Space Politics
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Archive for White House
January 18, 2012 at 7:11 am · Filed under Other, White House
Last week, a top State Department official surprised many when she indicated the US did not support a proposed “Code of Conduct for Outer Space Activities” endorsed by the European Union. Speaking at a breakfast with reporters on January 12, Ellen Tauscher, undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, said the proposed EU code was “too restrictive” and that the US would not sign on to it. “We made it very definitive that we were not going to go ahead with the European Code of Conduct,” she said, according to the Space News account of the breakfast. “What we haven’t announced is what we’re going to do, but we will be doing that soon.”
Tauscher’s comments took some by surprise, since it appeared in recent months that the US appeared willing to at least endorse the principles of the EU Code if not explicitly signing on to them. In an article Monday in The Space Review, lawyer Michael Listner speculated that the US would instead propose its own code of conduct in response. Such he move, he argued, might not necessarily win support from other spacefaring nations (which had expressed opposition to, or simply ignored, the EU document) and might also aggravate the Europeans.
On Tuesday, the US made its move. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton formally announced that the US would support the development of an “International Code of Conduct for Outer Space Activities” in cooperation with the EU and other nations. “A Code of Conduct will help maintain the long-term sustainability, safety, stability, and security of space by establishing guidelines for the responsible use of space,” she said.
News of the new US effort was first reported Tuesday by the Washington Times, who got quotes from several people expressing concern that such a code might jeopardize national security by limiting what the US can do in space. However, Clinton said in her statement that “the United States has made clear to our partners that we will not enter into a code of conduct that in any way constrains our national security-related activities in space or our ability to protect the United States and our allies.”
What isn’t clear is how this “international” code will differ from the EU draft that has been circulating since 2008, including what specifically the US took issue with in the EU document as being too restrictive. A fact sheet about the new initiative in fact praises the EU code. “The European Union’s draft Code of Conduct is a good foundation for the development of a non-legally binding International Code of Conduct focused on the use of voluntary and pragmatic transparency and confidence-building measures to help prevent mishaps, misperceptions, and mistrust in space,” it states.
In at least some respects, then, the US “rejection” of the EU code is hardly a surprise, but part of a long-term effort to craft a more international document. Even EU officials said last year that their proposed code was a draft; one likened it to an “internal memo” that the EU was soliciting feedback upon but not expecting anyone to immediately sign on to. Development of a final international code of conduct might still be well into the future.
November 16, 2011 at 6:11 am · Filed under Congress, NASA, White House
It’s not uncommon for NASA to be on the hot seat in Congressional hearings, criticized by members of Congress for what the agency is or is not doing. Yesterday, though, at a hearing of the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee’s space subcommittee on the future of NASA’s planetary exploration programs, NASA was treated like a victim of decisions being made, or pending, by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).
“On the one hand, NASA is actively seeking international partners to collaborate on future missions,” said subcommittee chairman Rep. Steven Palazzo (R-MS) in his opening statement. “On the other, the administration appears to be interfering with the agency’s efforts to reach out and engage foreign governments in future flagship missions.”
That alleged interference is a reference to the current state of limbo that NASA’s cooperation with ESA on 2016 and 2018 Mars missions is in, after NASA had to back out of an agreement to launch ESA’s 2016 Mars orbiter. The concern of committee members, and the planetary science community, is that OMB may treat those missions, and other large “flagship” planetary missions, as a lower priority and not seek funding for them in future budgets. An OMB official, Sally Ericsson, program associate director for natural resources, energy, and science, was invited to testify but declined, Palazzo said. (Her name was added to the public list of witnesses for the hearing only about an hour before it started.) “I am not surprised but I find it regrettable,” Palazzo said of OMB’s decision not to appear.
Steve Squyres, the Cornell University planetary scientist who chaired the most recent planetary decadal survey, one that found that a Mars rover to cache samples for later return to Earth to be its highest-priority flagship mission, said he was confused by the current situation regarding support for that mission. “I’m perplexed, sir,” he said with a sigh when asked about it by Palazzo. “I sense within the agency a strong desire to do flagship missions,” he said, citing work being done to lower the cost of the 2018 Mars rover mission. “And yet, there’s no commitment being made. I’m perplexed.”
Sqyures said later he has talked with OMB officials about the future Mars missions and making a commitment to cooperate closely with ESA. “In those conversations I have been told the administration, at this current time, is not ready to make such a commitment,” he said.
Caught in the middle of this debate was the other hearing witness, Jim Green, the director of the planetary science division of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. He described his role as the “advocate for planetary science” within NASA and the federal government, but acknowledged that his office and his agency have to work within “a difficult budget situation” that will require compromises. “Currently, OMB has not officially notified NASA of canceling Mars ’16 or ’18,” he said, adding that NASA meets with OMB “on a regular basis” on those missions and other issues. He later said that NASA is continuing to work with ESA on those missions based on the 2009 agreement between the two space agencies, and not because of any explicit approval from OMB.
On a separate subject, though, Green did offer a little bit of good news. Asked about efforts to restart production of plutonium-238, the isotope used in radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs) that power some planetary missions, Green said NASA was moving forward with the Department of Energy on those plans. “We’re on the path to do that,” he said, citing funding provided to NASA (but not DOE) in draft FY12 spending bills and cooperation between the two agencies. “Production could begin within the next couple of years.”
November 9, 2011 at 7:19 am · Filed under Congress, Lobbying, NASA, White House
With Congress expected to complete work next week on a FY2012 appropriations bill that includes NASA (the goal is to complete the bill before the current continuing resolution expires next Friday), supporters of NASA’s commercial crew program are making another, perhaps final, push to win full funding for the program. In an op-ed published Monday in The Space Review, Alan Stern, the new director of the Florida Space Institute, and Frank DiBello, president of Space Florida, argued that NASA, Congress, and the White House all should work to “expedite” the program. For Congress, that means funding the program at $850 million, the level requested by the administration in its FY12 request. NASA, meanwhile, should “streamline the business and technical processes” for commercial crew providers, while the Obama Administration should push NASA to make commercial crew a top priority for the agency.
Stern and DiBello are also signatories on an open letter to Congress and the White House released Tuesday on the topic of commercial crew funding. The letter, like the earlier op-ed, calls for expediting commercial crew through increased funding and streamlined processes. The letter is signed by over 40 people, ranging from executives of entrepreneurial space companies to former astronauts and NASA officials.
The day before that letter, nearly two dozen former astronauts submitted a similar letter to key House and Senate appropriators, also in support of commercial crew. This letter also calls for full funding of commercial crew, although the signatories appear willing to accept the $500 million the Senate approved in its version of the appropriations legislation. “Funding Commercial Crew at least at the Authorization Act level of $500 million will mean less reliance on Russia and a stronger space program here at home, and funding Commercial Crew at NASA’s requested level of $850 million will enable these commercial vehicles to be developed on an even more expeditious basis,” they write.
It’s noteworthy that commercial crew has been the one NASA program that has received significant lobbying attention as the appropriations process reaches its conclusion. NASA’s Space Technology program, for example, had its requested budget cut significantly in both the House and Senate, but hasn’t received nearly the same attention as commercial crew. (There has been concern about planetary exploration, but that has focused more on the long-term prospects beyond the FY12 budget.) Of course, commercial crew has a clear constituency—those companies involved or seeking to be involved in the program, as well as those companies and organizations that would benefit from commercial crew systems—while the constituency for technology programs is more diffuse. Whether this press of attention will have any affect on the appropriations process, though, remains to be seen.
November 8, 2011 at 7:00 am · Filed under White House
There was a flurry of media attention over the weekend and on Monday to the official White House response to a petition to “formally acknowledge an extraterrestrial presence engaging the human race”. In what doesn’t exactly qualify as breaking news, the White House stated, “The U.S. government has no evidence that any life exists outside our planet, or that an extraterrestrial presence has contacted or engaged any member of the human race.” At least we have that issue settled. Whew!
But are people using the White House’s new “We the People” online petition tool for more serious space policy topics? Not much, it seems. Of the 118 open, visible petitions on the site (as of early Tuesday morning), only two deal directly with space issues, but both have met the threshold—originally 5,000 signatures, but raised for newer petitions to 25,000—for an official response. One, “Reallocate Defense funds to NASA”, seeks to divert defense funding to NASA, specifically for human spaceflight. “America and Humanity require a permanent presence in Space and no amount of telescopes or rovers are going to meet that requirement. Manned Missions are the only answer but NASA does not the have funds to make this vision a reality,” the petition states (capitalization in original). “America needs to wind down these wars and reallocate all that money into our space program.”
The second petition seeks to give the shuttle Enterprise to Ohio, reversing NASA’s controversial award of the orbiter to New York’s Intrepid Sea-Air-Space Museum. “New York City is unprepared to house the Enterprise Shuttle while the National Museum of the USAF at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base is the ideal location,” the petition argues. “Please help boost the Ohio economy!”
The odds of success of either petition—in terms of changing policy, not attracting signatures—appear long. Transferring “all that money” that funded wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to NASA would be a political nonstarter in the current era of cutting overall federal spending. And would the White House wade in and override NASA’s decision to award Enterprise to New York City, making NASA look bad and agitating New Yorkers, without some other precipitating event (such as the failure of the Intrepid museum to raise funding for its planned shuttle museum)?
Notably, there are no open, visible petitions on what the space community considers hot topics: nothing about the Space Launch System, commercial crew, space technology funding, and so on. The key here, though, is visible: in order for a petition to show up in a search on the “We the People” site, it must already have at least 150 signatures, requiring sponsors to rely on word of (electronic) mouth when starting their petition drive. For example, in addition to the petition giving Dayton the shuttle Enterprise, there’s a similar one to give Enterprise to Houston. However, that petition, created just over a week ago, has attracted only 37 signatures as of Tuesday morning, and thus doesn’t show up in public searches.
Perhaps, though, the space community has decided that the petition site is little more than a stunt, and that there are more traditional, effective means to shape policy. Or, as one recent petition states, “We demand a vapid, condescending, meaningless, politically safe response to this petition.”.
November 4, 2011 at 6:32 am · Filed under NASA, White House
Earlier this week President Obama did a series of short interviews with local television stations around the country. These interviews included stations in Houston and Tampa, and in both cases the topic of space came up, particularly in relation to the economy and jobs in Texas and Florida.
Houston’s KTRK, not surprisingly, brought up the issue of space in connection to employment and the local economy. “I’m hugely committed to manned spaceflight, but I want to make sure that we’re doing it right and that we’re not wasting taxpayer money,” the president said. “What we’ve said with NASA is we need to retool to take that next big leap forward in space. The shuttle program had a wonderful run, but the truth of the matter is that the next phase, including the Orion project, was way behind schedule and didn’t seem to be meeting its budget objectives. So what we’ve done is tried to say let’s take a step back, let’s figure out how do we retool.”
President Obama also made a brief, but unsolicited, discussion of space during a separate interview with Tampa’s WTVT. “We are, for example, working with NASA and the private sector to bring additional jobs into central Florida,” he said in response to a question about improving Florida’s economy. “Boeing just made an announcement that we’re very happy about.” That was a reference to a deal announced Monday where Boeing would set up CST-100 operations at the Kennedy Space Center, employing up to 550 people by mid-decade.
November 2, 2011 at 1:20 pm · Filed under Congress, NASA, White House
The Oversight and Investigations subcommittee of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, chaired by Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), is holding a hearing titled “Efforts to Transfer America’s Leading Edge Science to China” at 3 pm EDT today. (The hearing will be webcast on the committee’s site and also carried on NASA TV.) The witnesses at the hearing include NASA administrator Charles Bolden, who will likely be asked about the agency’s adherence to a provision in the final FY2011 spending bill that prohibits the use of NASA funds for any sort of cooperation with China. He will be testifying on the same panel as White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) director John Holdren. OSTP is subject to the same prohibition but ran afoul of the law when hosted meetings with Chinese officials in May at a cost of $3,500, money members of Congress, backed by a GAO report, argue should not have been spent. Thus, Holdren is likely to get far more attention (and also take fire) from members of the committee than Bolden.
October 28, 2011 at 7:45 am · Filed under Lobbying, NASA, Other, White House
In a letter this week to President Obama, the mayors of Houston and Huntsville ask for immediate action on contracts related to the Space Launch System (SLS) and Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle (MPCV) programs. Specifically, they ask that NASA “move forward as expeditiously as possible” on converting contracts for the Constellation program to SLS and MPCV. “Speed is imperative to protect the workforce and to ensure our nation’s global leadership in spaceand in technological advancement,” Houston mayor Annise Parker and Huntsville mayor Tommy Battle write.
They add that those programs are at least as important, if not more so, than commercial crew development efforts at the agency. “While we all agree that commercial space ventures are critical to the future of human space flight, they cannot come at the expense of NASA’s role in ensuring access to space. They cannot come at the expense of seeing all the amazing, cutting edge expertise gathered together at MSFC and JSC being dispersed around the world – lost to this country and our own space efforts.”
Meanwhile, Mars Society president Robert Zubrin raised alarm bells when he claimed in an op-ed published Thursday in the Washington Times that the White House was planning to “terminate” NASA’s planetary science program in its FY2013 budget proposal. After the 2013 launch of the MAVEN Mars orbiter, he said, “No further missions to anywhere are planned.”
There’s one problem with his piece, though: that fantastic claim appears to be incorrect. “It is not true the planetary program is being killed,” Jim Green, head of NASA’s planetary science program, told the NASA Advisory Council Thursday during a telecon, Space News reported. The planetary program does face some problems with funding in future years, he acknowledged, but termination is not in the cards. “I’m here to say the future doesn’t look as healthy as it has been, but it is still the best program in the world,” Green said, SpacePolicyOnline.com reported.
Zubrin, incidentally, will be appearing at a Capitol Hill forum next Thursday jointly organized by The Planetary Society and The Mars Society, titled, “NASA at a Turning Point: Vibrant Future or Close Shop”.
October 14, 2011 at 8:44 am · Filed under Congress, White House
By the end of this year Congress may have the key documents it needs to press ahead with legislation to enable space-related export control reform, even if the odds of success are still long. At a meeting Thursday morning of the Export Control Working Group of the FAA’s Commercial Space Transportation Advisory Committee (COMSTAC), Brian Nilsson of the National Security Council discussed the administration’s ongoing export control reform efforts, including an ongoing review of the items in the various categories of Us Munitions List (USML). That review is intended to determine which items should remain on the USML and which should be transferred to the less-restrictive Commerce Control List (CCL).
“We have all 19 categories in some form of draft,” Nilsson said. “This has been extraordinarily labor intensive.” The focus has been on Category VIII, which covers aircraft and covers the largest number of licenses, followed by categories covering tanks and naval vessels. “The other category in the priority list is Category XV,” which covers space-related items, he said. The goal is to have the administration’s proposals for transferring items for the categories released by the end of this year.
Category XV is a special case, though, because of legislation over a decade ago that placed satellites and related components on the USML. Coupled with the release of its plans to transfer items off the USML, Nilsson said, will be the delivery to Congress of what’s known as the “Section 1248″ report, named after the section of the 2010 defense authorization bill that called for it. The report, analyzing the national security implications of moving satellites and their components off the USML, as due a year and a half ago, although an interim report was provided to Congress this spring. “It didn’t really answer the mail, quite candidly,” Nilsson said of that interim report. The updated report, tied to the review of Category XV, will be ready by the end of the year. “The action-forcing event, from talking to some our colleagues in Congress, will be the 1248 report,” he said.
With the delivery of the Section 1248 report and the proposed transfers of items off the USML, it will then be up to Congress to enact legislation giving the administration the authority to make those transfers. Also attending the working group meeting was Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, who spoke as much about his concerns about China than about the specifics of export control. However, asked if he would, in principle, support reform efforts while carving out exceptions for China and other so-called “126.1 nations” subject to arms embargoes, Rohrabacher had a one-word answer: “Yes.”
It’s not clear, though, how well that simple assent will translate to congressional support for legislation required for those reforms. One clue will be how Congress responds to proposed changes to other categories of the USML that will be submitted in the coming weeks. One observer noted that if there’s pushback from key staffers on the administration’s proposals in those categories, the prospects for space-related export control reform—or even export control reform in general—don’t look good. If Congress is more open to those changes in other categories, then the door remains open, if only a crack, for space-related reform.
Meanwhile, the ongoing reform process is having an unanticipated, adverse consequence: delaying ongoing reviews for export control licenses. At a space law conference Wednesday held by the University of Nebraska College of Law, Dennis Burnett, vice president for trade and export controls for EADS, said he had noticed an “uptick” in turnaround times for licenses recently because so much staff time has been devoted to the reform work. That’s particularly the case with categories deep in the review process, like Category VIII. “You’re seeing really big delays” in that category, he said, adding that the turnaround times have been much faster, so far, for Category XV space items.
With elections coming up, Burnett asked, “who knows what happens next year?” That could mean an accelerated pace for the administration’s export control efforts, he concluded. “The administration knows they’re running out of time, and they need to get as much done as they can.”
October 11, 2011 at 6:28 am · Filed under Congress, Other, White House
The next round in the ongoing, long-running discussion about export control reform for the US space industry will come Thursday with a meeting of the Export Control Working Group of the FAA’s Commercial Space Transportation Advisory Committee (COMSTAC). That working group meeting will include a panel discussion featuring Congressman Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), who has advocated for export control reform; National Security Council staffer Brian Nilsson; and AIA vice president Remy Nathan.
This meeting is expected to be an opportunity for the administration to discuss publicly more details about their export control reform plans, including perhaps their plans to review the items in Category XV of the US Munitions List (USML), which covers spacecraft and related components. Earlier this year congressional staffers indicated they were open to reform proposals, but were waiting on a long-overdue report from the Defense Department on the effects of removing satellites and related items from the USML.
More details about the working group meeting, courtesy of chairman Mike Gold, are below:
Brian Nilsson, National Security Council Professional Staff Member, will provide a briefing on the Administration’s current export control reform plans and strategy. Also participating in the panel will be Congressman Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) an important voice on Capitol Hill on the topic of export control reform, and Remy Nathan, Vice President for International Affairs at the Aerospace Industries Association, who will provide the business perspective. The panel discussion will begin promptly at 8:30 am on Thursday, Oct. 13th, at the National Housing Center, located at 1201 15th Street, NW, Washington, DC (near the intersection of Massachusetts Ave. and 15th Street). This panel discussion should provide attendees with invaluable insight into the latest in the ongoing export control reform effort and the likely Congressional reaction to the Obama Administration’s most recent plans. The event is free and open to the public.
The full COMSTAC meeting agenda also includes on Friday a presentation by Sean Monogue, chair of the Missile Technology Export Control Group in the Office of Missile, Biological, and Chemical Nonproliferation (ISN/MBC) of the State Department, which should offer another opportunity for insight into export control policy and its application to space-related items.
October 9, 2011 at 11:33 am · Filed under Congress, NASA, Other, White House
Some people in the space advocacy community have a long term goal that goes beyond going back to the Moon or sending human expeditions to Mars: they want to see people working and living—permanently—in space. From the early visions of space colonies by the L-5 Society to the modern-day desire of Mars Society members to establish an outpost of human civilization on the Red Planet, these people want to do more than explore space; they want to see people making it their home. Should that vision be part of national space policy—or is it already?
Over the last 18 months advocates of space settlement have been getting mixed messages from the White House and NASA leadership on this topic. In his speech at the Kennedy Space Center in April 2010, President Obama appeared to endorse, albeit indirectly, the concept of space settlement: “Our goal is the capacity for people to work and learn and operate and live safely beyond the Earth for extended periods of time, ultimately in ways that are more sustainable and even indefinite.” Obama never used the “s-word”—settlement—but the idea of living and working in space in “indefinite” ways certainly sounds like it.
But at a town hall meeting at the Johnson Space Center in late September, NASA administrator Charles Bolden seemed to suggest space settlement was not part of the agency’s vision. “Bolden says we’re not looking for other places to live, [we're] going to explore to better understand our place in universe and life on Earth,” read one tweet about Bolden’s comments from an attendee of the event. “Bolden asks who wants to live on Moon, skeptical we’ll build habitats on Mars. Discusses expeditionary approach to both,” read another.
To add to the confusion, just a few days later a NASA center director suggested space settlement is the best rationale for human space exploration. “Within a few decades Earth life will permanently live off Earth and prosper,” Pete Worden, director of NASA’s Ames Research Center, said in a keynote speech at the beginning of the 100 Year Starship Study Symposium on September 30 in Orlando. “Indeed, I think this is the best justification for our human exploration program.”
This discussion comes as the National Academies is set to perform this fiscal year (2012) “a review of the goals, core capabilities, and direction of human space flight” as directed by the 2010 NASA authorization act. Some have likened this to a “decadal study” for human spaceflight, analogous to those performed in the sciences, although there is a debate about how useful such a study will be.
“We’ve charged in the bill the National Academies to do some work to try to help identify a consensus for what are the reasons for human spaceflight, what are some of the destinations that make the most sense,” Jeff Bingham, a senior advisor on the staff of the Senate Commerce Committee, said during a panel session of the AIAA Space 2011 conference last month in Long Beach, California. Space settlement advocates will soon find out how well their arguments stand up against other rationales for human spaceflight in that study—which, in turn, could provide some clarity for future space policy.
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