When Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi suggested that she wasn’t a “big fan” of human spaceflight and that any additional spending proposed for NASA would have to be compared to alternative projects “in terms of job creation”, it’s not surprising it didn’t sit well with space supporters, particularly in places where NASA does provide a lot of jobs. An example is a Florida Today editorial on Friday, which declared that Pelosi “clearly doesn’t get it” on the importance of the space exploration. “Pelosi is flat-out wrong in her skepticism about NASA’s job creation power,” the editorial claimed. It added: “She should come to the Space Coast to see for herself what’s about to happen unless President Obama and Congress support retooling NASA,” a reference to potential job losses in Florida’s Space Coast once the shuttle is retired.
Late Friday Congresswoman Suzanne Kosmas (D-FL) issued a press release responding to Pelosi’s comments, including a copy of a letter Kosmas said she sent to Pelosi. The letter outlined some familiar economic and workforce issues linked to NASA, both in Florida and nationwide. “I urge you to join me in supporting a robust human space flight program that will provide long-lasting scientific, technological and economic benefits for our nation,” Kosmas’s letter to Pelosi concluded.
Congressman Parker Griffith also responded to Pelosi’s comments on Friday in Huntsville, where he spoke to Marshall Space Flight Center employees. “I appreciate the Speaker’s comments. I think as she informs herself more, becomes more acquainted with manned space flight, sees that we are in a space race with China, she’ll understand that this is not just about an event that takes place on TV in someone’s living room,” he told WAAY-TV there after his MSFC appearance. “This is about dominance of national security, research and development, space exploration, and manned space exploration is absolutely critically important. And I think as she understands that, knows a little bit more about it, I think her comments will change.”
We’ll see how persuasive a couple of freshmen members can be with the speaker…
Pelosi’s background with NASA in her home state is from JPL, Ames, and Dryden. Those centers have little historical relevance or responsibilities to human space flight, except in the work that Constellation has recently distributed to them as part of a “share the wealth” investment in political sustainability. Those particular centers excel in space science and aeronautics, and contribute strongly to a “dominance of national security, research and development, space exploration” as well as “long-lasting scientific, technological and economic benefits for our nation” in those ways. They don’t do that badly in creating jobs out of NASA funds either!
So the arguments being made to Pelosi by the Floridians and Alabamians need to have some more heft. A race with China? She doesn’t care about that. Anyone who follows Pelosi’s posture with regard to China knows that her concern is about human rights, and not about technological competition.
Her misgivings are specifically about safety and cost of human space flight, and not, it appears, about NASA in general. I’m not defending Pelosi, but just pointing out that with regard to her, human space flight advocates seem to be shooting at the wrong targets (which, I must say, they’ve had a lot of practice doing).
Does her misgiving really concern safety and cost? I am not sure what her priorities have been but space is hardly the most expensive or most dangerous thing the gov’t could pay attention to. It seems that farming is pretty dangerous, and the gov’t spends a lot of money on that (possibly including price supports, but again I am not an expert here). California has a lot of agriculture, has she done a lot of work on making California farms safer? The military is pretty expensive and has had a few safety concerns, what has been her work on that I wonder. So when she says that space is expensive and she worries about safety, is that just because that is all she has read about it in staff briefing papers?
What I worry about is the loss of experience built up over decades. We will soon NOT be a space faring nation – we will be hoping to buy rides on Russian rockets. If they decide to sell to someone else, what are we gonna do? If the Soyuz has a major problem, what are we gonna do?
We will soon lose almost all of our expertise in EVAs – after the Shuttle retires and assembly of ISS is complete. What are we gonna do EVAs for? Most of our stuff on the ISS does not require EVAs, maintenance would but how often will we do that?
Possibly Speaker Pelosi and her colleagues will look at what capabilities are important and ask if we are maintaining them?
“If you are asking me personally, I have not been a big fan of manned expeditions to outer space in terms of safety and cost. But people could make the case – technology is always changing … and that could change depending on the technology.”
That’s what she said, and preserving the context that she said it in. See previous post — http://www.spacepolitics.com/2009/12/17/bolden-and-obama-and-pelosi-too/.
But lets face it. It’s about value. Risk and expense is fine, if you’re getting something out of it that is worth the risk and the expense. Pelosi just doesn’t see what the value of human space flight is. Kosmas and Griffith tried to educate her about that, but using examples that are hardly specific to human space flight and very constituent-centric. The value of farming and the military is pretty clear.
She said it straight out
“What is the opportunity cost and the advantage?†Pelosi said. “Now, I am not against the Mars exploration. Again, I am a believer in technology and science and the future and the rest.â€
No one is going to argue that human space flight doesn’t make jobs, but no one is going to argue that there might not be safer or more cost effective ways of spending that money that will create lots of jobs too.
Kosmas’ and Griffith’s job creation arguments aren’t about what’s best for our nation. They’re about padding their own districts. I’ll hand it to Pelosi that she can see that, and that she’s willing to challenge human space flight advocates to come up with better arguments.
Nany Pelosi is a liberal. Liberals tend not to like human space flight, instinctively thinking that the money would be best spent on social programs. Any blather about “cost” or “safety” is really window dressing.
“But first, I would like to say what I understand the word “Liberal” to mean and explain in the process why I consider myself to be a “Liberal,” and what it means in the presidential election of 1960.”
Address of John F. Kennedy upon Accepting the Liberal Party Nomination for President, New York, New York, September 14, 1960
Now, it has been rightly suggested that if JFK had really liked humans in space, he wouldn’t have started a program like Apollo, which ended up being a dead-end enterprise. But many consider him the political father of American human space flight anyway. Damn liberals!
But the simple premise that Mr. Whittington voices here has been considered recently, and the result turned out to be surprising.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/3/25/712932/-Why-do-liberals-hate-human-space-flight-Poll-Results.
CharlesHouston wrote:
> What I worry about is the loss of experience built up over decades.
Not that I dismiss the concern, but remember that the US went from launching V-2 knockoffs to using the Saturn V to land people on the moon in, really, less than two decades. And that with people who had aviation and weapons experience that was much short of that needed for Saturn V. They were admirably quick learners, make no mistake, but there’s no reason to think that today’s — or tomorrow’s — engineers would be less capable.
So while I’m all for maintaining a robust engineering community in the US, I suspect that relevant skills will be maintained by the military and commercial sectors — just like they were in the 1950s and 1960s.
And, hopefully, NASA and DoD are maintaining archives of technical reports that would give future engineers a leg up if there were a sudden need to resurrect past capabilities to counter the Han Menace or whatever.
If JPL,or Ames, or Dryden were threatened, the Speaker would be all over it, defending the work they do. Remember: All Politics is local.
If JSC moved to Ca, especially the 8th district, you bet she’s be very interested in HSF, maintaining all the expertise built up over the years, etc.
Congressman Parker Griffith: “This is about dominance of national security, research and development, space exploration, and manned space exploration is absolutely critically important.”
The current approach to NASA human spaceflight using government rockets like Ares isn’t useful to national security. National security agencies don’t need Ares I, and don’t need and can’t afford the types of budget-busting systems that would go on Ares V. National security agencies do well to avoid reliance on the Shuttle already. In fact, this approach has taken funding from NASA robotic spacecraft that are useful to national security agencies because those spacecraft are similar to the ones the military and intellegence agencies use (eg: imaging satellites and instruments, communications satellites, etc). These NASA systems that have lost funding because of the current NASA HSF approach help the military by sharing costs, technology development, and workforce development that’s useful to national security agencies. They also use and share costs for existing rockets with national security agencies, and encourage new and improved rockets of this type.
The story is similar for research and development. The Ares rockets, to pick NASA HSF systems of great interest to Griffith, are hardly research and development themselves (as they attempt to repeat past developments), and they and the Shuttle have already taken considerable funding from real NASA research and development since ESAS. We can only expect more decline in NASA research and technology development if these rockets continue.
The story is the same for space exploration, as the Constellation approach has caused various robotic space exploration missions to be delayed or cancelled. Again, expect more of this decline as the Ares rockets continue.
National security, research and development, and space exploration are big reasons to avoid the current MSFC approach, not reasons to support it.
As for manned space exploration, even there the record and prospects for the Ares approach leave much to be desired. This is especially true compared to better approaches like the one described in the Vision for Space Exploration, the one outlined in the Aldridge Commission report, and the non-Ares Augustine Committee options.
Congresswoman Suzanne Kosmas: “I urge you to join me in supporting a robust human space flight program that will provide long-lasting scientific, technological and economic benefits for our nation”.
There’s nothing wrong with supporting a program that matches Kosmas’s description, but NASA’s Constellation program is not such a program. I’ve already mentioned technological benefits. The story is the same with science and economic benefits.
The Ares approach has caused severe harm to NASA’s science work. That includes ISS science, robotic science missions, university science data analysis, and more. Even lunar science has been scaled back to fund the NASA rockets.
The Ares approach has also blocked economic benefits. Witness the attacks certain Ares-supporting Congresspeople have made on commercial space. The Ares approach only offers some vague hope that after building a Moon base with the Ares rockets in the 2030’s NASA will decide to supply that base with commercial rockets and lunar surface components instead of NASA ones. That’s not likely to happen, and it’s so far in the future as to be irrelevant anyway. In the meantime, numerous new opportunities for NASA to use commercial services for suborbital rides, crew launch, space labs, hosted payloads, data purchases, lunar landers, fuel depots, and more will not be funded because Ares will need those funds.
Science, technology, and economic benefits are big reasons to avoid the current MSFC approach, not reasons to support it. Fortunately in Kosmas’s case, there are lots of prospects for expanding commercial launch activity in Florida. Far, far more EELV and SpaceX launches could be afforded than are now planned, for starters.
Florida could also win with an approach that uses both commercial launchers and a single government rocket (an HLV that’s more considerably more affordable than Ares V), and we could still get some of the national security, research and development, space exploration, science, technology, and economic benefits in spite of the HLV.
Allen Thompson wrote:
> So while I’m all for maintaining a robust engineering community in the US, I
> suspect that relevant skills will be maintained by the military and commercial
> sectors — just like they were in the 1950s and 1960s.
Not that I wish to focus too much on this, but personally I wish that managers or members of Congress, etc would articulate that we are losing capabilities that we have spent a long time to build up. Of course if we are losing them, can it be that they are not important?
For EVA skills as an example – the specific skills will be retained somewhat. We will maintain some workforce to prepare for maintenance EVAs, etc on ISS. The Russian part of the team proportionally builds more hardware that requires EVAs than we do, but that information is often not readily shared between “partners”.
But EVA skills are not important to the military or commercial sectors.
And our learning curve is a lot shallower now, with the layers of bureaucracy that we have to go through. Of course those layers were in response to problems we had, but still it slows us down.
The point is that people talk about losing jobs (and I selfishly hope that we don’t lose one in particular!!) but we should talk about losing capabilities. We should articulate that we want to retain some capability. I am going to be bummed that we could once go rendezvous with a satellite, capture and repair it, and now will have no capability or planned future capability to do so. I worry about pullling back since it is “too hard” or “too dangerous” or what ever.
And, hopefully, NASA and DoD are maintaining archives of technical reports that would give future engineers a leg up if there were a sudden need to resurrect past capabilities to counter the Han Menace or whatever.
Much of their value will be in how not to do things.
If JPL,or Ames, or Dryden were threatened, the Speaker would be all over it, defending the work they do. Remember: All Politics is local.
She, and the California delegation in general, have shown themselves to be indifferent to aerospace in California, either taking it for granted, or even being hostile. Unless it was actually in her district, I can’t see her caring.
EVA skills are not important to the military or commercial sectors.
EVA skills are going to be very important to the commercial sector, and anyone who wants to do serious venturing beyond LEO. So will orbital assembly. It’s a shame that NASA turned its back on all its experience in this area to focus instead on new, unneeded launch systems, something that it’s demonstrated that it’s incapable of doing in any cost effective way.
Mark R. Whittington wrote @ December 19th, 2009 at 2:28 pm
Nany Pelosi is a liberal. ..
Pelosi is no more a liberal then you are a conservative.
Or I dont know, maybe those terms are so hopelessly defined today by people like you and Pelosi that indeed she is a liberal and you are a conservative.
The meaning of words do change by standard usage so I guess maybe one should go with the flow and just accept that fact. So you wrote:
“Nany Pelosi is a liberal. Liberals tend not to like human space flight, instinctively thinking that the money would be best spent on social programs.:”
you defined “liberal” as someone who “instinctively” thinks that money should be spent on social programs.
Are you a liberal now?
Your theory as best I can tell it is that we should spend more money on Ares and Constellation and they are clearly social programs. Social programs for techno people.
The programs are no use to the economic competiveness of The Republic, they have no chance of ever returning the cost through value unless the flags and footprints we might get one day from them are the value for the cost…and they spend money like stuck hogs.
Ares so far has consumed 9 billion dollars and produced a 2 minute suborbital flight that alone cost over 1/2 billion dollars.
Oh and I forgot…the program has mindless supporters who will justify it based on fiction. As you put it (and the Congressman as well) “we are in a race with the Chinese.”
Maybe both you and Nany Nanc are liberals!
Robert G. Oler
Personally, I just wish Pelosi would support the commercial human spaceflight effort. That clears up the cost problem, although not the safety problem. At least in 2004 she didn’t support this effort however (Votes no on “Commercial Space Launch Amendments Act of 2004″, http://www.issues2000.org/CA/Nancy_Pelosi_Technology.htm).
If the government shouldn’t be paying for this stuff, then at least support the commercial sector.
Ari Litwin
(www.space-issues.com)
Doug Lassiter
the problem of course is that the terms “liberal” and “conservative” have been skewed, mostly by the right wing, to the point where they are meaningless.
There is NOTHING conservative about Ares, if one is using the Edmund Burke definition of conservative in terms of supporting Ares. It is in all respects a program of the state designed to stifle innovation, imagination and ingenuity of the people or the actors of the people. It is a promulgation of the status quo so far into the future that the people who finish the program (if it ever finishes) would not be the same people who launched (grin) it.
There is really nothing liberal about the program either.
What the program does, is preserve the “state” and the “status quo”.
Mark W is no more a conservative then Ted Kennedy was. What Mark (and other right wingers) have become is “statist” who support the continuation of the state, but as they define it. Both left and right wingers have become essentially “statist” where they want to define for the rest of us, the roles of the state. There is nothing really “liberal” or “conservative” about them.
It really is entertaining to watch Whittington twist and turn defending Ares. He does this, I believe for two reasons. The first is that he is still hopelessly in love with Bush the last. Second it fits now his image of what a “big power” does. But this was not always the case. As the Clinton era waned Whittington wrote this (I keep these handy!)
” The government run space line-the space shuttle fleet-has proven expensive and unreliable. If, however, the government were to acquire it’s civilian launch services from the private sector, a recent study by five aerospace firms under contract to NASA indicated that cost savings of one to two billion dollars a year were possible. And privatizing launch services-just as privatizing air mail transport more than sixty years ago-would help to form a robust private space launch industry. ”
(http://web.archive.org/web/20001008224959/www.spacepolicy.org/page_mw0499.html)
As a Hoot, when Whittington babbles about “flexible path” one day I am going to post some other things that he wrote in that (and some other papers).
Mark doesnt like FP because he does not like Obama. And hence everything Obama proposes is wrong.
Oh
What a great day it has been..
Robert G. Oler
…they spend money like stuck hogs.
How do stuck hogs spend money?
California is second in the nation as far as money spent by NASA. With the rate of unemployment in California already high, why would she want to increase it even more by cuts in NASA?
NASA is a government program, and conservatives tend to hate government programs!
Marcel F. Williams
Marcel F. Williams wrote @ December 19th, 2009 at 9:59 pm
California is second in the nation as far as money spent by NASA. With the rate of unemployment in California already high, why would she want to increase it even more by cuts in NASA?..
well it isnt that simple.
Put it this way. We have spent 9 billion on Ares and 1/2 or so billion on 1x.
Do you have a clue how many construction jobs that would create? Jobs that could build something that really changes the future of The Republic?
Dont like construction jobs?
The FAA needs (oddly enough) 15 billion to build the new ATC for this century…9 billion would have gotten us more then halfway there.
which do you think is more important?
Robert G. Oler
Construction jobs vs space flight R&D that could eventually help us expand into the rest of the solar system in order to avoid the extinction for our species while also giving us access to hundreds of quadrillions of dollars of natural resources amongst the asteroids and planets in our solar system. That’s a no brainer for me!
But there are many conservative nations out there not foolish enough to waste public funds on scientific research and development. They’re usually called third world nations!
“No brainers” aside, I will suggest that real thinking by Pelosi, whether instinctive or not, has some merit, though it is quite true that she evidently hasn’t been supplied with any convincing arguments about why human spaceflight has value to the nation.
I want to echo the sentiment expressed about EVA and orbital assembly. If humans are going to do ANYTHING useful in space, those two skills, developed so well with ISS and Shuttle, need preservation. The baseline Constellation plan does no such thing. In this respect, and especially given funding caps, continuation of ISS may well be a more functionally appropriate path to future human space exploration than near term efforts on the lunar surface.
The US needs to end any significant contributions to the mission to nowhere (ISS) in order to replace it with a real space station program. I’d rather spend the $2 billion a year that we spend on the ISS on launching Skylab-like space stations into orbits that are not inordinately delta v expensive for our vessels to get to and space stations that can produce artificial gravity.
There was no logical reason for a single titanically large microgravity space station in the first place. Smaller Skylab-like space stations are much cheaper. Plus a heavy lift vehicle could place a Skylab-like space station into orbit with one single launch.
And if any of our international partners or private industry wants one, we could place one into orbit for them too if they’re willing to pay for the space station and the launch cost!
Marcel F. Williams
no.
Skylab would cost about the same to resupply (people and parts are people and parts) and ISS is on orbit, ready to go, and only needs the correct system to operate in to see what can be done with microgravity and spacecraft construction.
“And if any of our international partners or private industry wants one, we could place one into orbit for them ”
nope. ISS needs to turn into national infrastructure. stand by, if policies are done correctly you are about to see the start of the first real space age.
Robert G. Oler
Marcel F. Williams wrote @ December 20th, 2009 at 5:08 am
Construction jobs vs space flight R&D that could eventually help us expand into the rest of the solar system in order to avoid the extinction for our species while also giving us access to hundreds of quadrillions of dollars of natural resources amongst the asteroids and planets in our solar system. That’s a no brainer for me! ..
but thankfully that is not our choices.
Robert G. Oler
Freshman Democrat Parker Griffith has announced today that he will become a Republican. Considering that his district includes the Marshall Space Flight Center, I wonder what effect if any his switch will have on congress and NASA
Considering that his district includes the Marshall Space Flight Center, I wonder what effect if any his switch will have on congress and NASA
I can’t imagine any at all.
With Griffith becoming a Republican, his re-election is assured but his influence on the administration will be reduced. Perhaps he suspects Constellation will lose support, and feels he has a better chance of being re-elected if he can blame Obama for its failure rather than accept any responsibility himself.
If we give up ISS we will have nowhere to go in LEO, and if we give up Shuttle we may well have no way to get there. Those who feel “trapped in LEO” should be careful what they wish for; we may soon be trapped on the ground.
Finally, America is in debt and losing what remains of its industrial base, and NASA needs to start producing practical benefits if it wants to get funded.
vulture4 – I don’t know that his re-election is assured. He is going to be facing opponants from his right, vis-a-vie tea******s. there are 2 already openly declared.
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