Space Politics
Because sometimes the most important orbit is the Beltway…
Archive for December, 2009
December 11, 2009 at 12:57 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
A person attending this morning’s Augustine committee panel session at MIT passed along, via Twitter, this comment from committee chairman Norm Augustine: “I’m told that some of the decision documents are on [Obama's] desk right now”. That should not be that surprising, since a decision would have to be made soon (if not already) to affect FY11 budget planning, but it’s noteworthy for the impatient out there. (Of course, given the president’s deliberative decision style, just because the “decision documents” are on his desk doesn’t mean he’s immediately going to act on them.)
December 11, 2009 at 7:11 am · Filed under Other
Space advocates in the UK finally got something Thursday they had long sought: a national space agency. Minister for Science Innovation Lord Drayson announced the plans for the space agency Thursday at the Rutherford Appleton Space Conference. The “bureaucracy busting agency” will bring together a number of government departments and other offices and was billed as a way to further growth of the country’s space sector. Many other details about the new agency, though, including its name, budget, and exactly when it will be stood up, weren’t announced (the BBC reports that the government will use a competition to select a name and logo).
Things aren’t looking so rosy in Japan, where the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) is getting a “frosty reception” from the new government, the Financial Times reports. The Democratic Party of Japan, which took power after national elections this fall, is reportedly concerned about “unclear costing” and “vague risk assessments” of JAXA programs, despite a number of recent successes, such as the H-2B rocket and HTV cargo spacecraft. The government is recommending a 10-percent cut for JAXA, which agency officials fear could jeopardize their commitments to supporting the ISS.
December 11, 2009 at 6:55 am · Filed under Other
NASA administrator Charles Bolden’s comments earlier this week that greater international cooperation would be a priority for NASA in the near future has attracted some debate. To learn more about potential advantages of obstacles to such cooperation, Scott Pace of GWU’s Space Policy Institute is speaking on “International Opportunities and Challenges for U.S. Space Policy” at the Applied Physics Lab weekly Colloquium at 2 pm today.
December 10, 2009 at 5:51 am · Filed under Congress
The full House Science and Technology Committee is holding a hearing this morning titled “Decisions on the Future Direction and Funding for NASA: What Will They Mean for the U.S. Aerospace Workforce and Industrial Base? “ (This was originally planned to be held by the space subcommittee, the third in a series of hearings on the agency’s future by the subcommittee, but was promoted to the full committee last week.) The witnesses:
- Dr. Richard Aubrecht, Vice President, Strategy and Technology, Moog Inc.
- Ms. Marion C. Blakey, President and Chief Executive Officer, Aerospace Industries Association
- Mr. David Thompson, President, American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics
- Mr. A. Thomas Young, Lockheed Martin Corporation (Ret.)
The hearing charter provides a preview of the hearing.
December 10, 2009 at 5:39 am · Filed under NASA
Those who attended yesterday’s AIAA/WIA joint luncheon expecting the speaker, NASA administrator Charles Bolden, to make major announcements about the future direction of the agency came away disappointed. “I’m not going to talk about Augustine,” he said early in his speech, referring to the Augustine committee and its final report released in October. “If you came to hear about Augustine, you can leave now.”
Instead, much of his speech focused on some other issues that he deemed important for the agency: education, NASA’s workforce, and technology development. On the last point, he said NASA has done “OK” historically, but could improve. “We need to change our mindset and the way we work together to have our people start thinking of NASA not just as a collection of incredible missions but as a developer of the innovative technology that helps drive our nation’s economy,” he said. That means, he said, working across mission directorates as well as outside the agency with industry and academia.
“Our missions and programs in human spaceflight, in aeronautics, and in science make us important and relevant,” he said. “We need to do a better job of explaining who we are, what we do, and the important of our missions to our stakeholders and the public, but that’s the subject for another luncheon talk.”
While Bolden didn’t talk about the Augustine committee’s work, he did drop hints that significant change in one manner or another was coming to the agency. “We’re going to be fightin’ and fussin’ over the coming year. Some of you are not going to like me because were not going to do the same kinds of things we’ve always done. We can’t. We can’t do that and survive,” he warned. “We cannot continue to operate the way we have. Things have got to change.”
One area of change that Bolden did say was coming was greater international cooperation. “That’s what the president wants to do, and he didn’t have to tell me that, because that’s what I’ve been doing all my life,” he said, noting that be believes that the two organizations who do more for diplomacy than anyone else are the armed forces and NASA. That international cooperation, he added, would include “non-traditional partners”, such as China. “There are not a lot of things I can tell you with certainty, but I can tell you that; he said do that,” Bolden said, referring to the president. Later, in a brief Q&A session, he added about working with the Chinese, “I’d rather work with them than fight them.”
Bolden also addresses the subject of ITAR reform during the Q&A, praising the efforts by Defense Secretary Robert Gates to push for reform. “The leader in our country right now in trying to work ITAR initiatives and trying to revamp it is the secretary of defense,” Bolden said. He credited “NASA’s persistent emphasis” on ITAR for winning over support for reform elsewhere in government.
December 9, 2009 at 7:17 am · Filed under Congress, NASA
Congressional appropriations negotiators reached agreement last night on an omnibus spending bill for FY 2010 that is largely good news for NASA. Only the top-level details of the consolidated appropriations bill have been released by House and Senate appropriators, but the summary for the Commerce, Justice, and Science section indicates NASA will get $18.7 billion in 2010, approximately the same as the the original budget request.
The biggest issue had been funding for exploration, after the House slashed exploration by nearly $700 million. That funding has been largely restored, with $3.8 billion in the final bill “to extend America’s capabilities in human spaceflight”. The summary includes this explanation:
In October 2009, the Review of U.S. Human Spaceflight Plans Committee (The Augustine Commission) reported its findings on NASA’s human spaceflight program. The Augustine Commission raised several issues regarding the current program and budget profile that will require thoughtful consideration by the Administration. In the absence of a bona fide proposal from the Administration on the future of U.S. human spaceflight activities and investments, the bill provides the budget request of $3.8 billion for activities to support human spaceflight in fiscal year 2010; however, the bill requires that any program termination or elimination or the creation of any new program, project or activity not contemplated in the budget request must be approved in subsequent appropriations Acts.
That would seem to tie the funds to the current Constellation architecture even if the White House directs NASA in the coming weeks to take an alternative approach.
December 8, 2009 at 1:05 pm · Filed under Other, States, White House
Yesterday’s rollout of Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo vehicle featured appearances by two sitting governors: Arnold Schwarzenegger of California and Bill Richardson of New Mexico. However, there wasn’t much in the way of politics at the event other than a brief statement by Richardson, echoing something he said over a year ago:
We know that being the home of commercial space travel is not only going to transform the economic landscape of New Mexico and open up boundless opportunities for our state, but it will make a difference for tomorrow’s astronauts. It will help with math and science instruction, and it’s critically important that America regain its leadership in math and science. [applause] And so today what we have is a launching, a launching of commercial space that hopefully will lead to America’s leadership again. And I call on the Obama Administration to embrace commercial space travel. [applause]
That comment is similar to remarks he gave in Las Cruces, New Mexico, in October 2008 during the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge. “[H]ere’s what I want to be sure of: that the Obama Administration is pro-commercial space,” he said at the time. “We’re going to push that. We’re going to make sure it’s pro-space: pro-government space but also pro-commercial space.” At that time he said he didn’t have any interest in taking a position in the administration, only to be nominated to be Commerce Secretary, and then withdraw his nomination because of an ongoing investigation. Richardson was never charged when the investigation concluded this summer, and an appearance at the White House state dinner last month raised speculation that Richardson might be angling for a return to Washington in some manner as he enters his final year in office in Santa Fe.
December 5, 2009 at 2:02 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
To pick up an earlier theme of space advocacy and its problems, I’ve confirmed that the executive director of the Mars Society, Chris Carberry, has resigned. Carberry cited “irreconciable differences” with the organizations founder, Robert Zubrin, in an email and follwup phone call yesterday. There hasn’t been an official statement about the leadership change from the organization. In an appearance on The Space Show a month ago, Zubrin said the organization had about 1,500 dues-paying members, and 7,000 people “on the books”. The organization is also fighting an uphill policy battle, as the Augustine committee’s final report ruled out any near-term human missions to Mars.
December 4, 2009 at 7:04 am · Filed under NASA
In brief introductory comments at a Space Transportation Association (STA) breakfast, Congressman Parker Griffith (D-AL) sounded the alarm about NASA funding and what he perceived as a lack of interest in the subject by the president. “We cannot frame this Ares 1/Constellation project in terms of the current economy,” he said. “The decision to go forward with Constellation and Ares 1—proven technology—has to be made.” And as for the White House: “The fact that we are not getting a direct signal from our administration is bothersome. I think the heat needs to be turned up.”
The main speaker at the STA breakfast, Marshall Space Flight Center director Robert Lightfoot, briefly discussed the status of the agency’s deliberations on the Augustine committee’s report. “As an agency we’re in the process of assessing” the findings of the committee’s final report, he said. “We’re going to provide some recommendations to the administration, some feedback to the administration on that.” He did not, though, give any timetable for providing those recommendations to the White House.
Later, Lightfoot stressed the importance of encouraging commercial providers to provide access to LEO for ISS cargo and crew, without going into specifics about how to accomplish that. “If we can get the commercial operators to low Earth orbit, get that access in place, then NASA can focus on getting out of low Earth orbit,” he said. “Our goal is to enable them, not fight them… We’ve got to get past the ‘tyranny of or’—commercial or NASA—and get to the ‘power of and’, commercial and NASA.”
December 3, 2009 at 12:39 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
Haven’t gotten your fill of discussion about the Augustine committee and its final report? MIT’s Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics is hosting a panel discussion about the committee’s work on December 11. Two members of the committee, chairman Norm Augustine and MIT professor Ed Crawley, will speak, among others.
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