Congress, Lobbying, NASA

Packing the house for a Senate hearing

Adding to a busy week, the Senate Commerce Committee is holding a hearing Wednesday afternoon titled “The Path from LEO to Mars”. The hearing will start with an update on NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover, followed by a second panel of witnesses to discuss NASA’s “exploration portfolio” from low Earth orbit to Mars.

The Planetary Society is hoping to get a big public turnout for this hearing. On Monday they sent emails to members of the organization in the DC area (as well as a blog post), informing them about the hearing and encouraging them to attend. “These are the Senators who help determine funding within NASA,” the Society notes (although the overlap between members of the Commerce and Appropriations committees is limited, with Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) the best example.) “The more public interest they perceive, the more likely they are to support these potentially game-changing missions to Mars and beyond.”

The real question, though, will be how many committee members show up: even though this is a full committee hearing, odds are most members will skip it because of other hearings, floor action, or other events off the Hill, as has traditionally been the case with space-related hearings by the Commerce committee. Unless, of course, getting an update on the activities of NASA’s latest Mars rover piques their, well, curiosity.

21 comments to Packing the house for a Senate hearing

  • In response to the House Science, Space & Technology Committee hearing scheduled for this Wednesday morning, the Space Frontier Foundation is offering a $200 prize for the joke or cartoon that best illustrates how ridiculous SLS is:
    http://www.facebook.com/events/283737588393765/

  • Big NASA rocket
    Going where others can go
    Too late to matter

    Sorry, I thought it was a haiku contest. :-(

  • There once was an SLS
    The Senate thought it was the best
    But confronted by the peoples with in-space fuel depots
    Its logic could not pass the test

    Sorry, I thought it was a limerick contest. :-(

  • common sense

    Slowly Languishing Spacecraft

    Maximum Probability of Cancellation Vehicle

    Yeah.

  • Mark R. Whittington

    Re SFF offering money to insult SLS: It’s come to this. Having run out of arguments, these people are reduced to childish name calling. Sad.

  • Robert Oler's IPAD

    Mark Whittington. Mocking SLS in any fashion is a good thing..

    Written while sitting on the beach at GLS

    Robert G Oler

  • vulture4

    It has come to this. Spaceflight is nothing but a satire of itself.

    When I heard the announcement in 2004 that Shuttle and all reusable launch development was cancelled, that ISS and all manned flight international collaboration was to be cancelled, that all our precious tax dollars would be poured into “Apollo on Steroids”, I knew in that instant we were headed for disaster, like an express train headed for a cliff. I told everyone who would listen, but it accomplished nothing.

  • NeilShipley

    Mark R. Whittington wrote @ September 11th, 2012 at 5:57 pm

    Some take themselves too seriously. Methinks you protesteth too much!!

  • NeilShipley

    Pretty relevant the fact that they hold a meeting to try to determine the science missions that SLS is required for. Usually you fit a mission to a vehicle, not the other way around unless you’re confident you can create a market a la SpaceX FH. I notice that they have one customer for their new vehicle and SLS is still looking for one. Not even NASA has a mission for the vehicle. Telling!

  • MrEarl's iPad

    The missions for SLS has been and continue to be developed. They will be announced in late November, early December to take it out of the hyper political environment of a presidential election.

  • Fred Willett

    Announcing a mission for SLS is one thing.
    Funding it is something else.

  • Robert G. Oler

    MrEarl’s iPad wrote @ September 11th, 2012 at 11:00 pm

    The missions for SLS has been and continue to be developed.>>

    They are essentially farcical. First none of them are funded; ie they are viewgraphs but little or not money has been allocated to them. Second they are mostly just goofy.

    my favorite continues to be the solar power demonstration that JSC cooked up…you know the one that was 5-12 billion dollars for what 50KW of power…

    these are people who have far to much time on their hands; doing technowelfare coming up with viewgraphs that will never be more then that…

    Robert G. Oler (had to come back to Santa Fe to get enough secure bandwidth for a video conference on the other side of the world…back to GLS and the beach today)

  • I’ll be watching the House hearing on SLS/Orion at 10 AM EDT.

    The question is whether at 2 PM EDT to watch the Senate Commerce Hearing on Mars or the Senate space subcommittee hearing on human and robotic exploration. I think I’ll go for the space subcommittee.

    What’s your preference?

  • @Mr Earl
    The missions for SLS has been and continue to be developed. They will be announced in late November, early December to take it out of the hyper political environment of a presidential election.
    Doesn’t matter how many missions “continue to be developed”, the money ain’t there to do them. However, we could have the money to develop the required payloads for human beyond LEO operations without SLS and also actually do the missions using commercial market rockets. Developing payloads (like anything else) takes money, an issue you have always blithely ignored. Unfortunately, developing SLS is more important to people like you than actually having the capability to go beyond LEO.

  • Dark Blue Nine

    “The missions for SLS has been and continue to be developed.”

    There’s no ongoing development for any SLS exploration missions outside MPCV lunar flybys. Per NASA’s own documentation, there is no budget available for such developments until fiscal year 2025, under the current budget or even if the funding laid out in the 2010 NASA Authorization Act was restored. Download and absorb page 7 in this presentation:

    http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=38348

    “They will be announced in late November, early December to take it out of the hyper political environment of a presidential election.”

    Unless NASA leadership is stupid enough to think that “we’re going to keep working on SLS and MPCV for the next 13 years and then maybe we’ll get around to building a lander or something else useful for a mission sometime in the next 20-odd years” is a worthwhile announcement, nothing is going to be announced.

    And even if NASA leadership was that stupid, the White House isn’t going to let them announce anything substantively new until sequestration is settled by January, and they know whether department and agency toplines are getting whacked 8% or not.

  • NASA Watcher

    Unless NASA leadership is stupid enough to think that …

    And even if NASA leadership was that stupid …

    You can fill in those sentences with whatever you want.

    After watching the hearing, I can only say that yes, NASA really is that stupid.

  • reader

    And the answer to the real question : less than 10%

  • Heinrich Monroe

    The missions for SLS has been and continue to be developed. They will be announced in late November, early December to take it out of the hyper political environment of a presidential election.

    That’s actually a fundamentally true statement, though as pointed out, once you get past the first couple of bare-bones launches, you can’t obviously afford SLS payloads. That doesn’t mean you can’t develop mission concepts. The mission calendar for Constellation was developed in some detail, long before there were any plans for any real money for those missions. But the election has NASA planning being done really close to their chest. This isn’t the time to assert “vision”.

    If you don’t have a notional mission calendar, you can bet you’re not going to get any money for notional missions. But yes, NASA is regularly stupid enough to think that if you have a notional mission calendar, then you might get money for them. There will be handwaving about lunar telerobotics, Lagrange point habitats and NEO trips.

    Of course, if Romney is elected, all those notional plans will get thrown out the window.

  • common sense

    “Of course, if Romney is elected, all those notional plans will get thrown out the window.”

    Except he won’t . Sorry DCSCA.

  • Googaw

    Of course, if Romney is elected, all those notional plans will get thrown out the window.

    They’ll get defenstrated either way. The only difference is that Obama will do it quietly, while Romney will brag about it.

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