By Jeff Foust on 2010 August 11 at 8:20 pm ET Last month, when it appeared the full House would vote on its version of a NASA authorization bill, SpaceX sounded the alarm with an email blast, asking readers to contact their representatives and ask them to instead support the Senate version of the bill. Late today, SpaceX sent out a followup message, thanking readers and reminding them the battle isn’t done yet:
Thank You for Supporting the Future of Human Spaceflight
We recently asked for your help to protect the future of human spaceflight – and the response was impressive. Your phone calls and the efforts of supportive members of Congress helped stop the NASA Authorization bill from being pushed through the House of Representatives before important improvements could be made.
This bill would have authorized over five times more taxpayer dollars to fly NASA astronauts on the Russian Soyuz than to develop an American-made commercial alternative that would energize our economy and create jobs right here at home.
We still have a tough fight ahead of us, but many in Congress are starting to recognize that commercial vehicles like Dragon and Falcon 9 are the nation’s best option for ending our reliance on Russia to transport astronauts to the International Space Station and preserving America’s leadership role in space.
It’s not over yet. When the House returns from its summer recess in September, NASA Authorization bill H.R. 5781 will be up for vote again.
We hope you will continue to fight for the opportunity to show how a true public/private partnership can transform America’s space program.
We thank you for your support and look forward to working together to ensure an exciting future for American spaceflight.
–Elon–
By Jeff Foust on 2010 August 10 at 7:32 am ET A major space power is grappling with a number of problems: constrained space budgets, debates about future programs, and concerns that, in the bigger scheme of things, space just isn’t a major priority. A description of the US? In fact, it’s a description of Europe’s current situation, as reported Monday in the Wall Street Journal.
The European Space Agency, its member states, and the European Union are all grappling with a number of problems, including potential budget cuts that could force countries to decrease their contributions to ESA next year by 20 percent or more, the Journal reports. There’s also debate about supporting developing of a new launch vehicle to succeed the Ariane 5, with Francois Auque of EADS complaining that major ESA countries don’t have “the impetus or the stamina” to carry out this or other major projects, or complete development of a long-term strategy. “Space exploration is quite low in the European priorities,” he said.
By Jeff Foust on 2010 August 8 at 7:51 am ET “No asteroids need apply — U.S. space policy is on a collision course with itself,” is the lede of a Washington Post editorial Sunday about the current space policy debate. The editorial’s key concern is that the White House’s proposal tries to do too much in human spaceflight with not enough money, and is thus “a poor use of limited resources.” (The editorial goes too far with that, though, when it claims the new policy would call for a human mission to Mars by 2025; that’s the date of a human NEO mission, with Mars orbital missions to follow about a decade later.) “If the administration and Congress truly want human spaceflight, they need to fund it adequately,” the editorial concludes. “Piecemeal funding that dooms programs to failure is a waste of money — especially when so many truly vital space functions, from the satellites that supply maps and communications to the telescopes that allow us to glimpse distant worlds, could benefit from such support.”
Some other random notes about various space policy issues at the state level:
In New Mexico, gubernatorial candidates Susana Martinez and Diane Denish offered somewhat differing takes on Spaceport America in response to questions from NMPolitics.net. Denish, a Democrat and the current lieutenant governor, calls the spaceport “a visionary idea”, saying that the spaceport will be used not just for “wealthy space tourists” but also satellite launches for communications and imaging needs (although probably not in the immediate future). Martinez, the Republican candidate, notes the spaceport’s “impressive potential” but says that “additional large investments would be a misguided use of our taxpayer funds”. (It’s not clear what, if any, additional investments are planned or have been requested for the spaceport.)
The situation is a little more dire in Oklahoma, where one state legislator is considering closing the state’s spaceport if “nothing substantial” happens there in the next three years. State Rep. Todd Russ, a Republican whose district includes the spaceport in Burns Flat, said in the sidebar to an article in The Oklahoman that he would talk with fellow legislators about closing the spaceport if there’s no activity there, especially after Rocketplane, a major planned tenant of the former air force base, filed for Chapter 7 liquidation this summer.
As you might expect NASA’s future has emerged as a major issue in political races in Brevard County, Florida, home to the Kennedy Space Center and thousands of workers whose jobs may be lost once the shuttle is retired next year. It’s showing up not just in Congressional races, but also at the state and local level. “I can’t remember a time in the last 20 years when NASA was at the forefront like it is now,” Titusville Area Chamber of Commerce President Marcia Gaedcke told Florida Today.
By Jeff Foust on 2010 August 6 at 9:47 pm ET In a speech Friday afternoon at the Thirteenth Annual International Mars Society Convention in Dayton, Ohio, former NASA administrator Mike Griffin offered a one-sentence summary of his opinion about the White House’s plans for NASA: “We’re not going anywhere and we’re going to spend a lot of money doing it.”
He actually had a lot more to say about the current administration’s proposed new direction for NASA, and none of it was particularly complimentary. For example, the administration’s plan to hold off on a decision for a heavy-lift vehicle to no later than 2015 had interesting timing, he thought. “By the time there was any budget year that would actually have to support the development of a real heavy-lift rocket, the president who is promising to do it will be gone,” he said.
He also took some time to address what he perceived to be a conflict between government and commercial that has developed with the policy’s direction where “LEO is to be set aside essentially as a commercial preserve,” as he described it. He said it was important to have a government system capable of carrying humans to space for a variety of reasons, from its strategic geopolitical value to providing a backup should a commercial provider have an accident (and thus likely be forced out of business, he argued) to preventing a commercial provider from wielding monopolistic pricing power. “We seem to be setting up for an adversarial position between government enterprises and commercial enterprises,” he said. Both have their own values and can be complimentary, he said. He did say later that he expected that the final compromise to come out of Congress would fund commercial crew programs at a level close to the Senate version, but no higher. “I don’t think the administration is going to get their way.”
Griffin mentioned the House and Senate versions of NASA authorization bills currently in Congress, but didn’t indicate that he had a preference for one over the other. “Either one—both of those bills are, in my view, radically better than the administration’s plan,” he said. “They’re not as good, in my view, as we had, but radically better than the administration’s plan.” In a Q&A session later, though, he did appear critical of the provision in the Senate version that called for immediate development of an HLV capable of placing 70 tons into LEO. “The question is what payload do you need for human exploration,” he said, noting that various studies concluded that the Saturn V “was about the lowest useful capability for exploration beyond LEO.” The Saturn V, of course, could put about 130 tons into LEO, nearly twice the capacity of the proposed vehicle in the Senate bill (although the bill’s intent is that vehicle could be upgraded later to launch heavier payloads).
The fundamental issue of the ongoing debate, he said, is this: “Does this nation want to have a real space program or not?” (“Yes!” at least one person in the audience shouted.) “A real space program goes somewhere, goes somewhere worthy, it does something worthy when it gets there. It does it in a timeframe that is of interest to normal human beings.” And, he added later, “we’re going to pay for it. We don’t decide that we’re going to do it on half of what people tell you is needed.”
By Jeff Foust on 2010 August 5 at 11:25 pm ET The big vote in the US Senate on Thursday was on the nomination of Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court, but the Senate also took care of some legislation as well, including the NASA authorization bill, according to a press release issued by the Senate Commerce Committee Thursday evening. (The press release doesn’t explicitly state it, but most likely the bill was approved under unanimous consent, as there was no recorded vote on the bill on Thursday.)
“By embracing this bipartisan vision for the future of NASA, the Senate has spoken with a unified voice,” Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) said in the release. “I encourage my colleagues in the House to take up this crucial bill in order to get NASA on track to continue its proud heritage of innovation and exploration.” The House, of course, failed to get its version of a NASA authorization bill–which has a number of key differences with the Senate’s version–to the floor before the House went on recess. The House will be returning from recess briefly next week to vote on a Medicaid and education bill, but it seems unlikely they’ll also find the time during that brief session to also take up the NASA legislation.
By Jeff Foust on 2010 August 4 at 6:49 am ET In a joint op-ed in the Orlando Sentinel today, Sens. Bill Nelson and Kay Bailey Hutchison defend their plan for the space agency that’s incorporated into the NASA authorization legislation currently in the Senate. “Working with the White House, Senate colleagues and others, we have developed bipartisan legislation to get NASA on what we believe is the right track,” they write, adding that the House is “preparing a similar plan” (although different in a number of key details, something they don’t mention.) “In a nutshell, President Obama has declared Mars to be an ultimate goal — and, the bills now emerging from Congress provide a blueprint for NASA to lead the way for humans to explore beyond low-Earth orbit.”
What follows is a discussion of the key elements of that blueprint: adding another shuttle mission, extending ISS operations to at least 2020, developing a heavy-lift vehicle, and supporting development of commercial crew and cargo capabilities as well as key technology. They write that “our legislation would reduce the time we would have to depend on Russia for access to the space station by extending the shuttle for another year.” (Actually it would extend it by several months by adding one mission, while still relying on Russia for ISS crew transfers.) The legislation “would make a significantly higher investment in commercial space ventures, specifically by accelerating development of both commercial cargo and crew carriers.” (Although it’s still considerably less than what the administration requested.) Also left unanswered is whether the funding authorized in the bill is sufficient to develop a heavy-lift vehicle by the end of 2016, as the legislation states.
Meanwhile, in a Space News op-ed, Bill Nye, TV’s “The Science Guy” and the incoming executive director of The Planetary Society, finds it hard to believe he is in disagreement with “two of the world’s heroes”, namely former astronauts John Glenn and Neil Armstrong. The two of them strongly disagree with the administration’s NASA plan that Nye and The Planetary Society support. “They, along with a few others, believe that the U.S. is ending its human (manned) space exploration,” he writes. “I cannot help but ask, have these opponents read the same documents that I have? Are we all talking about the same NASA?”
He later notes that he and Armstrong and Glenn probably agree on a number of issues, including that plans to cancel the shuttle were first announced back in 2004, and that Constellation “would not take anyone back to the Moon before 2020, or even 2025″. “Would we agree that the Constellation program somehow got away from its managers? Would we agree that it was not going to accomplish much, while spending a lot of money? Would we agree we need a plan that will work?”
By Jeff Foust on 2010 August 3 at 9:06 am ET What does the NASA Advisory Council (NAC) have in common with Congress? They’re both growing impatient with NASA for details on the agency’s commercial crew plans. The NAC’s commercial space subcommittee “expressed dissatisfaction with some of the information they have received from NASA managers on the agency’s approach” for commercial crew, Aviation Week reported. The subcommittee wants a better strategy from the agency on how it would spent the $6 billion over five years proposed for commercial crew—assuming, of course, that Congress is willing to go along with that.
In an article in this week’s issue of The Space Review, I provide some more insights on the new national space policy from a couple of forums on the subject held in Washington late last month. That includes discussion of the meaning of some of the language in the policy (what does “responsible behavior” mean, for example?) and implications for international cooperation and arms control. The PolitiFact project, meanwhile, uses the policy to assess a couple of Obama campaign promises. The lack of reference to a new National Space Council in the policy is considered a “promise broken” by PolitiFact, since the Obama campaign’s space policy white paper explicitly called for it. It also rates the language on arms control a “compromise” over a proposal in the policy for a “code of conduct” in the white paper.
In an op-ed in the Las Cruces (N.M.) Sun-News, Rick Homans, executive director of the New Mexico Spaceport Authority, thanks members of the state’s Congressional delegation for their support of the Commercial Reusable Suborbital Research (CRuSR) program in authorization legislation. He particularly thanks Sen. Tom Udall and Rep. Ben Ray Lujan for proposing amendments to remove funding and other restrictions on CRuSR in the legislation. “As of this week, with the amended NASA plan moving through Congress, we’ve taken a ‘giant leap’ to setting a new direction for NASA and laying the foundation for the commercial spaceflight industry,” Homans writes.
And finally, from a column in the same newspaper from Pat Hynes, head of the New Mexico Space Grant Consortium, this observation: “I have fallen under the spell of the 2010 Space Policy Act. It’s the sector guidelines on page 10. That’s when the Thunder Bolt hit me.” She is referring to the new national space policy’s definition of commercial space activities, and the role the state and its new spaceport could play. “When Spaceport America is fully operational, we will be able to compete for government business and save the taxpayers money while creating a new commercial space industry. Let’s hope this means future jobs in the commercial space industry evolving in New Mexico. What’s not to love?”
By Jeff Foust on 2010 August 1 at 10:41 am ET POLITICO has a few more details about the detailed effort to get the NASA authorization bill to the House floor before the House went on recess. According to the report House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer was briefly involved when members of California and Ohio objected to plans to bring the bill up under suspension of the rules; he directed them to discuss their concerns with Rep. Bart Gordon, the bill’s primary sponsor, but they could not work out a deal that would allow the bill to come up before recess. The report also adds that it’s unlikely the full Senate will take up its NASA authorization bill before leaving on recess.
On Sunday, Florida Today endorsed the Senate legislation in an editorial, stating that it is “imperfect, but contains major elements that make good sense.” Those elements include immediate development of a heavy-lift vehicle and Orion spacecraft while also supporting commercial crew development. The House version, by comparison, is “badly flawed” because it would “essentially terminate” the commercial crew program while supporting continued development of a Constellation-like program whose long-term costs would be “unsustainable”.
Rep. Suzanne Kosmas (D-FL), in a brief Florida Today op-ed, suggests the Senate version of the bill is better than the House version. The Senate version “comes much closer to the goals outlined in our bipartisan plan for NASA and strikes a better balance in terms of continuing the development of a NASA-led vehicle while supporting the growth of the commercial spaceflight industry,” she writes, saying only of the House version that it was “important to move the process forward”. In a companion op-ed, Rep. Bill Posey (R-FL) indicates he’s not pleased with either version, saying they “move in the right direction but still fall short”. He is particularly critical of plans, as he puts it, to “outsource our space program to the Russians”.
In response to a series of questions posed by the Orlando Sentinel, Florida Democratic Senate candidate Kendrick Meek called the White House’s NASA budget proposal its biggest policy mistake to date. The proposal “does not provide adequate funding to implement NASA’s priorities”, Kendrick responded in the excerpted responses published by the paper, adding that it would also “disproportionately impact Florida’s economy”. In response to another question, Meek identified NASA as one area, along with clean alternative energy, that deserved additional federal funding. Meek’s opponent, Jeff Greene, who has a 10-point lead over Meek in a new poll, did not address NASA in the responses published by the Sentinel.
Finally, at the end of an interview with local businessman Bernie Simpkins, Florida Today asks him what he thinks of the president’s space policy, including its emphasis on commercial space. “I have no objection that he’s encouraging commercialization or privatization. I still believe that entrepreneurs or private industry can do better than government,” he responded. However, he added, “space is like the telephone company or national defense. It’s such an important industry that we can’t let it go.” Of course, in an era of multiple telecommunications providers, the concept of the telephone company is something of an anachronism…
By Jeff Foust on 2010 July 30 at 1:13 pm ET Space News reported late this morning that a vote on the NASA authorization bill by the full House now appears unlikely before the August recess. While individual lobbying may have helped play a role, other factors also contributed, including a letter by 13 House members from California–all Democrats–to science committee chairman Rep. Bart Gordon that technology development and commercial crew program funding be restored in the bill. The bill also required some modifications, replacing a $100-million-a-year loan guarantee program for commercial crew with a similarly-sized grant program after the Congressional Budget Office raised concerns about the long-term cost of the loan guarantee program. Making those changes while still moving the bill through under suspension of the rules may not have been possible, Space News reports, because of opposition from California and other House members.
While action on the bill may be postponed, organizations and companies continue to take stances both in favor and against the legislation. The International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAMAW) released a letter supporting the House NASA authorization bill, calling it a “viable way forward for NASA and America’s human space flight program”, while at the same time the union’s web site posted a note citing a recent report that it claims “slams space privatization”. However, two other unions, the American Federation of Government Employees and the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers, opposed the bill in a joint letter, in part because of plans to bring it to the floor with minimal debate. “This kind of process pushes the arrogant perspective that parliamentary tactics can be used to supplant thoughtful legislative deliberation.”
Meanwhile, despite considerable differences between the House and Senate versions of the NASA authorization legislation, Lockheed Martin indicates that it supports both bills. There’s a good reason for that, of course: both include funding for a crewed vehicle much like, if not identical to, Orion. “We commend the cooperation between Congress and the Administration in achieving this important step to assure continued U.S. leadership in space,” Lockheed’s John Karas said in a statement. Just how much cooperation there is between the two branches of government, or even between the House and Senate, is an open question.
By Jeff Foust on 2010 July 30 at 6:17 am ET It’s not a guarantee that action on the bill is delayed, but HR 5781, the NASA authorization bill, does not appear on the House floor schedule for Friday as distributed by the office of the House Majority Leader. Several bills are up for consideration under suspension of the rules, some of which were postponed from yesterday, but the NASA bill is not among them. Schedules, as always, are subject to change.
Meanwhile, in a meeting with the editorial board of Florida Today, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk elaborated on his comments in the call-to-action email the company sent out yesterday morning. “It seems like just a basic rule of thumb — maybe you want to spend as much on the American team as you do on the Russians,” Musk told the paper, noting that the bill authorizes several times as much money for buying seats on Russian Soyuz spacecraft as it does for commercial crew development. “It just seems like a crazy time to be doing that sort of thing.”
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