Space Politics
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Archive for Congress
November 17, 2009 at 7:05 am · Filed under Congress
An intriguing hearing has popped up on the schedule of the aviation subcommittee of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee: “Commercial Space Transportation”. No other details about the hearing are listed, other than the date (December 2, 10 am).
The overall T&I committee is chaired by James Oberstar (D-MN), best known in space circles for his opposition five years ago to the Commercial Space Launch Amendments Act. When Oberstar’s name entered circulation a year ago as a potential Secretary of Transportation, I noted at the time that space had not been a priority for him for several years, since an abortive effort in early 2005 to roll back some of the provisions of the CSLAA. What’s triggered this hearing, and how involved Oberstar is with it, isn’t certain. I’ve heard from one source that the hearing will focus on a 2006 GAO report on commercial space transportation commissioned by Oberstar, although that report largely supported the FAA’s existing work on regulating commercial space transportation.
November 17, 2009 at 6:57 am · Filed under Congress
The House Science and Technology Committee has released the list of witnesses for Thursday’s hearing on “The Growth of Global Space Capabilities”:
- Marty Hauser, Vice President, Washington Operations & Research and Analysis, The Space Foundation
- J.P. Stevens, Vice President, Space Systems, Aerospace Industries Association
- Scott Pace, Director, Space Policy Institute, George Washington University
- Kai-Uwe Schrogl, Director, European Space Policy Institute
- Ray A. Williamson, Executive Director, Secure World Foundation
Speaking Saturday at the SpaceVision 2009 conference in Tucson, Arizona, Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, chair of the space subcommittee, said her committee was planning a series of three hearings on space issues through the end of the year “where we’re going to try and really drive home the importance of our human spaceflight program to our country.” This hearing is the first of three: the other two, she said after her talk, will deal with safety (comparing Ares/Orion with commercial systems) and jobs. She added that the committee would wait until at least January before starting work in earnest on a new NASA authorization bill, depending on when the White House announces its decision on human space exploration policy, and what that decision is.
Giffords, while supporting President Obama and the White House on general issues, expressed concern that he isn’t necessarily getting the best advice. “I feel very confident that NASA is important to the president,” she said, but also noted, “I think he’s doing a great job, but has not necessarily surrounded himself with people really close to him in his inner circle who are space people.”
November 16, 2009 at 8:34 pm · Filed under Congress, Other
On Thursday Time magazine released its annual “best inventions” list. Topping the list as the best invention of the year, in the minds of the magazine’s staff, were NASA’s Ares rocket, dubbing the Ares 1 “a machine that can launch human beings to cosmic destinations we’d never considered before”. Nitpickers would note that the Ares 1 could not qualify as the “smartest and coolest thing built in 2009″ since the full-fledged Ares 1 is still in the design stage: only a suborbital prototype, the Ares 1-X, was built and flown this year.
That did not stop the chairman of the House Science and Technology Committee, Bart Gordon, and the chair of the space subcommittee, Gabrielle Giffords, from praising Time’s selection in a press release today. “This recognition by TIME is further proof that in spite of a challenging budgetary environment, NASA continues to demonstrate technological leadership,” Gordon said in the statement. “I’d like to congratulate NASA and all of the people who have worked on the development of the Ares rockets.”
Coming from the opposite direction, though, was the Space Frontier Foundation, who sharply criticized the selection in its own press release today. Foundation co-founder Rick Tumlinson called the award a “publicity hoax”, saying, “There was no boy in the balloon and there most definitely was no Ares rocket launched in Florida last month.”
While Time might have considered Ares the invention of the year, it’s not a sentiment shared by its readers, who have the option online of rating the importance of each of the 50 inventions profiled on a 1-to-100 scale. Ares comes in tied for 13th place (as of early Monday evening), with an average rating of 72. That puts it well behind the frontrunner, an electronic eye to allow the blind to see, a low-power but bright lightbulb, and a roof shingle/solar panel. Ares, though, is doing much better than another top-50 invention, the no-punt offense, whose standing probably plummeted (in New England, at least) after Sunday night’s Pats-Colts game.
November 14, 2009 at 10:01 am · Filed under Congress
One of the more prominent space supporters in the Senate won’t be leaving as soon as previously planned. As both the Washington Post and The Hill report, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) plans to remain in the Senate at least through the Texas gubernatorial primary next March. Hutchison, who is running for governor against incumbent Rick Perry, had previously said she should resign in the fall to devote herself full-time to the campaign. Hutchison is the ranking member of the Senate Commerce Committee, with oversight of NASA.
November 12, 2009 at 12:36 pm · Filed under Congress
The space subcommittee of the House Science and Technology Committee has announced a hearing next week titled “The Growth of Global Space Capabilities: What’s Happening and Why It Matters”. The hearing will be Thursday the 19th at 10 am; no list of witnesses or hearing charter is available yet.
November 11, 2009 at 1:09 pm · Filed under Congress, NASA, White House
If you recall last week’s post about a bipartisan “Dear Colleagues” letter to drum up support for increasing NASA’s budget, there’s a minor update. According to an updated blog post on NSS.org, the deadline for obtaining additional signatures, which had been November 5th, has been pushed back to November 17th. There’s no reason for the change, although one wonders if members of Congress were a little too distracted last week with the health care bill debate to focus their attention on the space agency. The number of cosigners listed has gone up to 40, with roughly an even split between Republicans and Democrats.
November 9, 2009 at 6:51 am · Filed under Congress, NASA, White House
Last Monday Sen. Bill Nelson claimed that the White House would make a decision about NASA’s future by around Thanksgiving, based on a recent visit he had with the president on the subject. However, in an interview with Florida Today, Nelson appears to be telling a different story. Asked about the timeline for a decision, Nelson said that “sooner is better than later” but added that “I simply do not know” when such decisions would be announced. One can rationalize the two statements by concluding that Nelson said that he thought a decision would be made by Thanksgiving, but not announced until some unspecified later date, or that he was misinterpreted in one interview (or both).
Nelson added that he was “absolutely” convined that he and other space supporters in Congress could win over members and convince them to appropriate up to an additional $3 billion a year for NASA. Why he felt this way, when previous efforts to increase NASA’s budget by smaller amounts have failed, wasn’t discussed.
November 6, 2009 at 1:20 pm · Filed under Congress, NASA
Yesterday the Senate passed its version of HR 2847, the Commerce, Justice, and Science appropriations bill, which includes NASA. The bill funds NASA at $18.686 billion, the same level as requested in the White House budget proposal and more than $480 million above what the House passed earlier this year. This passage was spun in some places, like a Houston Chronicle article, as a vote to “restore” funding cut by the House; however, the Senate had never gone along with the House cut in the first place. Moreover, the final budget still needs to be worked out in conference between the House and the Senate, with no guarantee that the Senate’s funding level will prevail.
November 5, 2009 at 1:07 pm · Filed under Congress, Lobbying, White House
While Save Space has gone into overtime in its bid to solicit a half-million letters to the White House on space exploration policy, members of Congress are also writing letters, to both fellow members of Congress as well as the White House. The Orlando Sentinel reported Wednesday on the latest effort by Congressman Bill Posey (R-FL) to extend the space shuttle past its current retirement in early 2011. Posey’s letter to Congressional appropriators asks them to include language in the final version of the appropriations legislation that funds NASA that would keep the agency from carrying out anything that “would preclude the possibility of flying the Shuttle beyond the current flight manifest”. Keeping the shuttle flying has a been a key issue for him to reduce the gap and its effects on the Space Coast’s economy: earlier this year he and Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) introduced HR 1962, a bill that would authorize NASA to continue flying the shuttle trough 2015 (that bill, though, has not gone anywhere since its introduction in April.)
Posey has also joined a separate effort, led by Reps. Suzanne Kosmas (D-FL) and Ken Calvert (R-CA), to get members of Congress to sign onto a letter to President Obama for additional NASA funding. “We must ensure the President works with Congress to take this unique and fleeting opportunity to show a true commitment to NASA,” the “Dear Colleague” letter states, according to a copy published by the National Space Society. The deadline for signing onto the letter was today; ten members had done so according to the NSS posting last week.
October 29, 2009 at 7:03 am · Filed under Congress, NASA
It should be little surprise that many of the same members of Congress who issued comments about the Augustine committee report last week also issued statements after the successful test flight of the Ares 1-X rocket Wednesday. Indeed, they were able in many cases to repeat the same themes as their comments last week. For example, Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ), chair of the House Science and Technology Committee’s space subcommittee, had this to say in response to the launch: “It is one more significant achievement for the Constellation program, and a clear indication that NASA is on track with its human space exploration program.”
Congressman Bill Posey (R-FL) reiterated his call for more funding for NASA: “It’s my hope that the President will now give NASA the resources it needs to close the space gap.”
On the Senate side, Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) said the launch was a vindication for Constellation: “If we are to maintain our leadership in space, the work on Constellation must continue with the further development of the Ares vehicles, which provide the safest and most capable transport of our astronauts to the space station, the Moon, and beyond. Without Ares, the backbone of the Constellation program, there will be no successful U.S. human exploration program at NASA.”
Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) called the launch an “important milestone” but noted it’s not the only thing that needs to happen for the program to be successful. “We have many issues to resolve in charting the path forward for the U.S. space program, but this test and the upcoming launch of the space shuttle next month proves NASA still has the ‘Right Stuff.’ Now we need to work with the President and make sure NASA has the right budget to be able to do its job.”
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