One additional area of concern she mentioned that has not gotten as much publicity is funding the transition and closeout of the Constellation program. The budget proposal includes $2.5 billion over two years for that, but Garver noted that no funding for that is included in any of the current Congressional legislation. “Just because you don’t have that in the budget doesn’t mean we’re not going to have to spend that money,” she warned. “Those dollars will have to be embedded in some of the other programs if it is not singled out in a line item.”

On heavy-lift, she said that NASA was “working with Congress to get a broader, deeper understanding” on how to go forward on this. She suggested that the agency didn’t feel it should be restricted on the design of an HLV by language such as that in the report accompanying the Senate’s authorization bill, which mandates a specific shuttle-derived approach. “We don’t feel that the best way to make those technical decisions is at the level of political leadership” but instead where the technical expertise resides at NASA and in industry. Political leadership, she said, can instead drive the “figures of merit” for such a system, such as affordability.

She also said that the debate does not appear to be as fierce now as it was earlier this year. “There is a lessening of tensions in Washington,” she said, noting that “we really don’t feel that we are now questioning each other’s intentions.” While unsure about when a compromise might be reached, she said she was confident “there will be a program coming together”. One positive aspect of the debate, she noted, was the debate was about not about how much to spend on NASA: “I don’t believe I heard a speech about cutting the $19 billion” overall NASA budget proposal for FY2011.

The letter makes several specific requests. For technology development the signatories ask that funding “be increased to levels significantly closer to the President’s request”. They also ask for full funding of the commercial crew development program and the CRuSR suborbital program, as well as “adequate funding” for the robotic precursor mission program.

The letter is particularly targeted at the House, whose authorization bill severely cuts (“substantially underfunded”, in the language of the letter) many of these programs compared to both the original budget request and the Senate authorization and appropriation legislation. “These investments,” the letter concludes, “will help ensure continued American space leadership.”

The University of Nebraska College of Law will be hosting a free one-day conference on national space policy on Friday, September 10, at the Newseum in Washington. Keynote speakers include Gen. James Cartwright, vice-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and NASA deputy administrator Lori Garver.

While Adams is quiet on the issue of commercial spaceflight, Sen. Sam Brownback, a Republican now running for governor of Kansas, is not. Speaking in Wichita yesterday, Brownback in effect put out the welcome mat for space companies that might be thinking of establishing operations there. “We will pursue partnering opportunities with our existing companies and private space companies on the design and manufacture of commercial space vehicles, as well as encourage them to locate some of their facilities here,” he said, the AP reported. Brownback also introduced Alan Weston of NASA’s Ames Research Center, who spoke at the Wichita Aero Club and had a similar message of support for commercial space. “We at Ames, and many people at NASA, believe that commercial space can cut these [spaceflight] costs dramatically,” he said, as reported by the Wichita Business Journal. “I believe, and Pete Worden (director of NASA Ames) believes, that the industry here — the aviation industry — can lead this revolution.”

In an op-ed in Sunday’s Houston Chronicle, Scott Spencer and Chris Kraft make a last-ditch bid to extend the space shuttle program as a cornerstone for a “robust manned space program”. The op-ed takes a curiouser turn later on, though, as the two advocate development of a “modular, reusable Planetary Transport Vehicle (PTV) System” for human missions beyond LEO—modules that, of course, would be sized to fit in the shuttle’s payload bay, but with crews ferried to them in LEO by commercial vehicles. It’s worth nothing that the two sent a joint letter to President Obama in April asking him to extend the shuttle program (but without the discussion of the PTV system) when Spencer made a short-lived attempt to run for the House from Delaware.

The James Webb Space Telescope is the topic of an editorial in the Orlando Sentinel on Saturday, which expresses concerns about cost overruns and delays in the program. “Such cost overruns and delays are unacceptable,” the editorial states, but expresses support for the program’s scientific potential. “Making the Webb telescope a success deserves to be a national priority. Its promise is almost unfathomable.”

Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) is optimistic about the commercial prospects of the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS) at Wallops Island in Virginia, she tells the local newspaper, the Daily News. The spaceport will start hosting launches next summer of Orbital Sciences’ Taurus 2 rocket, carrying cargo spacecraft to the ISS. Wallops, she said, “will be like the Southwest Airlines of space. It’s an upstart, lower cost, cheaper and safer way because it doesn’t require human flight.” The metaphor seems a little tangled: Orbital, it seems, would be in line to be Southwest while Wallops would be like Dallas’s Love Field, or, closer to home, BWI Airport, both major hubs for Southwest.

“NASA wants to start heavy-lift work in 2011 ‘in a very robust way,’” the Huntsville Times reported today, quoting deputy administrator Lori Garver, who is in town. And what about the need to study various HLV designs? “We don’t need to study it anymore,” said Marshall director Robert Lightfoot, whose center would lead any HLV program.

Garver attempted to sound a conciliatory note in her comments, as least as reported by the Times: she said there’s no longer a “stalemate” between the White House and Congress on NASA, with both sides now talking to each other. (She added, though, that it would be up to Congress to reconcile the differences between the Senate and House versions of NASA authorization legislation.) She said that NASA and the administration got off to a poor start selling the new plan: “We had not well explained the issues with Constellation.” And, she complemented Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL), one of the most vociferous critics of the administration’s NASA policies: “One of the reasons we are as far as we are (in space) is because of Sen. Shelby.”

The letter cites several concerns. One is the lack of “a plan to restore U.S. technical capability to launch astronauts to space once the shuttle is retired”; the society supports commercial crew development, but worries that plans to develop government systems for such access could extend the post-shuttle gap. They also note the lack of specific exploration goals in the legislation and cuts in exploration and technology programs. Also, while supporting the eventual development of a heavy-lift vehicle, they don’t support the Senate’s plan to begin development of such a system immediately, because “premature development through political legislation rather than technological studies could result in huge waste and eventual delays.”

“We ask for your help and leadership, and that of your colleagues on the full Committees” to avoid the incomplete plan they fear, the letter concludes. “This may require stepping back from each of the Congressional bills now passed by Committees and refocusing on the whole. Congress’ interests and the Administration’s interests are more alike than different. We urge your support for a new NASA plan.”

In Florida’s 15th Congressional District, immediately south of the Kennedy Space Center, Rep. Bill Posey (R) is running for reelection and making space—and jobs—a major issue in his campaign, according to Sunshine State News. The thousands of jobs that will be lost when the shuttle is retired will come “at a worse economic time” than the end of the Apollo era (when Posey himself was laid off from McDonnell Douglas). As for creating jobs from commercial space ventures, he sounds skeptical: “(The Obama administration) keeps talking about this great commercial space market, but… there are no specific plans for exploration.” By contrast, his likely Democratic challenger, Shannon Roberts, is more positive about the prospects for commercial human spaceflight. “(Private companies) are really ready to take this on. I think it’s very timely,” she said.

In the neighboring 24th Congressional District, which does include KSC, incumbent Rep. Suzanne Kosmas (D) supports something like the compromise NASA authorization bill the Senate passed earlier this month, providing some funding for commercial crew development while pushing NASA to start immediate development of a hevy-lift vehicle, she tells Florida Today. Most of the Republicans who are vying to run against her in the general election, though, are either quiet on the subject of commercial spaceflight or opposed to it. In the words of one candidate, Tom Garcia: “I don’t think you can just turn it into a commercial industry. It needs to stay under government control.” An exception is Deon Long, who said he supports “privatizing low-orbit missions”.

The legislation faces two major challenges. One is that there’s no offset for the cost of the legislation, which would depend on just how many companies and investors take advantage of the bill. The second is that Nelson is introducing the bill very late in the current Congress: given the limited time left this year, even with a lame-duck session after November’s elections, it seems at first glance unlikely that the bill would make it through unless attached to other legislation.

In addition to Nelson’s legislation, details are emerging about the plan to provide $40 million in support to the Space Coast to help offset job losses and other economic impacts from the retirement of the shuttle. President Obama, who announced the funding in his April 15th speech at the Kennedy Space Center, asked for a plan by August 15th. Most of that money, $35 million, will go for grants to support businesses in several markets, including aviation, clean energy, homeland security, information technology and life sciences. The other $5 million would be for a proposed FAA commercial space center at Cape Canaveral, few details of which were disclosed. More details about the plan are due out today.

The Committee anticipates that in order to meet the specified vehicle capabilities and requirements, the most cost-effective and `evolvable’ design concept is likely to follow what is known as an `in-line’ vehicle design, with a large center tank structure with attached multiple liquid propulsion engines and, at a minimum, two solid rocket motors composed of at least four segments being attached to the tank structure to form the core, initial stage of the propulsion vehicle. The Committee will closely monitor NASA’s early planning and design efforts to ensure compliance with the intent of this section.

While Space News concludes that this means the new heavy-lifter would look a lot like Ares 5, it’s possible that variants of the Jupiter vehicle proposed by the DIRECT team may also qualify. The use of “in-line” in the report language would seem to indicate they are not interested in any sidemount vehicle concepts under study recently, however.

There’s a bigger question, though, addressed in the article: should Congress be in the business of mandating a specific vehicle design? Doug Cooke, NASA associate administrator for exploration systems, told Space News that he would like to “broaden the trade space” for any HLV mandated by Congress “to make sure we don’t preclude possible answers that might be the optimum overall”. Even beyond the vehicle design question, though, are other issues, such as whether the vehicle can be developed by the end of 2016 (as mandated in the legislation) with the authorized funding, and also what exactly the vehicle would be launching in 2017 and following years, given the lack of existing or planned payloads that require a vehicle capable of placing at least 70 tons in LEO. It could be used to launch Orion, of course, but it would be overkill (and potentially costly), and the 70-100 tons could be too small for some proposed exploration architectures, as former NASA administrator Mike Griffin noted earlier this month.