Space Politics
Because sometimes the most important orbit is the Beltway…
Archive for Events
July 30, 2009 at 8:27 am · Filed under Events, Lobbying
Later today dozens of Mars advocates will be swarming Capitol Hill for the 2009 Great Mars Blitz, an afternoon of lobbying in the same vein as March Storm, the NSS Space Blitz, and related events. The purpose of the blitz, according to the site, is “to tell members of Congress and their staff why the United States needs to commit to an ambitious human space flight program that will get us to Mars in the 2020s”, although they don’t mention any specific legislative measures they’re pushing for. The Blitz is part of the Mars Society’s annual convention, running today through Sunday at the University of Maryland in College Park. The society ran a similar event in 2006, the last time the organization held its annual conference in the DC area; Chris Carberry, who organized the Blitz (and is now executive director of the organization), wrote a summary of that 2006 event in The Space Review, complete with a tale about some $2 bills…
(I’ll also note that I’ll be appearing on a panel Friday evening at the conference about “Reporting Space”, moderated by ex-CNN space reporter Miles O’Brien.)
July 28, 2009 at 7:20 am · Filed under Events, NASA
Three days! Three cities! It’s not a rock band tour but the Review of US Human Space Flight Plans Committee (aka Augustine Committee) schedule this week: they are holding public meetings today in Houston, tomorrow in Huntsville, and Thursday in Cocoa Beach, Florida. Today’s meeting starts at 10 am CDT (11 am EDT), according to schedules released last week, and features presentation by JSC director Mike Coats, a “Congressional perspective”, overview of Constellation, and a briefing by the committee’s ISS/shuttle subcommittee, chaired by Sally Ride.
On that last point, NASASpaceFlight.com reported this morning that Ride’s group is looking at shuttle extension options that would stretch the current manifest and/or add more missions, and that “draft NASA authorization language is currently being worked on behind the scenes in Congress” for the latest NASA authorization legislation that would appear to endorse an option to extend the shuttle into 2012.
June 18, 2009 at 11:10 am · Filed under Events, NASA
I was at the Augustine committee meeting in DC yesterday, the first public meeting (of four currently planned) to solicit input on the future of NASA’s human spaceflight plans. Since the process is just now underway, it’s hard to draw too many conclusions about the meeting, but I did want to pass along some thoughts and observations from the meeting for those who weren’t there:
* The meeting was very much an information-gathering meeting, and at times seemed like drinking from a firehose: they went from 9 am to 5 pm with only a short break (originally 30 minutes, but stretched out in practice to more like 45) for lunch. The meeting was a series of presentations, ranging from the status of Constellation to proposals for alternatives, as well as perspectives from the White House (science advisor John Holdren), Congress (Rep. Pete Olson and Sen. Bill Nelson, with submissions read for the record from Rep. Ralph Hall and Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison) and international partners (ESA’s Jean-Jacques Dordain and Roskosmos’s Anatoly Perminov).
* If the committee members had any initial opinions about the current status of NASA’s activities, they largely kept them to themselves, instead keeping to asking questions or making some basic concluding comments at the end of the day. Three of the ten committee members – Charles Kennel, Lester Lyles, and Sally Ride – had prior commitments and were not at the meeting.
* The afternoon session was largely devoted to either alternatives to the current Constellation system (EELV, DIRECT, and a shuttle-derived side-mount proposal) and COTS/ISS commercial resupply. A lot of attention in particular was devoted to the DIRECT concept, presented by Stephen Metschan. Depending on your point of view the committee seemed either interested in or skeptical about the idea (I heard both reactions afterwards) although the latter seemed evident in Leroy Chiao’s question to Metschan: “Who are you guys?”
* More interesting than the DIRECT presentation, though (since the merits and demerits of DIRECT have been widely discussed for some time now) was United Launch Alliance’s presentation on EELV alternatives to Ares, perhaps the most detailed public presentation to date by the company on this. Michael Gass, president and CEO of ULA, said that a modified Delta 4 Heavy could launch Orion as early as 2014 with a performance margin in excess of 20%. That would require $800 million for a new pad and $500 million in human-rating work, and then $300 million a launch. He also said Atlas 5 could start commercial crew missions to ISS in 2013 (with another company providing the spacecraft); that would require $400 million in non-recurring costs and then $130 million a launch. Gary Pulliam of the Aerospace Corporation then followed with a summary of their EELV-vs-Ares study previously reported.
* In brief comments early in the day, Holdren reiterated that President Obama is interested in space, noting his conversations with the crews of the last two shuttle missions, adding that Obama would continue the practice in the future. Obama, Holdren said, “is excited by human spaceflight… this is a president who gets it, he understands the importance of space, he understands the importance of human spaceflight.”
* Several people, including Sen. Nelson, said that they believed that the committee has particular power to shape the future of the country’s human spaceflight effort with their recommendations. “In essence, what you decide is going to be the significant influence for the White House, and therefore also for the Congress,” he said in brief remarks just before lunch. However, what the committee will provide is just that: recommendations. Augustine said in a press conference after the meeting that they would provide the White House with a number of options, graded against a set of criteria (risk, cost, capability) they are still developing. Like so many other panels in the past, it will be up to the White House and Congress to turn those recommendations into policies, plans, and legislation. And the historical track record is not necessarily promising.
May 24, 2008 at 1:29 pm · Filed under Campaign '08, Events
Andrew Hoppin announced yesterday that there will a space policy panel at Netroots Nation (formerly Yearly Kos), this July in Austin, Texas. It’s a fairly high-power panel, featuring Lori Garver, former FAA associate administrator for commercial space transportation Patti Grace Smith, and NSS executive director George Whitesides, among others. The panel he writes, is “an opportunity to bring critical space policy issues to light within a potent progressive political constituency—the Netroots—that hasn’t historically paid much attention to space. It is also an opportunity for the Netroots to weigh in on what a new progressive space policy agenda could be under a progressive Administration in 2009.” The formal description of the panel:
NASA is in crisis–overburdened, under-funded, and inefficient. Yet the progressive legacy of space, which dates back to JFK, is being quietly reborn: NASA can reinvent itself as a critical resource in climate change mitigation; the UN and some in the U.S. military are collaborating to prevent space weapons from becoming an arms race with China; progressive “NewSpace” entrepreneurs are creating new domestic high-tech jobs. Before 2009, a new progressive space policy needs to be devised and advocated beyond the traditional space constituencies, to upgrade Bush’s failing space exploration vision. Who better to initiate this work than the Netroots?
I’m not sure I understand the point about the UN and US military collaborating to prevent an arms race in space with China; the US government has insisted that there is no arms race in space, and had thus blocked proposals at the UN and elsewhere for treaties that would explicitly ban space weapons. Also, while they mention the role NewSpace can play, it’s unfortunate Netroots Nation conflicts with NewSpace 2008, the annual Space Frontier Foundation conference.
June 26, 2007 at 6:02 am · Filed under Events
A few events this week related to space policy:
The Marshall Institute is hosting a “Forum on National Security Space: Examining Codes and Rules for Space” this Wednesday on Capitol Hill. The all-morning event features three panels of speakers discussing “ongoing efforts, established rules, and options for the future with respect to collision avoidance, debris mitigation, and harmful interference resolution” in space. The event is free, but if you haven’t yet registered, good luck: I tried to RSVP for this last week and was told I’m on a waiting list.
Thursday morning the House Science and Technology Committee’s space subcommittee will host a hearing on NASA’s 2008 budget request for earth sciences programs. Scheduled to testify will be officials from NASA, academia, and other organizations.
On Friday morning CSIS will host a presentation by Jean-Jacques Tortora, space attache to the French Embassy in Washington and US representative for the French space agency CNES, on “The Future of French Space Policy”. (I did not find details about the event on the CSIS web site, but the event is scheduled from 9-10:30 am at the CSIS offices at 1800 K St NW).
March 1, 2007 at 12:48 pm · Filed under Congress, Events
The notice of this event hasn’t been posted on CSIS’ web site yet, but as part of its “Decision 2008″ series, the organization is hosting a discussion with Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) and Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA) on “China’s Anti-Satellite Weapons Launch” on March 8th from 8:30 to 9:30 am. The event notice doesn’t provide any additional information, other than that the talk will be moderated by CSIS’ James Lewis and that RSVPs are required.
