life of the shuttle beyond 2010, something an increasing number of members of the Florida Congressional delegation, Republicans and Democrats, are pushing. The house version of the FY2010 budget resolution made no mention of extending the life of the shuttle, unlike the Senate version. “There is competition for dollars as to how you spend the science dollars,” she told the Sentinel. “You can’t increase the amount of money, or that would be endless.”
April 2, 2009 at 10:15 am · Filed under NASA
Today’s Houston Chronicle reports on rumors that Nick Lampson is under consideration to become NASA administrator. There is not much new in the article beyond what has been previously reported (Lampson did not respond to requests for comment) but there is an interesting quote from Rep. Gene Green (D-TX), clearly taken offguard by the reports. “I’m surprised… Nick and I talked last week, and he didn’t mention it. I’m going to have to call him and say, ‘What’s the story?’ ” But maybe he shouldn’t have been surprised: some of Lampson’s former House colleagues had been lobbying the Obama Administration to nominate Lampson since shortly after losing his re-election bid, according to the Chronicle.
However, it may be a moot point. The latest rumors passing through the halls of the National Space Symposium in Colorado Springs (at least as of late yesterday) was that Lampson was no longer in the running, for reasons unknown. Take that for what it’s worth…
April 1, 2009 at 9:08 am · Filed under Congress
Thursday afternoon the Subcommittee on Terrorism, Nonproliferation and Trade of the House Foreign Affairs Committee is holding a hearing on “Export Controls on Satellite Technology”, discussing the impact ITAR has had on the US space industry over the last decade. It marks the beginning of the latest effort to try and reform the export control regime for satellites and related technologies.
The chairman of the subcommittee, Congressman Brad Sherman (D-CA), discussed his plans during a special appearance during a panel on ITAR at the Satellite 2009 conference in Washington last week. He said Thursday’s hearing was the first in a series of hearings on “substantive” export control issues, with a focus “first and foremost” on satellites. “Recently the space industry has made credible arguments that ITAR controls have hurt their business and have hurt our space industrial base significantly,” he said. “That claim is echoed—at least in private—by some in the intelligence community, who claim they find it more and more difficult to source satellite-related components domestically.”
So what kind of reform does Rep. Sherman have in mind? In the near term, it appears he is looking for relatively modest changes. “A lot will depend on the hearings and what solutions come up,” he said. “Solutions that have big problems will move more slowly than solutions that are no-brainers.” An example of a “no-brainer”, he said is getting the Directorate of Defense Trade Controls (DDTC) within the State Department to more rapidly process export license applications, something he said DDTC has already started to do after prodding by himself and others in Congress.
Sherman said that the incidents in the 1990s that triggered the inclusion of satellite technology on the US Munitions List—the transfer of US satellite technology to China after failures of Chinese rockets carrying those satellites—created “an anger [that] was mal-channeled” into the current state of affairs. “I won’t say it’s been ineffective, but it certainly was a crude response.”
His comments, though, indicate a fixation on China, and the availability of low-cost Chinese launches, as a driving interest in ITAR reform that may be misplaced. For example, one solution he suggested for the current ITAR situation was not to necessarily remove satellite technologies from the Munitions List or otherwise reform how their exports are regulated, but to instead subsidize the US launch industry so that they could be cost-competitive with the Chinese. The low cost of Chinese launches “begs the question of how much does China subsidize its rocket program and why aren’t we subsidizing ours to the same level,” he said. “We should be focused on keeping the rocket jobs, the rocket technology, plus the satellite jobs and the satellite technology, here in the United States.”
Of course, such an approach might cost the US billions of dollars a year (on top of what the Defense Department is paying to United Launch Alliance for the EELV) and is no guarantee that it would attract additional commercial customers or simply encourage other countries to further subsidize their own vehicles to compete. (And, ironically, a cheaper alternative is just down the 405 freeway from Sherman’s home district: SpaceX is promising commercial Falcon 9 launches that would certainly be competitive with, or even cheaper than, Chinese vehicles, without massive federal subsidies.)
Other panelists in the session, speaking after Rep. Sherman departed, were skeptical that desire for access to Chinese launches was driving calls for ITAR reform. Pierre Chao, a senior associate at CSIS who led a study of export control issues, said the interest in so-called “ITAR-free” satellites being developed by Thales Alenia Space in particular was not primarily motivated by access to Chinese launches, even though such spacecraft are being launched by the Chinese. “The evidence says it’s been prompted more by the uncertainty embodied with the US ITAR system,” he said, referring to delays in getting approvals for export licenses and related agreements.
Any bid to reform ITAR, though, will have to take into account economic arguments, Sherman warned, saying that Congress is almost totally preoccupied with the economy. “No matter what your proposal is—if you have a ‘Puppy Protection Act’—you have no chance of passing it unless you can prove that it can somehow help the economy,” he said. ITAR reform proposals that can demonstrate that, he said, “may allow us to overcome our previous obsession” with technology transfer to China.
April 1, 2009 at 8:03 am · Filed under NASA
A snippet from an online chat at washingtonpost.com earlier this week featuring conservative commentator Tucker Carlson and his liberal counterpart, Ana Marie Cox:
Hyattsville, Md.: Hello Tucker and Ana,
In terms of budget, NASA is bigger than four federal departments (Commerce, Labor, Treasury, Interior). The White House hasn’t nominated anyone to be NASA’s boss. What’s going on?
Tucker Carlson: A better question might be: Why hasn’t anyone noticed that nobody’s been nominated to run NASA? Probably because it’s the least of this administration’s (many, many) problems. They still have rows of empty desks at Treasury. If you can even believe that.
As for who ought to run NASA, I say bring back Dan Goldin. He was tremendous I thought.
Ana Marie Cox: BUT if we found gold on Mars everything would be okay!
I am not as up to date on the prospects for Spaceman-in-chief but I do think it’s just as important as those empty desks at Treasury.
Actually, people have noticed the lack of a NASA administrator nominee: the space community has almost a monomaniacal focus on the topic today, and it even captured the attention of the Post last week. Also, it’s not certain that everyone would agree with Carlson that Goldin was “tremendous” as administrator—or at least tremendous in a positive way.
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