By Jeff Foust on 2010 June 1 at 8:27 pm ET The web site Daily Kos published yesterday the results of a brief poll of space exploration policy commissioned by the progressive web site and performed by polling firm Research 2000. The poll is short: three questions, only two of which are really about space exploration policy (the third is about astronomy, or perhaps more accurately, the intersection of astronomy and religious beliefs.) A total of 1,200 people were contacted in the telephone poll, conducted last week.
The first question asked, “Regarding the US Space Program, do you feel we spend too much, not enough, or the right amount?” Overall a plurality (47%) answered “too much”, versus 28% for “right amount” and 12% for “not enough” (the remaining 13% answered “not sure”). The second question asked, “Should the US government continue to take the lead in space exploration, or should it leave such space exploration to the private sector?” Here government wins out with 56% of the responses overall, versus 32% for the private sector and 12% not sure.
The breakdowns are particularly interesting. Republicans were far more likely to think that the US spends too much on its space program (56%) than independents (48%) or Democrats (38%). Men are more likely to answer too much than women (53 versus 41%). The older the respondent is, the more likely they’ll say we’re spending too much on the space program: only 43% of those aged 18-29 answered “too much”, versus 51% of those 60 and over. And despite the presence of several major NASA centers like KSC, MSFC, and JSC, those in the South answered “too much” more often (52%) than the other three geographic areas defined in the survey.
On the second question, Republicans more frequently believed the private sector should take the lead on space exploration: 55%, versus 29% of independents and 17% of Democrats. Older respondents were more likely to favor the private sector: 37% of those 60 and over versus 25% of those 18-29. And the South is more likely to favor the private sector (38%) than other regions, with only 25% in the Northeast preferring the private sector over the government.
So what does this poll mean? Maybe not much. While the aggregate results are a little confusing (people think we spend too much on the space program but want the government to be in control of space exploration?) the breakdowns by party are more predictable: more conservative Republicans think we’re spending too much but want to turn things over to the private sector, while more liberal Democrats are less willing to cut spending but also keep things in government hands.
Unfortunately, any poll is as only as good as its survey instrument (among other factors), and here it could have used some work. While it’s reasonable to ask whether people think we’re spending too much or too little on space, it would have been useful to calibrate those responses by also asking them how large NASA’s budget is (either as a dollar amount or a fraction of the federal budget). Do people who believe we’re spending too much on NASA also overestimate the size of NASA’s budget? Likewise, the second question posits an all-or-nothing scenario that isn’t reasonable: there’s no real move to hand all of space exploration to the private sector. A better question, perhaps, would be to ask if people if they believe the private sector should take a greater role, or, more specifically, if they believe the private sector should take on the responsibility of transporting NASA astronauts to orbit.
By Jeff Foust on 2010 June 1 at 6:46 am ET Paul Spudis is an advocate for an immediate return to the Moon. Bob Zubrin, by comparison, sees the Moon as something of an unnecessary detour to the real goal, Mars. However, they both agree on something: their opposition to the White House’s plan for NASA. In an op-ed in Tuesday’s Washington Times, they note that while “we are known for holding different opinions on the order and importance of specific objectives in space, we are united in our concern over this move to turn away from the Vision for Space Exploration.”
Specifically, they’re concerned over plans to abandon Constellation and focus on commercial crew and technology development, which they believe threatens the agency’s existing spaceflight infrastructure. “By adopting the new program, we will lose – probably irretrievably – this space-faring infrastructure and, most certainly, our highly trained, motivated and experienced work force,” they claim. “It will be prohibitively expensive and difficult to restart our manned program after five to 10 years of agency navel-gazing, effectively signaling the end of America’s manned space program and our leadership in space.”
They argue that NASA does best when given specific goals and then develops the systems needed to achieve them. “The administration claims it is setting daring goals – the asteroids and Mars – but has posited them so far in the future that no real, focused work needs to be done toward their achievement during this or the next presidential term,” they note (a statement Zubrin also made Saturday at the International Space Development Conference in Chicago.)
Meanwhile, Dennis Wingo, another advocate for lunar exploration and development, seeks a compromise between the White House plan and opponents who wish to keep Constellation. “[Neil] Armstrong and [Gene] Cernan are 100% right when they say that the new plan is unfocused in its execution and uninformed in the finding that ‘We have been there and done that’ on the Moon,” he argues in a SpaceRef essay. “Unfortunately, Constellation was never going to get us to the Moon or anywhere else in a sustainable manner.”
Wingo advocates a return to the Moon, but one done in a more sustainable manner, including the use of in situ resource utilization. “If a lunar outpost is utilized that incorporates, as a core principle, ISRU, then exploitation along with the new plan for commercial crew in LEO and technology development for sustainable exploration beyond LEO” would bring Armstrong and Cernan on board in support of it. “Therefore, the table is set for compromise if Armstrong and Cernan are willing to abandon an unworkable Program of Record for the new plan – and the Moon.”
“If Congress is truly concerned that we are abandoning our spaceflight heritage, then they need to fund the new plan before October 1 while mandating the Moon and a strong presence there,” Wingo concludes. Given that in the least contentious of recent times getting a budget approved by the beginning of the new fiscal year has still proven impossible, it seems likely that even if a compromise like that was made we’ll still have to wait until late this calendar year (or later) for a final appropriations bill.
By Jeff Foust on 2010 May 31 at 2:41 pm ET To listen to Rep. Rob Bishop (R-UT), the House Armed Services Committee (HASC) has taken a strong stand against NASA’s plans to cancel most of Constellation. “There is report language, which meets our (committee’s needs), where we went almost two pages criticizing NASA’s decision to cancel the Constellation [program] without recognizing the impact it would have on our defense industry,” he told the Davis County (Utah) Clipper. He said the language was “a win” for those fighting for Constellation, but that they “still have a long, long way to go, step by step”.
The language of the report, though, suggests that Rep. Bishop may have been overstating his point. There is a section of the HASC report on the FY11 Defense Department authorization bill that addresses the solid rocket motor (SRM) industrial base (pp. 354-355, or 382 and 383 in the PDF document). The section is actually only about one page’s worth of material, not two (it starts near the bottom of p. 354), and much of it does not address Constellation at all. The challenges of maintaining the SRM industrial base, it notes, “are made worse by the proposed termination of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) Constellation program. Defense officials have estimated that the cost of propulsion systems could increase from 40 to 100 percent because infrastructure costs currently shared by the Department of Defense (DOD) and NASA would be passed on to the Department of Defense.” The next few paragraphs deal with DOD-specific SRM issues, including development programs and the need to align Navy and Air Force SRM needs for its ballistic missiles. Only at the end does NASA come up again, in reference to inter-agency coordination of SRM needs: “Any DOD strategic plan should include NASA, and any NASA plan should include the Department of Defense.”
Nowhere does that section (which appears to be the only section of the report that mentions NASA) explicitly criticize NASA for its decision on Constellation, only noting the impact NASA’s plans make on SRM planning for the DOD, which already is facing its own issues of “sustaining currently-deployed strategic and missile defense systems or maintaining an intellectual and engineering capacity to support the next-generation rocket motors,” as the report notes. The section at the end about coordination is perhaps more subtle criticism, since the White House apparently did not consult with DOD officials, or at least do so extensively, prior to making its decision about Constellation.
Another question is the claim in the report that propulsion systems costs “could increase from 40 to 100 percent” because of Constellation’s cancellation. The HASC report cites unnamed “defense officials”, but back in March Rear Admiral Stephen E. Johnson, director of strategic systems programs for the Navy, told a Senate committee that he expected DOD costs to increase by only 10-20 percent.
By Jeff Foust on 2010 May 30 at 4:04 pm ET The so-called “Great Debate” at the National Space Society’s (NSS) International Space and Development Conference (ISDC) in Chicago on Saturday afternoon featuring Mars Society founder Robert Zubrin and former Apollo astronaut Rusty Schweickart was something of a dud, in part because it wasn’t that much of a debate: after ten-minute opening statements by Zubrin (who opposes the agency’s proposed plans) and Schweickart (who supports them), the floor was turned over to the audience, some of whom asked questions of the two, and others who simply expressed their opinions. Conference organizers explained that the event wasn’t intended to be a debate between the two at all; the “Great Debate” title referred to the ongoing broader debate about the White House’s proposal for NASA (even though the Mars Society, in their own publicity about the event, called it a debate between Zubrin and Schweickart).
However, more interesting—and more of a debate—was an impromptu exchange between NASA deputy administrator Lori Garver and Scott Pace, director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University and someone who has been critical of at least some elements of the NASA proposal. It came together after Garver’s luncheon ran long, overlapping with a presentation by Pace on the budget proposal that was to serve as the prelude to the Schweickart/Zubrin event. (Told about the clash of schedules, she joked, “I’m going to filibuster so that no one can go hear Scott Pace.” The luncheon did end a few minutes later because the hotel staff needed to set up the room for another event.) Conference organizers then arranged to have Garver take some audience questions with Pace during his session for a short time until Garver had to leave for the airport.
What emerged was a debate about one key aspect of the NASA plan, the development of commercial crew capabilities. Pace is skeptical that it’s a wise move. “The issue that I think is one of the main differences is what role do you think the government should play in human spaceflight in the transition now, at the end of shuttle,” he said. “Some think we’re ready to go towards human spaceflight on a commercial vehicle; and I’m not.” He said such a shift to commercial providers is not impossible, but that it would lengthen the post-shuttle gap.
He advocated that it made sense to “press to MECO” and continue building Ares 1, even if a commercial crew program goes forward. He said it would taken $7.5 billion to complete Ares 1 by 2015 or 2016, then noted that there’s $2.5 billion in the proposal already for Constellation termination costs. “If I do Ares 1 I get a $5-billion downpayment for a heavy-lift vehicle, the Ares 5.” He suggested that Ares 1 be the fallback option should commercial vehicles fall behind schedule. “I believe in the public option,” he quipped.
Garver countered that continuing to develop the Ares 1 was neither wise nor affordable. “Private sector will not have the incentive to invest and develop that capability if we have, as you call it, a backup plan,” she said, arguing that the government should not compete with the private sector in this arena. She argued that developing Ares 1 would cost far more than Pace indicated. “We have a situation where it is going to cost $18 billion overall” to develop Ares 1, she said. By comparison, she noted, “the very first case for Ares was, as I recall, from Scott Horowitz: $1 billion and by 2010.”
“I know people look at the $6 billion for commercial crew and think, ‘oh, if we just use that to complete the existing program,'” she continued. “There’s not nearly enough available to do that.”
By Jeff Foust on 2010 May 30 at 3:25 pm ET Saturday’s luncheon at the National Space Society’s (NSS) International Space and Development Conference (ISDC) in Chicago was something of a homecoming for its speaker, NASA deputy administrator Lori Garver, who was executive director of the organization for a number of years. “I grew up in NSS,” she said. “Perhaps no other speaking engagement so far has really seemed like coming home.”
Her speech, though, was not designed to reminisce about the good old days of the NSS, but instead lay out the administration’s plans for NASA and seek support from, and action by, the audience of space advocates, to the point of offering to make available the slides from her presentation on the NSS web site (which have not been posted as of Sunday) to aid in outreach efforts. She argued that it’s particularly important to reach out beyond the space community to the broader public. “We have to connect to a public that doesn’t understand how NASA is helping them.”
Part of that effort, it would seem, is to make the case of how NASA fits into the bigger picture. “We really need, during times when our government is clearly going to have to focus on those things that help develop the economy, to be a part of the national agenda,” she said. Later, she said, “We need to address actual things we can contribute to the nation and the world.” That led to a discussion of “potential grand challenges”: projects that NASA would lead or be a part of that would provide that value to larger audiences. Some of the ideas are very space-specific, such as looking for life beyond Earth and making space access economical; others appeared to leverage NASA technologies or capabilities, like “carbon-netural mobility”.
She acknowledged, though, that there are skeptics about the plan at ISDC, and part of her speech made the case that the agency’s proposed new plan was surperior to continuing on the program of record. “People have made a lot of rhetorical statements that this plan kills human spaceflight; in fact, it does the opposite,” she said, citing problems with cost and schedule of Constellation.
She later added that even though the new plan does not explicitly include a lunar landing, “we are not giving up on the Moon.” She said under the program of record we weren’t going to the Moon in the foreseeable future anyway because of those cost and schedule issues, and that the plans for lunar return that did exist were regressing to “flags and footprints” missions rather than something sustainable. The capabilities that would be developed in the new plan “will allow us to go back to the Moon and stay much earlier than the program of record.”
However, she noted that it’s been a difficult battle so far winning over those skeptics. “Change is hard,” she said. “This is a paradigm shift. We know it’s not popular now because you can’t make these artificial claims we can get you somewhere we cannot.” And, she added, “It doesn’t take much to recognize that we’re not getting out message out well.”
“The space community should hopefully see that this our time,” she said near the end of her talk. “The President of the United States has taken a stand—very difficult and maybe not immediately politically beneficial—on the importance of expanding the human presence into space.” At the end of her speech Garver got a standing ovation from the ISDC luncheon audience, although it remains to be seen if they were simply saluting one of their own or were inspired to to take up the call to advocate for the new NASA plan.
By Jeff Foust on 2010 May 29 at 9:53 am ET After being interrupted by a protestor, the rest of NASA administrator Charles Bolden’s speech Friday night was a bit anticlimactic. That was, though, to be expected: it was unlikely the administrator would make any major announcements in a speech in Chicago that wrapped up around 9 pm CDT on a Friday night before a holiday weekend, with hardly any media in the audience. (But then, the White House announced Bolden’s nomination to be administrator early on the Saturday morning of last year’s Memorial Day weekend.)
“It’s actually been kind of a rollercoaster week for us,” Bolden said. “We’ve taken some lumps, and that’s okay. Like I tell people all the time, at least you’re not getting shot at.” The highs of the last week included the success of the STS-132 mission and near-completion of the International Space Station, also noting the award of the Collier Trophy to the ISS program earlier month. He added interesting note about that award: a key endorser of the ISS to the award committee was Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. “That says a lot about the International Space Station when the chief diplomat of the nation thinks enough to write a letter of recommendation.”
At the other extreme was the hearing Wednesday by the House Science and Technology Committee. “Some very high profile people are not seeing eye-to-eye with the president right now on the president’s new direction,” Bolden said, a reference to testimony in recent hearings from people like Neil Armstrong and Gene Cernan. “But I personally believe the president’s fiscal year 2011 budget and the request that goes with it is good for NASA, because it sets the agency on a sustainable path that’s tightly linked to our nation’s interests.” After some applause, he added, “I also believe what the president has put forward is the most authentically visionary policy for real human space exploration that we have ever had since President Kennedy challenged NASA to send humans to the Moon and return them safely back to Earth in the 1960s.”
Much of what followed was a reiteration of arguments for technology development, commercial crew, and other key aspects of the agency’s proposed new plan. “We get criticized as though these ideas just hatched out of the blue, as if the president somehow disappeared into a bunker and emerged with these ideas that no one has ever conceived of before,” Bolden said. “The truth is, ever since the Apollo era ten national studies across the board, from the post-Apollo space board to Augustine, have identified the kinds of capabilities we would need if we truly intend to get beyond low Earth orbit.” And near the end of his speech: “This is a generational shift, and a big one, but in many ways this isn’t new. The only thing new is that we finally have a president who has proposed a budget with sufficient funding to support his vision.”
The one interesting, and relatively new, idea in his speech is that the first human mission beyond low Earth orbit might in fact be a return to Moon—or, rather, lunar orbit. “We have been criticized the last few months for not having destinations, for not having a timeline. In reality, we’ve always been, and still are, mission driven,” he said. “We plan to fly a crewed circumlunar mission by the early 2020s.” While that’s not the first time the idea that an Apollo 8-style mission might take place, he sounded a lot more definite than in his prepared testimony earlier this week, in which he stated that NASA’s plan for human space exploration starts “with crewed flight tests – perhaps a circumlunar mission – early next decade of vehicles capable of supporting exploration beyond LEO.”
By Jeff Foust on 2010 May 29 at 8:31 am ET NASA administrator Charles Bolden was just starting his after-dinner speech Friday night at the International Space Development Conference (ISDC) in Chicago when a young woman got onto the stage and took control of the microphone. “NASA needs to scrap plans to fund cruel and wasteful on monkeys,” she said. “Stop wasting taxpayers’ dollars on wasteful experiments. Shame on you, Charles Bolden! NASA needs to stop animal experiments.”
The audience, initially stunned by the protestor, started to boo her; one person even shouted “Jerk!”. “Hold on, hold on,” Bolden said, directing his comments at the audience. “One of the good things about the country in which we live,” he said, even as the protestor was continuing her anti-experiment rant, “and one of the things I wore my uniform for—I’m still a United States Marine,” a comment that got a round of applause as the audience. “And one of the things that I always told my Marines when I was among them on active duty was that we may not always agree with everything that we’re asked to do, we may not agree with everyone we’re asked to protect, but in the United States of America we serve the Constitution.” As the woman was removed from the room, he said, “The young lady had every right to express herself—maybe not that way, but this is maybe the only country in the world in which she could do that.”
The unidentified woman, according to eyewitness accounts, was handed over to hotel security and local police; she was ejected from the hotel but not arrested. It’s unknown if she’s in any way affiliated with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), who have protested a study by NASA that would involve exposing monkeys to radiation as part of efforts to understand the effects of long-duration interplanetary spaceflight, the study the protestor appeared to be referring to. PETA has been protesting these plans for several months, including small demonstrations outside NASA Headquarters and other centers, although they haven’t stolen the stage, so to speak, in past protests.
By Jeff Foust on 2010 May 28 at 7:36 am ET On Wednesday, hours after word came out that NASA was reassigning Constellation program manager Jeff Hanley to a new position at JSC, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) questioned the move, saying she was “deeply troubled” by it and called for an investigation by NASA’s Inspector General. On Thursday Hutchison, the ranking member of the Senate Commerce Committee, was joined in that request by the committee’s chairman, Sen. John Rockefeller (D-WV). The two released a joint letter to NASA IG Paul Martin, asking him to conduct such an investigation, including “whether his removal as program manager was related to Mr. Hanley’s well-publicized efforts to preserve the Constellation Program, consistent with Congressional enactments, notwithstanding the President’s Fiscal Year (FY) 2011 Budget request calling for elimination of the program.”
Separately, Sen. George LeMieux (R-FL) is also calling for an investigation into Hanley’s transfer. “This is yet another example of NASA taking actions to cancel the Constellation Program, and that is a violation of law,” claimed LeMieux to the Orlando Sentinel.
By Jeff Foust on 2010 May 27 at 7:55 am ET Besides the news that NASA was transferring Constellation program manager Jeff Hanley to a different position at JSC, a few other items of note from the hearing:
- At the hearing NASA administrator Charles Bolden revealed the estimated cost of developing Orion as a crew return vehicle only: $4.5 billion over five years. Where the money will come from hasn’t been determined yet, but a spokesperson told the New York Times it won’t come from the $6 billion for commercial crew over the same time span in the existing budget proposal, but from “elsewhere in the human spaceflight program.”
- Bolden did not get much of a warm reception from members of the committee. As Rep. John Garamendi (D-CA) put it late in Bolden’s panel, “By now you have probably figured out that this committee is not with you.” But that opposition wasn’t unanimous. Shortly before Garamendi spoke, Rep. Kathy Dahlkemper (D-PA) praised plans in the proposal to mount a human mission to a near Earth asteroid by 2025. “That captures my imagination, actually,” she said.
- Late in the second panel, which featured Neil Armstrong, Gene Cernan, and Tom Young, all critical of the budget proposal (in particular its emphasis on commercial crew), Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) expressed his frustration with what to him appeared to be a one-sided hearing. “It has not been a balanced hearing,” he told committee chairman Rep. Bart Gordon (D-TN). “We have not received both sides of this issue at all from this presentation.” Rohrabacher added that before the committee takes up a NASA authorization bill “we would have a panel presented to us that could give both sides of the issue.” Gordon defended the makeup of the hearing, noting that Bolden testified for two hours and that presidential science advisor John Holdren was invited but could not attend. “You can be well assured that we are not one hearing away from an authorization,” Gordon said, adding that he had talked yesterday with Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico, an advocate of commercial spaceflight, who was interested in testifying.
- The quote of the hearing, though, goes to Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL), who sought to compare the capabilities of NASA versus the commercial sector when it comes to responding to a spaceflight crisis like Apollo 13. “I told the NASA administrator recently that my sense is that if a commercial enterprise had been running the space program at the time of Apollo 13, then all of those hundreds of engineers, mechanics, and other astronauts who worked so hard to make sure that the three men returned to Earth safely would have been replaced by one 20-year-old in a Grateful Dead t-shirt working on a laptop.”
By Jeff Foust on 2010 May 26 at 10:05 pm ET Several hours after the space shuttle Atlantis landed at the Kennedy Space Center, ending its last scheduled flight, Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL) officially announced he would try to seek one more flight for that orbiter. In a letter to President Obama, Nelson said he would seek to include language for that flight in the NASA authorization bill his subcommittee of the Senate Commerce Committee is currently drafting. Flying the extra mission would not only allow additional spare parts and other supplies to be flown to the station, it would also “allow us to more smoothly transition the workforce in Florida and Texas from the space shuttle program to the vision you’ve set for NASA’s future.” Nelson emphasized in the letter this would be the only additional shuttle flight he would seek: the summer 2011 mission “would mark the last flight of the space shuttle program.”
Nelson has been seeking to win another shuttle flight for NASA for some time. At the Kennedy Space Center earlier this month for the launch of Atlantis, he talked up the benefits of the additional mission to reporters. “I keep recommending it, and I will keep asking the White House to go ahead and do that,” he said. At the time he also said that his subcommittee hoped to markup a NASA authorization bill by the middle of June.
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