Space Politics
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Archive for White House
September 7, 2008 at 11:48 am · Filed under NASA, White House
The Orlando Sentinel reports today about an internal NASA email by Mike Griffin that expresses frustration and criticism with the current state and future direction of the agency, particularly in regards to the shuttle, access to ISS, and the future of Constellation. The email, available here, has a tone that “depicts a man watching as his finely crafted plans for a revitalized space-faring NASA appear to be melting before his eyes,” in the words of the Sentinel’s Robert Block.
“Exactly as I predicted, events have unfolded in a way that makes it clear how unwise it was for the US to adopt a policy of deliberate dependance upon another power for access to ISS,” he writes in the August 18th message. In a “rational world”, he writes, the shuttle retirement would have been better timed with the availability of Ares 1 and Orion and NASA would have been given the “necessary budget” to make that happen.
Griffin blames the lack of that rational approach on the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). “[F]or OSTP and OMB, retiring the Shuttle is a jihad rather than an engineering and program management decision,” he wrote. “Further, the actively do not want the ISS to be sustained, and have done everything possible to ensure that it would not be.”
He later writes that he believes the next administration, be it McCain or Obama, will change course. “This Administration will not yield with regard to continuing Shuttle operations past 2010, but the next Administration will have no investment in that decision. They will tell us to extend Shuttle,” he wrote, adding that while it may appear “irrational” but that it will be the only “politically tenable course” when faced with otherwise abandoning the ISS at least temporarily. “Extending Shuttle creates no damage that they will care about, other than to delay the lunar program. They will not count that as a cost. They will not see what that does for U.S. leadership in space in the long term.”
NASA confirmed the authenticity of the email, but when the Sentinel approached the White House for comment, they got something of a retraction a few hours later from Griffin himself. “The leaked internal e-mail fails to provide the contextual framework for my remarks, and my support for the administration’s policies,” he wrote.
The timing of the email struck me, since it was dated just a few hours after he gave a speech at the DC-X Reunion conference in Alamogordo, New Mexico. There’s little in the text of the speech relevant to this topic, unless you want to try and read through the lines about the comment on page 5 that “NASA, as the implementing agency simply carries out policy within the resources provided. We don’t make it.” That comment was made regarding the decision in the early 1970s to abandon the infrastructure created during the Apollo program, which Griffin said “was a mistake of strategic proportions.”
During the Q&A session after the speech, Griffin was asked about the effect the Russian incursion into Georgia would have on INKSNA and access to the ISS, and whether it might generate any “political pressure” to change the status quo in terms of policy and budgets. “Well, I might hope that it would, but I don’t know that it will,” Griffin said. He reiterated that it was “unseemly” to have to rely on another country for access to space, regardless of whether that country was friendly to the United States or not, putting the blame for this situation on “decisions made, frankly, before my tenure and decisions to which I have objected.” The space station, he said, “is not a bug in US space policy at this point, it is a feature” having been sustained over the years by various administrations and Congresses, and thus having it dependent on a single system is both politically and technically risky.
“The issues surrounding the Russian invasion of Georgia just go to illustrate exactly my point,” he said. “It’s not that I foresaw that coming, it’s just that I foresaw something happening. The world doesn’t go so smoothly that those kinds of things don’t happen.”
Griffin was also asked in Alamogordo whether he saw anything in the policies of the two presidential candidates that would “fundamentally change policy direction” for the agency, but the administrator declined to answer. “I don’t express political preferences because I think it’s bad for NASA,” he said. “NASA is, and should be, a non-political executing agent of US policy, and US policy is decided by those who get elected. So I just want to stay well away from anything that could be construed wrongly.”
Update: NASA issued a statement Sunday afternoon from Griffin regarding that email message:
The leaked internal email fails to provide the contextual framework for my remarks, and my support for the administration’s policies. Administration policy is to retire the shuttle in 2010 and purchase crew transport from Russia until Ares and Orion are available. The administration continues to support our request for an INKSNA exemption. Administration policy continues to be that we will take no action to preclude continued operation of the International Space Station past 2016. I strongly support these administration policies, as do OSTP and OMB.
August 20, 2008 at 12:35 am · Filed under White House
Secrecy News, a blog run by the Federation of American Scientists, reported Tuesday that the text of NSPD-31 has been released. What is NSPD-31? It’s National Security Presidential Directive 31, titled “U.S. Space Exploration Policy”, dated January 14, 2004, the day President Bush unveiled the Vision for Space Exploration. The document had not been publicly available until Wikileaks.org, a site that specializes in the publication of leaked documents, published the document earlier this month.
However, if you’re looking for any secret insights into the policy, you’ll be sorely disappointed. In fact, NSPD-31 is virtually word-for-word identical to “A Renewed Spirit of Discovery”, a document published on the White House web site that same day. One of the few differences: the section in the web document titled “Bringing the Vision to Reality” is, in NSPD-31, given the more prosaic title “Implementation Guidelines”.
June 26, 2008 at 7:04 am · Filed under Congress, White House
That’s a direct quote from an unusual op-ed in Thursday’s Orlando Sentinel penned by two former senators—Jake Garn and John Glenn—and current senator Bill Nelson. The three say they don’t know for certain why the White House has failed to provide the appropriate guidance and funding needed to implement the Vision, “though we suspect it can be explained by Bush not knowing all the facts about what the real impact of NASA’s annual budgets has been since the loss of the Columbia in 2003.”
And what doesn’t Bush know? The three believe he’s not aware that NASA has not been reimbursed for the costs returning the shuttle to service after the Columbia accident, forced to come up with the $2.8 billion by raiding other programs. They believe Bush doesn’t know that the budget requests for the Vision his administration has submitted “have been on average a half-a-billion per year less than he projected” when the Vision was unveiled in 2004. He may also be unaware, they claim, that his directive in his 2004 speech about the Vision calling for completing the station and then retiring the shuttle by 2010 “has been turned into a mandate to end the shuttle program in 2010, whether or not the space station is finished.” (See some earlier discussion on differing interpretations of this deadline.) And, they say, Bush isn’t aware his budgets are creating a five-year gap in “U.S. human-spaceflight capability” (correct only if we exclude any US commercial alternatives that may arise during the Shuttle-Constellation interregnum.)
Fortunately, Congress is coming to the rescue because it “knows what it seems that Bush doesn’t” and is pressing ahead with authorization legislation that addresses many of these issues. (The op-ed ignores that current versions of appropriations bills are funding NASA at levels much lower than what is authorized—and the situation may only get worse if legislative gridlock forces NASA and other federal agencies to spend a significant part of FY2009 on a continuing resolution.) “Congress should reject the administration’s position on the NASA reauthorization bill, because to accept it is to surrender America’s leadership in space exploration” when other countries, including everyone’s favorite bogeyman, China, “are waiting in the wings”.
June 10, 2008 at 9:11 pm · Filed under Congress, NASA, White House
Earlier today, a day before the full House is scheduled to take up HR 6063, the NASA Authorization Act of 2008, the Office of Management and Budget released a Statement of Administration Policy (SAP) on the bill. And the White House is not too happy with the bill in its current form:
The Administration supports maintaining a strong national civil space science and aeronautics enterprise and is committed to advancing the quest for new knowledge, discovery, and exploration that is embodied in NASA programs and activities. However, the Administration strongly opposes H.R. 6063 because it mandates specific Space Shuttle flights that greatly threaten NASA’s ability to retire the Shuttle in 2010, an action that is critical to implementing the President’s Vision for Space Exploration. In addition, the Administration has other serious objections to several provisions of H.R. 6063 that must be satisfactorily addressed prior to final congressional action on reauthorization legislation.
As the excerpt suggests, the administration’s biggest concern with the bill is the provision that mandates that NASA carry out the two “contingency” shuttle flights currently on the manifest as well as add one for carrying the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer to the ISS. “The direction in this section would almost certainly result in several serious impacts and risks to NASA’s exploration programs and other activities, including: (1) significantly increasing costs of the Shuttle program, not including potential recertification activities; (2) delaying the operational capability of the Orion CEV well beyond its current projected dates; (3) exacerbating transition challenges, including facilities and workforce; and (4) exposing astronaut crews to increased risks. In addition, statutorily mandating additional flights regardless of safety assessments and costs sets a dangerous and unwise precedent.”
The administration has several other problems with the bill, including a provision that mandates COTS awards for crew capabilities, several technology development requirements, and a requirement for continued operation of the ISS beyond 2016. The administration is also opposed to the topline authorization of $20.2 billion, compared to the administration’s proposed FY2009 budget of $17.6 billion.
While the White House states that it is “strongly opposed” to the bill, nowhere in the SAP does the administration make any threat to veto the bill if approved in its current form, something it has not hesitated to so in the past, particularly with appropriations bills. It is, though, clearly a warning shot across the bow of the bill’s supporters in Congress.
Update: Wednesday morning’s Houston Chronicle reports that Houston-area members of Congress, Democratic and Republican, continue to support the bill despite the SAP. (The article oversimplifies the NASA authorization bill, claiming it would “hand NASA $2.9 billion for three additional shuttle flights to the international space station before retirement of the shuttle fleet in 2010″; the additional money is for more than just the shuttle flights.)
March 6, 2008 at 1:35 pm · Filed under White House
Presidential science advisor John Marburger, speaking Thursday morning at the Goddard Memorial Symposium, downplayed any prospects for a new space race between the US and China. “I think it would be a serious mistake to construe the relative activities of China and the US as the beginning of a new space race,” he said in response to a question after his prepared remarks. “It would lose the opportunity for synergistic efforts” between the two nations down the road.
Later, Marburger was asked how a Chinese manned landing on the Moon, before the United States returns, would be viewed here in the US. (NASA administrator Mike Griffin has previously said that when (not if, in his opinion) that happens, “Americans will not like it, but they will just have to not like it.”) “These are events that can seized upon by the multitude of advocates that we have… so who knows how that event will be ‘managed’, if you will, or spontaneously strike the imagination of the people,” he said. “If we’re in a very tense time with China when that happens, then it’s possible that the impact might be very great” but may have less of an impact here if relations with China are more “relaxed”.
Marburger made it clear he preferred that latter scenario. “We’re more effective if we can do this in a relaxed way,” he said, referring to the implementation of the exploration vision. “We can’t afford to make each one of these events a big, expensive show that doesn’t build for the future. We will be most successful in the future if we do this in a planned way and really try to signal our seriousness to other countries that we want to do this together.” In conclusion, he said, “We ought to try as hard as we can to exert a discipline on ourselves not to overreact, not to see in these various efforts by other nations opportunities to make a quick hit in some way, a quick splash of our own, and spend a lot of money and not get enough for it for the future.”
January 24, 2008 at 6:29 am · Filed under Congress, Other, White House
On Tuesday President Bush signed a set of directives to improve the current export control process for items on the U.S. Munitions List. While this is being called “reform” in some quarters, it’s really more of an improvement of existing processes, as outlined in a State Department fact sheet: additional funding will be allocated for the review of license applications, a 60-day deadline for a decision on a license application, and electronic application systems for all types of licenses. The reforms do not, however, involve taking anything on or off the Munitions List, such as satellite components.
Despite the limited scope of the reforms, industry is endorsing the changes. “We view the administration’s action as an important step in a long-term process to achieve meaningful reform in the way the United States regulates defense trade and advanced technology exchange,” the Coalition for Security and Competitiveness said in a statement. The coalition submitted a set of recommendations for licensing changes on the Munitions List as well as dual-use items to the administration in March 2007, a subset of which were adopted.
The problems with the export control process prompted Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA) to introduce HR 4246 in November. That bill includes some of the same reforms that the administration enacted this week; one of the bill’s co-sponsors, Rep. Dan Manzullo (R-IL), told The Hill that he and others in Congress worked with the administration on the announced reforms.
December 21, 2007 at 1:11 pm · Filed under White House
An article in Thursday’s issue of CongressDailyAM (not freely availably online, unfortunately) suggests that the Bush Administration may be close to making some changes to the export control process that could benefit the aerospace industry. The changes are believed to be based on recommendations made earlier this year by the Coalition for Security and Competitiveness. Industry representatives told the publication that a “package of process improvements” could be announced any week now; these changes would affect how the export control regime is implemented but not involve anything that would require legislative action by Congress. Some of the coalition’s proposals back in March for items on the Munitions List include appointing a senior director on the National Security Council responsible for export policy, increasing the staff of the Directorate of Defense Trade Controls, and implementing “more efficient, effective, and transparent licensing procedures and technology disclosure review processes”.
However, you shouldn’t necessarily hold your breath that these changes will be imminent: one person told CongressDailyAM, “This is the fifth week we’ve been told we will get an answer soon.”
December 16, 2007 at 5:37 pm · Filed under Other, White House
This afternoon I was finishing up the second volume of Astronautics, a two-volume history of the Space Age by Ted Spitzmiller published this fall by Apogee Books. A section about the future of the ISS and its overall viability states that NASA administration Michael Griffin had said that he would not have chose to build the ISS in its current configuration and orbit. Such statements, Spitzmiller writes, “call into question not only continued support for the ISS but funding for the return to the moon as requested by President Bush. Bush himself stated—perhaps with tongue-in-cheek—‘We plan to either hold an auction on Ebay [sic] or give it away to our international partners.’”
Had Bush really joked about selling the ISS on eBay? I didn’t recall Bush making such a statement, and Spitzmiller doesn’t include endnotes in the book. So I did a little research, and turned up this SpaceDaily piece that includes the quote used in the book. The problem is the article’s lede: “US President George W. Bush declared today that he had signed a rare Presidential Decree canceling any further expenditure of Federal funds on the US Space Shuttle program.” Not to mention the article’s publication date: April 1, 2005. Oops.
The irony of all this is that, in the long run, NASA might well turn over the ISS to its international partners, depending on how the Vision for Space Exploration and the agency’s finances unfold in the years to come. Selling it on eBay, though, still seems a little unlikely…
November 9, 2007 at 6:32 am · Filed under NASA, White House
President Bush happened to be in the neighborhood, it seems, so he decided to greet the STS-120 crew upon their return to Houston on Thursday. Bush met with the astronauts and their families at Ellington Field upon their arrival there, one day after the astronauts returned to Earth on the shuttle Discovery. According to the Houston Chronicle, the White House contacted NASA on Tuesday to arrange for a private meeting with the crew while Bush was in Texas for a visit to a veterans rehab center and a fundraising luncheon for Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), who is running for reelection next year. The only mention of the meeting on the White House web site is a photo of Bush meeting the crew, and the only quote from Bush: “Wow, what a terrific mission!”
October 5, 2007 at 1:04 pm · Filed under Congress, White House
While the Senate was approving an amendment to the Commerce/Justice/Science appropriations bill to add $1 billion to NASA’s FY08 budget, the administration was again threatening to veto the bill. In a Statement of Administration Policy document released by OMB on Thursday, the administration accused Congress of including ” an irresponsible and excessive level of spending and… other objectionable provisions” to the funding bill. “[I]f S. 1745 were presented to the President” in its current form, the statement warned, “he would veto the bill.”
The statement says very little about NASA, and makes no reference to Sen. Mikulski’s amendment:
The Administration supports the Senate’s full funding for NASA’s Exploration Systems, Space Shuttle, International Space Station, and Aeronautics, but does not endorse funding in excess of the request for Science. In addition, the micromanaging of funding allocations specified in the Committee report would inhibit program managers’ ability to make effective and efficient decisions in support of ongoing mission activities.
Also, in the Commerce section of the statement, the statement notes the “the Administration is concerned that reductions for core geo-stationary satellite program and bureau-wide management services, as well as limitations on the length of availability of certain funds, would seriously impair the agency’s ability to carry out its missions.”
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