Another aspect of the memo and review is the uncertain, but not particularly promising, future of the National Security Space Office (NSSO), originally a joint office between the Defense Department and NRO but now solely staffed by the DOD. While Air Force staff currently assigned to NSSO will now fall under the Deputy Under Secretary of the Air Force for Space, Donley’s memo states that decisions about NSSO staff associated with the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) will be deferred “until ongoing discussions about the role of the EA [Executive Agent] for Space and roles and reporting relationships for any successor organization to the NSSO are complete and agreement has been reached for the roles and responsibilities of the successor organization(s).” The memo adds that discussions with OSD on the future of functions assigned to NSSO are ongoing, with Donley stating he is “very encouraged by the collaborative approach demonstrated during these meetings.”

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton also issued a statement, calling the policy “a strong statement of our principles and goals regarding U.S. national interests and activities in space.” The State Department, she said, “will expand our work in the United Nations and with other organizations to address the growing problem of orbital debris and to promote ‘best practices’ for its sustainable use,” among other areas. And in a brief statement, Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke praised the commercial elements of the policy. “It recognizes the sea changes occurring in the space community, with federal budgets tightening at the same time that commercial space capabilities and markets are gaining momentum,” he said

The new policy got some third-party endorsements as well. The Aerospace Industries Association said that the policy “takes important steps needed to maintain our global leadership in space and ensure continued competitiveness and innovation”. The AIA noted its strong support of international cooperation provisions in the policy and its goal of strengthening US leadership in space. The Union of Concerned Scientists, in a statement apparently prepared and released just before the policy’s release Monday, supported the policy’s shift in language back to policies from the Clinton and earlier administrations. And the Secure World Foundation “salutes” the new policy, calling it “a highly pragmatic approach to the international space regime that substantially enhances the long-term national security interests of the United States in space.”

The Space Foundation, though, had a mixed assessment of the policy. On one hand it supports elements of the policy ranging from improved space situational awareness to the “recognition” of space nuclear power in the policy (although the previous policy also had a section on that subject). However, it’s concerned that the new push for international cooperation will exclude India and China. It also claims that the policy statements on developing and retaining space professionals “ring hollow” given “plans for NASA continue to put thousands of American space professionals out of work”.

Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT), meanwhile, “blasts” the policy in a statement late Monday. “The Administration is yet again trying to sell this country a failed space policy that irrevocably diminishes our central role in space exploration,” he said, citing plans to make the US “more dependent” on Russia and other nations as well as plans for “dismantling a proven and effective space program that has propelled our nation to tremendous heights.” Sen. Hatch concluded: “I urge the President to rethink this flawed policy, because while this might be a new direction for manned space flight, it’s a direction we don’t want to take.”

The language of the report, though, suggests that Rep. Bishop may have been overstating his point. There is a section of the HASC report on the FY11 Defense Department authorization bill that addresses the solid rocket motor (SRM) industrial base (pp. 354-355, or 382 and 383 in the PDF document). The section is actually only about one page’s worth of material, not two (it starts near the bottom of p. 354), and much of it does not address Constellation at all. The challenges of maintaining the SRM industrial base, it notes, “are made worse by the proposed termination of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) Constellation program. Defense officials have estimated that the cost of propulsion systems could increase from 40 to 100 percent because infrastructure costs currently shared by the Department of Defense (DOD) and NASA would be passed on to the Department of Defense.” The next few paragraphs deal with DOD-specific SRM issues, including development programs and the need to align Navy and Air Force SRM needs for its ballistic missiles. Only at the end does NASA come up again, in reference to inter-agency coordination of SRM needs: “Any DOD strategic plan should include NASA, and any NASA plan should include the Department of Defense.”

Nowhere does that section (which appears to be the only section of the report that mentions NASA) explicitly criticize NASA for its decision on Constellation, only noting the impact NASA’s plans make on SRM planning for the DOD, which already is facing its own issues of “sustaining currently-deployed strategic and missile defense systems or maintaining an intellectual and engineering capacity to support the next-generation rocket motors,” as the report notes. The section at the end about coordination is perhaps more subtle criticism, since the White House apparently did not consult with DOD officials, or at least do so extensively, prior to making its decision about Constellation.

Another question is the claim in the report that propulsion systems costs “could increase from 40 to 100 percent” because of Constellation’s cancellation. The HASC report cites unnamed “defense officials”, but back in March Rear Admiral Stephen E. Johnson, director of strategic systems programs for the Navy, told a Senate committee that he expected DOD costs to increase by only 10-20 percent.

Nelson announced that he had won an extra $726 million for NASA in the FY2011 budget resolution that was marked up Wednesday by the Senate Budget Committee, on which Nelson serves. The additional money, he said, would be used for continued work on a heavy-lift vehicle. “If we’re going to Mars, as the president has said, then let’s get going,” he said in a statement. “We shouldn’t wait five years.”

In comments during the markup (which can be viewed in this video clip), Nelson elaborated on this, suggesting that such a heavy-lift vehicle would be derived from the Ares family of vehicles that would be canceled under the president’s plan. The additional funding, he said, would be used because “as we are confronting a program of testing a large-diameter solid rocket motor, which is critical to the Department of Defense, and of which is a good example of one hand of the federal government not knowing what the other hand was doing – Defense Department and NASA – and NASA goes in and cancels this test.”

Nelson, in comments directed to committee chairman Sen. Kent Conrad (D-ND), played up the connection between this NASA development and national security. “You have allowed in this the flexibility of continuing the testing for that big solid rocket motor called the Ares 1-X, which will not only be important to the future of us getting out of low Earth orbit by building a heavy-lift vehicle for NASA, but is going to be critical to the solid rocket motors that protect this country’s national security.”

Nelson’s comments are somewhat puzzling since the Ares 1-X was a specific test that took place last year, and is not itself a “big solid rocket motor”. The statement from his office makes no mention of Ares or solid rocket motors, but does mention that “The Pentagon is worried about delaying this decision and the effect it might have on the rocket industry”, an apparent reference to previous concerns about the solid rocket motor industrial base.

Conrad, who could be seen in the video nodding as Nelson spoke, concurred in his own comments. “There are classified discussions that we can’t go into here with respect to this initiative, but I would say to my colleagues, this is absolutely essential for the national security that this go forward,” Conrad said. “And I think every member of this committee understands what I’m talking about. So I hope very much that this will be retained and we’re going to have to fight for this.”

Conrad is referring to the fact that the budget resolution is just that—a non-binding resolution that plays a role in the later appropriations process, but does not constrain appropriators to fund a specific program.

That means no cutting corners on launch costs. “I am paying extra for mission assurance on all of our launch vehicles, but to me that’s great,” he said. “I would love to save $10 million on a launch, but if it costs me—if that launch vehicle fails and I splash a $2-billion satellite—then I’ve been pushing on the wrong end of the lever.” He continued: “Launch reliability is my top priority. Our constellations for any of our missions cannot tolerate a launch failure.”

However, he said he’s still concerned about launch costs and looking for ways to reduce them without affecting reliability. NASA’s plans are having a ripple effect, he said, but it’s not all due to NASA’s current plans to cancel Constellation. He said he started to see price increases for engines last summer as production of the Space Shuttle Main Engine (SSME) wound down with the impending retirement of the shuttle. “We’ve known that for many, many months and we’ve been working with independent cost estimators and ULA, United Launch Alliance, to mitigate those predicted cost increases.” One possibility would be to do a bulk buy of vehicles, something he said that would require the ability to do a multi-year procurement.

He also discussed the impact to the solid rocket motor industrial base caused by the shuttle’s retirement and plans to cancel Ares. The bigger impact of that, he said, is on the Minuteman and Trident ballistic missiles, and not the strap-on motors used by EELVs. Still, he said, “we very intelligently have to walk down the path of the potential reduction in the solid rocket motor industrial base.” He said he had met just earlier in the week with NASA administrator Charles Bolden to discuss “how the Air Force, NRO, and NASA will work together as the future unfolds” with respect to the industrial base and other issues.

Sen. David Vitter (R-LA), a critic of the new NASA plan, fears the military’s costs will double, as Defense News reports. However, at a hearing yesterday of the strategic forces subcommittee of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Rear Admiral Stephen E. Johnson, director of strategic systems programs for the Navy, expects a much smaller increase: on the order of 10 to 20 percent. Vitter was skeptical of that claim, wondering why the loss of the biggest customer—NASA—wouldn’t cause a bigger increase. Johnson replied that NASA’s requirements are so different than what’s needed for even ballistic missiles that it may be possible to control costs by shutting down shuttle-specific production facilities. “It’s a very valid concern. There’s no doubt costs are going to go up,” Johnson said. “I don’t think they’ll double.”

So what can we expect in terms of military space policy? Speaking at an event about the Space Security Index Thursday at the Canadian Embassy in Washington, Peter Hays, an SAIC senior scientist working at the National Security Space Office, offered some insights. While not directly involved in the development of the review, and also speaking solely for himself, he said he understood that the current plan was to release a “shorter, non-perscriptive” version of the review early next month, along with the FY2011 budget request. That would be the same time as the Defense Department plans to release the Quadrennial Defense Review, an overall defense policy report that the Space Posture Review was designed to support.

Hays said one unnamed person who was involved with the review process described the debate about it as splitting into four camps: “ostriches” who saw no reason to change what we do in space; a “steroids camp” that advocated doing the same as what we’re doing today in space, but more of it; soft power advocates who wanted more international cooperation and commercial partnerships as well as negotiations for “rules of the road” in space; and a “hard power” group that would increase the “less benign” capabilities of the Defense Department to protect US space capabilities. “Clearly if you have these kinds of divergent views and no resolution amongst them, it’s going to be difficult to fashion a holistic and theoretically, foundationally based clean-sheet approach to all of this,” Hays said.

The rest of the work that had gone into the review would be reworked, he said, as part of a “national security space strategy”. That would come out after the completion of a new overall national space policy. The current schedule calls for completing that policy by early summer, although Hays was skeptical that schedule could be kept. He noted that it took several years for the Bush Administration to develop its national space policy, a process that started in 2002 and was not completed until August 2006, thus he thought it was unlikely the current administration could complete its own space policy so quickly. “Perhaps the Obama Administration has a time machine, but I’m not optimistic that they’re going to be able to do all this work on the timeline that they’ve outlined,” he said.

A planned review of the nation’s military space programs and policy could be delayed by several months. Defense News reports that the 2010 Space Posture Review may be delayed by several months and possibly up to a year. The review was scheduled for release next month, along with the Quadrennial Defense Review and the FY11 budget proposal. The Congressionally-mandated review is designed to examine “the definition, policy, requirements, and objectives” for a variety of military space issues.

A Republican challenger to Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ), chair of the space subcommittee of the House Science and Technology Committee, hinted that he would make an issue of her position during the campaign. Arizona state senator Jonathan Paton told the Arizona Daily Star that becoming chair was an example of “political missteps” made by Giffords. “She has raised her profile, and some eyebrows, as chairwoman of the House space subcommittee, even though her husband is an astronaut,” according to the article. “Giffords’ camp notes her role was approved by the ethics committee, in part because her husband actually works for the Navy, assigned to NASA’s space shuttle program.”

Despite a budget shortfall of $4.2 billion over the next two years, new Virginia governor Bob McDonnell reiterated his support for the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS) on Wallops Island. “Governor Kaine committed to invest $1.3 million in the Virginia Spaceport,” McDonnell said in a speech before the General Assembly Monday, referring to his predecessor, Tim Kaine. “We can make Wallops Island the top commercial Spaceport in America, and I ask you to keep that money in place so that we can aggressively recruit aerospace companies and promote space tourism initiatives.” McDonnell supported continued development of MARS during last year’s campaign.

Virginia might be facing some spaceport competition though, from… Indiana? Legislation introduced in the state’s House of Representatives last week would designate two municipal airports as the state’s “primary” and “secondary” airports, and also provide some tax incentives for space transportation research and development, including “a deduction from the adjusted gross income tax equal to the amount of casualty loss deducted from the taxpayer’s federal adjusted gross income with respect to the loss of a space vehicle owned by the taxpayer.” Nothing like thinking positive…

Butler’s background, though, seems to be primarily on the cyber side, as NextGov reported. He has “real, hands-on programming experience” from his early career in the Air Force, and later served in a number of intelligence positions; he was the head the military intelligence business for Computer Sciences Corporation prior to his appointment. It’s not clear how much of that experience dealt with space systems, but at first glance it does raise the question of how much attention space will get from the new office compared to cyberspace.

• Perhaps the biggest item in the bill is language that blocks the Defense Department from spending any money appropriated for the National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS) “until the Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics certifies in writing to the congressional defense committees that the NPOESS program is being managed in compliance with the Department of Defense 5000-series acquisition guidelines and that the participants are complying with the MOA [memorandum of agreement] signed on December 18, 2008.” The report also calls for an updated independent assessment of the program’s cost and schedule.
• The appropriations committee, the report notes, “is concerned that there is no clear path for space system investment.” The report calls for the development of an annual long-range (30 years) report that “will provide a necessary roadmap for future government and industrial base investments.” The same section also presses the DOD to create a major force program category for space by the FY2011 budget submission next February.
• The report directs the Air Force and the NRO to create a “sustainment plan” for the EELV program that would allow it to continue until 2030. That plan would address in particular liquid-propellant rocket engine development “identify the minimum level of investments and areas of technology development required to ensure the United States has a robust and viable liquid rocket engine industrial base beyond 2015″, particularly for upper stages. The same report language also calls for a review of the merger that created United Launch Alliance, assessing the cost savings promised at the time of the merger. (Another part of the report calls for development of a “five-year investment strategy” for the next block of both EELV vehicles as well as the SBIRS missile warning satellites.)