Space Politics
Because sometimes the most important orbit is the Beltway…
Archive for September, 2010
September 30, 2010 at 6:35 am · Filed under Congress, NASA
The final recorded vote for S.3729 in the House last night is available. There aren’t too many surprises in who voted for or against the bill; in addition to Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, who spoke out against the bill on the House floor, some Ohio representatives, including Dennis Kucinich (D) and Steven LaTourette (R), who had been lobbying against the bill, voted no. Several key appropriators, including the chair and ranking member of the full appropriations committee, Reps. David Obey (D-WI) and Jerry Lewis (R-CA), voted in favor of the bill. One interesting no vote: House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH), who is in line to become Speaker next year should Republicans win control of the House in November’s elections.
Some of those who did vote for the bill didn’t sound that enthusiastic about it. “While I am not completely satisfied with the Senate bill, I am very pleased it passed,” Rep. Ralph Hall (R-TX), ranking member of the House Science and Technology Committee, said in a statement. “While I preferred the compromise language offered by Chairman [Bart] Gordon, I am pleased that we were at least able to pass a bill.” Gordon, meanwhile, reiterated in his own statement plans to seek changes when appropriators take up their spending bills after the November elections, calling the passage of S.3729 “only one more step in crafting a sustainable, affordable, and productive future path for NASA.”
Senate leaders, understandably, were a little more effusive in their reactions. “I congratulate my House colleagues for taking a big step forward for America’s space program,” Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, said in a statement. “It’s been a long, rigorous process – but I believe we’ve reached a sensible center.” The committee’s ranking member, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, “lauded” the House, in particular Houston-area representatives, in her own statement. “I am extremely pleased that the Houston delegation… pulled together to gain approval of the Congressional initiative to preserve America’s future in space and protect our proud heritage of exploration.”
One of the companies most affected by the bill, ATK, issued a statement early Thursday saying that it was “encouraged” by the bill’s passage. “The passage of S.3729 provides ATK the opportunity to support NASA on the development of a heavy-lift vehicle for human space flight that will utilize proven advanced solid rocket motor propulsion capabilities,” the company stated. ATK, of course, loses the Ares 1 launch vehicle that won’t be continued under the new plan, but the relatively prescriptive language in the Senate bill and accompanying report on HLV design (a point of criticism by Giffords in her floor speech) would appear to give the company a consolation prize.
Congress also got a message of thanks from NASA administrator Charles Bolden. “We are grateful that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Authorization Act of 2010 received strong support in the House after its clearance in the Senate, and can now be sent on to the President for his signature,” Bolden said. “Passage of this bill represents an important step forward towards helping us achieve the key goals set by the President.”
September 29, 2010 at 10:20 pm · Filed under Congress, NASA
Update 11:45 pm: The House did pass the bill in a recorded vote by well over the two-thirds margin needed: 304-118.
For about 45 minutes this evening the House debated S. 3729, the NASA authorization bill. Because the bill is taken up under suspension of the rules, the debate was relatively streamlined, with no opportunity for introducing amendments. Most of those speaking, including Reps. Bart Gordon (D-TN), Ralph Hall (R-TX), and Pete Olson (R-TX), were reluctantly in favor of the bill, saying it wasn’t perfect but it was better than none at all. Some of the claims bordered on (or perhaps were fully) hyperbolic: Rep. John Culberson (R-TX) claimed that if the House didn’t pass the bill, President Obama would succeed in shutting down the nation’s human spaceflight program by the end of the year.
A notable exception was Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ), chair of the House Science Committee’s space subcommittee, who spoke “in strong opposition” to the bill, calling it a “bad bill” that the House should vote down. Over the course of about seven minutes she laid out her issues with the bill, ranging from a lack of funding specified for an additional shuttle mission to a heavy-lift launch vehicle “designed by our colleagues” in the Senate as opposed to engineers, to its support of “would be” commercial providers.
The speaker pro tem declared at the end of the debate that the yeas had won the voice vote, but after a bit of an awkward pause, Giffords formally requested a recorded (roll call) vote. That will take place later tonight; perhaps much later, as the House is now moving on to debate the continuing resolution to fund the government after Thursday. The vote will take place tonight, though, as Majority Leader Steny Hoyer announced this evening that the House will adjourn after tonight’s votes until November 15th, after the mid-term elections. Note that under suspension of the rules the bill will need a two-thirds majority to pass.
September 29, 2010 at 1:00 pm · Filed under Congress, Lobbying, NASA
The House is in session right now, but there’s no timetable for consideration of the Senate NASA authorization bill. This morning there’s been one final wave of statements about the bill and requests for people to contact their representative regarding it. Late this morning NASA released a statement from administrator Charles Bolden expressing his support for S. 3729. Bolden said he was “hopeful” that the bill “will receive strong support in the House and be sent onto the President for his signature.” He adds at the end of the statement: “There is still a lot of work ahead, especially as the 2011 appropriations process moves forward, but the continuing support for NASA ensures America’s space program will remain at the forefront of pioneering new frontiers in science, technology, and exploration.”
A pithier request came from former Congressman Nick Lampson on Twitter: “Please call your congressman and ask him/her to vote FOR the space bill today in the House of Reps. Contact friends for same. Urgent!” What’s noteworthy is that Lampson posted the request on Twitter: his last tweet was more than seven and a half months ago.
Space advocate Rick Tumlinson isn’t one to mince words, and he doesn’t in an essay on The Huffington Post Wednesday morning about why people should support the Senate bill, as imperfect as it might be. “The Senate, on the other hand, although filling its own bill with as much pork as possible and keeping many of the obviously dead end programs started in the last administration alive, at least allows our NewSpace industry a shot at proving itself, and gives NASA marching orders at a time when many of its people are facing uncertainty and chaos,” he writes. And, because this is a relatively low profile issue, he says, a small number of people can make a big difference. “Because so little attention is being paid to this issue, those who do lift a finger can make a difference. And because the stakes are so large, the difference you make is greater than those issues so many see as important today and you can do little about.”
Recently retired Planetary Society executive director Lou Friedman would agree with Tumlinson that the Senate bill has its share of pork, but argues that’s a reason not to vote for it. “The NASA Authorization bills proposed in Congress barely mention exploration. They contain heavy prescriptions for how to build things, pointing to specific contractors. Having politicians design our rockets, propulsion systems, crew vehicles and payloads is a prescription for spending lots of money and accomplishing little,” he writes in a piece on The Planetary Society’s web site. “That’s why I personally oppose both Authorization bills. I am putting my hopes in the Appropriations Committees. Maybe they will authorize the funding and tell NASA to get beyond the Moon, leaving how to the scientists and engineers. Or maybe I am too naive.” Maybe.
September 29, 2010 at 6:23 am · Filed under Congress, NASA
It’s official: the Senate NASA authorization bill is on the floor schedule for the House today as the sixth of six bills to be considered under suspension of the rules. With that in mind, the Washington Post sounds off on the state of the agency and its future in an editorial Wednesday, its second in two months. The Post calls the bill “flawed” because it is “an oddly specific plan in which members of Congress took it upon themselves to specify the exact contours of the U.S. plan for space — contours that often seem to conform to district and state lines.” Without additional funding, which the editorial concludes is not forthcoming, the Post instead believes a better, if relatively unspecific, approach would be to “invest in research and aeronautics and to salvage technology, expertise and resources from the Constellation program” for use for human space exploration at some future date.
September 28, 2010 at 9:02 pm · Filed under Congress, NASA
Former NASA administrator Mike Griffin, who has previously said he liked the original House version of the NASA authorization bill more than the Senate’s version, is now openly calling for House members to vote against the Senate bill when it comes up for a vote tomorrow. “After considerable reflection, I have reluctantly come to the conclusion that NASA and the nation’s space program would be best served if the House were to vote against the Senate Authorization Bill in its present form,” Griffin said in an email message obtained by SpacePolicyOnline.com. The Senate bill, Griffin writes, has “grievous flaws” and, while better than the administration’s proposal in his opinion, “it is not enough better to warrant its support in law.”
Griffin’s email is not the only sign of opposition to the Senate bill, although not necessarily for the same reasons. According to a Space News tweet, Ohio congressmen Dennis Kucinich (D) and Steven LaTourette (R) are asking fellow members of the Ohio congressional delegation to vote against the bill, because of jobs at NASA Glenn as well as commercial crew and space technology funding.
Because the bill will be considered under suspension of the rules, it will require a two-thirds majority to pass. Will it get it? The Orlando Sentinel reports that “Initial signs are that the vote could be very close” with the chair of the House Science Committee’s space subcommittee, Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ), expected to vote against it. The Hill, though, claims that the House is “likely” to pass the bill.
If the House doesn’t pass the bill, it makes it unlikely any authorization bill will make it out of Congress this year, leaving it up to appropriators to make policy when they get to funding bills after the November election. Griffin, in his email, seems willing to settle for that. ” If we cannot do better than that,” he writes, referring to the Senate bill, “then I believe we have reached the point where it is better to allow the damage which has been brought about by the administration’s actions to play out to its conclusion than to accept half-measures in an attempt at remediation.”
September 28, 2010 at 7:21 am · Filed under Congress, NASA
While the announcement yesterday by Rep. Bart Gordon that the House will vote this week on the Senate’s version of a NASA authorization bill, rather than its own, would seem to clear the way for passage of the bill, advocates of the Senate version are not resting. Because the House will take up the bill under suspension of the rules, which requires a two-thirds majority for passage, the Space Access Society is asking people to contact their representatives again and request they vote for the Senate bill, while also warning there are more battles to come. “The Old Guard has suffered a setback, but it’s unlikely to fade away anytime soon.”
Rep. Pete Olson (R-TX), who this weekend published an op-ed in the Houston Chronicle supporting the compromise House version, told the paper now that it was more important to “end the uncertainty” facing NASA and its employees and contractors. Olson said he was “throwing his support” behind the Senate bill.
One person who hasn’t decided on the House bill is Rep. Bill Posey (R-FL). His spokesman tells Florida Today that neither the Senate nor the House bills do enough to close the post-Shuttle gap and that Posey was “still evaluating the details of both the proposals”. In the same article Rep. Suzanne Kosmas (D-FL) expressed her support for the Senate bill, consistent with earlier comments from her.
September 27, 2010 at 2:18 pm · Filed under Congress, NASA
It appears that advocates of the Senate version of the NASA authorization bill have won their battle: House Science and Technology Committee chairman Bart Gordon issued a statement Monday afternoon saying that he anticipated the full House to take up the Senate bill on Wednesday. “It has become clear that there is not time remaining to pass a Compromise bill through the House and the Senate,” he says in the statement. “For the sake of providing certainty, stability, and clarity to the NASA workforce and larger space community, I felt it was better to consider a flawed bill than no bill at all as the new fiscal year begins.” Exactly how that vote will take place isn’t stated in the release, but one option would be to do it under suspension of the rules, which would prevent amendments whose inclusion could make it difficult to reconcile with the version the Senate passed in early August.
Gordon, though, made it clear he wasn’t happy with elements of the Senate version, including an “unfunded mandate” for an additional shuttle mission, its “overly prescriptive” language for a heavy-lift vehicle, and the lack of a timetable for development a government backup capability to commercial providers for ISS access. He also suggested that he’s not done fighting about those issues, either: “I will continue to advocate to the Appropriators for the provisions in the Compromise language.”
September 27, 2010 at 12:46 pm · Filed under Congress, Lobbying, NASA
With the House not planning to take up its version of a NASA authorization bill before Wednesday, space advocates opposed to the legislation are continuing their efforts to win support for the Senate’s version. Commercial suborbital spaceflight supporters sent out emails on Sunday asking people to contact their representatives on Monday to seek their support for the Senate bill. The Space Frontier Foundation today released a video where members of the NewSpace community “support the need for a budget focused on innovation and new enterprise, not wasting money on failed projects.”
The House legislation, though, does have its supporters in Congress, who are speaking out about it. In a Houston Chronicle op-ed Saturday, Rep. Pete Olson (R-TX) expressed support for the bill, calling it “a strong bipartisan bill that preserves and improves NASA’s human space flight program, while also helping support private sector research and development in human space flight.” By contrast, he argues, the Senate bill “falls short of the House measure in clearly defining the path – and equally important – ensuring the necessary future funding for NASA’s human space exploration efforts.” As members of Congress, he concludes, “we have a duty to clarify NASA’s future and not buck our responsibility to a reluctant president.” (How exactly the president is “reluctant” on this matter isn’t clear.)
Another House member, Rep. Rob Bishop (R-UT), expressed his frustration with the lack of a vote on a bill in an article Sunday in the Ogden (Utah) Standard-Examiner. Bishop told the paper that while he likes the Senate version and “could live with” the earlier House bill, “Gordon’s bill is the one he really likes best.” Bishop blames the lack of a vote on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who Bishop says “is opposed to the NASA manned space program.” (It’s uncertain just how involved Pelosi has been in this process, as previous reports have only cited the involvement of House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer.) “If the Speaker will just schedule it, we will be in great shape,” Bishop said of a vote on the bill. “If not, we’re still not dead, but we’re on life support. This is probably the most important issue we’re fighting for right now.” One wonders how many of Bishop’s colleagues, of both parties, would agree that the NASA authorization bill is their “most important issue”.
September 24, 2010 at 6:53 am · Filed under Congress, NASA
If the House Science and Technology Committee thought that its revised version of the NASA authorization bill, with additional funding for commercial crew development, would win support from commercialization advocates, well, not exactly. “Although they’ve done their best to appear to be compromising, the fine text makes it clear that
they want to continue Constellation,” Space Frontier Foundation executive director Will Watson said in a statement by the organization. The Foundation complains about “24 separate restrictions” on commercial crew in the revised bill (although not enumerating them) as well as the bill’s combination of commercial cargo and crew funding into one account. The Foundation also criticizes language elsewhere in the bill that appears to leave the door open for continued development of the Ares 1. They ask that the House instead vote on the Senate bill.
Similar complaints come from the Space Access Society in a separate statement, which expresses concerns about “a whole tangle of reviews, reports, certifications, and other requirements” for commercial crew development as well as “continued development of something a lot like Ares/Orion”. The organization is also calling on the House to accept the version approved by the Senate. “We think it’s time to settle on the Senate compromise, resolve this matter, and move forward.”
Although both organizations sent out alerts warning the House would vote on this compromise version as soon as Friday, it appears that no vote is imminent. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, in a statement late Thursday, said there would be no votes on Friday, and that the House would next meet this coming Wednesday, September 29. The statement indicated that the priority for the House then would be to pass a continuing resolution before the fiscal year ends Thursday; Hoyer said he hoped the House could vote on it today but negotiations with the Senate on the CR are not complete.
September 23, 2010 at 12:24 pm · Filed under Congress, NASA
The House Science and Technology Committee announced Thursday morning the release of “compromise legislative language” for a NASA authorization bill, presumably (although not explicitly stated) after negotiations with the Senate [I've since been told, second-hand, that this compromise bill was drafted just by the House, and is not necessarily endorsed by the Senate]. The full text of the bill is available, as well as a summary comparing the new version with the one passed by the committee in July. Some highlights:
- The new bill calls for the development of a “Space Launch System” similar to what the Senate proposed, although without the lower minimum launch capacity (as little as 70 tons) in the Senate bill. Instead, this calls for a “scalable capability of lifting payloads of at least 130 metric tons” into LEO, although scalable from what, and by when, isn’t stated; the bill requires at least the capability of servicing the ISS by the end of 2016.
- The compromise bill includes $1.19 billion for exploration technology development as part of an overall $2.67 billion for space technology over the three years of the bill; the earlier version had only $5 million for exploration technology development, in exploration versus space technology.
- The compromise bill includes $1.212 billion for commercial crew development over three years ($412 million in 2011 and $400 million each in 2012 and 2013), far more than the earlier bill ($150 million a year) but still short of the administration’s original request. As expected, the loan guarantee language in the original bill is gone in this one; instead, the funds “shall be allocated at the discretion of the Administrator” to those efforts deemed the highest priority towards the goal of supporting continued utilization of the ISS.
- The compromise bill includes $150 million over three years for exploration robotic precursor missions, while the original bill provided only $5 million.
- The bill also includes language formally authorizing the flight of the “launch-on-need” shuttle mission (STS-135) no earlier than June 1, 2011, unless “the Administrator determines that the level of risk of flying such mission is unacceptable.”
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