Space Politics
Because sometimes the most important orbit is the Beltway…
Archive for Uncategorized
November 6, 2009 at 7:29 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
Courtney Stadd won’t do any jail time after being convicted on ethics charges stemming from an incident in 2005 when he worked at NASA. Stadd, found guilty in August of helping steer $9.6 million in earmarked funds to Mississippi State University, a client of his private consulting practice, was sentenced to three years of probation as well as six months of electronic monitoring and fined $2,500. The government had asked for a one-year prison term, but that was rejected by the judge, who said that prison time “was not needed to protect the public”. As a Space News article notes, the courtroom was “packed with many of Stadd’s friends and aerospace industry colleagues”, and the judge said she had received “tons of letters” supporting Stadd.
October 22, 2009 at 1:01 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
The full Augustine committee report is now online.
October 8, 2009 at 5:47 am · Filed under Uncategorized
The president assembled quite a group at the White House last night: NASA administrator Charlie Bolden and deputy administrator Lori Garver, former astronauts Buzz Aldrin and Sally Ride, and science advisor John Holdren. A space policy summit? Nope, a star party, attended by 150 middle schoolers with a focus on science education, not space policy. Obama’s brief speech at the event didn’t drop any hints about NASA’s future, and Holdren wasn’t offering any hints, either:
Asked by a reporter what he would say if a middle school student asked him if America is returning to the moon, Holdren said simply, “We will certainly go back to the moon at some point.”
And would the administration be willing to put another $3 billion into human exploration? “We’ll be looking at that,” he said.
Earlier in the day President Obama spoke at the awards ceremony for the National Medal of Science and National Medal of Technology and Innovation, an event also attended by Bolden and Holdren. Obama did not explicitly mention space policy in this speech either, instead focusing on education as well as previously-announced plans to increase federal spending on R&D to 3 percent.
However, Spaceflight Now’s Craig Couvalt reads between the lines to conclude that the administration is likely to request additional funding for NASA’s human spaceflight program. Sources tell Couvalt that Holdren has had “unofficials sessions” with members of the Augustine committee and received the options presented in the report “favorably”. Holden, he reported, “expressed optimism that the White House can help with funding shortfalls toward modification of the Bush plan.”
May 7, 2009 at 6:47 am · Filed under Uncategorized
I am tied up all day today at a space debris workshop at McGill University in Montreal, so I won’t be providing updates on the budget details released later today until tonight. So I’m leaving this post open to comment on the budget and any other policy announcements (such as the anticipated Constellation review) that might come out today.
January 22, 2009 at 9:33 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
The Democratic leadership of the House Science and Technology Committee announced its subcommittee assignments Thursday. Picked to chair the space and aeronautics subcommittee is Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ). Entering her second term in Congress, Giffords is probably best known in space circles not for her legislative work—she was on the science committee, but not the space subcommittee, in the last Congress—but for her husband: NASA astronaut Mark Kelly. She acknowledges this connection in passing in her own press release announcing her appointment: “My personal experience in learning about the space program gives me a jumpstart,” she said.
Might there be a conflict of interest, though, in a subcommittee chair being married to a highly visible member of the agency the subcommittee has oversight of? A spokesperson for the full committee tells the Orlando Sentinel that Congressman Bart Gordon, committee chairman, is not concerned since Kelly is technically not an NASA employee: he is a Navy officer detailed to NASA. “He works for the Navy, so it’s not a conflict of interest,” the spokesperson explained to the Sentinel.
The other Democrats assigned to the space subcommittee are:
- Rep. Marcia Fudge (D-OH)
- Rep. Parker Griffith (D-AL)
- Rep. David Wu (D-OR)
- Rep. Donna Edwards (D-MD)
- Rep. Steven Rothman (D-NJ)
- Rep. Baron Hill (D-IN)
- Rep. Charles Wilson (D-OH)
- Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL)
- Rep. Suzanne Kosmas (D-FL)
Several of these people also have connections to NASA, although these are geographical and not familial in nature. Griffith and Kosmas, both freshmen, represent districts that include Marshall Space Flight Center and Kennedy Space Center respectively; both had previously announced they would be on at least the full committee. Fudge’s Cleveland-area district is close to, but does not include, the Glenn Research Center. Edwards’s serpentine suburban Washington district comes close to the Goddard Space Flight Center. Even Grayson’s central Florida district extends far enough east to perhaps include some people who commute to the Cape.
October 22, 2008 at 10:58 am · Filed under Uncategorized
Late yesterday India launched its first lunar mission, Chandrayaan-1. In response to that milestone, the Barack Obama campaign issued the following statement from the candidate that ties that launch into his space policy:
With India’s launch of its first unmanned lunar spacecraft following closely on the heels of China’s first spacewalk, we are reminded just how urgently the United States must revitalize its space program if we are to remain the undisputed leader in space, science, and technology.
My comprehensive plan to revitalize the space program and close the gap between the Space Shuttle’s retirement and its next-generation replacement includes $2 billion more for NASA – but more money alone is not enough. We must not only retain our space workforce so that we don’t let other countries surpass our technical capabilities; we must train new scientists and engineers for the next generation. My comprehensive space policy focuses on reaching new frontiers through human space exploration, tapping the ingenuity of our commercial space entrepreneurs, fostering a broad research agenda to break new ground on the world’s leading scientific discoveries, and engaging students through educational programs that excite them about space and science.
As a child, I remember sitting on my grandfather’s shoulders and watching the Apollo astronauts return from a splashdown to Hickam Air Force Base, dreaming of where they had been. It inspired my imagination and gave me confidence in what we as Americans could achieve. It’s time for a space program that inspires our children again. As President, I will lead our space program boldly into the 21st Century – so when my daughters, and all our children, look up to the skies, they see Americans leading the way into the deepest reaches of our solar system.
August 20, 2008 at 7:42 am · Filed under Uncategorized
Central Florida News 13, a cable news channel serving Orlando and surrounding areas, took advantage of visits this week by presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama to speak at the VFW convention there to interview them, including asking them about space policy. (The McCain interview was even performed with a Mercury capsule replica in the background).
The McCain interview saves the space question for the very end, asking him for “your definite whatever people need to know” about where he stands on space:
I stand for not cutting any of the NASA budget, which Senator Obama proposed and then reversed himself, as he has on a number of things. I think we have to give a national priority to our efforts on the Moon, the International Space Shuttle [sic], and Mars. Americans are excited about these. We can excite them again. And it is a national security issue, when you look at the competition from both Russia and China. Space still is the last frontier. We have to continue to lead.
The Obama interview took up space earlier, and was apparently important enough to the station that they provided the transcript of that portion of the interview, discussing why he reversed his earlier decision to delay Constellation:
I’m not going to make a proposal unless I know how to pay for it, and in one of our earlier proposals, we had looked at extending the Constellation program longer, and stretching it out so that we could take some of that money to pay for education programs.
In consultation with space community here in Orlando and around the country, my conclusion is that we have to have that in place to have a transition from the space shuttle to the next generation of space exploration.
August 10, 2008 at 2:08 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
The Democratic party has completed work on its party platform for 2008, which will be adopted at the convention in Denver later this month. The text of the platform hasn’t been released yet (at least officially on the party’s web site) but a near-final draft was published by The Atlantic.com late Thursday. And, at least this draft does mention space in passing, as part of a single sentence on page 16 (page 19 of the PDF document linked to in the post):
We will double federal funding for basic research, invest in a strong and inspirational vision for space exploration and make the Research and Development Tax Credit permanent.
That doesn’t say much at all, other than the party felt it was worth it to include a passing mention of space in the platform: the 2004 version makes no mention of space policy at all.
July 17, 2008 at 6:36 am · Filed under Uncategorized
Last night several organizations co-hosted a “Teachers in Space” roundtable at George Washington University. The idea behind Teachers in Space, unlike NASA’s Teacher in Space program in the 1980s and the current group of educator astronauts, is to fly current teachers on suborbital spaceflights using any number of commercial vehicles currently under development, then get the teachers back in the classroom so they can share their experience—and, presumably, enthusiasm—with their students. Most of the panel discussion focused on the benefits of the program as well as the history of NASA’s past teacher-in-space efforts.
The roundtable came after three days of Congressional staff briefings by several people affiliated with Teachers in Space. Project manager Ed Wright said that they held several dozen briefings and were pleased with the results; he cited one hour-long briefing earlier in the day with a Congressional fellow who was particularly excited about the concept.
Right now, though, Teachers in Space isn’t seeking any specific legislation or federal funding. Wright said that they did get some commitments of support, up to offers to introduce legislation on the issue if needed, and also got feedback on how to win federal funding to help support this project. (Teachers in Space has several flights donated to it by several vehicle providers, and has also arranged a purchase of flights from XCOR Aerospace.) One earlier proposal called for funding flights of 500 teachers a year: one from each Congressional district plus several dozen others.
Charles Miller, president of Space Policy Consulting, said that it might still be too soon to pursue specific initiatives like that. “If you started a Teachers in Space program right now, 500 teachers per year, it would change how the Hill perceives risk,” he said. “They would probably try to put more burdensome regulations on the emerging industry, which is not ready for it, because you’re protecting the teachers.” He expected that in the next few years, once suborbital vehicles begin flying, and flying safely, that teachers, perhaps supported by funding from Congress, will soon follow. “It may not be the right idea right now, but within the next five years, they [Congress] could see it being the right idea,” Miller said.
July 15, 2008 at 7:14 am · Filed under Uncategorized
That’s the topic of an article in this week’s issue of The Space Review that I wrote about the potential risk to civil space programs posed by growing concerns about energy and desires for crash programs to develop alternative energy sources. Both major presidential candidates have appropriated arguably the biggest accomplishment of the Space Age to date—the Apollo lunar landings—as a way to describe the level of commitment (and size of funding) needed to gain “strategic independence” in energy (in John McCain’s words) or otherwise develop alternative energies.
That level of effort will require a lot of money: Barack Obama’s energy policy calls for $150 billion over 10 years for alternative energy research. Coupled with desires to reduce deficit spending, as well as growing pressure on the budget from mandatory spending, will space feel the squeeze in the next administration? As I conclude the article:
…but new energy policies will add to the existing fiscal pressures on NASA and space exploration in the next administration and beyond. That makes it all the more imperative for NASA and its supporters to craft approaches that are cost effective and also exciting and inspiring, to help win public support and thus funding. Otherwise, the Vision for Space Exploration and efforts like it might run out of gas.
In a related article, Greg Anderson examines what it takes to build long-term support for government initiatives of any kind, from Social Security to the Cold War, and how that can be used to build support in future administrations for space exploration. His conclusion: “Space expansion, therefore, must be presented to voters as being good for society as a whole. If the enemy in the Cold War was Communism, the alternatives to expanding the human economy beyond Earth are poverty, stagnation, and smaller, perhaps shorter lives for coming generations.”
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