Space Politics
Because sometimes the most important orbit is the Beltway…
Archive for Other
September 26, 2008 at 7:28 am · Filed under Congress, Other
An editorial in today’s New York Times endorses efforts to extend NASA’s Iran, North Korea, and Syria Nonproliferation Act (INKSNA) waiver in Congress. The editorial argues, in effect, the members of Congress upset with Russia’s behavior in recent months, including its invasion of Georgia, should accept a waiver extension that is in “the clear interest of this country”. The editorial also rejects arguments that extending the shuttle is an alternative, noting that the orbiters can only remain docked to the station for a couple weeks at a time. “The shuttle program’s future is a separate argument that will need to be resolved by the next administration and Congress,” the editorial concludes. “The waiver needs to be extended right now. The House did so on Wednesday. The Senate needs to do the same before it adjourns.”
September 19, 2008 at 6:29 am · Filed under Other
On Thursday the Council on Foreign Relations released a report on US-China competition in space, with a particular emphasis on the threat posed by space weaponization. Unlike some other reports that call for a blanket ban on space weapons, the “China, Space Weapons, and U.S. Security” report acknowledges that “some degree of offensive space capability is inevitable” but that the US in particular needs to take a leading role in ensuring that this doesn’t lead to armed conflict in orbit. That effort should be done with “vigorous diplomatic initiatives as well as defense programs and strategy”, adding that any offensive space capabilities the US chooses to develop should be “primarily for deterrent purposes”. As for China, it needs to “give serious consideration to steps that can help it play a more effective role” in this area, particularly in light of its January 2007 ASAT test.
September 10, 2008 at 12:50 pm · Filed under Other
A key Air Force space official thinks that what the US needs is an “official national space strategy”, Aerospace Daily reported Wednesday. And what exactly is a national space strategy? It is “a document that would communicate the value of space, inspire the public and generate increased interest and attention from Congress”, according to Lt. Gen. John Sheridan, head of the Space and Missile Systems Center in Los Angeles. Sheridan, speaking at the Space 2008 conference in San Diego, said that such a strategy would rectify the problem, in his view, that space is “invisible”, at least compared to aviation.
How such a strategy would differ from the national space policy isn’t clear. According to the article, Sheridan sees such a strategy including “continued pre-eminence in space, renewed exploration goals, increased protection for existing and future assets and increased funding for education and aerospace work force development.” Yet most, if not all, of these issues are addressed in the current national space policy in one form or another. Evidently, though, a strategy is more “dramatic”, in his words, than a policy. “Few people remember policies. But everybody remembers [the] Apollo [program].”
September 5, 2008 at 5:56 am · Filed under Other
While Americans have been fixated on political conventions the last two weeks, there have been some space policy developments in Canada. On Tuesday Industry Minister Jim Prentice named astronaut Steve MacLean as the new president of the Canadian Space Agency. And Prentice gave MacLean his marching orders in a speech announcing the appointment: develop a new long-term strategy for the space agency:
I have given Steve a mandate to make sweeping changes at the CSA. As we stand at this crossroads, he will revitalize the Agency. He will restore its ability to punch above its weight in an international quest. He will develop Canada’s capacity for a new era of prestige and achievement.
And to that end, as one of Steve MacLean’s first acts as new President, the CSA will begin consultations with stakeholders that will lead to a new Long-Term Space Plan. I expect this plan – the fourth in the series – to be as influential for our generation of exploration and development as any plan that Canada has produced for charting our future in space. That’s a tall order. I know that Steve is capable of bringing together the stakeholders. Time is of the essence, and I look forward to the plan in the coming months.
That plan is scheduled to be completed by November, but there is one complicating factor: a federal election expected to be called on Sunday that would take place on October 14. MacLean told reporters at his first press conference this week that he’s “politically aware” and ready to adjust if the ruling Conservative party loses power, although he said he’s not “a political person at all”.
August 11, 2008 at 11:18 am · Filed under Other
It should be no surprise to anyone that former House speaker Newt Gingrich is a big fan of prizes for a variety of applications, including space. In an op-ed in Monday’s Wall Street Journal, Gingrich uses prizes as a way to answer a question posed by the paper: “How would you spend $10 billion of American resources (either directly or through regulation) over the next four years to help improve the state of the world?”
Gingrich allocated the $10 billion in seven prizes, three for $2 billion each and the other four for $1 billion each. Two of the $1-billion prizes are focused on space: “A reusable system that could get people into space at 10% of the current cost, thus enabling genuine space tourism and launching an age of exploration” and “The first privately financed permanent lunar base”. The question is, though, whether either would be claimed in four years (as the Journal stipulated in its original question.)
August 6, 2008 at 8:43 pm · Filed under Other
When President Bush met with South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak this week, the main issues on the table had to deal with topics like free trade and North Korea. But the two also reached an agreement about cooperation in space. The official White House statement is short on details, saying only that the two countries pledged to “promote close cooperation in the fields of civil space exploration”, but Lee offered a little more detail in a joint press conference with Bush:
President Bush and I agreed to further expand our cooperation in the area of space science and aeronautics by promoting joint space exploration, development of scientific research satellites, and Korea’s participation in NASA’s International Lunar Network Project.
The last item was actually announced last week in a NASA press release about the International Lunar Network, suggesting that South Korea will either provide one or more robotic lunar landers, or otherwise contribute those missions. What else is involved in “promoting joint space exploration” and the “development of scientific research satellites”. isn’t clear.
August 6, 2008 at 8:00 am · Filed under Other
A heads up: Charles Miller and I will be guests on The Space Show today at 5 pm EDT to talk about the series of articles we’ve authored on The Space Review about Cheap and reliable Access To Space (CATS, or CRATS, or CARATS, or whatever), the National Coalition for CATS announced last month, and plans for a national summit on the issue in Ohio in October. (The show was accidentally omitted from the weekly Space Show newsletter earlier this week; this show had actually been planned some weeks in advance.)
July 23, 2008 at 7:26 am · Filed under Campaign '08, NASA, Other
It’s rare to see a major newspaper devote editorial space to, well, space. However, on Wednesday two of the nation’s largest newspapers (as well as one smaller paper that more frequently covers space issues) took on the topic in editorials and op-eds:
Leading off, the Los Angeles Times examines the proposed space policies of presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama in an editorial. The editors note that McCain “supports the vision for space exploration that President Bush articulated in 2004″ while Obama has proposed delaying Constellation by five years. (The editorial doesn’t note that, more recently, Obama has proclaimed his support for Ares 1 and Orion, the two major early components of Constellation.)
“Who’s right? There’s something to be said for pulling the plug on Constellation,” the editorial continues, suggesting that NASA rely on commercial services or international partners for human spaceflight, allowing it to spend more money on robotic missions. But then the editors worry that, since many robotic missions could be perceived “as the necessary prep work for human exploration”, this could boomerang against those missions—and the paper’s parochial interests at JPL.
The editorial concludes that the Bush-McCain approach “nicely balances realism and ambition”, but that Obama “is sounding like the more realistic, market-oriented candidate” because he wants to enhance NASA’s role in earth sciences research in addition to promoting more international and private-sector cooperation.
Meanwhile, a New York Times op-ed makes an argument for space solar power (SSP). O. Glenn Smith, a former manager of ISS experiments at JSC, reviews the arguments for SSP, including the use of the ISS as a testbed for SSP experiments. (He glosses over one of the major issues, the cost of launching a SSP system, saying that launch services being developed by SpaceX and Orbital under the COTS program “could be adapted to sending up a solar power satellite system”. However, even the NSSO report about SSP released last year admitted that “The vehicle fleet necessary to place a SBSP system into orbit does not exist today” and that a new generation of RLVs are required.) Smith’s closing argument: “[I]n a time of some skepticism about the utility of our space program, NASA should realize that the American public would be inspired by our astronauts working in space to meet critical energy needs here on Earth.” (See recent discussions about the potential conflict between alternative energy research and space exploration.)
Finally, Florida Today argues for “spreading the NASA gospel” to local businesses, so that they, in turn, will support the space agency. The editorial was spurred by a recent meeting at KSC that attracted about 100 chamber of commerce officials from across the state, most of whom hasn’t been there before. “Converting business leaders to the cause is important for building the kind of broad backing necessary to convince the state’s elected officials in the Legislature and Congress that NASA’s future is critical to all Floridians, not just Brevard County residents,” the editorial argues. However, business leaders are often less swayed by rhetoric like “the NASA gospel” and “the cause” then by hard economic data; there’s little of that in the editorial other than the claim that the retirement of the shuttle “could result in the loss of 6,400 jobs”, even though NASA cut that estimate to as little as 3,000 jobs last month.
July 18, 2008 at 6:12 am · Filed under Campaign '08, Other
At the Space Frontier Foundation’s NewSpace 2008 conference in Crystal City, Virginia on Thursday, a group of over a dozen organizations announced the formation of a National Coalition for Cheap and reliable Access To Space (CATS). The purpose of the coalition is to “put cheap access to space back on the national agenda,” in the words of coalition coordinator Charles Miller. The coalition will develop a “declaration” for CATS over the next four to six weeks, including during a meeting at the DC-X reunion conference next month in New Mexico. That will be followed by a National Summit on CATS that will be held on the campus of Ohio State University on October 7-8 that will delve into how to achieve CATS. Why there? “Ohio is a battleground state” in the upcoming presidential election, Miller said; the Ohio Aerospace Institute is one of the member organizations in the coalition as well. The coalition will ask CEOs of major corporations and non-profits to sign the declaration, which will then be presented to the next president after the November election.
Although the location of the summit is based in part on the state’s role in the election, Miller said that the coalition does not have specific plans to engage with the campaigns prior to the election. “We don’t think that the campaigns will be able to hear this” because of all of the other issues during the campaign. Miller said that they are building inroads into both the McCain and Obama campaigns so that they’re prepared to discuss this with the winning campaign after the election, but not earlier.
July 18, 2008 at 5:21 am · Filed under Other
As I noted here earlier this week, there is growing interest in alternative energy efforts that could end up competing with space exploration for federal funding—even as alternative energy advocates use the Apollo program as a model for their efforts. Now there are a couple more examples which demonstrate this trend.
An editorial in Wednesday’s Houston Chronicle made the case for an “Apollo-scale” program for alternative energy (in addition to increased offshore drilling):
If President Bush and Democratic leaders in Congress wished to show responsible leadership worthy of the public’s growing concern about high energy costs, they would together craft legislation that would encourage domestic energy production and begin a national research program – on a scale of NASA’s successful race to the moon – to develop clean energy from renewable sources such as wind and sunlight; superefficient batteries in which to store it; and alternative fuels such as hydrogen or some source not yet envisioned.
Then, yesterday, former vice president Al Gore made a similar call for alternative energy development:
Just as John F. Kennedy set his sights on the moon, Al Gore is challenging the nation to produce every kilowatt of electricity through wind, sun and other Earth-friendly energy sources within 10 years, an audacious goal he hopes the next president will embrace.
Such large-scale programs, if implemented, would be expensive, just as Apollo over 40 years ago. Where would that money come from, particularly if the presidential candidates are serious about reducing budget deficits? Lots of other programs would probably be under pressure, and it’s hard to see how NASA would be exempt.
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