By Jeff Foust on 2010 July 29 at 8:23 pm ET As the House took up legislation other than the NASA authorization bill Thursday, others spoke out against plans to rush the bill through the House under suspension of the rules. Late Thursday The Planetary Society called for a more extensive debate about the bill: “The future of the space program is too important to rush through a controversial change in policy,” the organization stated. “Therefore, the Society urges the House leadership to wait until after the August recess to bring the bill to the House Floor, allowing a full and open debate and for amendments to improve the bill.”
Meanwhile, the DIRECT Team, a group that has advocated development of a shuttle-derived heavy-lift booster, called on the House to adopt the Senate’s version of the authorization bill instead. The Senate version calls for immediate development of an HLV not unlike what the DIRECT group has proposed, while the House calls for the initial development of a smaller crew launch vehicle similar to the Ares 1, deferring the HLV develop until later in the decade.
By Jeff Foust on 2010 July 29 at 12:10 pm ET This morning SpaceX sent out a message to those subscribed to the company’s email updates asking for help to block the NASA authorization legislation the House is set to consider as soon as this week. The key portion of the email, signed by “–Elon–“:
Your Help Urgently Needed to Save the Future of Human Spaceflight
If you care about the future of American space exploration, your urgent help is necessary. The only hope for the average citizen to one day travel to space is in danger due to the actions of certain members of Congress. SpaceX does not have the enormous lobbying power of the big government contractors to stop them, however with your help the day can still be saved.
NASA’s Authorization bill (H.R. 5781) will be debated on the floor of the US House of Representatives tomorrow. Despite the imminent retirement of the Space Shuttle, H.R. 5781 authorizes over five times as many taxpayer dollars to fly NASA astronauts on the Russian Soyuz than it invests in developing an American commercial alternative, moreover at a time when jobs are sorely needed in the United States. Quite simply, this bill represents the sort of senseless pork politics that has driven our national debt to the point where our economy can barely service it.
The bill is expected to be brought to the House floor this Friday under a special “suspension of the rules,†which is a procedure that limits debate and amendments.
Telephone your Congressional representative right away via the House Switchboard at (202) 225-3121 and ask them to vote NO on H.R. 5781, and instead support the bill unanimously agreed to in the Senate last week.
Your five minutes will make a critical difference, ensuring an exciting and inspiring future in space travel! SpaceX rarely asks you to take action, so you know it really matters when we do.
Also, commercial suborbital spaceflight advocates have been sending similar requests for people to call their representatives and ask them to vote no against the bill.
Note that the message indicates that the legislation will be taken up by the House on Friday. The bill does not show up in today’s anticipated schedule of legislation, such as this one from the minority whip’s office, which also includes a forecast of legislation expected to be considered Friday. However, such schedules are subject to change.
Update: Space News has some more details on current efforts, including word that House Science and Technology Committee chairman Bart Gordon “is expected to meet with aggrieved lawmakers July 29 to address concerns with key elements of the measure”, including commercial crew development and technology programs.
By Jeff Foust on 2010 July 29 at 6:39 am ET Space News reported late yesterday that the House may vote on the NASA authorization bill as soon as Thursday. That would indicate a bit of a shift from Tuesday, when one member indicated it was unlikely the House would take up the bill this week. Rep. Pete Olson (R-TX), who attended a Space Transportation Association luncheon on Capitol Hill Tuesday, said then that “we were hoping to get it up this week, but that’s not going to happen” because of a crowded legislative schedule. It would seem that someone’s found an opening in the agenda.
If the bill is, in fact, taken up by the House before it goes on its summer recess at the end of next week, it will be under “suspension of the rules”. That limits debate and also prevents amendments, but requires a two-thirds majority for passage; the bill’s supporters are “reasonably confident” of getting that level of support, according to Space News. Back in 2008 a NASA authorization bill passed the House on a 409-15, while a 2005 bill passed on a 383-15 vote. The White House has not issued a formal statement of administration policy about the House bill as of early Thursday morning.
By Jeff Foust on 2010 July 29 at 6:14 am ET Earlier this week the House approved the Senate version of an FY10 supplemental appropriations bill that includes a provision regarding NASA. That provision, which the Senate added in May, requires that FY10 Constellation funds “shall be available to fund continued performance of Constellation contracts, and performance of such Constellation contracts may not be terminated for convenience.” The language was designed to reinforce a provision in the original FY10 bill that prevented NASA from terminating Constellation programs without Congressional approval.
The passage, though, comes just days after the GAO found that NASA was not in violation of that original provision nor was it withholding funding for Constellation programs. “According to NASA financial data, by June 30, 2010, NASA had obligated 83 percent of the Exploration funds that Congress appropriated for fiscal year 2010,” the GAO report noted. “By comparison, the corresponding figure in fiscal years 2009 and 2008 was 73 percent.” The report added that the GAO had found no evidence that “NASA is taking any steps to terminate or end the Constellation program” in the current fiscal year.
The GAO report also found no evidence of impropriety by NASA with regards to Constellation contract termination costs. “We recognize that progress toward meeting key Constellation milestones has slowed and that job losses have occurred,” it noted. “However, the evidence we have gathered to date indicates that NASA is adhering to its policy and the FAR [Federal Acquisition Regulation] terms incorporated into the Constellation prime contracts concerning allowable costs, including potential termination costs.”
By Jeff Foust on 2010 July 27 at 9:05 pm ET Senate appropriators have already taken a position on NASA funding with an appropriations bill that cleared the committee last Thursday. House appropriators, though, declined to take a stand on NASA’s human spaceflight program last month, deciding to defer to authorizers. Now that the House Science and Technology Committee has approved its own authorization bill, different from what’s under consideration in the Senate, what will the committee do? One key member didn’t provide many firm predictions Tuesday.
Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA), the ranking member of the Commerce, Justice, and Science subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee, didn’t predict what the committee would do when he spoke at a Space Transportation Association luncheon on Capitol Hill. “We were sort of just waiting to see what the authorizers have done,” he said. “I’m not going to predict completely where we will go or what will happen.”
Asked if he had a preference between the House and Senate versions of the bill (having previously endorsed the Senate version of the NASA authorization bill), he declined to play favorites, although he indicated both were an improvement over what the White House requested in its original budget proposal in that they kept “America number one” in space. “They’re both good,” he said. “I don’t think that I’m going to get involved in the two authorizing bills.” He added, though, that the Senate bill “fairly tracks the compromise in the letter that was sent”, referring to a letter to the president that about 60 members of Congress, including Wolf, signed last month asking for immediate development of a heavy-lift vehicle. “Maybe there’s a way to blend them together,” he concluded.
Rep. Pete Olson (R-TX), ranking member of the House Science Committee’s space subcommittee, was in attendance at the luncheon and provided his own insights on the differing bills. “We’re hoping to sit down with the Senate at some point” and work out a compromise. That won’t come until after the August recess, as Olson also noted that it was unlikely the full House would take up the authorization bill this week as some proponents had hoped. “We need it, if we possibly can, to get it to pass on its own” rather than get crammed into a larger omnibus bill.
On the timing of an appropriations bill, Wolf said it was likely there would be some kind of continuing resolution (CR), although he wasn’t sure how long would run. “I think a lot will depend on what will happen in the elections,” he said. He thought there was a “reasonable chance” that the CR would extend into January and a new Congress, one that Wolf believes, at least on the House side, will be in the hands of the Republican party. He was particularly wary of anything done by a post-election “lame duck” session in November or December, including passage of an omnibus bill that wraps up multiple appropriations into a single bill. “I think the less that happens in a lame duck session the better.”
By Jeff Foust on 2010 July 24 at 9:40 am ET Meteorologically speaking, this is a good weekend to get away from Washington, DC: Saturday’s high temperature is forecast to be over 100 with a heat index approaching 110. The heat’s also been turned up recently for commercial space advocates in Washington, who have seen Congressional committees slash the White House’s budget proposals for commercial crew development. That’s exemplified by the House Science and Technology Committee, which Thursday approved authorization legislation that provides only $50 million a year for commercial crew development plus $100 million a year for a new loan guarantee program—and even that was criticized by one member as “the epitome of socialism and corporate welfare.”
“I have never been so happy to get out of Washington, DC,” quipped Jim Muncy, president of PoliSpace and co-founder of the Space Frontier Foundation. He was speaking Friday morning in the cooler and friendlier confines of the NewSpace 2010 conference held by the Foundation in Silicon Valley. He and other speakers, while frustrated by the recent turn of events in Washington, sought to rally attendees to push for renewed support for the development of commercial crew transportation systems. “The good part is that the fight isn’t over,” he said. “And, arguably, the real fight hasn’t even begun.”
One reason Muncy said the fight hasn’t even begun was that the debate had been incorrectly framed into one of government versus commercial systems, and entrepreneurial NewSpace companies versus established “OldSpace” companies, when in fact both are needed. The real fight, he said, is between “a white-collar welfare state space program and a frontier-opening, settlement-enabling, future-changing space strategy.” Put another way, he said, “We can’t let this conversation be about SpaceX versus ATK, or how NASA astronauts get to space. We have to make it about the future of humanity.”
In a later conference panel on orbital spaceflight, Muncy addressed one element of the House authorization bill, the loan guarantee provision, which he called “a really bad idea”. Loan guarantees work, he explained, for projects like ships and buildings, where there’s something being built that, if the loan falls through, can be sold. “Using that to fund development is problematic in lots of different ways.” He also said he was puzzled by restrictions in Senate legislation that prevent NASA from entering into commercial crew service contracts in FY2011. “I don’t understand why, if you are worried about the gap in US human spaceflight and having to pay Russia for space goods and services,” he said, “you would say you can’t even start for a year.”
Muncy predicted that a final NASA appropriations bill won’t come until after November’s mid-term elections, meaning that the agency will run under a continuing resolution for potentially several months. “Hopefully the White House will engage in a more forceful manner in negotiations down the road,” probably after the elections, he said. “We will get some level of funding with some restrictions.”
By Jeff Foust on 2010 July 23 at 10:14 am ET The House Science and Technology Committee approved on Thursday its version of a NASA authorization bill, HR 5781. The approval came after a long markup that considered over 30 amendments, adopting 23 of them (listed here). Among the most significant amendments were those that authorize an additional shuttle flight and also reduce the scope of the overall authorization bill from five years to three, the same length as the Senate version.
The committee, though, rejected amendments by Reps. Suzanne Kosmas (D-FL) and Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) to add funding for commercial cargo and crew programs, bringing them in line with the Senate version (in the case of commercial crew) and the original NASA proposal for the $312 million of additional COTS funding for FY11. The Kosmas amendment for commercial crew was opposed by members who were concerned about taking money away from government development of a launch vehicle and spacecraft. “I am philosophically in tune with Ms. Kosmas and Mr. Rohrabacher,” committee chairman Bart Gordon (D-TN) said when discussing his opposition to Kosmas’s amendment was debated, “but I am not fiscally attuned to that.” Rohrabacher’s amendment to restore the FY11 COTS funding was opposed by Rep. Donna Edwards (D-MD) in because the current COTS awardees, Orbital Sciences and SpaceX, who also said the additional funding was not needed to achieve their current milestones. “You know” she said to Rohrabacher during the debate on the amendment, “if I had may way we probably would have had zero for this program” instead of the $14 million in the legislation.
The committee, though, did reject another amendment by Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL) to eliminate the $100-million-a-year loan/loan guarantee program for commercial crew development in the legislation. “This is the epitome of socialism and corporate welfare,” he said of the proposal. “Why hand $500 million of federal resources to companies that don’t need it, haven’t asked for it, don’t want it, and in all likelihood will provide nothing for it?” Rohrabacher, while not happy with the loan program (in part because it showed up in the legislation without prior discussion in earlier committee hearings), defended commercial involvement, and the amendment was defeated. Also, the commercial suborbital industry won a minor victory when the committee approved an amendment by Rep. Ben Ray Lujan (D-NM) that struck the $1 million authorization cap on the Commercial Reusable Suborbital Research (CRuSR) program in the original version of the bill (it did not hurt that one of the companies that could benefit from CRuSR, Armadillo Aerospace, is in the home district of the committee’s ranking member, Ralph Hall (R-TX).)
Chairman Gordon emphasized in his statement that the authorization bill tried to find a path between the original Constellation program and the original White House proposal that would have killed Constellation, neither of which Gordon said were “executionable” as planned given available funding. “I believe the bill before us today provides the nation with a productive future for its human spaceflight program, one that can be sustained even in the midst of budgetary uncertainty,” he said.
However, the bill is at odds with the Senate authorizing and appropriating legislation in some key areas, like commercial crew and technology development programs. How (or even if) those will be reconciled, assuming neither bill is radically altered on the House or Senate floor, remains to be seen. Another question is how House appropriators follow the lead of this authorization bill. One appropriator, Rep. Robert Aderholt (R-AL), signaled his support for the bill “because it strongly rejects the Administration’s proposal to kill Constellation by providing a well thought-out strategy for maintaining a strong and well-rounded American space program.” However, recall last week that Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA), the ranking member of the appropriations subcommittee with oversight of NASA, endorsed the Senate version of the authorization legislation, primarily for backing immediate development of a heavy-lift launcher, although that came before the House version of the legislation was completed.
By Jeff Foust on 2010 July 22 at 9:23 pm ET On Thursday the full Senate Appropriations Committee approved a Commerce, Justice, and Science appropriations bill, just a day after the CJS subcommittee marked up the bill in a brief session. The text of the legislation is not yet available but the summary of the legislation released by the committee included this discussion of the NASA section of the bill:
National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) – The bill provides $19 billion for NASA, $278 million above the Fiscal Year 2010 level and equal to the President’s request. The total funding includes $1.6 billion for Space Shuttle operations; $2.78 billion for Space Station operations; $3 billion for development of the next generation Crew Launch Vehicle and Crew Exploration Vehicle; $5 billion for science; and $904 million for aeronautics and space technology research. The bill restructures NASA’s human spaceflight programs, providing for a new heavy lift launch vehicle and crew capsule for exploring beyond low-Earth orbit, extending the life of the International Space Station through 2020, supporting the burgeoning commercial space industry, investing in new technology development, and allowing one additional Space Shuttle flight, if determined to be safe.
During the hearing Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) thanked the CSJ subcommittee chairwoman, Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), for adding $27 million for a flagship exploration technology program. “Candidly, I was very disappointed to see that the technology funding, which was the cornerstone of the president’s budget, is really substantially, some what say drastically, reduced. Exploration technology cut $502 million, robotic precursor missions cut by $80 million, space tech programs cut by $247 million. These cuts are going to cause 200 immediate job losses in my state alone,” she said.
“I acknowledge the validity of the senator from California’s concerns,” Mikulski responded, “but we face a very constrained budget environment, and also we started off the year with a very difficult presentation by the administration that initially canceled the human spaceflight program as we knew it.” Mikulski continued: “Working with Senator Shelby, we really did try to find a path forward that kept a balanced space program in human spaceflight, space technology, space science, and also reliable transportation systems.” She said she would be willing to work with Feinstein as the bill moves forward to address the Californian’s concerns.
Some senators hailed elements of the bill that support “development of the next generation Crew Launch Vehicle and Crew Exploration Vehicle”. “The funding secured today for NASA will ensure that America remains the world leader in manned spaceflight by jumpstarting the development and construction of a new Heavy Lift Vehicle, while also continuing the development of the Orion Crew Capsule,” said Sen. Mary Landrieu (D) of Louisiana, home of the Michoud Assembly Facility. “This is not only great news for the direction of the space program but will ensure that NASA’s skilled workforces, in locations like Michoud, will be able to resume work on a NASA-built Heavy Lift Vehicle in the near-term.”
Sen. Robert Bennett (R-UT) also praised the bill in a statement because that new launch vehicle, he said, will use solid rocket motors manufactured in Utah. “This legislation is not only significant because it rejects President Obama’s failed vision for human spaceflight, but is also a major step toward preserving the solid rocket industrial base and thousands of jobs in Utah.”
Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL), ranking member of the CJS subcommittee, also supported the bill, while taking some swings at commercial space elements of the White House’s budget proposal. “The overarching point is simple: No so-called commercial space company has ever carried anything successfully to the space station, much less safely launch and return a human being. We cannot risk human lives or the entire future of the space program by deploying an unproven commercial crew concept,” he said. “The CJS bill solidifies American’s human space flight program by funding a robust heavy lift vehicle based on demonstrated technological reality.”
By Jeff Foust on 2010 July 21 at 6:33 am ET The Commerce, Justice, and Science subcommittee is scheduled to mark up its FY11 appropriations bill, which includes NASA, in a session at 10 am today. The question is whether the subcommittee will follow the lead of Senate authorizers, or offer funding closer to the House authorization bill that offers far less for commercial crew programs and does not include an additional shuttle mission. For now, it appears, the subcommittee will stick with the Senate version, the Orlando Sentinel reports, “with some minor funding alternations”.
By Jeff Foust on 2010 July 21 at 6:26 am ET What does the House version of the NASA authorization bill mean for NASA’s Johnson Space Center, the Houston Chronicle asked Rep. Pete Olson (R-TX), the ranking member of the space subcommittee of the House Science and Technology Committee, and whose district includes JSC? “The first message is we love you,” Olson responded. (Hugs, anyone?) “[M]y message to them is that help is on the way. The House and Senate are hard at work to ensure that we have a viable space program.”
Rep. Rob Bishop (R-UT) also hailed the proposed legislation as “a strong repudiation of the President’s flawed proposal” for NASA, one he added, that was “stronger even than the good developments we saw last week out of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation.” His support is primarily rooted in the bills implicit support for Ares 1 (or, at least, a crewed launcher that would be closely derived from that vehicle). providing demand for solid rocket motors ATK produces in his state. (Incidentally, earlier this week Brett Lambert, director of industrial policy in the Pentagon, said that the US solid rocket motor industry was “over capacity” and needs to be consolidated.)
Advocates of commercial space, though, are hardly loving the bill. While the press release announcing the bill states that the legislation “provides more than $4.9 billion in funding for commercial crew- and commercial cargo-related initiatives”, only $764 million is explicitly designated as such in the bill: $50 million a year for five years for commercial crew development, $100 million a year for five years for a “loan and loan guarantee program” to support the development of such vehicles, and $14 million in FY11 for COTS (about $300 million less than what the administration requested.) The remainder, apparently, is for far less controversial cargo transportation services. “Based on the proposed levels of funding for Russian Soyuz flights versus commercial crew services, it would appear that the House Science Committee has more faith in Russian technology developed in the 1960s than in America’s own aerospace industry,” Brett Alexander, president of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation, tells Space News.
Suborbital research advocates are also unhappy with the bill. While the administration requested $15 million a year for five years for the Commercial Reusable Suborbital Research (CRuSR) program, the House bill authorizes only $1 million a year for FY11 and FY12 (and does not set any explicit funding levels for later years). The bill also puts a number of restrictions on the program, requiring a number of studies and resolution of any liability and indemnification issues. That’s opposed by researchers and suborbital vehicle developers alike, who see it as an unnecessary delay for flying experiments on such vehicles.
Given those provisions in the House bill, it’s not surprising some commercial advocates are rallying around the Senate version, even those it doesn’t give them everything they want. SpaceX issued a press release Tuesday where the company “applauds” the Senate for their bill. “We are pleased that the Senate Commerce Committee has recognized that the best and only near-term option for eliminating America’s reliance on the Russian Soyuz for astronaut transportation is the development and use of commercial systems, such as SpaceX’s Falcon 9 and Dragon spacecraft,” SpaceX CEO and CTO Elon Musk said in the statement.
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