Space Politics
Because sometimes the most important orbit is the Beltway…
Archive for Lobbying
November 19, 2009 at 6:49 am · Filed under Lobbying
If your idea of space advocacy can’t be contained to 140-character tweets, you’re in luck: a couple of organizations have set plans for grassroots lobbying efforts on Capitol Hill early next year. The Space Exploration Alliance has announced plans for its 2010 Legislative Blitz, scheduled for February 21-23. (Some of the language on the web site, though, still refers to their 2009 event.) The exact legislative agenda isn’t listed, although the site does refer to the Augustine committee report and the need to increase NASA’s funding.
ProSpace has also set a date for its March Storm 2010: February 28-March 2. Preliminary agenda items will be posted in the near future. No word, though, on the state of the controversy between ProSpace and the Space Frontier Foundation, which announced plans last week for its own March Storm event.
November 19, 2009 at 6:40 am · Filed under Lobbying
It seems some NASA supporters took the news about a potential across-the-board budget cut in FY2011 (which may or may not happen, and may or may not include NASA) pretty hard: on the microblogging service Twitter, the news generated a flurry of tweets in the last day or so, all tagged with the search term “#saveNASA”. While it’s not clear just in how much jeopardy NASA’s budget is, it hasn’t stopped people from rallying that something needs to be done to, well, save NASA.
What that something is isn’t clear: most of the tweets are actually “retweeting” other posts, most of which cite the technological spinoffs created by NASA (good if you’re trying to justify technology development, not as effective if you’re trying to save human spaceflight). An example: “If you don’t think we should #SaveNASA, please throw away ur pacemaker, dialysis machine, cancer detection technology, cell phone, etc. Thx!” Then there are the electoral threats: “Dear Obama. I voted for you. I in fact managed to get my whole family to vote for you (amazing!) Now is your time to keep my vote. #SaveNASA”
What these “space tweeps” plan to do to convince the White House to save NASA isn’t clear yet. One person has created a social networking site whose stated goal is to “convince the Obama Administration to maintain NASA’s funding” (wait, what about that $3-billion-a-year increase space advocates had been supporting?), but other than that there’s no focus, nor any reason why this should exist rather than joining existing groups and efforts. Perhaps the plan is to inundate the White House with pro-NASA tweets: after all, @BarackObama is big on Twitter. (What’s that, you say, President Obama says he’s never used Twitter? Time for a #planB.)
November 18, 2009 at 1:15 pm · Filed under Lobbying
In late September Save Space kicked off its efforts to get half a million letters in support of the space program delivered to the White House by the end of October. By late October, though, that goal looked doubtful: the metrics they had provided (in terms of web traffic and Facebook fans) appeared to fall far short of what was needed to generate that many letters, and a spokesperson indicated that it would be more of an “open-ended venture”.
However, in a video posted to the web site with remarkably little fanfare (primarily just a single tweet), Space Florida president Frank DiBello claims that the effort mets its goal, and by the October 31 deadline, with a “devastating impact” in DC. “While I was in Washington two weeks ago, I had a meeting with some people in the White House who wanted to know what they could do with all the letters that they’ve got,” DiBello said in the video, dated November 10. “And their estimate is that they have some 500,000 letters in Washington, all in support of the space program. And they have an issue for security – they can’t deliver them to the White House – but believe me, the White House knows that they’re there.”
Without more supporting information, though, it’s difficult to accept this. The Save Space campaign started on September 28, while DiBello’s meeting, if his timing is correct, would have been the week of October 26, just four weeks later. For Save Space to have met its 500,000-letter goal it would need to generate an average of 125,000 letters a week. That’s about twice what the White House receives per week overall, as POLITICO noted last month. That sort of volume would probably overwhelm the people charged with reviewing them (indeed, there was a backlog of 25,000 letters noted in the POLITICO article), making it difficult for them to ascertain they’re “all in support of the space program”. I’ve put in a request with the Save Space people to confirm this information and clarify what the status of this letter-writing campaign is.
November 13, 2009 at 1:10 pm · Filed under Lobbying
After the Space Frontier Foundation announced yesterday that it planned to revive the citizen space lobbying effort March Storm in 2010, I was curious what the response of ProSpace, who had run the event for most of its history, might be. I got the following press release earlier today from ProSpace executive director Winn Phillips (who I see has also commented on the previous post on this topic):
After a premature announcement of his demise, Mark Twain famously observed that “The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.”
This past week, The Space Frontier Foundation committed a similar mistake, releasing a statement that erroneously contended our annual March Storm event was allowed to “fade away”.
Nothing could be further from the truth. ProSpace is an organization that is moving forward with strength and vision. And our trademark event, March Storm, remains the single most respected space activist event in Washington.
ProSpace did make an operational decision not to hold the event in 2009. In consultation with members of the House and Senate, the Obama administration and our membership, we determined that the singular focus on the dire state of the economy would obscure our message. Other organizations made other determinations, but the leadership of ProSpace stands by our decision and knows it to be the right one.
The success of our fourteen previous March Storm events is evident and a source of pride for our members. The leading indicator of that success is the fact that a number of other organizations decided to follow our lead and hold similar events in the same time frame as ProSpace.
We have always encouraged those other space groups to come to Washington to advance their organizational agendas and likewise applaud the proposed efforts of the Space Frontier Foundation. Our singular requirement is that they create an original name and identity for their event that does not imply the endorsement of ProSpace.
March Storm will remain the trademark event for ProSpace. We will be announcing our plan for 2010 shortly. It is an exciting time and we promise an exciting March Storm. Join us!
November 12, 2009 at 12:45 pm · Filed under Lobbying
From 1995 through 2008 a group of space advocates (organized in most years by the grassroots lobbying group ProSpace) held an annual lobbying blitz on Capitol Hill called March Storm (so named for the month the event took place). ProSpace did not perform a March Storm in 2009, though, citing “resource and time limitations”. However, according to an email from the Space Frontier Foundation this morning, March Storm will return in 2010. The event is still in the “early planning process”, according to the message, and how it will be run isn’t clear: the email referred to “The Space Frontier Foundation’s March Storm 2010″, and not “ProSpace’s March Storm 2010″.
“I think that it’s critical that Congress hears a pro-space (as opposed to a pro-industry or pro-NASA) agenda often. We had many successes as a result of our past efforts,” said Mike Heney, the March Storm project manager. “Which is why I was saddened when March Storm was allowed to fade away – and why I’ve decided to join with a group of like-minded March Storm veterans to resurrect this valuable event.”
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 31, 2009 at 2:50 pm · Filed under Lobbying, White House
The sense of many in the space community this year has been one of impatience, bordering on frustration: with a new administration in place, they had been hoping for change in national space policy, or at least a confirmation of existing policy. Yet earlier this year people waited for months before the White House nominated a NASA administrator, Charles Bolden; now they’re waiting for weeks, perhaps months, for a decision on which option, if any, contained in the Augustine committee report to implement.
That waiting is wearing thin with some, such as Space Foundation CEO Elliot Pulham, who likens the situation to the famous Samuel Beckett play “Waiting for Godot”. “[W]hen it comes to space policy and programs, this administration has done nothing remarkable during the first 25 percent of its term,” Pulham writes (rounding up a bit, as the administration is only a little over nine months into its four-year term.) He cites not just the Bolden nomination and Augustine committee decision delays, but other issues such as a lack of progress on export control reform and a large number of unfilled political positions within the Pentagon. The former issue, at least, is something largely beyond the direct control of the White House, although progress is being made: HR 2410, a State Department authorization bill that includes some ITAR reform elements, passed the House in June and is awaiting action in the Senate.
Left out is a key point: many other people, in a wide range of other policy areas, don’t believe the White House is moving fast enough on the issues they care about. In the cover story in this week’s Newsweek, Anna Quindlen observes that President Obama takes a far more incremental approach than people thought he would during last year’s campaign. “He is methodical, thoughtful, cerebral, a believer in consensus and process,” she writes. “In an incremental system, Barack Obama is an incremental man.” And that, she believes, isn’t a bad thing. “[C]ampaigns are bad crucibles in which to forge the future. They speak to great aspirations; government amounts to the dripping of water on stone.”
So those who have great aspirations for space policy might want to practice their patience. Pulham acknowledges that the president is facing a number of other major policy issues, from Afghanistan to health care to the economy, but still wants space to get a bigger share of attention: “I would argue that nothing is more important to national security and economic security, and nothing is a better investment in economic vitality and national economic stimulus, than the exploration, development, and utilization of space.” If the space community did a more effective job communicating that importance to policymakers and the general public alike, perhaps the White House would be paying more attention, and sooner, to space—although there’s still no guarantee that they’d like the outcome of those policy deliberations.
October 25, 2009 at 1:13 pm · Filed under Lobbying, NASA, White House
Florida Today provides an update today on the status of Save Space, a Space Coast effort to get half a million letters in support of space exploration delivered to the White House. The article gives the impression that the movement is gaining momentum (”catching on”, as the headline puts it; “gaining steam”, as the lede paragraph claims), noting milestones like donated space on digital billboards across the country and the number of partner organizations that have joined, from Space Florida to local businesses like Taco Shack of Titusville. (Another partner organization is Florida Today itself, something the article fails to disclose.)
However, there’s little evidence in the article that Save Space is anywhere near its goal of 500,000 letters by the end of this month. A spokesperson for the Brevard County government, which is hosting the site, says that it’s “impossible to determine” just how many letters have been sent to the White House. The other statistics provided don’t sound optimistic: for example, the spokesperson said that the site has generated 42,000 “hits”. If she’s technically correct, that’s very poor, since each page will generate several hits for the various files that comprise it. Even if she meant visitors (or, better, unique visitors), that’s still a tiny fraction of the 500,000 letters, unless each visitor plans on writing more than 10 letters. The Save Space Facebook page just passed 2,000 fans, the article adds, a stat that sounds good but again is still far short of the 500,000.
If the organizers could come through on their goal of 500,000 letters, they likely would get noticed by the White House: as POLITICO reported last week, the White House is currently getting 65,000 letters a week, on top of thousands more phone calls, faxes, and emails: enough that there’s a backlog of mail that has to be processed. Dumping 500,000 letters there over a short period of time would presumably get some attention. A few thousand? Not so much.
The campaign is now backing away from that October 31 deadline, as the article states it will now be “an open-ended venture” until the president makes a policy decision. That might give them more time to collect more letters, but no guarantee they’ll rise above the noise of other mail arriving at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
[Note: I'm on travel the next few days, so updates here will be limited.]
October 22, 2009 at 11:12 am · Filed under Congress, Lobbying, NASA
- An op-ed in the Washington Examiner by three Republican House freshman, including Pete Olson of Texas and Bill Posey of Florida, stresses the importance of properly funding NASA and increasing its budget even though it might seem at odds with their philosophy of limited government. “We do not take spending $3 billion lightly, but it is our strong belief that the failure to do so will be even more costly in the long run,” they write. (Part of their argument is that NASA’s share of the federal budget has dropped by 20% since 2007, although that is primarily because of increased spending elsewhere instead of a absolute decline in NASA spending.)
- Mixed messages? NASA administrator Charles Bolden told an audience in Huntsville Wednesday that the future of the Ares program is “not tentative at all”, which would appear to be a sign of support for the current program. However, NASASpaceFlight.com reports that Bolden has directed NASA Marshall to study heavy-lift alternatives to the Ares 5, including shuttle-derived sidemount concepts and the Jupiter vehicle from the DIRECT concept. The same report also claims that work on the Altair lunar lander has been “defunded”, although that work was in its very earliest stages.
- Bolden did say he was happy with the Augustine report: “If you don’t say anything, then you have to live with what you get. I didn’t say anything, and I’m happy with what I’ve got.” Bolden also said he would meet with President Obama “before the end of the year” to present NASA’s take on the report and its suggestions. (Presumably it will be sooner than the end of the year in order to fit into the FY11 budget proposal process.)
- Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin endorses the “flexible path” option in the Augustine committee report in an essay published by The Huffington Post, complete with a call for action at the end: “America, will you urge the president to pick a bold new mission for our nation in space?… In Twitter-friendly style, ask him this simple but profound question: Mr. President, will you lead us to greatness in space?”
September 29, 2009 at 7:56 am · Filed under Lobbying, NASA, Other
At yesterday’s meeting on the Space Coast, speakers said Florida must demand that president fund an “ambitious” space exploration program, in large part to protect jobs there. Or, as Florida Today put it, “President Barack Obama is in for an earful from Florida elected officials and space industry leaders”. The event referenced the Save Space letter-writing effort launched yesterday (as discussed here) as well as then-candidate Obama’s August 2008 speech where he said he would “close the gap” between the shuttle and its successor.
Florida Today is one of the sponsors of Save Space, so it’s no surprise it endorses the effort in an editorial Tuesday, asking readers to write letters to the president asking him to keep that campaign promise.
Increased funding for NASA was also endorsed in a recent editorial by the Cleveland Plain Dealer. It notes the expense of Constellation, but adds that despite concerns about “today’s depressed economy and growing federal debt”, NASA should get that additional funding, particularly to develop Ares and Orion, which it calls “necessities”.
Also worth noting is op-ed in Sunday’s Washington Times by Michael Bloomfield, a former astronaut and current vice president of ATK. He argues that “crew safety is of utmost importance in evaluating shuttle replacements” based on the lessons of Challenger and Columbia, and that Ares 1/Orion would be “tops for safety against any other option by a significant degree”. Regarding commercial alternatives, he claims that “they still lag behind Ares I safety by a factor of 3 to 5 and do not meet the Columbia investigation’s clear assertion that America should replace the shuttle with a vehicle that is ’significantly safer.’”
Next entries »
