Space Politics
Because sometimes the most important orbit is the Beltway…
Archive for Lobbying
November 9, 2011 at 7:19 am · Filed under Congress, Lobbying, NASA, White House
With Congress expected to complete work next week on a FY2012 appropriations bill that includes NASA (the goal is to complete the bill before the current continuing resolution expires next Friday), supporters of NASA’s commercial crew program are making another, perhaps final, push to win full funding for the program. In an op-ed published Monday in The Space Review, Alan Stern, the new director of the Florida Space Institute, and Frank DiBello, president of Space Florida, argued that NASA, Congress, and the White House all should work to “expedite” the program. For Congress, that means funding the program at $850 million, the level requested by the administration in its FY12 request. NASA, meanwhile, should “streamline the business and technical processes” for commercial crew providers, while the Obama Administration should push NASA to make commercial crew a top priority for the agency.
Stern and DiBello are also signatories on an open letter to Congress and the White House released Tuesday on the topic of commercial crew funding. The letter, like the earlier op-ed, calls for expediting commercial crew through increased funding and streamlined processes. The letter is signed by over 40 people, ranging from executives of entrepreneurial space companies to former astronauts and NASA officials.
The day before that letter, nearly two dozen former astronauts submitted a similar letter to key House and Senate appropriators, also in support of commercial crew. This letter also calls for full funding of commercial crew, although the signatories appear willing to accept the $500 million the Senate approved in its version of the appropriations legislation. “Funding Commercial Crew at least at the Authorization Act level of $500 million will mean less reliance on Russia and a stronger space program here at home, and funding Commercial Crew at NASA’s requested level of $850 million will enable these commercial vehicles to be developed on an even more expeditious basis,” they write.
It’s noteworthy that commercial crew has been the one NASA program that has received significant lobbying attention as the appropriations process reaches its conclusion. NASA’s Space Technology program, for example, had its requested budget cut significantly in both the House and Senate, but hasn’t received nearly the same attention as commercial crew. (There has been concern about planetary exploration, but that has focused more on the long-term prospects beyond the FY12 budget.) Of course, commercial crew has a clear constituency—those companies involved or seeking to be involved in the program, as well as those companies and organizations that would benefit from commercial crew systems—while the constituency for technology programs is more diffuse. Whether this press of attention will have any affect on the appropriations process, though, remains to be seen.
October 28, 2011 at 7:45 am · Filed under Lobbying, NASA, Other, White House
In a letter this week to President Obama, the mayors of Houston and Huntsville ask for immediate action on contracts related to the Space Launch System (SLS) and Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle (MPCV) programs. Specifically, they ask that NASA “move forward as expeditiously as possible” on converting contracts for the Constellation program to SLS and MPCV. “Speed is imperative to protect the workforce and to ensure our nation’s global leadership in spaceand in technological advancement,” Houston mayor Annise Parker and Huntsville mayor Tommy Battle write.
They add that those programs are at least as important, if not more so, than commercial crew development efforts at the agency. “While we all agree that commercial space ventures are critical to the future of human space flight, they cannot come at the expense of NASA’s role in ensuring access to space. They cannot come at the expense of seeing all the amazing, cutting edge expertise gathered together at MSFC and JSC being dispersed around the world – lost to this country and our own space efforts.”
Meanwhile, Mars Society president Robert Zubrin raised alarm bells when he claimed in an op-ed published Thursday in the Washington Times that the White House was planning to “terminate” NASA’s planetary science program in its FY2013 budget proposal. After the 2013 launch of the MAVEN Mars orbiter, he said, “No further missions to anywhere are planned.”
There’s one problem with his piece, though: that fantastic claim appears to be incorrect. “It is not true the planetary program is being killed,” Jim Green, head of NASA’s planetary science program, told the NASA Advisory Council Thursday during a telecon, Space News reported. The planetary program does face some problems with funding in future years, he acknowledged, but termination is not in the cards. “I’m here to say the future doesn’t look as healthy as it has been, but it is still the best program in the world,” Green said, SpacePolicyOnline.com reported.
Zubrin, incidentally, will be appearing at a Capitol Hill forum next Thursday jointly organized by The Planetary Society and The Mars Society, titled, “NASA at a Turning Point: Vibrant Future or Close Shop”.
September 22, 2011 at 6:59 am · Filed under Congress, Lobbying, NASA
A reminder that at 10 am EDT today, the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee will be holding a hearing titled “NASA Human Spaceflight Past, Present, and Future: Where Do We Go From Here?”, which will be webcast on the committee’s site. The witnesses include former astronauts Neil Armstrong and Gene Cernan, as well as former NASA administrator Mike Griffin; late last week the committee added another witness, MIT planetary sciences professor Maria Zuber, the principal investigator of NASA’s recently-launched GRAIL lunar orbiter mission.
On the eve of today’s hearing, the student space advocacy group Students for the Exploration and Development of Space (SEDS) said it send a letter to Armstrong, asking him to “carry with you some of the messages” that SEDS members articulated in a letter earlier this year. That earlier letter strongly supported commercial spaceflight, saying that “NASA and the nation both benefit greatly from investing in commercial spaceflight programs that will allow astronauts to fly on commercial vehicles,” and playing up the educational and workforce development benefits of such efforts. Given that Armstong (along with Cernan and Griffin) have been critics of the administration’s space policy, which has put an emphasis on commercial crew vehicle development, it’s not clear the students’ message will resonate with the legendary astronaut.
September 1, 2011 at 7:02 am · Filed under Lobbying, NASA
For Orlando Sentinel columnist Mike Thomas, it’s a question of what’s the lesser evil: “We can either go billions over budget on mismanaged science projects, or we can go billions over budget on even more mismanaged manned-spaceflight programs,” he writes in a column today. Thomas, who has been a critic of human spaceflight activities in the past, unsurprisingly chooses the former, in part because of the money already spent on the James Webb Space Telescope, as well as the scientific and other benefits it can yield: “It would be a big in-your-face to the Chinese, who could never build such a technical marvel, at least not until they’ve downloaded the plans from the NASA computers.” He doesn’t apply similar arguments to the Space Launch System (SLS) and Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle (MPCV), and is skeptical of the cost estimates reported last month. “Factoring in the usual NASA cost overruns and delays, this rocket will cost $200 billion and go up in the year 2525.” (If man is still alive…)
The advocacy group Tea Party in Space (TPIS) sees last week’s Soyuz launch failure as proof Congress should fully fund NASA’s Commercial Crew Development (CCDev) program in order to ensure American access to the ISS, the conservative news site NewsMax reports. CCDev would be faster and cheaper than SLS, the organization argues; a TPIS official called congressional support for SLS “a pretty warped sense of priorities”. “Tea Party in Space officials see NASA’s cost overruns as a microcosm of the larger bureaucratic snafus that plague the federal government generally,” the report adds.
Back in July, SpaceX hired Mark Bitterman, who had spent nearly 20 years at rival Orbital Sciences Corporation, most recently as vice president of government affairs, as its new senior vice president of government affairs. But Space News reported this week that, after less than two months on the job, Bitterman has resigned; a company spokesperson said “family obligations” require more of his time than the job would allow. (The version of the press release announcing his hiring is no longer listed on the SpaceX web site, although in addition to the Business Wire version listed above, there’s a cached version from earlier this week.)
August 23, 2011 at 6:31 am · Filed under Congress, Lobbying, NASA, White House
On Monday Aviation Week and Nature reported on the latest cost estimate for building and operating the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST): $8.7 billion. That includes the costs to build and launch the telescope, as well as five years of science operations. That new total figure should not be surprising: last month Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA), chairman of the House Appropriations Committee’s Commerce, Justice, and Science Subcommittee, said the GAO has estimated the telescope’s cost at $7.8-8.0 billion. Excluding the five years of science operations from the new NASA cost estimate brings the JWST cost back to $8 billion.
So how does NASA propose to cover these additional costs? According to Nature, NASA is seeking to split the costs on a 50:50 basis between the agency’s science account and the rest of the agency. That could mean over half a billion dollars could be taken from exploration, technology, aeronautics, and other non-science programs over several years to cover those costs, should the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) approve NASA’s proposal. OMB has been studying the plan for several weeks, according to Nature, but hasn’t signed off on it yet.
Then there’s the issue of winning funding for fiscal year 2012 for JWST, given that the legislation the House Appropriations Committee approved last month included no funding for the telescope. JWST advocates are cautiously optimistic that some funding for the telescope can be restored later in the appropriations process. Representatives of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) met with House staffers earlier this month and found some support for the telescope even from the office of Rep. Wolf. “The staff expressed Rep. Wolf’s belief that JWST has an extremely strong science merit,” the AAS noted in a blog post late last week. “The staff commented that they have been inundated by social media correspondence about JWST and have made note of recent editorials in the NY Times and Washington Post.” Cutting JWST’s budget in committee, the report suggests, was a maneuver to “get NASA’s attention on these broader, Agency-wide management issues at the highest levels.” The AAS statement added that the organization is “hopeful” Congress will work out a deal to fund JWST in 2012.
August 17, 2011 at 6:20 am · Filed under Congress, Lobbying, NASA
Earlier this month came word that a draft letter was circulating on Capitol Hill, reportedly linked to Utah’s congressional delegation, calling on the administration to publish its design for the Space Launch System (SLS) heavy-lift launch vehicle and ensure it makes use of solid rocket motors. The advocacy group Tea Party in Space (TPIS) recently obtained a signed copy of the letter, featuring the signatures of five senators, including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and four Republicans, most notably Orrin Hatch of Utah. TPIS minced no words in its reaction to the letter: “TPIS calls on these five senators to renounce this letter and apologize to Administrator Bolden and the hard working men and women at NASA.”
While five western senators signed one letter about the SLS, five southern senators have put their names to another letter critical of the administration’s work on SLS. The letter to President Obama, dated Monday and signed by Republican senators from Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi, called on the White House to “immediately provide the Section 309 report to Congress”, a reference to the provision of the 2010 NASA authorization act that called on NASA to provide Congress with a report the reference vehicle designs for the SLS and the Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle (MPCV) within 90 days of the bill’s enactment. The letter notes that the final report is now nearly 200 days overdue. “We believe the time has come to deliver the report to Congress.”
That letter is also critical of elements of NASA’s 2011 operating plan, which includes spending money allocated for SLS on facility work at the Kennedy Space Center that the senators believe should not be charged exclusively to SLS. “The misallocation of SLS funds and the lack of synchronization between rocket and spacecraft development at NASA seem to suggest that this Administration has no intention of properly using appropriated funds,” the letter concludes, asking for NASA to resubmit an operating plan “to ensure that the funds appropriated for SLS are used to develop the 130 metric ton heavy lift vehicle required in both the authorization and appropriations acts.”
August 7, 2011 at 2:24 pm · Filed under Congress, Lobbying, NASA
With concerns about overall federal spending higher than at any time in recent history, fiscal conservatives are taking a closer look at NASA spending, as evidenced by a couple of recent releases–although, at least in one case, their logic is muddled, at best.
Last week Tea Party in Space (TPIS) issued a press release in response to a letter reportedly linked to Utah’s congressional delegation about the use of solid rocket motors in the Space Launch System (SLS). TPIS “strongly condemned” that letter, arguing that the language in the letter strongly requesting the use of solid rocket motors on the SLS was “a sole-source bailout for the Solid Rocket Motor industry”. TPIS called on Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) in particular to “disown” the letter if he is not involved in it and said anyone who signs on to it should be “ashamed” of themselves. “TPIS and its volunteer network will be reaching out nationwide to candidates and elected officials of all parties, to ensure that this sole-source earmark is terminated,” the release warned.
That logic is relatively straightforward compared to what the Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) announced last week when it released its list of earmarks in the House version of the FY12 Commerce, Justice, and Science appropriations bill. The very first of the “outrageous examples of pork” they cited was for NASA, although it’s difficult to figure out exactly what they’re opposed to:
$237,800,000 to the NASA Space Exploration Crew Vehicle and Launch System, both part of the Constellation Systems Program. CAGW recommended in its 2011 Prime Cuts to eliminate Constellation after years of missed deadlines and cost overruns. In 2010, the Constellation Program was cancelled by the President, but the 2012 Commerce bill confirms that the program continues to receive funding.
SLS and the Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle are getting much more than the $237.8 million in the FY12 bill cited in the CAGW release: a little over $3 billion, or more than 12 times the amount listed in the release. There’s no other NASA program in the House appropriations bill getting a similar amount; the Exploration Research and Development line is the closest in subject matter and funding, at $289 million, but that doesn’t appear to be what CAGW is referring to. (I’ve contacted CAGW for clarification and will pass along anything I hear from them.)
July 31, 2011 at 1:39 pm · Filed under Lobbying, NASA, Other
As the debate grinds on in Washington about a deal to raise the debt ceiling, there have been questions about what will happen should an agreement not be reached by the current deadline of Tuesday. On Friday NASA administrator Charles Bolden sent out message to the agency’s workforce, effectively telling them it will be business as usual this coming week at the space agency. “I am sending this note to remind you that NASA employees should plan to come to work next week, as scheduled, at their normal place and time,” he wrote in the memo, obtained by SpaceRef.
POLITICO examined Friday the lobbying practices of aerospace companies in this new space policy era. Much of the article is less about NASA than about efforts by SpaceX to win business from the Air Force for military launches, arguing that its rockets are just as good as those built by United Launch Alliance but cost much less. SpaceX, the article notes, is on a pace to exceed its 2010 lobbying expenses of $600,000, much more than the $120,000 a year spent by ULA but a small fraction of that spent by ULA’s corporate parents, Boeing and Lockheed Martin.
That article leads, though, with the belief that the president and SpaceX founder Elon Musk are good friends—”President Barack Obama’s élan for Elon Musk”, as the article cleverly puts it—based on Musk’s donations to Obama and “multiple personal visits”. Musk, though, quashes any idea the two are close. “People think Obama is my best friend. If he has been my best friend, he sure hasn’t been very good at helping me out,” Musk told POLITICO. “Obama has been doing a good job within the scope of what he can do … but not pushing further. And Congress has done quite a bad job.”
Speaking Friday morning at the NewSpace 2011 Conference at NASA Ames Research Center, Virgin Galactic president and CEO George Whitesides spent most of his time talking about the status of his company and the progress they’re making in developing a suborbital vehicle. However, the former chief of staff to NASA administrator Bolden also touched upon space policy issues for part of his talk. Whitesides noted he had just come from the EAA AirVenture show in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, and wondered when the space field would be able to host a show of a similar type and scale. “While we cannot be sure that the current national policy will get us to that future, I think we can be reasonably sure the path we were on before would not get us to that future,” he said.
He said that if we had continued down the path of an “Apollo-like” program, there would be little funding available for technological innovations that could lower the cost of space access in general and create an “exothermic reaction” of activity in space. “I really do believe—and I was involved in some of these conversations—that the underlying motivation for these new national policy changes is a desire to go further, and to go sustainably,” he said. “What is motivating, I think, this policy is absolutely not a desire to kill human spaceflight, but it is a desire to essentially press the reset button on human spaceflight, and to try to get it into a pathway that really can fulfill our dreams.” He added it was ironic that some viewed the policy as killing human spaceflight when instead it’s intended “to encourage human spaceflight to thrive, ultimately.”
June 15, 2011 at 7:47 am · Filed under Congress, Lobbying
Plutonium 238 (Pu-238), the radioactive isotope used in the radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs), is essential to a number of spacecraft missions, particularly those bound for the outer solar system. However, getting the relatively modest funding (no more than a few tens of millions of dollars a year) needed to restart Pu-238 production in the US to ensure that a supply of the isotope is available for future missions has been difficult in recent years. The latest push is taking place this week. The Obama Administration included $10 million each for NASA and the Department of Energy (DOE) to restart Pu-238 production, but a draft version of the Energy and Water appropriations bill in the House does not include that funding. The full House Appropriations Committee is scheduled to markup the bill in a hearing today.
Emily Lakdawalla of The Planetary Society reported yesterday that the American Geophysical Union (AGU) is making a last-minute push to get the money added to the appropriations bill. In an email, the AGU said that Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), whose district includes JPL, plans to introduce an amendment to the bill to include the Pu-238 funding. (The AGU alert is not included in its list of “Science Policy Alerts” on its web site; it apparently went out to AGU members whose representatives are on the committee.) The AGU asked its members to contact their congressmen and ask them to support the Schiff amendment, providing a variety of talking points to use in those calls.
Getting that amendment through may be tough, however. In the report accompanying the draft appropriations bill, the committee criticized the administration’s plan to split the Pu-238 costs between NASA and DOE. “The Committee remains concerned that the Administration continues to request equal funding from NASA and the Department of Energy for a project that primarily benefits NASA,” the report states at the top of page 98. “The Committee provides no funds for this project, and encourages the Administration to devise a plan for this project that more closely aligns the costs paid by federal agencies with the benefits they receive.”
June 14, 2011 at 7:33 am · Filed under Congress, Lobbying, NASA
On Friday Huntsville’s “Second to None” task force, a group of local officials who lobby on space and defense issues, met with a member of Congress. Not the area’s own representative, Mo Brooks (R-AL), but with Rep. Terri Sewell (D-AL) from Birmingham. And afterwards local officials declared her their newest ally in supporting NASA, and NASA Marshall in particular. “Rep. Terri Sewell to be voice for TN Valley on NASA affairs” declared the headline of a WAFF-TV report on the meeting, while Huntsville mayor Tommy Battle called her “our new best friend”. Local officials hope that Sewell, who serves on the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee, will help win support from her fellow Democrats on space topics.
Sewell seems willing to do that. “I see the role for myself and the rest of the congressional delegation as helping to promote that innovation and that excellence,” she said, as one account of the meeting reported. “I know that the Rocket City is a shining example of all that is right about the state of Alabama and about our innovation in science and technology throughout this country.” Sewell said that while the federal government needs to cut overall spending, it needs to make “strategic investments”, of which NASA is one example.
“NASA is an investment into the future and we have to have a future,” Battle said. “We sell technology out of this country. We have people that are smarter than any other place in the world sitting right here in Huntsville, Alabama and we have to sell that technology.” The reports didn’t indicate if Battle specified what Huntsville-based technology he thought should be sold “out of the country”.
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