Space Politics
Because sometimes the most important orbit is the Beltway…
Archive for May, 2011
May 11, 2011 at 6:00 am · Filed under Congress, Other
Yesterday we noted new legislation introduced last week to reform satellite export controls by giving the president the ability to remove satellite and related components from the US Munitions List (USML), although still prohibiting their export to China. However, some caution that the introduction of that legislation doesn’t mean reform is right around the corner.
During a meeting of the Export Controls Working Group of the FAA’s Commercial Space Transportation Advisory Committee (COMSTAC), congressional staffers, speaking on a not-for-attribution basis, warned that a couple of obstacles will hinder any near-term progress. One is the so-called “Section 1248 report”, after the section of the FY2010 defense authorization act that required the Defense Department to prepare “an assessment of the national security risks of removing satellites and related components from the United States Munitions List.” That report was due in April 2010, but only in the last few days has Congress received an “interim” report. That interim report, according to one staffer, concluded that there are “no unacceptable security risks” of moving commercial satellites and related components off the list. Until the administration releases a final report, not expected until late this year, though, that staffer expected Congress not to act on any reform effort. (Space News has more details on the details of that report.)
The second factor is the administration’s ongoing export control reform efforts, which seek to unify various export control lists and systems. (That work is one reason why the Section 1248 report is so late.) Such an effort is a major, and slow, process. “This is a momentous undertaking,” said a panelist. “Sisyphus had an easier job than what they’re attempting to do with this export control reform.” The thinking on Capitol Hill, according to the panelist, is that Congress prefers to wait to see how that reform effort works out before moving to make changes of its own. There’s also skepticism that the reform effort will work out as the administration has proposed: while there’s support for a unified IT system and even a single, tiered export control list, there’s less support for two other major aspects of the reform effort, creation of a single licensing agency and single enforcement agency.
Panelists also noted one of the challenges for proponents for export control reform has been the difficulty in identifying specific negative impacts on US industry caused by moving satellites and related components to the USML n the late 1990s. While the share of the commercial satellite market held by American manufacturers dropped after that change, other factors could also play a role in that change, and various reports on export control policy have not been able to quantify the its effect on American industry. What has changed minds on Congress about the issue, though, according to one staffer, is the introduction in recent years of “ITAR-free” satellites by European manufacturer Thales Alenia Space. Those satellites, which contain no US-built components, can be freely exported to China for launch there. “That was proof that control of satellites on the ITAR is working against US interests,” said a staffer.
“I think there is a lot of support for moving commercial satellites and related components off the list. I think it’s just a question of timing,” one panelist concluded. And that timing is not particularly urgent.
May 10, 2011 at 5:48 am · Filed under Congress, White House
Ah, export control reform. The space industry has talked about the subject for over a decade, since shortly after Congress put satellites and related components on the US Munitions List in the late 1990s, subjecting them to the far more rigorous requirements of ITAR. While there have procedural changes during this time that have helped streamline the export licensing process, efforts for more fundamental changes, including removing satellites and their components from the USML, have so far fallen short. But that doesn’t mean people haven’t stopped trying.
Last week Rep. C. A. “Dutch” Ruppersberger (D-MD) introduced HR 1727, the “Strengthening America’s Satellite Industry Act”. (The legislation was oddly squeezed in between two other unrelated bills introduced by Ruppersberger the same day, the Child Care Protection Act of 2011 and the Right Start Child Care and Education Act of 2011.) The bill covers a variety of issues associated with export controls, but the key provision of bill for the satellite industry is section 5, which states that “the President is authorized to remove satellites and related components from the United States Munitions List”. That’s similar to a provision in a State Department authorization bill in the previous Congress; that bill passed the House but died in the Senate. Both the older legislation and Ruppersberger’s new bill include language that would still ban the export of such components to China. If passed, the bill would likely support ongoing export control reform efforts by the Obama Administration, which seeks to reduce the number of items on the USML but increase protections on those items that remain.
Export control reform will also be featured this Thursday in a hearing by the full House Committee on Foreign Affairs, although it’s not clear if the hearing will get down to details such as satellites. Separately, the Export Controls Working Group of the FAA’s Commercial Space Transportation Advisory Committee (COMSTAC) will be meeting this afternoon, featuring a panel discussion on the “politics of export control” with two congressional staffers.
May 6, 2011 at 8:02 am · Filed under Congress, Other
Thursday morning the space subcommittee of the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee took up a topic that typically gets little attention: commercial space transportation, and the regulation thereof, as it examined the fiscal year 2012 budget proposal for the FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation (AST). The office’s proposed major budget increase ($26.6 million in 2012, a 75% increase over the $15.2 million it received in 2010) was the subject of considerable scrutiny by committee members, although a bigger, underlying problem may be a lack of familiarity with the office and its activities.
Some members of the committee expressed skepticism about the need for an enhanced AST budget. The office’s head, FAA associate administrator George Nield, cited a projected spike in commercial launch activity due to both commercial ISS cargo, and later crew, missions, as well as commercial suborbital spaceflight. Nield said he expects “several dozen” commercial launches that will require licenses or experimental permits from his office in 2012, primarily from suborbital ventures. That’s far more than the single-digit level of commercial launch activity overseen by AST for each of the last several years.
“You’re asking for us to increase your budget for a ‘what-if’,” Rep. Sandy Adams (R-FL) said to Nield towards the end of the hearing. “I have grave concerns about that.” Adams said that after another witness, Gerald Dillingham of the GAO, noted that his office could not justify the requested jump in spending. “We have argued that maybe incrementally, based on the industry, one could start making that move in that direction,” he said, referring to increasing AST’s budget, “rather than the ‘big bang theory’.” Adams was also far more combative than her colleagues on the committee, expressing frustration when she could not get what she thought was a simple answer on how long it took AST to provide a reentry license to SpaceX last year. (That was apparently because of some miscommunication between Adams and Nield, who had been trying to explain that the office issued the license about two weeks after receiving a complete application; Adams was citing one year, which may date back to the initial submission of the application that only much later was deemed substantially complete.)
Another area of attention was on the eight-year restriction on AST’s ability to issue safety regulations included in the Commercial Space Launch Amendments Act of 2004 and expires in December 2012. There are efforts by industry to extend that deadline given the lack of flight experience built up by commercial operators during that time. In fact, a provision tucked away at the end of HR 658, an FAA reauthorization bill passed by the House last month, changes that provision from eight years after enactment of the 2004 legislation to eight years after “the first licensed launch of a space flight participant”. There seemed to be little objection to that extension, although there was some discussion about why that restriction should be eight years long. Dillingham said it wasn’t clear to the GAO “what the basis was for the eight years”, while another witness, Henry Hertzfeld of George Washington University, suggested that in place of an “arbitrary” time limit, the extension should be based instead on indicators “of the maturity of the industry and the risks involved.”
One subcommittee member, Rep. David Wu (D-OR), seemed particularly concerned about the fact that commercial spaceflight is not held to the same rigorous safety standards as commercial aviation. “I am absolutely stunned about that characterization of the future of commercial human spaceflight,” he said, warning later that an accident involving a crewed commercial vehicle “could potentially flatten the space program for a period of years.” Nield responded that any form of transportation has risks and fatal accidents. “The nation needs to understand that that is part of the risk of exploring the unknown, of doing new things,” he said.
One topic that got very little discussion was a proposal in the 2012 budget proposal for AST for a $5-million low cost access to space prize. Subcommittee chairman Rep. Steven Palazzo (R-MS) suggested in his opening testimony that such efforts should be left to NASA. “It is my view that NASA is doing a more than sufficient job funding new technologies and capabilities through aggressive use of Space Act Agreements,” he said. Given the constrained fiscal environment, he added, “I question the wisdom of implementing another form of federal largesse.”
A general, if unsurprising, theme from the hearing, though, was that many members just aren’t familiar with the roles and responsibilities of AST. Part of that is no doubt because many of the subcommittee’s members, including Chairman Palazzo, are freshmen who are perhaps getting their first exposure to the office, but even more experienced members expressed misunderstandings about the role of the office and its future plans during the course of the hearing. As the office seeks additional funding for what it anticipates to be a much higher level of commercial activity, industry advocates may need to step up their outreach to Congress on just why those additional resources are necessary and important.
[Disclaimer: my employer does work for AST, but is not involved in licensing or permitting activities for the office, nor the development of Congressional testimony.]
May 5, 2011 at 7:05 am · Filed under Congress, NASA, White House
One of the few specific space policy provisions included in the final continuing resolution that funds the federal government through the rest of fiscal year 2011 has to do with cooperation with China–or, rather, prohibiting cooperation with China. The CR prevents NASA and OSTP from using any funds to “develop, design, plan, promulgate, implement, or execute a bilateral policy, program, order, or contract of any kind to participate, collaborate, or coordinate bilaterally in any way with China or any Chinese-owned company” unless specifically authorized in a future law. That also prevents NASA from using any funds “to effectuate the hosting of official Chinese visitors at facilities belonging to or utilized by” the space agency. That would appear to put the brakes on any prospects for cooperation with China, at least through this fiscal year.
However, in testimony before the CJS subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee on Wednesday, OSTP director John Holdren suggested that the administration has found a “loophole” in that ban, according to ScienceNow. The White House has concluded, he said, that the provision doesn’t extend to “prohibiting interactions that are part of the president’s constitutional authority to conduct negotiations.” That includes, he said, a bilateral agreement on scientific cooperation between the two countries that dates back to 1979.
Holdren, Space News reported, has pragmatic reasons for seeking cooperation with China on space exploration in particular, including a future human expedition to Mars. “If China is going to be, by 2030, the biggest economy in the world… it could certainly be to our benefit to share the costs of such an expensive venture with them and with others,” he said.
That did not sit well with some members of the subcommittee, including chairman Frank Wolf (R-VA), who has been very critical of China, in particular its human-rights record. An “irate” Wolf, as described by Space News, criticized the idea of Sino-American space cooperation, “repeatedly pounding a hand against the table top in front of him.” However, according to ScienceNow, Wolf appeared to accept Holdren’s constitutional explanation, asking for consultation on “a case-by-case basis” when any administration dealing with China might conflict with the law. By contrast, Rep. John Culberson (R-TX), another subcommittee member, was not assuaged at all by Holdren’s statements, warning Holdren that “you’re endangering your funding and NASA’s funding” by contemplating any cooperation with China. “You have a huge problem on your hands.”
May 3, 2011 at 7:39 pm · Filed under Congress, NASA, Other
A few space policy items from the last few days you might have missed given the other news:
Nearly two years after being named to lead a committee to study the nation’s human spaceflight plans, Norm Augustine remains concerned about the funding allocated to those now-revised efforts. “I think with regard to this year’s budget, the match is reasonable,” he said in an interview with MSNBC. “But if we’re to have a program of the type that we described as attractive in the report that we put out, there’s not enough money in the out years to do it.” If that additional funding, on the order of $3 billion a year, is added, Augustine says the agency’s current effort is “the right program, in my judgment.”
Augustine added that he’s optimistic about the prospects of commercial spaceflight, saying “we will eventually have widespread tourism into orbit”. He also appears to advocate for propellant depots, saying the government should provide contracts to commercial firms to transport those propellants into orbit in a manner analogous to the airmail contracts of the 1920s. As for NASA’s ongoing commercial crew efforts, Augustine said that is progressing “better than I expected”.
Augustine acknowledges that some space veterans “and some of my most admired friends” don’t agree with that plan, citing in particular Neil Armstrong. Another would likely be Gene Cernan, who told the Houston Chronicle that, unlike Augustine, he doesn’t “have a lot of confidence” in some elements of the commercial sector to take over transporting astronauts to LEO. While some companies, he says, are “highly qualified”, others are “young entrepreneurs with a lot of money, and for them it’s kind of like a hobby”, an apparent reference to SpaceX in particular (who he does not mention by name.) He adds that he thinks that “there are wiser heads in Congress and I believe they will prevail”, apparently through making sure NASA develops the heavy-lift vehicle included in the NASA authorization act last year.
On Sunday, Florida Today examined what happened to the $40 million in economic aid promised to the Space Coast to help mitigate the effects of the end of the shuttle program. That funding was promised by President Obama in a speech at the Kennedy Space Center last year, but last week the newspaper reported the funding was not included in the final FY11 continuing resolution that Congress passed last month. The funding was to come from NASA’s Cross-Agency Support account, but when funding for that was cut by $83 million over 2010 levels, the workforce funding bore the brunt of the cut.
The article goes on to curiously note that the workforce funding was not included in either the agency’s 2012 budget proposal or in the House budget resolution. However, there would be no reason to include it in the 2012 budget request since the $40 million was a one-time item to be funded only for 2011 (and FY11 spending levels were not finalized for about two months after the FY12 proposal was released), and the House budget resolution, which also came out before FY11 was wrapped up, did not go into that level of detail.
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