Space Politics
Because sometimes the most important orbit is the Beltway…
Archive for States
September 28, 2009 at 7:17 am · Filed under Lobbying, States, White House
That’s the hope of a new effort on Florida’s Space Coast that’s launching today. Save Space, an effort led by Brevard County’s board of commissioners, is encouraging Floridians and other Americans to write letters to President Obama in support of the space program. The draft letters on the web site ask the president to:
- add an additional $3 billion a year to NASA’s budget;
- close the shuttle-Constellation gap by extending the shuttle;
- extend the life of the ISS;
- align human spaceflight goals “with key national objectives including clean energy, climate-change, and improved health”; and
- accelerate the development of “a well-designed and adequately funded heavy-lift space technology program” (not explicitly naming Ares 5 or shuttle-derived alternatives).
The site’s launch is tied to the Florida Space and Technology Forum taking place this morning in Cocoa, with Congresswoman Suzanne Kosmas as one of the participants. The goal of the Save Space campaign is to have 500,000 letters delivered to the White House by the end of October.
While the site claims that the campaign’s purpose is to “raise the awareness of the nation, the President, and other elected officials: Space needs to be a priority for America”, there’s a more parochial concern as well: saving jobs on the Space Coast and protecting the local economy. “If this shuttle doesn’t get extended, it’s going to be very, very devastating to the community. I started thinking to myself, why isn’t the community screaming about it?” Brevard County Commissioner Robin Fisher told Florida Today. To that end, the web site plans to be a “learning tool” for students in Brevard County public schools; Space Florida will promote the site at a state level. (Interestingly, Florida Today is listed as a partner on the Save Space site, a relationship not mentioned in the article.)
September 23, 2009 at 7:25 am · Filed under States
An editorial in today’s Orlando Sentinel discusses the current state of Space Florida, the state space development agency. For those who missed the events last week, a search committee picked former NASA deputy administrator Shana Dale as the agency’s new president, a decision that caused consternation among some Space Coast officials, who backed interim president Frank DiBello, a local businessman with a long record in the aerospace industry. Then, just before the full Space Florida board was scheduled to make a final decision on the job, Dale took herself out of the running for the job. The board then voted to name DiBello the permanent president.
Happy ending? Well, not exactly, in the eyes of the Sentinel. Citing “lackluster results” during the tenure of previous agency president Steve Kohler, “the recent bungling by some board members in choosing a new president raises nagging doubts about whether the agency is finally on track,” the Sentinel argues. “It’s a good argument for legislators to continue to keep a close eye on Space Florida.” The editorial is also keeping a wary eye on DiBello, noting that Space Florida “has not yet announced any major accomplishments during his interim leadership.” What they’re looking for is Space Florida to bring business, and jobs, to the Space Coast to help offset the losses expected when the shuttle is retired, be that in 2011 or later.
August 15, 2009 at 9:43 am · Filed under States
This week Bob McDonnell, the Republican candidate for governor of Virginia, toured the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS), the commercial spaceport on Wallops Island, Virginia. He used the visit to release his plans to support the continued development of MARS to make it “America’s top commercial Spaceport”.
The biggest part of the plan is a pledge to increase the state’s funding of MARS ten-fold—although that would only increase it to $1 million, an idea of how much of a shoestring budget the spaceport has operated under. (MARS does also get funding from Maryland.) Other aspects of the plan include creating an “aerospace business roundtable” to plan for future projects at the spaceport, “aggressively” recruit companies to use the spaceport, and promote space tourism initiatives that would use MARS (as the plan states, McDonnell “understands the value of our hospitality industry and fully intends to promote our Commonwealth to ‘space lovers’”).
One issue that the plan doesn’t address, though, is any potential conflict between use of MARS and offshore drilling, which McDonnell has endorsed. Some have previously raised concerns that offshore drilling could greatly restrict operations at MARS.
Meanwhile, the campaign of the Democratic candidate, Creigh Deeds, circulated a letter (not posted on his campaign web site) noting his support for the spaceport. While the timing of the release suggested to some that Deeds was playing a “grown up version of follow the leader”, it turns out the letter to the board of supervisors in Accomack County, where MARS is located, was submitted on Monday, three days before McDonnell’s announcement. In that letter Deeds supports some of the same initiatives to recruit companies, including space tourism, to MARS, although he does not call for any specific increase in state funding for the spaceport.
June 9, 2009 at 6:50 am · Filed under States
In this off year in the Congressional election cycle, one of the few elections of interest is the Virginia gubernatorial race. The primaries are today, although only the Democratic nomination is contested, with three major candidates: Creigh Deeds, Terry McAuliffe, and Brian Moran. The good news for space advocates in the state is that all three Democrats, as well as Republican Bob McDonnell, have all endorsed continued development of the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS) at Wallops Island.
Among the Democratic candidates, Deeds and McAuliffe endorsed additional funding for MARS at a forum in April, according to Jack Kennedy’s Spaceports blog. McAuliffe, the former head of the Democratic National Committee, added that he would “leverage his contacts to pull more commercial space launch firms” to the facility. Moran, meanwhile, expressed his support for the spaceport in a Washington Post online chat last month, saying that MARS has “tremendous potential”.
McDonnell, meanwhile, expressed his support for MARS in an interview with Human Events last week. He didn’t explicitly say he would increase funding for the spaceport, but did say that “there are some things to do to boost state support of that, to help them with more research and development, to help them get more contracts.” MARS also is mentioned at the very end of the “Jobs and Economic Growth” section of his campaign web site: “We will set a goal of developing the top commercial space port in the country at Wallops Island on the Eastern Shore.”
The same section of McDonnell’s web site also notes his support for “the safe offshore exploration and drilling of oil and natural gas”. This could, potentially, raise a conflict with the spaceport: some fear that offshore drilling operations could sharply restrict or event prevent launch operations from Wallops because of range safety concerns. Moran raised that point in his Washington Post chat: “We can’t realize the potential of this innovative approach if we build oil rigs off the Eastern Shore.”
May 4, 2009 at 1:53 pm · Filed under Congress, Lobbying, NASA, States
A few policy-related items published in the last few days worth mentioning:
• It’s not surprising that, after the series of articles it did on Space Florida, the Orlando Sentinel called for a shakeup of the agency in an editorial Sunday. The paper called on the state’s governor and lieutenant governor to “clean house at the agency”, starting with the removal of the agency’s current head, Steve Kohler.
• In an op-ed in Sunday’s Washington Times, former congressmen Nick Lampson and Dave Weldon call on the administration and Congress to maintain their commitment to the space program and apparently not change its overall strategy or implementation. “What the space program now needs,” they conclude, “is support for its goals, not a start-and-stop approach that will negatively impact our nation’s strategic capabilities for years to come.”
• Some at NASA Glenn feel that the Cleveland center won’t get “our fair share” of the agency’s $1 billion in stimulus money, and that current plans to allocate it are “a real slap in the face to Glenn”. How much money would be Glenn’s fair share isn’t clear, although the article identifies some earth science, exploration, and center repair funding union officials at Glenn are eyeing.
• The lack of an administrator nominee attracts the notice of the New York Times and Florida Today reminds us that the FY2010 budget to be detailed this week won’t do much to shorten the gap.
May 1, 2009 at 12:04 pm · Filed under Lobbying, States
An entanglement with a space tourism training venture that hired a former state employee, running afoul of state ethics rules? Not much of a problem. Spending millions on a new launch facility that doesn’t have any customers? A needed investment. But spend money on lobbyists? That was a bit too much for one Florida lawmaker after hearing that Space Florida spent nearly $300,000 last year on lobbyists at the state and federal level, without much positive effect.
When the Orlando Sentinel revealed that spending Wednesday, state senator Mike Fasano, chair of an appropriations committee with oversight of Space Florida, reacted by announcing he planned to cut the organization’s budget in half—over $1.8 million—for the upcoming fiscal year. Fortunately for Space Florida, though, Fasano backed down Thursday and restored the funding after meeting with Space Florida officials and its supporters in the legislature. Space Florida agreed it would not use state money on lobbyists, although Fasano said there’s no reason for the organization to spend any money on lobbyists, given that it has strong allies at least in the state legislature. “I still impressed to them they don’t need lobbyists. … There’s no need to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars,” Fasano told the Sentinel.
March 13, 2009 at 6:02 am · Filed under Other, States
The Illinois Senate, fresh off its conviction of former governor Rod Blagojevich in his impeachment trial, has taken a stand on another controversial issue: whether Pluto should be a planet. Really. Late last month the state senate passed SR0046, designates today, March 13, “Pluto Day”, in honor of the 79th anniversary of the announcement of its discovery. (Why Illinois? Pluto’s discoverer, Clyde Tombaugh, was born in Streator, Illinois.)
In addition, the resolution notes that Pluto was “unfairly downgraded” by the IAU in 2006 to a new category, “dwarf planet”, a decision that remains controversial among astronomers to this day. In Illinois, though, that injustice is rectified: the resolution proclaims that “as Pluto passes overhead through Illinois’ night skies, that it be reestablished with full planetary status.” (The resolution doesn’t discuss what happens when Pluto is not above the horizon as seen from the state; does it revert to dwarf planet status then?) While the resolution delights those who are trying to restore Pluto to full planethood, astronomer Mike Brown worries that the Illinois Senate’s act “can be dangerous to public understanding of science”, he tells National Geographic News.
March 4, 2009 at 7:17 am · Filed under States
Today is Florida Space Day, when representatives of the state’s space industry as well as Space Florida meet with state legislators in Tallahassee “to discuss the challenges we face in ensuring Florida remains at the forefront of the nation’s space program.” And that challenge, according to an article in today’s Orlando Sentinel, may be based in a neighboring state: unless “some miracle” revitalizes activity at Cape Canaveral in the near future, aerospace workers will leave the state “in droves” to take jobs with the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) in Huntsville, Alabama.
According to the article, United Space Alliance is in discussions with the Huntsville Chamber of Commerce to help secure positions with the MDA once the shuttle is retired; that effort would provide some guarantee for current shuttle workers so they’ll stay with the shuttle program through its final flights rather than leaving sooner for other work. (Exactly what the local chamber of commerce can do to help guarantee those government jobs isn’t clear.) As the article notes, there’s not much Florida officials can do about this other than root for budget cuts to the MDA by the new president, who “has not been a big fan of the system”.
This issue, though, may be something of a distraction from the internal problems facing Florida, including criticism of Space Florida and its effectiveness (as chronicled in The Space Review and the Sentinel in recent weeks.) As the Sentinel reported last week, industry representatives agreed to participate in Florida Space Day only if Space Florida’s $4-million budget request was removed from the agenda.
February 5, 2009 at 4:59 am · Filed under Lobbying, States
We don’t know who the next NASA administrator is going to be, nor what the new administration’s space policy plans are, nor what sort of budget the administration will request, but that’s not stopping some advocacy groups from pressing their agendas on Congress. The National Space Society is planning its annual Legislative Blitz in conjunction with the Space Exploration Alliance on February 22-24. As in past years, this event will feature teams of space activists meeting with Congressional offices to push the theme that “space must be a national priority”, although they have not disclosed any policy specifics.
The Planetary Society is also stepping up its Congressional outreach in support of “Beyond the Moon”, its space exploration roadmap released in November that deemphasizes a human return to the Moon while making Mars the ultimate long-term goal for human spaceflight. The organization plans to distribute copies of that report to all members of Congress early this month. “By reaching out to Congress early in its term,” the group notes, “the Society is making sure that its voice and that of its members will be heard when the time comes to make difficult budgetary decisions.”
February 4, 2009 at 7:51 am · Filed under States
If you saw this Orlando Sentinel headline—“Former Fla. lawmaker to help Palin on space”—the first thing that may have popped into your mind was the former vice presidential candidate was already assembling a coterie of advisers to prepare for a future run at national office. And while that might eventually be the case, the news was instead linked to Palin’s current position as Alaska governor: she appointed former Congressman Dave Weldon to the board of directors of the Alaska Aerospace Development Corporation, the state corporate that operates the Kodiak Launch Complex.
That selection doesn’t sit well with the editorial board of Florida Today, and for reasons having nothing to do with any political ambitions of Governor Palin. The paper is worried that Alaska will use Weldon’s experience and connections to win business away from the Cape, and calls Weldon’s decision to joint the board “disappointing”. An excerpt:
Palin cited Weldon’s experience on the House Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics for the appointment. But what she didn’t say undoubtedly played a part in the decision:
His insider knowledge of Florida’s plans to utilize Cape Canaveral Air Force Station – which also was in his district – to lure private rocket and satellite companies.
That – coupled with Weldon’s Washington know-how in steering space projects to states – could cost Brevard County more jobs in the fierce competition among Florida and other states to attract launch business at a time when the shuttle’s retirement next year will result in about 3,500 job cuts at KSC.
There is, as you might have guessed, a problem with this assessment: Cape Canaveral and Kodiak aren’t much in competition with one another. While the Cape focuses primarily on larger launch vehicles, including the EELVs and the Shuttle, Kodiak can only currently host small launch vehicles. The Cape can’t support launches in polar orbits (at least not very well), while Kodiak can essentially only do polar orbit launches. And in recent years pretty much the only launch activity out of Kodiak has been in support of missile defense tests, as opposed to satellite launches. So, while it’s good to be vigilant, there’s a fine line between vigilance and paranoia.
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