Campaign '12, Lobbying, NASA

Disappointed advocates, advocating scientists

Don’t count the members of the space advocacy group the Space Frontier Foundation fans of either the Democratic or Republican parties’ positions on space. Last week they issued a press release critical of the Republican platform’s space language, suggesting it was as odds with broader party ideology. “NASA seems to be one Big Government program many Republicans love,” the Foundation’s statement reads, saying that while the platform in general is critical of federal government programs, it has “nothing but hackneyed praise for NASA, and doesn’t even mention the increasing role of the private sector.” And, in a statement earlier this week, the Foundation criticized the lack of language about space in the Democratic platform: “At least the platform committee didn’t waste any words. But when it comes to actual substance, they earned the same failing grade as the Republicans.”

While the Space Frontier Foundation was criticizing either the lack of space language or its big-government focus, planetary scientists have been focused on a more tactical objective: winning additional funding for NASA’s planetary science program, which the administration sought to cut by 20 percent in its FY2013 budget request. “Right now the problem is the Administration in the form of Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the Office of Science Technology Policy (OSTP),” said the Division for Planetary Sciences (DPS) of the American Astronomical Society in a statement this week. “While Congress can give planetary exploration extra money on a year-by-year basis, the OMB five-year planning budget can hamstring NASA’s execution of any Congressionally-enhanced planetary program. We need to engage OMB and OSTP and push for the inclusion of five-year budget planning levels up to or above the FY12 level of $1.5B.”

DPS is urging its members to send physical letters (not emails) to key officials in OMB and OSTP urging them to increase NASA’s planetary funding as they work on the proposed FY2014 budgets, offering sample letters and contact information for those officials. DPS is coordinating this effort with The Planetary Society (which has its own “action alert” with a September 10 deadline) and the Planetary Science Section of the American Geophysical Union.

20 comments to Disappointed advocates, advocating scientists

  • Robert G. Oler

    Beating up on party platforms is like well beating up on a dead horse…its useless..Party platforms are something from another time; they are meaningless.

    There is however room to beat up on both the parties for their space “thoughts” …and although an Obama partisan I will start with him.

    Obama’s acceptance speech was “good” and there were some moments in it which were really wonderful (the last 10 minutes) but how little space and human spceflight in general “whirl” around in the mind of “ordinary” people can be seen by his treatment of it in the passage about American jobs coming back etc. ie there was none

    Obama talked correctlyin my view how the car industry “bailout” has been a good thing at least its worked out OK (I still dont know what I would have recommended to a POTUS had I been there it is a complicated subject) but as he went on with heralding that effort there was no “pivot” to thejobs of he future and there he could have trumpted well his administrations use of the commercial cargo and crew programs…

    BUT either 1) the folks who wrote the speech and the POTUS who proofed and edited it have an “everypersons” attitude about human spaceflight (meaning none) or 2) they didnt think that it would resonate with the American people…I asked a GOP operative (who Whittington and Kolker have met) who is a classmate about this and his reply was to laugh. “He (Obama) would say ‘and SpaceX delivered cargo to the station the first private company to do that ‘ and people would say “what”?”

    I disagree I think that a good wordsmith (and this guy is) could have put together some prose which would have done a Kennedyesque approach to it…but in the end the reality is that the American people have simply dropped out of the loop of real space efforts and it is going to be hard to reengage them and party platforms are boring anyway.

    There is a whole group of people, another blog has a story “a nation of quiters” because the US didnt want to do the last Apollo missions, who cannot seem to move past their “space junkie ” status and look at the hard numbers about what human spaceflight does or doesnt do for the economy…there might come a time when that changes but right now with the programs as they are mostly structured the reality is that most human spaceflight “cost’ money and doesnt really return a lot.

    The commercial contracts “might” change that (at least I hope) but right now…thats not the case and hence the people writing these platforms really dont care…

    but as I noted above they are meaningless. RGO

  • Robert G. Oler

    I should add this. While Obama’s speech left some to be desired really it was far better then Willards which more or less said nothing.

    One can get a sense from the last four years of where Obama would go in general and in specific on space policy. in the latter there would be no SLS, there would be no “desination” mentality and there would be a focus on making the space station do “something” that earns the bucks we as a nation put into it.

    Go look at Willard’s notes on space and his notes in general on his administration and really you get almost nothing. and that is by design. Everything about his campaign is “I’ll tell you later” or ” lets do this when I am elected”…and the lines he has written both in the platform and in some other arenas which have been covered on this blog are simply “word salad”. with no croutons. It is just babble designed to let anyone think whatever they want to think.

    What is really needed and one hopes in a second term Obama lets Charlie do this…is a complete reorg of NASA (and most of the federal government)…if someone wanted to build SLS this is about the dumbest way to do it (and is by large measure the Obama administration willing to waste 3 billion dollars a year on SLS/Orion because the effort is wasted anyway)…MSL was an overpriced dud and JWST will suffer the same fate…(if it works)

    anyway the sad thing abotu an Obama second term is that I doubt Lori Garver has a major reorg in her. but maybe.

    (and an Obama second term seems more and more likely as the Romney convention bounce fades and Obama gets his…even Rasmussen has willard fading.)

    RGO

  • Dex

    Smart speech writers and tacticians could have used the success of SpaceX in many ways. It is very straight forward to wrap it in the flag, talk about it being a great example of innovation and entrepreneurship, etc.

    The Republicans (wishing to separate themselves from Bush ) could have shoveled praise on the program, talked about how smaller government influence enabled the creation of a new launch system for 1/4 the estimated cost for the government to do it and put the question to the Democrats of why not trying that in some other places.

    The Democrats could talk up having a vision for a future, nurturing young companies, filled with bright 20-somethings interested in a person’s capability and ideas and not their religion, gender, or sexuality. Drive home the idea that a culture based on merit that does not discriminate can do amazing things.

  • Googaw

    “He (Obama) would say ‘and SpaceX delivered cargo to the station the first private company to do that ‘ and people would say “what”?”

    RGO, your friend observes correctly. Astronaut fans are caught between a rock and a hard place:

    (1) “Infrastructure” like ISS, Dragon, Bigelow’s “visions” to “privatize” this kind of “commerce”. (Yawn). Nobody outside the astronaut cult and a few porkers care about these doll houses of future past. (Scratch neck). After five decades of trying to convince the practical people in real space commerce and security of the economic value of our diapered heroes, they are more than ever convinced of their liability. (Check watch). The only people still pushing HSF-based “infrastructure” come from that sect of the cult that still believes in central planning according to the dogmas of old sci-fi and Cold War economic fantasies. (Scan room to find all the exit signs). There is no wordsmithing of any talent that could now make normal Americans support major federal funding of such plans, just as no wordsmithing could have saved Newt from his sci-fi oblivion. (Giggle. Yawn).

    (2) Manned missions to the asteroids, Moon, Mars. Much more exciting to the general public. Far more prestige and pride would be attached to such firsts than to the LEO tail-chasing of commercial crew. So this is increasingly the priority for HSF. Witness Obama referring to Orion in the future tense, and ISS in the past tense. To the extent Romney supports HSF at all, this would also be his rhetorical priority. But any politicians who actually funded such highly frivolous spectaculars would be setting themselves up for political damage, and destining that very project for Constellation-style oblivion, in our budget-cutting era. So beyond SLS and Orion, which are really there to keep the solid fuel production lines in business, these remain mere “goals” and “visions” and slick slideware.

    In short, regardless of who is elected, ISS and the whole “capabilities” approach that has dominated NASA since Apollo will be slowly phased out, and no new HSF starts will be made in the foreseeable future. What will remain of NASA HSF will be the Cheshire Cat’s grin — praise of our grand HSF past and hand-waving rhetoric about the grand HSF of the future, always conventiently just beyond the budget horizon. And the increasingly most visible and embarassing part of this grin will be the blog commenter fringe: the futile astro-lowballing of the UFO hunter and his faithful followers.

  • mike shupp

    [shrug] If human beings are NEVER going to live off earth’s surface — an assumption dear to planetary scientists, I gather — how much MUST we spend on planetary science? Very little, it seems to me. Oh, yes, it would be nice to map Titan in more detail and run rovers across Mars to survey its geological features, but this can be done in 2112 or 2212 as well as in 2012 — outer space isn’t going to change that much in a century or two — and meanwhile we can spend the money on things of more real interest to scientists, such as particle physics. [/shrug]

  • Heinrich Monroe

    If human beings are NEVER going to live off earth’s surface — an assumption dear to planetary scientists, I gather — how much MUST we spend on planetary science?

    Um, what exactly determines humans living off the Earth’s surface as a national priority? I’ve never seen the words colonization and settlement in any legislation or budget proposal. To “live off the Earth’s surface” means more than to “survive off the Earth’s surface”. We do the latter right now. Newt got laughed off the dais when he brought up lunar colonies. In fact, the reverse could be argued. To the extent that colonization and settlement of space aren’t national priorities, how much MUST we spend on human space flight?

    To the extent that space settlement isn’t an established national priority, running astronauts across Mars to plant flags, leave bootprints, hit golf balls and have kids there can wait to 2112 or 2212 as well. The habitability of Mars isn’t going to change that much in a century or two.

    This is just clueless bloviation. Grousing about how policies for national expenditures don’t meet the priorities of individuals. I just wish people would get serious about the value of human space flight, at least in some form that can be recognized by our leaders. Until our leaders recognize some importance of space colonization and settlement, such bloviation is just noise.

  • Robert G. Oler

    Googaw wrote @ September 8th, 2012 at 11:22 pm

    I am not sure I agree with your post.

    I would make a few points.

    First the NASA that has existed since the lost of Columbia has not been focused on anything related to the Nation;but on things related to NASA.

    There are a LOT of alternative histories where the NASA before the loss of Columbia really changes history and the track of where the HSF effort goes…there is a lot of alternate history where after Columbia the problems that caused Columbia are fixed and the program goes back to being something USEFUL not just a jobs program.

    The problem is that the project went back to an Apollo mentality and then got worse.

    Look we have not had a fair analysis of what people can do in space…we have not had that but we are going in my view to get a start on trying to find out.

    I dont think that voyages to Mars etc are more then just (right now) entertainment…What they are are make work that is hyped.

    In the end the economic problems of The Republic are fixable…we have had a bad few decades interrupted by the Clinton years of trickle down economics which have stifled but not killed the country. when we reverse that and focus federal expenditures on things that work for the people of the country and not funnel money into selective industries…we will see a recovery like non before. Romney is the last stand of the GOP corporate machine…when he losses we turn our back on those theories and move on into a new better era. Spaceflight, human spaceflight will be thanks to visionaries like Musk; part of it.

    Robert G. Oler

  • I’ve never seen the words colonization and settlement in any legislation or budget proposal.

    How soon we forget the Space Settlement Act. Not that it had any effect whatsoever.

  • Robert G. Oler

    Sorry

    this line “First the NASA that has existed since the lost of Columbia…”

    should be “first the NASA that has existed since the loss of Challenger….”

    the editor regrets the error. RGO

  • Gooogaw

    Look we have not had a fair analysis of what people can do in space…

    50 years and nearly $500 billion have been put into trying to demonstrate this. After all that time and money, they are still useless and still clad in diapers. After all that time and money, real commercial and security and science efforts in space still don’t want to have anything to do with them. The reasonable observer must call such enormous time and effort wasted on this retro-futuristic Luddism much more than fair to the astronaut cult.

    There is one group that this has been extremely unfair to. One group that has been astronomically screwed by this. The taxpayers.

  • Robert G. Oler

    Gooogaw wrote @ September 9th, 2012 at 4:27 pm

    Look we have not had a fair analysis of what people can do in space…

    50 years and nearly $500 billion have been put into trying to demonstrate this. ”

    yes I agree but and it is a big but…the reality is that the 10 billion a year has always been spent by an aging federal agency that is more interested in justifying its existence then expanding national horizons…and as long as we continue to do that we will get the same exact results.

    SpaceX has so far demonstrated “there is another way” RGO

  • Heinrich Monroe

    How soon we forget the Space Settlement Act. Not that it had any effect whatsoever.

    Ah, delightful. That was in 1988, when George Brown did a Newt Gingrich. Know what happened to that bill? It died in subcommittee. Never was even voted on by Congress. It was never really legislation nor in a budget proposal. No wonder why we forget about it …

  • Heinrich Monroe

    Let me amend that. Although the Act went nowhere by itself, some parts of it were evidently incorporated into the 1989 NASA Authorization bill, signed by the President. I can’t find that language. If that’s the case, then yes, there indeed was space settlement language once in congressional legislation, albeit almost 25 years ago. Good catch.

  • NeilShipley

    Well put RGO. So far, NASA has wasted all opportunities to expand beyond leo and demonstrate what could be done by HSF.
    Perhaps Musk can do better. He’s showing that SpaceX has the capability to do the hard yards, but so far we can only rely on that as evidence that they can go further. Elon talks about Mars and wanting to make mankind an interplanetary species but so far I think he sees them as assisters, not leaders. Perhaps that will change or maybe I’m not reading the tea leaves properly.
    I’m hopeful that SpaceX and Bigelow continue together and really work up a plan to get to Mars. FH and BA330’s. Who knows!

  • NeilShipley

    Gooogaw wrote @ September 9th, 2012 at 4:27 pm

    ‘There is one group that this has been extremely unfair to. One group that has been astronomically screwed by this. The taxpayers.’

    Another view is possible here. If space was such an important issue to the ‘taxpayer’, then why is it that Congress (i.e. taxpayers’ representatives) have not be demanding solid progress in your terms? Could it be that the taxpayer is quite happy knowing that NASA is spending their dollars doing the work they do and providing jobs; not necessarily what many who have a specific interest in Space HSF, exploration, et al, want!?! Just a thought!

  • common sense

    Oh my. So here we stand next to sequestration right? And we are going to ask for “more” money. Please tell me I just did not understand. That’s fine. For? Planetary Science? You know, don’t get me wrong I think all science should get a budget hike in general. But let’s see, say I support it. Then who’s next? How about those who will lose their jobs because of sequestration? Will they support Planetary Science?

    Now if some one was to say we’ll cut SLS/MPCV out of their misery and take some in sequestration and the rest redirected if anything is left… Kinda maybe. But is this going to happen?

    Or was someone seen waving at Kepler or something? And *I* think Kepler is fantastic stuff.

    Anywho. Back to SciFi I guess.

  • Coastal Ron

    NeilShipley wrote @ September 9th, 2012 at 10:30 pm

    Elon talks about Mars and wanting to make mankind an interplanetary species but so far I think he sees them as assisters, not leaders.

    I think that’s a fair assessment.

    Musk sees SpaceX as being a transportation company – they will get you and your payload where you’re going. For now that’s LEO to GEO, but later it will be to the surface of Mars (and points in between).

    I haven’t heard any talk about SpaceX building exploration-specific hardware.

  • Vladislaw

    Neil wrote:

    “NASA has wasted all opportunities to expand beyond leo and demonstrate what could be done by HSF.”

    But if it expanded .. and hundreds of people were flying to LEO for work and play… would astronauts still be national heros for NASA to take advantage of? Would NASA still be relevant if spaceflight was common and just another job? Would the congressional members who benefit from the status quo .. still reap the same benefits?

    Was it wasted or has it been the plan all along?

  • NeilShipley

    Vladislaw wrote @ September 11th, 2012 at 3:45 pm

    Zounds Watson, you could be onto something here! (with apologies to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

  • Heinrich Monroe

    would astronauts still be national heros for NASA to take advantage of

    Get with it. It’s been a long time since astronauts were real national heroes. Human space flight at NASA is not relevant, because it’s already just another job. Congressional members never benefit from the “status quo”. They benefit from the dollars shoveled into their districts. As to the latter, you betcha it’s been the plan all along, and it will continue to be.

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