Space Politics
Because sometimes the most important orbit is the Beltway…
Archive for April, 2010
April 30, 2010 at 6:47 am · Filed under Congress, NASA
Scott Spencer is something of an underdog running for the Democratic nomination for Delaware’s sole House seat against former lieutenant governor John Carney. And Delaware isn’t known for its space industry outside of perhaps ILC Dover. Those items alone, though, aren’t the only things that make curious a letter to President Obama from the candidate about the administration’s space policy. What’s also interesting is who Spencer recruited as a coauthor: Chris Kraft, the legendary former flight director and head of the Johnson Space Center.
In the two-page letter, the two argue that the White House’s new plan for NASA “fails to consider the two principals that have been essential to successful U.S. manned space flight for nearly 50 years – proficiency and redundancy.” They argue that NASA should instead fly the shuttle at least three times a year for an unspecified period, and that “a specific schedule of manned moon missions resume by 2020″. (The letter does not mention Constellation, Ares, or Orion by name.) How much extra it would cost to continue flying the shuttle while also ramping up the development of Constellation (or some other system) to permit human lunar missions in ten years, and where that money should come from given heightened concerns about budget deficits, isn’t addressed in the letter.
April 28, 2010 at 7:14 am · Filed under Congress, NASA, Other
NASA administrator Charles Bolden, in an op-ed in today’s Houston Chronicle, says that even before he was approached last year to run the agency “it was obvious to me we had serious problems in balancing our priorities” under Constellation and that “it would take courageous action on the part of the president and NASA leadership to realize our dream of sending people beyond low-Earth orbit.” In a defense of the agency’s new plan, he warns, “If we flounder, it is unlikely we will have a similar opportunity in our lifetimes. America will lose its leadership in technological innovation and human spaceflight.” Bolden is in Houston today and will give an all-hands address to NASA employees at noon EDT.
Rep. Parker Griffith (R-AL) tells the Decatur Daily that he believes the Augustine Committee was a “setup” to give cover to an administration desire to kill Constellation. “Why would you have a commission study something you’ve been doing 4 1/2 years and for billions of dollars?” he asks. “I met with Augustine and the principals, and realized this was a setup.” He is also opposed to turning to the commercial sector for launching crews, even if it benefits United Launch Alliance, which builds its rockets in Decatur. “What do you think would happen to United Launch Alliance, to Orbital Sciences or SpaceX, if there was a Columbia accident on their nickel? We are done. The country is done. That company is done,” he told the paper. “We can’t take that chance. It’s not a good idea to privatize a country’s conscience, a country’s pride.”
Another opponent of commercial crew, Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL), has been occupied recently with another topic: financial report. During that time he has spoken out against the concept of “too big to fail” that has been used to justify bailouts of troubled financial companies. “The message should be, unambiguously, that nothing’s too big to fail,” he said Sunday on “Meet the Press”. Now, the Space Frontier Foundation is turning his words against him: in a message posted on RLV and Space Transport News, the Foundation lists the long record of troubled or failed projects associated with the Marshall Space Flight Center, from elements of the shuttle program through various canceled launch systems to Ares 1 and 5. Shelby, the Foundation statement concludes, “should explain why MSFC has long been too big too fail and been bailed out repeatedly at the cost of many tens of billions of dollars.”
April 27, 2010 at 7:42 am · Filed under Congress, NASA
While space industry professionals from around the world are in Huntsville this week for the SpaceOps 2010 conference, 175 people from the greater Huntsville area are in Washington for an annual lobbying visit organized by the local Chamber of Commerce, and atop their agenda is trying to win support to save Constellation from the administration’s plans to cancel it. Sunday evening they got a pep talk from Sen. Richard Shelby, the Huntsvillle Times reports. “If (Republicans) were in control of the Senate, I would tell you exactly what we’d be doing to save Constellation,” he said, reiterating earlier statements that the administration’s strategy is a “death march” for NASA.
Yesterday they got a similar message from staffers for Shelby and Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX). “I don’t know how many more blunt objects we have to hit NASA over the head with,” Allen Cutler, on Shelby’s staff, said, according to the Times. He told the story of his daughter, who had been saving money for a trip to Space Camp but after the release of the FY11 budget proposal changed her mind, wondering what the use was “if there aren’t going to be any more astronauts”. Despite plans in the proposal to extend the ISS to 2020 and mount missions to near Earth asteroids, Mars, and other destinations beyond Earth orbit, Cutler said he’s also wondering “what is NASA going to be worth if it isn’t flying astronauts into space?”
Brian Hendricks, on Hutchison’s staff, “expressed ‘profound anger’ at Obama’s decision”, the Times reported. “and he said the ability of the commercial world to achieve what NASA has achieved is ‘circumspect.’”. (One suspects that he said, or meant to say, that he was circumspect about about their abilities.) He added that there is “no support” in Congress for canceling Constellation. A mid-May hearing is planned to bring in “people who best understand spaceflight and NASA” to express their views about the president’s plan, “and I have a real problem calling it a plan because he doesn’t seem to have one.”
April 25, 2010 at 11:46 am · Filed under Congress
One of the interesting aspects of the reaction to NASA’s new human spaceflight plans is the strong opposition to it from Alabama’s congressional delegation, in particular Sen. Richard Shelby: while plans to end Constellation will have impacts on the Marshall Space Flight Center, that will be partially, if not completely, offset by other work there, not to mention additional for United Launch Alliance, which builds Atlas and Delta rockets at a plant in Decatur. Among the puzzled is the head of a competitor to ULA.
“I don’t really understand why Senator Shelby is so opposed to commercial crew,” SpaceX CEO Elon Musk told the Huntsville Times in a recent interview, “given that Atlas and Delta are right there in Alabama, because no one’s going to be a bigger winner in commercial crew than United Launch Alliance.” Musk said it was a “certainty” that ULA would win contracts to launch crewed spacecraft until the proposed plan, while “it’s much more a question mark” for SpaceX.
Musk also said he doesn’t know why his company in particular has been on the receiving end of so much criticism (by name or implied) by Shelby. “I just don’t understand what his beef is,” he told the Times. “I’ve tried to meet with him,” he added. “He refuses to meet.” A spokesman for Shelby said the two had in fact met at some point in the past but the two “have fundamental differences in their vision for successful space policy that will not be overcome in a meet and greet.”
Meanwhile, Mo Brooks, a Republican challenging incumbent Rep. Parker Griffith (R-AL), told the Decatur Daily that he also opposed the administration’s plan even though it would benefit hometown ULA. “I don’t want the private sector being in charge of what is national security information,” he said, not specifying what “national security information” would be put in jeopardy by having commercial providers carrying out crew launches.
Brooks also criticized Griffith for alienating fellow members of Congress, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, saying that criticism made it impossible for him to win support for NASA, and Constellation in particular, on Capitol Hill. “I believe Parker Griffith’s inability to work with members of Congress is a major factor in our potential loss of the (NASA) Constellation program,” Brooks said of the first-term congressman who switched parties last December.
April 25, 2010 at 11:15 am · Filed under Congress, NASA
One of the VIPs at Saturday’s QuikTrip Air and Rocket Racing Show in Tulsa, Oklahoma, was Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK). (He was more than a guest, though: he flew one of the planes at the show.) When he wasn’t flying, he was talking up the prospects of Tulsa getting one of the shuttle orbiters once the fleet is retired. He could also be seen having an involved discussion with another VIP in attendance, Buzz Aldrin, about space exploration.
After he completed that discussion, I asked Inhofe his thoughts about the new plans for NASA as described in the FY11 budget proposed and President Obama’s speech earlier this month. “Well, I don’t think the president has done many things right—I can’t think of anything—and certainly cutting back on the space program, which is what he’s doing… His priorities are social engineering, they’re not the military, they’re not infrastructure, they’re certainly not the space program,” he said. “I often say to people that we’re going to change the House and the Senate in November, and a lot of these things that he’s done we can undo, and I plan to do that.”
His comments appeared to be in contrast with those of a number of other special guests at the event, including Aldrin, Peter Diamandis, and Richard Garriott, among others, who talked up throughout the day the prospects of the commercial sector taking over transportation of astronauts to low Earth orbit. So I asked Inhofe: do you support that aspect of the plan? His ambiguity-free response: “No, I do not.”
April 23, 2010 at 4:32 am · Filed under Uncategorized
If NASA and the White House thought that President Obama’s speech last month outlining his vision for the future of the agency’s space exploration plans would be enough to satisfy members of Congress, they get a strong reality check Thursday in a hearing by the Commerce, Justice, Science and Related Agencies subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee (video). At the hearing on NASA’s budget proposal (postponed from last month because of healthcare-related votes in the Senate), NASA administrator Charles Bolden got reactions varying from uncertainty to hostility from senators.
Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), chair of the subcommittee and the only Democratic senator present at the hearing, said she was not yet sold on the new exploration plan. “I need to know more,” she said. “Congress needs to know more. We owe it to the American people, we owe it to the taxpayers, and we owe it to the astronauts to be very clear about what we’re going to do and how are we are going to it. I need to know more details.”
The ranking member of the subcommittee, Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL), expressed no uncertainties, and ratcheted up his rhetoric, particularly regarding the emphasis on commercial crew transportation in the new plan, in his opening statement. “Mr. Administrator, your plan does nothing more than continue the abdication of America’s leadership in space,” Shelby said. Later: “This request represents nothing more than a commercially-led, faith-based space program.”
Appearing to borrow some of the language from recent Senate debates on financial reform (Shelby is the ranking member of the Banking Committee), he called the extra $312 million for COTS included in the FY11 budget request “an additional bailout” for “failed commercial providers”. The plan to rely on commercial providers for crew transportation will also founder, he predicted. “The truth is, when troubles mount and a commercial rocket market again fails to materialize, the taxpayers will be called on to bailout these companies and their investors, a recurring theme within this Administration.”
Shelby also criticized NASA for “attempting to undermine the letter and the spirit of the law”, claiming the agency was already making plans to shut down Constellation contracts despite a prohibition from doing so in the appropriations bill for FY10. “Your destructive actions toward the Constellation program will only ensure that members cannot trust you,” he said. “You, Mr. Administrator, are creating an atmosphere where you and your leadership team have become a major impediment to moving forward.”
Bolden also got an earful from Sen. Bob Bennett (R-UT), who participated in the hearing although he’s not a member of the CJS subcommittee. Bennett took particular exception to a comment Bolden made in response to a question from Sen. Mikulski regarding safety that the “demonstrated reliability” of Ares 1, like Falcon 9 and Taurus 2, is zero, as none of those vehicles have flown yet. “You made a statement just now that I find incredible, when you say that the demonstrated reliability of Ares is zero,” Bennett said. He then held up a copy of the Time magazine issue last year that proclaimed the Ares 1 their invention of the year, reading a passage from the article that claimed that last year’s test flight “dazzled even the skeptics.” “That doesn’t sound like there’s no demonstration of reliability,” Bennett continued. “None of the other things that you talked about can match the tested perfection of Ares.”
Bolden responded that “perhaps we were not very good in explaining to people that Ares 1-X is not Ares,” then went on to explain the differences between the Ares 1-X that flew last October and the full Ares 1 that has yet to fly. Bennett appeared ready to step in and challenge, or otherwise respond to, Bolden’s comments when Sen. Mikulski interrupted. “In the interest of time we’re not going to have a debate.”
There wasn’t a debate, but by the end of the hearing neither Sen. Mikulski’s uncertainties were resolved nor the strong opposition by Shelby and Bennett were assuaged, although the discussion will continue. “Madame Chairwoman, I hope you would reserve the right to hold another hearing on this matter,” Shelby said at the end of the hearing. “I absolutely agree that we will hold another hearing,” Mikulski responded.
April 23, 2010 at 3:37 am · Filed under Congress, NASA, White House
Congressman Pete Olson (R-TX), who has expressed his strong opposition to the administration’s new plan for NASA, said Thursday he would be willing to talk with the White House to fashion some kind of compromise. “I just want the opportunity to sit down and talk with the administration and work though some of the things,” he said at a Space Transportation Association breakfast on Capitol Hill. “I’m willing to work with the administration to come up with some compromises and to come up with some deadlines: a goal and a timeframe to achieve it.”
Olson said he agreed with what President Obama said in his speech at the Kennedy Space Center last week about space exploration being a necessity for the county, not a luxury. “I just disagree with him on the pathway to ensure that the future is sustainable, achievable, and desirable.”
A couple specific areas of disagreement that Olson identified in his talk were heavy lift launch vehicle development and Orion. “I don’t understand why we don’t put energy and resources into developing a heavy lift rocket now,” he said. “Based on what we learned from the Constellation program, there’s no need, no need, to wait to 2015 to make that decision.” On Orion, he said that while he was relieved that it was given “somewhat of a reprieve”, he said it can do much more than just be a crew return vehicle for the ISS. “It’s much more capable than a lifeboat.”
He also reiterated previous requests by him and other Houston-area members of Congress for the President to visit JSC. “I’d love to have him come out to the Johnson Space Center so he could spend just an hour and a half, going around and seeing what investment our country has made and just the unbelievable professionalism, dedication, and knowledge of the people who work in those buildings.”
Olson, the ranking member of the space subcommittee of the House Science Committee, said the committee was still working on a NASA authorization bill, with a goal set by the full committee’s chairman, Bart Gordon, of getting the bill through the committee by Memorial Day. “It’s important, more important than ever, that we hit that goal,” he said. He said he’ll seek language in the bill to preserve Constellation. “I believe Constellation is the best course to get us out of low Earth orbit. That’s my big picture goal.”
“This is a pivot point, and if don’t pivot the right way, we may never be able to turn back,” he said of the agency’s current situation. “We’ll become a nation of wanderers, not explorers.”
April 21, 2010 at 8:26 pm · Filed under Congress, NASA, Pentagon
After President Obama spoke at the Kennedy Space Center last week, Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL) said that while he supported the president’s plan in general, “we’ll change some things” in Congress, suggesting that accelerating development of a heavy-lift vehicle would be one of them. “I think we can make the decision much sooner” than 2015, he said. Wednesday, he took a step to do just that.
Nelson announced that he had won an extra $726 million for NASA in the FY2011 budget resolution that was marked up Wednesday by the Senate Budget Committee, on which Nelson serves. The additional money, he said, would be used for continued work on a heavy-lift vehicle. “If we’re going to Mars, as the president has said, then let’s get going,” he said in a statement. “We shouldn’t wait five years.”
In comments during the markup (which can be viewed in this video clip), Nelson elaborated on this, suggesting that such a heavy-lift vehicle would be derived from the Ares family of vehicles that would be canceled under the president’s plan. The additional funding, he said, would be used because “as we are confronting a program of testing a large-diameter solid rocket motor, which is critical to the Department of Defense, and of which is a good example of one hand of the federal government not knowing what the other hand was doing – Defense Department and NASA – and NASA goes in and cancels this test.”
Nelson, in comments directed to committee chairman Sen. Kent Conrad (D-ND), played up the connection between this NASA development and national security. “You have allowed in this the flexibility of continuing the testing for that big solid rocket motor called the Ares 1-X, which will not only be important to the future of us getting out of low Earth orbit by building a heavy-lift vehicle for NASA, but is going to be critical to the solid rocket motors that protect this country’s national security.”
Nelson’s comments are somewhat puzzling since the Ares 1-X was a specific test that took place last year, and is not itself a “big solid rocket motor”. The statement from his office makes no mention of Ares or solid rocket motors, but does mention that “The Pentagon is worried about delaying this decision and the effect it might have on the rocket industry”, an apparent reference to previous concerns about the solid rocket motor industrial base.
Conrad, who could be seen in the video nodding as Nelson spoke, concurred in his own comments. “There are classified discussions that we can’t go into here with respect to this initiative, but I would say to my colleagues, this is absolutely essential for the national security that this go forward,” Conrad said. “And I think every member of this committee understands what I’m talking about. So I hope very much that this will be retained and we’re going to have to fight for this.”
Conrad is referring to the fact that the budget resolution is just that—a non-binding resolution that plays a role in the later appropriations process, but does not constrain appropriators to fund a specific program.
April 21, 2010 at 1:05 pm · Filed under Congress, Lobbying
While officials from dozens of nations met in Washington last week for a summit on nuclear security, astronomers were also getting riled up about nuclear issues, albeit of a very different kind. The American Astronomical Society (AAS) sent out an “Action Alert” to its members last Monday, asking them to contract Congress about restarting production of plutonium-238. This isotope of plutonium is used in radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs) in deep-space missions, but the domestic supply of the isotope has been exhausted and access to Russian supplies of Pu-238 has become problematic. The 2011 budget proposals include $15 million each for NASA and the Department of Energy to restart Pu-238 production in the US; however, a similar effort last year in DoE was not funded by Congress.
The action alert includes a sample letter members can use to send to their members of Congress asking them to support the requested funding. The letter discusses the importance of Pu-238 for certain space missions, and that the isotope is not used for weapons. It concludes: “The future of American space exploration is at stake!”
April 21, 2010 at 12:52 pm · Filed under White House
On Tuesday the administration took another step forward in efforts to reform export control policy in the US, a source of considerable distress for many in the space industry. The goal of the new plan, as laid out in a speech by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates in a speech, is to simplify the current system to make it more effective. “The United States is thought to have one of the most stringent export regimes in the world, but stringent is not the same as effective,” Gates notes.
The new plan, as described in a fact sheet issued by the White House, is called by one DoD official the “four singles”: a single control list, a single enforcement agency, a single IT system, and a single licensing agency. That would a major change from the current system, where there’s the more stringent US Munitions List and less stringent Commerce Control List, overseen by different agencies with different systems. Satellites and related components, for example, were once on the CCL but moved to the USML in the late 1990s; there’s legislation in Congress right now that would allow the president to remove them from the USML (presumably back onto the CCL) if he so chooses.
Left unstated is how this three-phase plan (starting with “significant and immediate improvements to the existing system” while laying the foundation for the more significant changes that will require Congressional action) will take, or how space-related items will fare under the new plan. Gates, according to a press account of his speech, talked about a “tiered approach to export control that he said would allow the United States to build higher walls around truly crucial technologies while lowering walls around others”; how high the walls will be around space technologies remains to be seen.
Next entries »
