Space Politics
Because sometimes the most important orbit is the Beltway…
Archive for White House
November 17, 2009 at 6:36 am · Filed under NASA, White House
Space advocates have talked for a long time about winning a substantial budget increase for NASA. That talk has been emboldened in the last few months by the Augustine committee, whose report found that an increase of up to $3 billion a year was “more appropriate” to support human space exploration beyond LEO. Even people who disagree with some of the options and other findings in the report have seized upon this as something of a necessity for NASA.
There’s just one problem: NASA’s budget—as well as other domestic spending—might get slashed in the FY2011 budget request. The AP reported late last week that the White House was weighing a spending freeze or cuts of up five percent for non-military agencies, as part of an effort to decrease the budget deficit. An Orlando Sentinel article suggests it might even be worse: NASA has been told to prepare for as much as a ten-percent cut.
Keep in mind, though, that while agencies have been told to plan for cuts of up to five or ten percent, that doesn’t mean that all agencies will be subject to the same cuts. “When the president makes a decision on human spaceflight, he can ignore that,” an unidentified “senior administration official” told the Sentinel. The question will be how much of a priority human space exploration will be for the White House when it decides how much to cut—or increase—NASA’s budget.
November 11, 2009 at 1:09 pm · Filed under Congress, NASA, White House
If you recall last week’s post about a bipartisan “Dear Colleagues” letter to drum up support for increasing NASA’s budget, there’s a minor update. According to an updated blog post on NSS.org, the deadline for obtaining additional signatures, which had been November 5th, has been pushed back to November 17th. There’s no reason for the change, although one wonders if members of Congress were a little too distracted last week with the health care bill debate to focus their attention on the space agency. The number of cosigners listed has gone up to 40, with roughly an even split between Republicans and Democrats.
November 9, 2009 at 6:51 am · Filed under Congress, NASA, White House
Last Monday Sen. Bill Nelson claimed that the White House would make a decision about NASA’s future by around Thanksgiving, based on a recent visit he had with the president on the subject. However, in an interview with Florida Today, Nelson appears to be telling a different story. Asked about the timeline for a decision, Nelson said that “sooner is better than later” but added that “I simply do not know” when such decisions would be announced. One can rationalize the two statements by concluding that Nelson said that he thought a decision would be made by Thanksgiving, but not announced until some unspecified later date, or that he was misinterpreted in one interview (or both).
Nelson added that he was “absolutely” convined that he and other space supporters in Congress could win over members and convince them to appropriate up to an additional $3 billion a year for NASA. Why he felt this way, when previous efforts to increase NASA’s budget by smaller amounts have failed, wasn’t discussed.
November 6, 2009 at 7:38 pm · Filed under NASA, White House
A couple of exploration policy items from Space News: NASA administrator Charles Bolden told the publication that the so-called “flexible path” option of the Augustine report is “attractive to everybody”. That option defers a human return to the lunar surface in favor of missions to lunar orbit, Lagrange points, and near Earth asteroids in the near term, gradually building up experience for eventual human missions to Mars. “If you were to follow a Flexible Path, it affords you the opportunity to do things in one- and two-year centers that would keep the American public interested and keep things inspired,” Bolden told Space News, although he stopped short of formally endorsing the option.
Meanwhile, in another article about the budget, sources “close to the administration” claim that a decision on choosing the flexible path or another option isn’t expected before Christmas. This would seem to contradict Sen. Bill Nelson, who claimed earlier this week that the president would make a decision around Thanksgiving. Waiting until Christmas would also seem to complicate the development of the proposed FY2011 budget, due out in early February—especially if that decision also includes how much additional money, if any, to include for NASA.
November 5, 2009 at 1:07 pm · Filed under Congress, Lobbying, White House
While Save Space has gone into overtime in its bid to solicit a half-million letters to the White House on space exploration policy, members of Congress are also writing letters, to both fellow members of Congress as well as the White House. The Orlando Sentinel reported Wednesday on the latest effort by Congressman Bill Posey (R-FL) to extend the space shuttle past its current retirement in early 2011. Posey’s letter to Congressional appropriators asks them to include language in the final version of the appropriations legislation that funds NASA that would keep the agency from carrying out anything that “would preclude the possibility of flying the Shuttle beyond the current flight manifest”. Keeping the shuttle flying has a been a key issue for him to reduce the gap and its effects on the Space Coast’s economy: earlier this year he and Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) introduced HR 1962, a bill that would authorize NASA to continue flying the shuttle trough 2015 (that bill, though, has not gone anywhere since its introduction in April.)
Posey has also joined a separate effort, led by Reps. Suzanne Kosmas (D-FL) and Ken Calvert (R-CA), to get members of Congress to sign onto a letter to President Obama for additional NASA funding. “We must ensure the President works with Congress to take this unique and fleeting opportunity to show a true commitment to NASA,” the “Dear Colleague” letter states, according to a copy published by the National Space Society. The deadline for signing onto the letter was today; ten members had done so according to the NSS posting last week.
November 2, 2009 at 12:52 pm · Filed under NASA, White House
A decision on the future on NASA’s human spaceflight program could be coming in time for Thanksgiving, according to a key senator. Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL) told WFTV in Orlando that he expects President Obama to make a decision “sometime around the Thanksgiving holiday” on which direction he wants to take the space program. Nelson bases that expectation on a meeting he “recently” held with the president on the subject.
Nelson, though, seemed to be hinting that the $3 billion a year in addition funding identified by the Augustine committee, and endorsed by space supporters in Congress, may not be forthcoming, or at least would not be sufficient. “He is very sensitive to this and I really believe the President is a fan of the space program and, at the end of the day, I am optimistic,” he told WFTV. “But in a very tough money time, it’s going to take a lot more money to make up for the deficiencies of the last decade.”
October 31, 2009 at 2:50 pm · Filed under Lobbying, White House
The sense of many in the space community this year has been one of impatience, bordering on frustration: with a new administration in place, they had been hoping for change in national space policy, or at least a confirmation of existing policy. Yet earlier this year people waited for months before the White House nominated a NASA administrator, Charles Bolden; now they’re waiting for weeks, perhaps months, for a decision on which option, if any, contained in the Augustine committee report to implement.
That waiting is wearing thin with some, such as Space Foundation CEO Elliot Pulham, who likens the situation to the famous Samuel Beckett play “Waiting for Godot”. “[W]hen it comes to space policy and programs, this administration has done nothing remarkable during the first 25 percent of its term,” Pulham writes (rounding up a bit, as the administration is only a little over nine months into its four-year term.) He cites not just the Bolden nomination and Augustine committee decision delays, but other issues such as a lack of progress on export control reform and a large number of unfilled political positions within the Pentagon. The former issue, at least, is something largely beyond the direct control of the White House, although progress is being made: HR 2410, a State Department authorization bill that includes some ITAR reform elements, passed the House in June and is awaiting action in the Senate.
Left out is a key point: many other people, in a wide range of other policy areas, don’t believe the White House is moving fast enough on the issues they care about. In the cover story in this week’s Newsweek, Anna Quindlen observes that President Obama takes a far more incremental approach than people thought he would during last year’s campaign. “He is methodical, thoughtful, cerebral, a believer in consensus and process,” she writes. “In an incremental system, Barack Obama is an incremental man.” And that, she believes, isn’t a bad thing. “[C]ampaigns are bad crucibles in which to forge the future. They speak to great aspirations; government amounts to the dripping of water on stone.”
So those who have great aspirations for space policy might want to practice their patience. Pulham acknowledges that the president is facing a number of other major policy issues, from Afghanistan to health care to the economy, but still wants space to get a bigger share of attention: “I would argue that nothing is more important to national security and economic security, and nothing is a better investment in economic vitality and national economic stimulus, than the exploration, development, and utilization of space.” If the space community did a more effective job communicating that importance to policymakers and the general public alike, perhaps the White House would be paying more attention, and sooner, to space—although there’s still no guarantee that they’d like the outcome of those policy deliberations.
October 25, 2009 at 1:13 pm · Filed under Lobbying, NASA, White House
Florida Today provides an update today on the status of Save Space, a Space Coast effort to get half a million letters in support of space exploration delivered to the White House. The article gives the impression that the movement is gaining momentum (”catching on”, as the headline puts it; “gaining steam”, as the lede paragraph claims), noting milestones like donated space on digital billboards across the country and the number of partner organizations that have joined, from Space Florida to local businesses like Taco Shack of Titusville. (Another partner organization is Florida Today itself, something the article fails to disclose.)
However, there’s little evidence in the article that Save Space is anywhere near its goal of 500,000 letters by the end of this month. A spokesperson for the Brevard County government, which is hosting the site, says that it’s “impossible to determine” just how many letters have been sent to the White House. The other statistics provided don’t sound optimistic: for example, the spokesperson said that the site has generated 42,000 “hits”. If she’s technically correct, that’s very poor, since each page will generate several hits for the various files that comprise it. Even if she meant visitors (or, better, unique visitors), that’s still a tiny fraction of the 500,000 letters, unless each visitor plans on writing more than 10 letters. The Save Space Facebook page just passed 2,000 fans, the article adds, a stat that sounds good but again is still far short of the 500,000.
If the organizers could come through on their goal of 500,000 letters, they likely would get noticed by the White House: as POLITICO reported last week, the White House is currently getting 65,000 letters a week, on top of thousands more phone calls, faxes, and emails: enough that there’s a backlog of mail that has to be processed. Dumping 500,000 letters there over a short period of time would presumably get some attention. A few thousand? Not so much.
The campaign is now backing away from that October 31 deadline, as the article states it will now be “an open-ended venture” until the president makes a policy decision. That might give them more time to collect more letters, but no guarantee they’ll rise above the noise of other mail arriving at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
[Note: I'm on travel the next few days, so updates here will be limited.]
October 22, 2009 at 8:42 pm · Filed under Congress, NASA, White House
Shortly after the Augustine committee released its final report, Alan Ladwig of NASA spoke at the luncheon of the International Symposium for Personal and Commercial Spaceflight in New Mexico. Ladwig, filling in for deputy administrator Lori Garver (who was scheduled to speak but stayed in Washington because of the report’s release) did briefly address the “800-pound gorilla in the room”—the report—but without going into detail about what direction NASA would go. “It remains premature for anyone at NASA to draw conclusions or speculate about future spaceflight plans or policies based on the committee’s final report,” he said.
He said that policy leaders from a number of organizations would now meet to “transform the Augustine options into a recommendation or recommendations to be considered and acted on by the president.” He hoped that decisions would be made in time to influence the FY2010 budget and to be incorporated into FY2011 budget request. He noted that the budget request normally isn’t released until late January or early February. “So while it is likely that we’ll hear something about our fate from the president before the end of the year,” he suggested, “a complete view of the new-and-improved NASA may not be completely defined until the release of the 2011 budget.”
The organizations that would be involved in that process, Ladwig said, likely includes OSTP, OMB, “probably” the National Security Council, and “maybe” the National Economic Council. “Hopefully they’ll be smart enough not to make the mistake that was made back in 1989″, when the first Bush administration didn’t coordinate with Congress on the planning for the Space Exploration Initiative, he said. He added that he would not be surprised if President Obama himself got involved in the deliberations at some point before the plans were finalized. “He likes to get involved in these discussions sooner than later, so I don’t envision that he’ll be sitting by and won’t see anything about this until the very last moment.”
October 17, 2009 at 10:57 am · Filed under NASA, White House
The Augustine committee’s final report is now expected out next week (something the committee confirmed in a Twitter posting Friday morning) but a draft version of that report is already at NASA and the White House, Space News reported. The article, citing “sources both within the administration and close to it”, states that the administration is considering proposing a budget increase along the lines of what the Augustine committee considers necessary to enable human exploration beyond LEO: a gradual increase that leads to the $3-billion increase by 2014 widely reported. That’s different from efforts in Congress to give NASA an immediate, but one-time, $3-billion increase by taking money from unspent stimulus funds.
As for what option the agency and White House are considering, the Space News article indicates that the so-called “flexible path” option, which defers lunar landings for lunar flybys, NEO missions, and other destinations, is “an attractive option” within the space agency. The White House, an unnamed administration official states, considered a human return to the Moon “not sellable to the public or to the president”.
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