Space Politics
Because sometimes the most important orbit is the Beltway…
Archive for April, 2011
April 30, 2011 at 2:23 pm · Filed under Congress, NASA, White House
Just over a year ago President Obama visited the Kennedy Space Center to give a major space policy speech about his vision for NASA’s future in space exploration. Yesterday, the president returned to KSC, a visit originally intended to watch the launch of space shuttle Endeavour on its final mission. Although the launch was scrubbed over three hours before launch, the president still made the stop with his family, spending a couple hours at the Cape before he continued on to Miami for a commencement address.
Yesterday’s stopover, though, was a much lower profile visit. There was no speech or other statement to the media; a handful of pool reporters trailed the president for much of his time at the center. The president apparently didn’t intend to use the visit to make any significant statement about his space policy. In a press conference at KSC about the shuttle launch scrub after the president left, KSC director Bob Cabana offered only general comments about what the president said during his visit. “He was extremely supportive of what we were doing,” Cabana said. “I think it was great that he came down today. I think the family really enjoyed the visit.”
Later, Cabana said, “The president supports our spaceflight program. He’s very supportive of what we’re doing,” adding that the president “is supportive of us building a large rocket and crew vehicle to go beyond our home planet” as well as the commercial crew program. “Everybody that he ran into, he thanked them for what we’re doing,” Cabana said. “He enjoyed his tour and seeing all that he saw, and he wants us to keep doing good things.”
Those comments fell short of some expectations for the president to say more about NASA’s future in a region that is facing the impact of thousands of layoffs when the shuttle program ends later this year. “Obama had a parallel purpose for the trip — to ease the political damage of job losses in the space industry and reaffirm his commitment to space exploration,” POLITICO reported. His visit “highlights the need for the president to mend fences in a state stung by proposed cuts to the space program,” The Hill stated. It’s not clear that his visit did much to ease damage and mend fences.
Both articles noted that President Obama isn’t responsible for the decision to cancel the shuttle (which dates back to the unveiling of President George W. Bush’s Vision for Space Exploration in January 2004), and POLITICO in particular that his space policy isn’t necessarily what one would expect from this White House: “For a president described by Republicans as a big-government liberal, even a socialist, his space policy has cut against the stereotype, experts say.”
However, the issue of jobs on the Space Coast is something that Republicans are likely to bring up in their 2012 campaigns there against both the president and Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL), who will be running for reelection. On the same day as the president’s visit, the campaign of Republican challenger George LeMieux issued a video lambasting Nelson for allowing what it claims will be 23,000 lost jobs when the shuttle ends. “Florida, we have a problem, and his name is Bill Nelson,” read the graphics on the 42-second video, which features no narration or other comments by LeMieux. “Bill Nelson is letting NASA die on his watch.” The campaign, by contrast, positions LeMieux as “a champion for our space program and a defender of our American exceptionalism,” without offering any specifics about what he would do differently.
April 28, 2011 at 1:22 pm · Filed under Congress, Other
The space subcommittee of the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee is holding a hearing next Thursday, May 5, on the FY2012 budget request of the FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation (AST). George Nield, the associate administrator of commercial space transportation at the FAA, is the only scheduled witness so far.
The FY2012 budget proposal for FAA/AST (included in the overall FAA budget proposal) requests $26.6 million for the office in 2012, up considerably from the $15.2 million it got in FY2010 (the 2011 budget is uncertain because of long battle to finalize FY11 spending government-wide.) the increase is largely due to the planned creation of the Commercial Spaceflight Technical Center at the Kennedy Space Center, as well as a proposed $5-million Low Cost Access to Space Initiative prize announced by FAA/AST in February.
In addition to FAA/AST’s budget, there are moves afoot in industry to adjust existing law regarding commercial spaceflight that could come up at the hearing. The Commercial Space Launch Amendments Act of 2004 gives FAA/AST the authority to issue regulations “governing the design or operation of a launch vehicle to protect the health and safety of crew and space flight participants”, but for the first eight years afte the law’s enactment, those regulations are limited to circumstances that resulted in, or posed the “high risk” of causing, serious or fatal injury to crew or spaceflight participants. The idea was to give industry time to build up experience in commercial human spaceflight and identifying best practices before codifying those practices in regulation.
That eight-year period expires on December 23, 2012, but the industry hasn’t developed as quickly as advocates expected in the heady days of 2004, when SpaceShipOne was winning the Ansari X PRIZE and other ventures appeared to be following close behind. While no one expects FAA/AST to start issuing regulations willy-nilly next December, the industry would like to extend that current restriction to provide industry assurance it won’t. “I’m not saying the FAA wants to do that, or would do that,” Jim Muncy of Polispace said during a session of the Space Access ’11 conference in Phoenix earlier this month, “but bureaucratic organizations tend to exercise their authority.”
Because the industry hasn’t developed as quickly, some in the industry are looking to reset that eight-year “learning period” through legislation, and have met with people in Congress about that. “We are setting up as an eight-year period from the first flight of a spaceflight participant, so that it’s literally eight years of learning,” said Muncy. He said at Space Access ’11 that the House Science Committee showed interest in holding hearings on this and then marking up legislation for this provision. This change, he added, might be rolled up into another proposal to include third-party indemnification for spaceflight participants, similar to existing indemnification for commercial satellite launches.
April 27, 2011 at 9:08 pm · Filed under Other
Speaking at the Kennedy Space Center just over a year ago, President Obama promised $40 million for “regional economic growth and job creation” on Florida’s Space Coast, $35 million of it in in the form of grants through the Commerce Department to support business in the area. Late today, though, Florida Today reported that the grant program won’t be funded in FY2011. The article is short on details: it claims the funds were cut from the final continuing resolution (CR) that funded the government in 2011, although it’s not clear if Congress explicitly failed to fund the program or if NASA and the Commerce Department, as they drew up spending plans as required by the CR, decided not to fund the program. A spokesman for Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL) blamed “extremists bent on wildly and blindly slashing the budget” for the cut. The other $5 million, intended to establish a commercial spaceflight technical center run by the FAA at the Cape, apparently also is not funded.
April 27, 2011 at 6:45 am · Filed under NASA, Other
In a related story to the previous post about Sen. Marco Rubio’s (R-FL) op-ed on human spaceflight, the Daily Caller reports on similar comments made by George LeMieux, the Florida Republican planning to run for the Senate against incumbent Democrat Bill Nelson. (LeMieux served in the Senate in 2009 and 2010, filling out the remainder of Sen. Mel Martinez’s term after he retired; that seat is now held by Rubio.) According to the report, LeMieux talked to reporters Tuesday about the importance of cutting spending—except when it comes to spaceflight:
“There are very few things the federal government should be doing,” LeMieux said during a conference call with reporters Tuesday. “But one of the few things the federal government can only do is space exploration. We are seeing good private sector folks that are trying to go into low-Earth orbit and that’s great and we should encourage them, but the only folks that are going to go to an asteroid or go to Mars is going to be NASA.”
The article added that LeMieux called cuts to NASA “criminal”. The Daily Caller sees a “real dilemma” for Florida Republicans on this issue. “You see, space ships are to the Sunshine State what farm subsidies are to Iowa,” the article claims: efforts politicians back even if they may clash with broader ideological principles. “Almost all potential Florida up-and-comers looking to make waves on the national scene must defend NASA to make it anywhere beyond Tallahassee.” This could also be true for a few places outside Florida, like Houston, Huntsville, and northern Utah, which all have significant local economic stakes in government human spaceflight efforts in particular; note Rep. Mo Brooks’ (R-AL) comments earlier this week.
And the irony of all this is that while LeMieux said that only NASA can go to asteroids and Mars, Elon Musk is claiming he can send people to Mars in 10-20 years.
April 26, 2011 at 8:19 pm · Filed under Congress, NASA
In an op-ed published today in the Orlando Sentinel, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) worries about the future of NASA’s human spaceflight efforts under the current administration. “The president’s space policy is jeopardizing America’s longstanding commitment to manned space exploration,” he claims, citing the administration’s efforts to cancel Constellation (which was “our most reliable path to low-earth orbit,” he argues). In addition, he is not convinced the administration is serious about supporting the Space Launch System and Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle included in last year’s NASA authorization act, noting that the administration requested $1.2 billion less for them in its 2012 budget proposal than what was authorized last year.
“[B]y not having our own capabilities to transport Americans into space, our reliance on foreign countries for manned space exploration will jeopardize many of the national security functions that have made NASA’s work so vital,” he adds, although what exactly those “national security functions” that NASA performs are not specified. But what about the role of US-based commercial providers to ferry astronauts to and from LEO? Rubio is silent on the subject, curiously: he makes no mention of NASA’s commercial crew efforts, either positive or negative, even though they have the potential to end NASA’s reliance on Russia for crew transport sooner than the SLS and MPCV.
April 26, 2011 at 7:09 am · Filed under Congress, NASA
Houston area members of Congress are continuing to complain about NASA’s decision not to award the city with a retired shuttle, nearly two weeks after NASA announced the sites that will host a retired orbiter. In an op-ed in the Houston Chronicle on Sunday, Reps. Gene Green (D-TX) and John Culberson (R-TX) complain that the oversight “is more than just a disappointment – it’s an insult.” Interestingly, while they note they signed a letter to NASA administrator Charles Bolden asking him why Houston was left out, they make no mention of the two bills introduced in the House since the decision, HR 1536 and HR 1590, seeking to overturn the decision. (Green is a cosponsor of HR 1536, while Culberson has signed to neither.) Instead, the two appear to be more focused on future opportunities: “we will continue to fight to ensure that Houston will continue to guide humankind further into the wondrous realm of space by supplying our nation with a robust human space exploration program that is essential to our national security and leadership in the world.”
At a luncheon Monday in Huntsville, Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL) complained about a lack of support for NASA from the White House. “I am afraid that NASA does not have a friend in the White House,” he said, the Huntsville Times reported, when asked whether NASA will push to have the new Space Launch System (SLS) heavy-lifter in service by 2016. Brooks added that Bolden “did nothing to fight a $300 million budget cut to the space agency.” What budget cut he’s referring to isn’t clear: the final FY11 continuing resolution (which Brooks voted for earlier this month) funded NASA at about $240 million below FY10 levels, and more than $500 million below the FY11 request. The Times article also reports that Brooks said the Huntsville area “fared well out of the recent 2011 budget crisis”, including $1.8 billion for the SLS, while also calling for state legislators to pass a resolution for a constitutional convention to consider a balanced-budget amendment.
April 22, 2011 at 7:20 am · Filed under Congress, NASA, White House
A roundup of miscellaneous items on a slow space policy news week:
As has been widely reported, President Obama will visit the Kennedy Space Center next Friday to witness the scheduled launch of space shuttle Endeavour on STS-134. His appearance will only heighten the media frenzy surrounding the launch, which has less to do with the fact that it is the penultimate shuttle mission than that Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, husband of STS-134 commander Mark Kelly and recovering from injuries sustained in a Tucson shooting in January, is planning to attend. However, it will be a very brief visit: he has a White House event (welcoming Auburn University’s national championship football team) at 10 am, which means he would not get to KSC until early afternoon at the earliest. In addition, he’s speaking at graduation ceremonies at Miami Dade College Friday at 5 pm in downtown Miami, which suggests he’ll leave immediately after the 3:47 pm launch (and probably still be late.)
President Obama also had something to say earlier this week about the placement of the space shuttles. A reporter for Dallas TV station WFAA asked the president in an interview earlier this week if politics played a role in not awarding Houston a space shuttle orbiter when the fleet is retired later this year, passing over the city in favor of sites in New York, Los Angeles, outside Washington, and at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. “That’s wrong,” the president said. “We had nothing to do with it. The White House has had nothing to do with it. There’s a whole commission, a whole process, and that’s how the decision was made.” (The exchange takes place about four minutes into the video linked to above.) In testimony last week before a Senate committee, NASA administrator Charles Bolden said that the decision was “free of any political involvement,” although he also said he had briefed people “close to the president” on the issue.
The president’s statement has hardly assuaged critics of the decision. “Sadly, it seems partisan politics permeates this announcement,” Reps. Pete Olson and Ted Poe (R-TX) said in an CNN op-ed. Saying they are “demanding answers”, they added, “If, as we suspect, the measures were purely political, we will do everything in our power to make this right.” The two are among the 12 co-sponsors of HR 1536, which would override NASA’s selection and award Endeavour to Houston (giving Enterprise to LA and leaving New York empty-handed). They have not co-sponsored a competing bill, HR 1590, introduced by Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX), that would require the Smithsonian to loan Discovery to Houston for 15 years.
The curious headline of the day comes from National Journal: “Spending Bill Funds NASA Mission to the Moon”. The article reports on funding in the final FY11 continuing resolution that funds work on the Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle (MPCV) and Space Launch System (SLS), which combined will get no less than $3 billion in 2011. “The money will fund NASA’s Constellation Program,” the article claims, later referring to “the reauthorization of the Constellation Program” in the NASA authorization act last year. Strictly speaking, that’s not accurate: while MPCV is, to at least first order, a continuation of Orion, SLS is different from Ares, bigger in its initial iteration than Ares 1 but smaller than Ares 5. And a return to the Moon is not an overt goal of the administration’s exploration plan announced a year ago, which calls for instead a mission to a near Earth asteroid by 2025 and Mars orbit by the mid 2030s. Rep. Bill Posey (R-FL) said earlier this month he wants Congress to pass legislation that would “resume the goal” of a human return to the Moon.
Update 12:45 pm: the text of HR 1641, the bill introduced by Posey to make a lunar return NASA’s human spaceflight goal, is now available. (It was introduced last Friday but not posted on Thomas until some time this morning.) The “Reasserting American Leadership in Space Act” (or “REAL Space Act”) is primarily a set of findings about space exploration, with the key item at the end: “the National Aeronautics and Space Administration shall plan to return to the Moon by 2022 and develop a sustained human presence on the Moon, in order to promote exploration, commerce, science, and United States preeminence in space as a stepping stone for the future exploration of Mars and other destinations.” According to one report, Posey drafted the bill “in consultation with Mike Griffin”, the former NASA administrator.
April 20, 2011 at 7:13 am · Filed under States
Florida Senate president Mike Haridopolos, who is also seeking the Republican nomination to run against US Senator Bill Nelson in 2012, called for more support from the federal government for Florida’s space industry in a curious op-ed in the Orlando Sentinel on Wednesday. Haridopolos laments the impending layoff of 1,900 workers at the Kennedy Space Center as the shuttle program retires, but, he notes, since there is “still no clear continuing mission for NASA, contractor United Launch Alliance has no other choice.” Of course, it’s United Space Alliance that is laying off the shuttle workers, not ULA, which operates the Atlas and Delta rockets. He also claims that the $40 million promised to Florida workers last year by the White House has yet to show up, which he calls “a failure of leadership.” (No reason for the missing money is given, but one possibility is that the federal government didn’t have a final FY11 spending bill until last week.)
By contrast, he says, Florida is doing a much better job in supporting its space industry. “Despite limited resources, the Florida Legislature in 2010 increased space-program funding by more than 600 percent,” he writes. Space Florida did get $31 million in 2010, but about two-thirds of that was for one-time initiatives; new governor Rick Scott’s budget proposed $10 million for the agency in 2011, something not mentioned in the op-ed. He also cites “new aerospace jobs” that have come to Florida’s Space Coast as a result of space efforts, but most of the examples he gives are more “aero” than “space”, and some are neither, like 600 jobs for “Associated Telecommunications Management Systems” [sic], a company that is “the largest provider of pre-paid telephone service in the United States”, according to a local jobs site.
Even that $10 million for Space Florida may be in jeopardy. An editorial in Wednesday’s issue of Florida Today raises concerns that Space Florida’s budget could be combined with that other state economic development agencies and put under the direct control of Governor Scott. Citing Scott’s recent controversial decision to unilaterally kill plans for a high-speed rail project in the state, the editorial says, “There’s no reason Scott — who has no knowledge of the space industry and still hasn’t used his office to make a strong space commitment — could not do the same on space, rejecting ventures regardless of their benefit simply because he didn’t like them.” Even if he didn’t, the editorial adds, “the strangling maw of a super bureaucracy” could make it harder to win funding for space efforts in the state. To prevent that from happening, the editorial seeks support from… Sen. Haridopolos, who “should stop him [Scott] to ensure the agency maintains its ability to act quickly and aggressively to seek companies at a time when the shuttle program’s end will be a body slam to the Space Coast’s economy.”
April 19, 2011 at 6:36 am · Filed under Congress, NASA
On Friday the president signed into law the final fiscal year 2011 appropriations bill, ending an appropriations process that started over a year ago. Passage of the bill last week was greeted relatively quietly, with a rather generic statement of appreciation from NASA administrator Charles Bolden, who noted the bill gives NASA the funds to implement the programs in the authorization act despite “these tough fiscal times”. Lockheed Martin offered their thanks as well since the legislation provides a minimum of $1.2 billion for the Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle, the continuation of the Orion spacecraft the company was working on under Constellation.
But then there is the language in the appropriations bill about a “130-ton” heavy-lift launch vehicle. In a statement issued Monday, Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) took credit for that, saying he “added language to the final Continuing Resolution for 2011 that requires NASA to fully develop its heavy lift capability.” Last week Rep. Robert Aderholt (R-AL) said he had worked with Shelby and others to get that provision into the final bill. Shelby added the provision “saves over 500 jobs at the Marshall Space Flight Center”.
That language (specifically, that the heavy-lift vehicle funded in the bill “shall have a lift capability not less than 130 tons and which shall have an upper stage and other core elements developed simultaneously”) has raised concerns that it short-circuits the NASA authorization act last year that mandated a 70- to 100-ton vehicle that could later be upgraded to at least 130 tons. A congressional source familiar with the formulation of the legislation, though, said that’s not the case. Early versions of the language in the appropriations bill did call for an initial lift capacity of 130 tons, but that word was stricken from later versions. The language does require NASA to work simultaneously on the core elements as well as an upper stage that may be specific to the 130-ton version, but that work does not have to take place at the same pace, allowing NASA to focus more attention on an initial, smaller version while assuring Congress that it will evolve it later to the ultimate capacity.
April 15, 2011 at 7:30 am · Filed under Congress, NASA
In the immediate aftermath of NASA’s announcement Tuesday, officials from Ohio and Texas, who were both left empty-handed, reacted differently to the bad news: while Ohio officials criticized the decision on geographic grounds and immediately issued a letter to the Government Accountability Office (GAO) asking them to review the decision-making progress, Texas officials vented their frustration, pinning the blame on partisan politics. Now, though, Texas legislators are backing their anger with political action.
On Thursday 18 members of the state’s congressional delegation sent a letter to NASA administrator Charles Bolden asking a series of questions about the decisionmaking process and how Houston could be passed over for one of the four orbiters. “No city in the world deserves a shuttle more than Houston, certainly not New York,” Rep. Pete Olson said a release accompanying the letter. “Houston deserves answers to how this decision was made. Administrator Bolden has some explaining to do.”
In the text of the letter (also available here), the Texas delegation seems willing to admit that the Smithsonian, KSC, and even the California Science Center in Los Angeles are reasonable homes for shuttles, as they make no specific mention of them in the letter. But New York? That’s another story, apparently, as most of the questions are about the decision to award Enterprise to the Intrepid museum in New York City. “For what specific reasons was the Intrepid Sea, Air, and Space Museum in New York City chosen?” reads one question. “Are there any historical connections between NASA and the Intrepid Sea, Air, and Space Museum? Are there any historical connections between NASA and New York City in general?” reads another. Other questions focus on the logistics of getting the shuttle to the Intrepid museum and the costs involved.
The letter concludes with a warning: “If there is no rational explanation based on definable factors for the choice of the Intrepid museum in New York City, and that the transfer of the Enterprise to that location will cost significantly more than a transfer to the Johnson Space Center in Houston, we will do everything in our power in Congress, including legislation to prevent funding of the transfer, to stop this wasteful decision. ”
In fact, there’s already a move to override NASA’s decision. On Thursday Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) introduced HR 1536, titled “To provide for the disposition of the retiring Space Shuttles.” The text of the legislation is not yet posted, but according to the Los Angeles Times, the bill would “strip New York of its shuttle and give one to Houston.” It’s not immediately clear why Rep. Chaffetz, from a state not involved in the shuttle competition, introduced the bill, but it does have nine cosponsors, including members from Texas, Florida, and California.
Update 9:30 am: Rep. Chaffetz’s office has issued a press release about the legislation. In it, the congressman states, “Instead of relying on political guidance systems, these decisions must be steered by history and logic.” The legislation would give JSC “Shuttle Endeavor” [sic] while the California Science Center, which was to get Endeavour, would instead get Enterprise; the Smithsonian and KSC would keep Discovery and Atlantis, respectively.
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