Space Politics
Because sometimes the most important orbit is the Beltway…
Archive for February, 2010
February 12, 2010 at 8:10 pm · Filed under Lobbying, NASA, States
Much has been made today of the announcement of the “Second to None” group in Huntsville, created by the city’s mayor, Tommy Battle, and led by former congressman Bud Cramer. The group is designed to help the region’s Congressional delegation “understand how ending Constellation would affect the Tennessee Valley”. Cramer, though, appeared to be taking a bigger view in his comments. “If we pull the plug on the programs we’re already well into, that we spent a lot of good tax payer money on, then we are not being smart about where we as a country are going, what we expect NASA to be all about,” he said, according to local TV station WHNT. The report adds that Cramer is “cautiously optimistic the House and Senate will vote down the President’s plan for NASA.”
The group is made of about 25 people from business, academia, and other organization, although you don’t have to be a local to recognize some of the names: former NASA administrator Mike Griffin (now at UAH), former MSFC director Dave King (now at Dynetics), and former Ares manager Steve Cook (also now at Dynetics).
However, this is only the latest in a series of moves at the local and state level to try and salvage Constellation. On Thursday the state legislature passed resolutions asking the president to reverse his decision to cancel Constellation. The resolutions, SJR 58 and HJR 261, passed in the Senate and House respectively without dissent. The resolutions don’t speak about the importance of spaceflight or the threat of falling behind other nations; instead, it bluntly notes, “cancellation of the Constellation program would significantly harm the citizens and economies of the City of Huntsville and the State of Alabama.”
Also, earlier in the week Rep. Artur Davis, a Democrat from Birmingham, met with Huntsville-area space industry officials and others and left saying he would fight for Constellation. “We cannot do to ourselves what our enemies have tried to do to us, and that’s to retreat from human spaceflight,” the Huntsville Times quotes him as saying. Why Davis, who has not been very outspoken on space issues in the past, took a strong interest in Constellation wasn’t mentioned in the article; however, it did note that Davis is running for governor.
February 12, 2010 at 10:53 am · Filed under NASA
Despite the blizzard conditions that struck Washington earlier this week, NASA deputy administrator Lori Garver made it to the FAA Commercial Space Transportation Conference in Crystal City, Virginia, on Thursday. (She was filling in for administrator Bolden, who could not make it back to DC from Texas and Alabama because of the storm.) In front of a friendly, receptive audience, she made the case for greater use by NASA of commercial space capabilities, both orbital and suborbital.
“We plan to transform our relationship with the private sector as part of our nation’s new strategy with the ultimate goal of expanding human presence across the solar system,” she said early in her speech. “So don’t be fooled by those who say we have no goal. That is the goal.” She also noted that NASA’s proposed plan to support the commercial space industry is a natural extension of efforts dating back to the Reagan Administration’s decision to stop using the shuttle for commercial satellite launches—a line in the speech designed, perhaps, to win greater Republican support for the Democratic administration’s plan.
Her speech reviewed the key highlights of the agency’s new plan as released in its FY11 budget proposal last week, filling in a few additional details and expanding on some issues and concerns, such as the effects canceling Constellation will have on the workforce. “In the short term I recognize that there are a lot of people worried about jobs, and we understand,” she said. She noted, though, that the agency’s overall budget is increased, and that translate into jobs, although there will be “displacements” in the near term. “In the long run bolstering the US commercial space industry will help the economy.”
Garver provided some words of support, and praise, for the Constellation workforce. “The wonderful people in our own NASA family and industry who were working on Constellation absolutely did nothing wrong and did not fail,” she said. “Our contractor and NASA workforce is an incredible asset to the nation and we believe it will continue to be that. But they deserve to work on programs that are well thought out, make sense, and have the resources to succeed.”
She also more broadly defended a core aspect of the plan: replacing Ares 1/Orion with commercial alternatives. Doing so, she said, not only would help stimulate the economy but also be a lower risk approach. “We will diversify our risk by funding a portfolio of highly-qualified competitors instead of a high-risk approach in which we fund only one system,” she said. “We’re going to see the most exciting space race that NASA’s seen in a long time, and there’s likely to be more than one winner.”
On a related note, early in her speech she got in a minor jab at those who criticize NASA for dumping Constellation in favor of “untried” commercial systems. She congratulated the agency for the successful launch that morning of the Solar Dynamics Observatory on an Atlas 5—the same vehicle some companies have proposed for use to launch human spacecraft. “So much for those unproven rockets,” she quipped.
Garver also discussed NASA’s role in commercial suborbital spaceflight. “I do anticipate that one day soon that these [suborbital] vehicles will be safe enough that NASA will pay for hundreds of astronauts and scientists and technology developers to fly into space each and every year,” she said. To ensure that these vehicles are safe enough for NASA, she said, the Dryden Flight Research Center would lead the safety assessment of these vehicles, although she didn’t discuss the details of how such assessments would work.
She also briefly touched upon the need for export control reform to help make the US commercial space industry more competitive. The Obama Administration, she said, was aware of these concerns, “and are working hard to find ways to reform the regime.”
After her speech she said that she was not surprised by the strong and often strongly negative, reaction to the agency’s new direction. “I think we fully expected that any change of this magnitude was going to have people concerned. The status quo is tough to move,” she said. She added that the agency was ready to provide more information about the plan during Congressional hearings planned for late this month. “We have a lot of details and we look forward to discussing them.”
February 10, 2010 at 7:24 am · Filed under NASA, White House
One interesting aspect of NASA’s FY11 budget proposal released last week was the lack of detail in the budget request. In past years, like FY10, NASA has released lengthy documents going into detail about all the programs, their funding levels, and other details. This year, though, all that NASA released last Monday was a single presentation with five-year projections for key programs, but no further details.
There may be a good reason why the FY11 release was so brief. Speaking at the NASA Innovative Partnerships Program Commercial Space Update Meeting in Crystal City, Virginia, on Tuesday, a NASA official indicated that NASA got its budget “passback” from OMB very late in the budget process. Very late. Normally the passback to the agency is provided around Thanksgiving, or at the latest early December. “The passback this year was the Saturday night before—less than 48 hours before—the budget rollout,” said Charles Miller, senior advisor for commercial space at NASA, as an explanation for the lack of details about some of the technology R&D programs contained in the budget proposal.
Why the budget passback was so late isn’t clear, but if the agency doesn’t know its funding levels until just before the budget’s release, it doesn’t give people much time to fill in the details. Miller added that the new emphasis on technology programs came at the direction of the White House, which had indicated to NASA last year that what they agency was doing was not innovative enough, and asked NASA to study what it could do if it had more R&D funding. That effort culminated in the new technology programs included in the budget request.
In the days since last Monday’s budget release, agency officials have mentioned that they’re working to provide more details, in particular on the exploration plan. In today’s Houston Chronicle, administrator Charles Bolden said he’s working on the “beginnings of a plan” for human exploration that will be ready when he appears at Congressional hearings currently scheduled for February 24 and 25. That plan, he hinted, would have Mars as a long-term goal, possibly as soon as the early 2030s.
February 7, 2010 at 12:59 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
The historic snowstorm that hit the Washington DC area over the weekend with over two feet of snow in many locations (I measured 24″ as of mid-afternoon Saturday and just got my power back at home after being without it for over a day) has claimed a space advocacy casualty: the Space Frontier Foundation’s “Take Back Space 2010″ lobbying effort (originally, and controversially, known as “March Storm” and later renamed “First Flight”). The Foundation’s Michael Heney notes via Twitter that the event, which was to have a training session today followed by a week of meetings on the Hill, has been scrubbed by the weather. “Go NSS, ProSpace, and AIAA – we’ll try again later in the spring,” he writes.
February 5, 2010 at 6:42 pm · Filed under Congress, NASA
As Washington hunkers down for a snowstorm of epic proportions (20-30 inches of snow forecast through Saturday), some reading material to help you to put off the shoveling:
When word came yesterday that Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) had placed a hold on all current Obama Administration nominees awaiting Senate confirmation, some wondered if this was a hardball tactic to overturn the administration’s plans to cancel Constellation, given his outspoken opposition to the budget proposal immediately after it was released. Not so: Shelby is instead protesting the bidding process for the KC-X tanker as well as funds for an FBI center that would be built in the state. It raises the question of whether this battle will enhance or diminish his effectiveness in later attempts to overturn the administration’s new plans for NASA.
Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL), meanwhile, “tempered” his criticism of that plan during a speech at the University of Florida on Friday, the Gainesville Sun reports. The real problem with the plan, Nelson claimed, “is he did not set a goal for NASA.” And what should that goal be? Not the Moon, Nelson argued. “We know where we want to go — we want to go to Mars.”
Congressman Parker Griffith (R-AL), who switched parties in December and as a result gave up his post on the House Science and Technology Committee, won’t be returning as a GOP member. Griffith instead will be assigned to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, which deals in issues ranging from healthcare to technology, but not space. Griffith tried to put a positive spin on the assignment, but others criticized the appointment in a Huntsville Times report. “When North Alabama’s pressing need is job protection for NASA, Parker can spend his time dealing with the Toyota recall,” said Doug Dermody, chair of the Madison County Democratic Party.
Homer Hickam is so unhappy with NASA’s new direction he’s asking for key officials to resign. In a letter Friday to the House Science and Technology Committee the Rocket Boys author said he had written to OSTP director John Holdren and NASA deputy administrator Lori Garver, asking each to resign. “They are the principle [sic] architects of the decision to cancel the American lunar spaceflight program known as Constellation,” he states. “Garver and Holdren are political activists and gadflys who have no business making serious space policy. They should leave.” Curiously, he makes no mention of NASA administrator Charles Bolden at all in his letter: perhaps he doesn’t classify him with Garver and Holdren as “political activists and gadflys”, but that would seem to imply that he thinks Bolden is more of a figurehead—which doesn’t seem any more flattering.
February 4, 2010 at 6:48 am · Filed under Congress, NASA
Yesterday’s House hearing about “Key Issues and Challenges Facing NASA” wasn’t explicitly about the FY2011 budget proposal and the changes it makes to NASA’s human spaceflight programs, and much of the discussion was on other topics. However, the hearing did give members an opportunity to express their opinions on the budget, with most—but not all—opposed to or at least concerned about the plan.
Some committee members, like Reps. Ralph Hall (R-TX), Pete Olson (R-TX), and Suzanne Kosmas (D-FL), had already spoken out against the plan’s core proposal to cancel Constellation. “I can hardly read this damn thing, I’m so mad,” Hall, the ranking member of the full science committee, said at one point after stumbling over his opening statement. “For the life of me, I cannot understand how this administration can rationalize its decision to scrap Constellation and simply start anew, especially given the strong support it’s received from Congress, Republican and Democrats. It’s naive to assume that a do-over will somehow offer a safer, cheaper system faster than the current path we’re on.”
“I am extremely concerned about some of the lack of direction that we might have in the policy as put forth in the President’s budget,” Kosmas said. “I don’t see a vision, I don’t see an inspiration, and I see a major loss of workforce and workforce skills.” Later, she warned, “I think you’re going to see, based on what we’ve heard here, that Congress is going to fill in some of the blanks with what we see as our vision.”
Other members also chimed in. “I do share the concerns expressed by my colleagues about the proposed budget and the impact on human spaceflight, and essentially decimating America’s human spaceflight capacity,” said Rep. Donna Edwards (D-MD), vice-chair of the space subcommittee. She added she saw an “inconsistency” the President’s desire for technology and jobs development and the decision to end Constellation. Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX) saw a different contradiction: between NASA’s plans to end Constellation and its mission to explore the universe and inspire the next generation. “We’ve invested a lot of money into NASA, and particularly into the Constellation program, and I would hate to see that completely scrubbed and taken out of this budget.”
The chair of the subcommittee, Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ), was a little more subtle in her criticism of the budget. “As I reviewed the President’s budget request, I found a quite glaring omission,” she said, that being a lack of a broad vision for the agency. “My concern today is not numbers on a ledger, but rather the fate of the American dream to reach for the stars.”
One exception to this criticism, though, was from Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA). “We’re all pretty shocked about the President’s budget, one way or the other. There are some good things in it, there are some things that we really need to discuss,” he said. He took particular aim against Constellation, engaging in debates with one of the witnesses, ASAP chairman Joseph Dyer, about the efficacy of Constellation versus commercial alternatives.
“We have had one test on all of this research that has been done on Constellation,” he said later, referring to the Ares 1-X test flight last October. “One test that had no new technology and hardware… and that brought us to $9 billion that we spent on the program that is now being suggested that we scrap,” he said. “This does not speak well of using our government as the vehicle for getting human beings into space.”
“If we’re going to have human beings in space, which I believe in, we’re got to get serious about this,” he concluded. He didn’t believe in relying on NASA alone to do it, he said, “because obviously it’s not working out.”
February 3, 2010 at 7:22 am · Filed under Congress, NASA
A reminder that the space subcommittee of the House Science and Technology Committee will host a hearing today at 10 am on “Key Issues and Challenges Facing NASA: Views of the Agency’s Watchdogs”. The hearing is not explicitly about the FY2011 budget proposal issued Monday, and the hearing charter states that “Separate hearings are planned to address NASA’s Fiscal Year 2011 budget request as well as the administration’s human space flight strategy after they are announced”, although one would expect that questions about the change in course for the agency will come up at some point in the hearing.
One subject that will come up is a GAO report on management of large-scale NASA projects released on Monday. The report found that 9 of 10 projects that have been in an “implementation phase” for several years encountered cost growth of up to 68 percent and launch delays of up to 33 months. “Many of the projects GAO reviewed experienced challenges in developing new or retrofitting older technologies, stabilizing engineering designs, managing the performance of their contractors and development partners, as well as funding and launch planning issues,” the report’s summary notes.
February 3, 2010 at 7:05 am · Filed under Congress, NASA, White House
The first opportunity for members of Congress—well, one member of Congress—to grill the administration about NASA’s new direction came Tuesday at a hearing by the Senate Budget Committee about the FY2011 budget featuring OMB director Peter Orszag. (The video of the hearing is available on the committee’s hearing page; skip ahead to about the 68:40 mark.) Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL) told Orszag that “I want to ask you a friendly question, and I want to ask you an unfriendly question.” The first question—the “friendly” one—dealy with NASA’s overall funding levels. Nelson said that the budget “accepted the recommendations” of the Augustine Committee “with the exception of what they said for meaningful human spaceflight for the future for what you had to spend,” that is, its options which increased NASA’s budget by up to $3 billion a year. “Do you want to explain?”
Orszag noted the $6-billion increase in the next five years, and that Norm Augustine himself issued a statement supporting the new plan. “I choose to disagree with that characterization,” Nelson responded, referring to Augustine’s memo. “It was a namby-pamby watered-down statement that was oblique at best.”
Orszag defended the budget, saying that it wasn’t necessarily a case of not being able to afford a $3-billion increase but instead reflected the change in course for NASA, with greater emphasis on technology development and related efforts to “leapfrog existing technologies and allow us to have human spaceflight to different parts of the solar system.”
Nelson then turned to his “unfriendly” question, which wasn’t really a question at all but instead a criticism of the plan to rely on commercial crew transportation providers. “The problem is that you have put all the eggs in the basket of assuming that those commercial rockets are going to work,” he said, ending the “testing and development of an alternative rocket”, presumably a reference to the Ares 1. “If those commercial rockets don’t work, then for the foreseeable future of the next decade or so we’re going to be relying on the Russians just to get to and from our space station.”
“I want you to take that for consideration,” Nelson concluded, “and that’s got to be changed, Dr. Orszag.” Orszag didn’t have a chance to respond before Nelson’s time expired and the committee moved on to other topics.
February 2, 2010 at 7:12 am · Filed under Other
A space program suffering from long-running problems, including schedule delays and cost overruns, is radically reshaped in the FY 2011 budget proposal announced Monday. And hardly anyone notices.
Obviously, we’re not talking about Constellation.
Instead, the National Polar-orbiting Operational Satellite System (NPOESS) underwent a shakeup in the budget proposal, right down to its name: it’s now called the Joint Polar Satellite System, at least on the NOAA side. NPOESS has been a joint effort of NOAA, NASA, and DoD to develop a new generation of polar-orbiting weather satellites that can serve both civil government and military weather forecasting and climatology needs. NPOESS, though, had suffered from serious problems that resulted in billions of dollars and cost overruns and schedule slips that caused some to worry about the continuity of weather data from such spacecraft.
Now, instead of being a single combined program, NOAA and NASA will split responsibility for the program with DOD. NOAA/NASA will be responsible for the satellites that will fly in “afternoon” orbits (because they pass over sunlit regions of the Earth at local afternoon) while DOD will take control of the spacecraft that will go in early morning orbits. The two groups will procure their satellites separately; for the civil government side, NASA will perform the acquisition management in much the same way it handles such tasks for NOAA’s geostationary weather satellites.
OSTP has more details about this shift, including details on the responsibilities of the various agencies in the post-NPOESS environment; NOAA’s budget document has some additional information. The change, though, has attracted very little media attention so far: thanks at least in part to NASA’s big announcements, no doubt.
February 1, 2010 at 8:13 pm · Filed under Congress, NASA, White House
Some people hate the proposed NASA budget. Some people love it. Others are undecided. Some samplings of opinions in all three categories:
Love It
As you would expect, the Commercial Spaceflight Federation “welcomes” the proposal and its emphasis on commercial crew transportation. “President Obama has given NASA a bold and exciting new mission: to once again push the limits in technology and exploration, promote innovation, and foster a vibrant commercial spaceflight sector,” said CSF president Brett Alexander in a statement.
The Planetary Society asks Congress to endorse the budget proposal in a statement. The organization believes that the new approach, including both commercial crew and NASA technology development initiatives, “should enable human space exploration to move ahead more realistically and even more quickly than previous plans,” in the words of executive director Lou Friedman.
The X PRIZE Foundation also sees positives in the budget proposal. “While many are calling President Obama’s proposed grounding of NASA’s program to return to the Moon the ending of an era for space travel, the X PRIZE Foundation sees this new budget proposal as a visionary step for NASA and an opportunity to forge new ideas, develop much-needed technology, and channel the American Spirit spurring innovation and entrepreneurship.”
Hate It
Sen. Shelby isn’t the only member of Congress to issue a statement opposing NASA’s change in direction. Fellow Alabama Republican Senator Jeff Sessions is also opposed to canceling Constellation. “This ill-advised decision, which comes on the 7th anniversary of the sacrifice of the space shuttle Columbia crew, abandons our nation’s nearly five-decade commitment to human space flight and will likely result in NASA taking a back seat to China, Russia, and India in space exploration,” he states. He predicts a “long, difficult battle” over the FY11 budget and the agency’s future.
Speaking of battles, the mayor of Huntsville, Alabama, Tommy Battle, vows to “do everything we can” to restore funding for Ares. “I respectfully ask you to please, sir, not give up on the Constellation program,” Battle states in a letter to the president. “Doing so does not just negate the billions of dollars already invested in safe, manned space flight – canceling this program puts limits on the dreams of our country.”
Several other members of Congress were, as one might expect, opposed to canceling Constellation, including Rep. Suzanne Kosmas (D-FL), Rep. Bill Posey (R-FL), and Rep. Pete Olson (R-TX). All has previously expressed their concerns about the NASA budget and Constellation last week.
ATK, a company closely tied to the Ares 1, issued a statement in response to the budget proposal that, indirectly at least, expressed disapproval about the budget. “It is not clear why at this time the nation would consider abandoning a program of such historic promise and capability – with so much invested,” the ATK statement reads. “In the weeks and months ahead we are hopeful that the Congress and Administration will work together to deliver a budget that supports a program that capitalizes on the investments the nation has made in the Constellation program, closes the gap in US capability to return to space, and best assures continued US leadership in space.”
Undecided
Rep. Bart Gordon (D-TN), chairman of the House Science and Technology Committee, said that the NASA budget request “requires deliberate scrutiny” but didn’t pass judgment on it. “We will need to hear the Administration’s rationale for such a change and assess its impact on U.S. leadership in space before Congress renders its judgment on the proposals,” he states.
The Coalition for Space Exploration adopted a neutral tone in a statement, saying that it “awaits collaboration between the White House and Congress” on the budget proposal. “We urge the White House and Congress to come together under the proposed budget increase for NASA to develop a sustainable, long-term strategy,” it adds.
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