Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) is the latest member of Congress to raise issues about NASA’s approach to dealing with the potential termination of Constellation contracts. In a May 10 letter to OMB director Peter Orszag (reported by Space News and also independently received here from a third party), Mikulski said she was “deeply troubled” by moves by NASA directing industry to retain funds to cover termination costs for Constellation programs. That move, she wrote, “seeks to terminate Constellation activities in apparent violation of terms of the Omnibus provision,” referring to the language in the FY10 appropriations bill that prohibits the “termination or elimination” of any Constellation program in the current fiscal year without the approval of Congress.
Mikulski does acknowledge that the administration’s approach may not be technically illegal, but argues that it is, at least, unwise. “While NASA’s current approach to termination liability may follow the letter of the law, it is not clear that this approach has been NASA’s historical practice,” she wrote, adding that it “seems neither fair nor appropriate” for NASA to change its approach without a third-party review. “This termination liability issue is a needless distraction, if not an obstacle, toward moving forward in a cooperative spirit.”
Mikulski asked Orszag for a response by later in the week on “a path forward to avoid canceling contracts in fiscal year 2010″ and avoiding termination liability set-asides. Orszag responded, according to Space News, by saying that his office would work with NASA and the Justice Department on the issue and report back “when we have additional details.”
Aviation Weeksees signs of a developing compromise between the White House and Congress on NASA’s future, based on its interpretation of this week’s Senate Commerce Committee hearing. That assessment is based in part on comments at the hearing by Sens. Bill Nelson (D-FL) and John D. Rockefeller (D-WV), the latter stating that he believes “we need a new direction” in human spaceflight. What that compromise will look like, though, and how long it will take to develop remains to be seen.
Compromise, however, wasn’t on the mind of attendees of dueling rallies about NASA Friday in Galveston, Texas. A “Democrats and Labor Support NASA Jobs” rally, featuring Rep. Gene Green (D-TX), lobbied for NASA (or, at least, NASA’s Johnson Space Center); Green said there that “Congress needs to save the mission of what NASA means to the country.” A separate “Save NASA, Stop Obama” took place at the same time and, as the title suggested, said the agency’s current situation was entirely the fault of the president. The White House’s plan is “not based on science or fact or anything” beyond an attack on Texas governor Rick Perry, one attendee claimed, while a Galveston County commissioner at the rally said it was “time for Obama to man up and take responsibility” rather than blame the Bush Administration.
Meanwhile, the Deseret News of Salt Lake City called on Congress to reject the president’s plans for NASA in an editorial Saturday. Noting the amendment to FY10 supplemental appropriations bill in the Senate that reiterates and clarifies an existing prohibition on terminating Constellation contracts, the paper argues that “Now, it’s up to all members of Congress to stand firm and reject the plant [sic] completely.” The administration’s plan of sending humans to asteroids and eventually to Mars “lacks details and seems to be little more than a package of wishes”, the editorial hopes that Apollo 11 astronaut Neil Armstrong’s testimony before the Senate earlier this week will be “more than one small step toward keeping the United States in the forefront of space exploration.”
Yesterday two members of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Richard Shelby (R-AL) and Robert Bennett (R-UT), introduced and got included into an FY10 supplemental appropriations bill an amendment that prevents NASA from terminating any Constellation contracts. The two argued that this was a significant step in protecting Constellation: Bennett’s press release claimed the amendment “gains traction” for efforts to save Constellation, while Shelby’s statement said the provision “clarifies and reinforces the intent of current law”.
Provided further, That notwithstanding any other provision of law or regulation, funds made available for Constellation in Fiscal Year 2010 for “National Aeronautics and Space Administration Exploration†and from previous appropriations for “National Aeronautics and Space Administration Exploration†shall be available to fund continued performance of Constellation contracts, and performance of such Constellation contracts may not be terminated for convenience by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration in Fiscal Year 2010.
[N]one of the funds provided herein and from prior years that remain available for obligation during fiscal year 2010 shall be available for the termination or elimination of any program, project or activity of the architecture for the Constellation program nor shall such funds be available to create or initiate a new program, project or activity, unless such program termination, elimination, creation, or initiation is provided in subsequent appropriations Acts.
Since NASA has argued that it is not in violation of the existing law since it has not terminated any contracts, it’s not clear how the new language would change matters. (The new language does note that existing funds shall be used “to fund continued performance of Constellation contracts”, apparently addressing reports that contractors are reserving funds for contract termination costs, but the agency has said they have only reminded them of such liabilities, not directed them to reserve funding for that.) Bennett, quoted in Florida Today, appeared to acknowledge that. “It is a restatement of existing law,” he said. “I’m sorry the administration needs this reminder.”
The video above is a response to a question about NASA’s new plan posed to presidential science advisor John Holdren at the AAAS Forum on Science and Technology Policy in Washington on Thursday, one day after he appeared before the Senate Commerce Committee to discuss the administration’s new human spaceflight plans. He outlined the admininstration’s objections to Constellation, including its “rapidly escalating costs” and schedule slips. “The president and his advisors, including me, made the decision that there are other destinations in deep space, destinations beyond low Earth orbit, that will enable us to do more science sooner, with more missions, more visits, more exciting discoveries than going back to the Moon 50 years later,” he said.
He noted that some of the astronauts who went to the Moon during Apollo oppose the new plan. “It’s not real surprising that the American heroes who were the first people to set foot on the Moon might think the most exciting thing we could possibly do now is to go back there, but not everybody agrees with them.” He pointed out that a “large array” of astronauts support the White House’s plan, from Buzz Aldrin and Sally Ride to Mae Jemison and John Grunsfeld.
“I think we’re getting some very bad press, frankly,” Holdren continued, “because there’s huge attention in the press ot the fact that Neil Armstrong and Gene Cernan testified against the president’s proposal and practically no attention at all to a large number of astronauts who support it.”
So did NASA administrator Charles Bolden say that he would “bail out” commercial crew transportation providers on a scale similar to government bailouts of major automotive and financial companies? That was perhaps the most interesting item in a three-hour hearing yesterday by the Senate Commerce Committee on the future of human spaceflight. During the first panel, which featured Bolden as well as presidential science advisor John Holdren, Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) said, “It was reported to me that in the conference call with Mr. [Neil] Armstrong and Capt. [Eugene] Cernan last week that you had… you told them that you would, ‘do whatever it takes’ to make commercial work, including ‘bailing them out’, even if that would mean ‘a bigger bailout than Chrysler and GM’.”
“I’m not sure I said that,” Bolden responded. However, he went on, “I will do everything in my power to facilitate the success of the commercial entities in access to low Earth orbit. I have to have that.” He went on that as a “contingency planner” he had to look at the possibility the commercial sector would run into difficulties and plan accordingly. When pressed by Vitter about whether he used language like “bailout”, Bolden said, “I don’t remember using the sort of language you used. I don’t remember that.”
However, in the second panel, Cernan said he distinctly recalled hearing the term bailout. Calling Bolden “a dear friend who I ultimately have the ultimate respect for”, Cernan recounted that part of the discussion from last week’s conference call. “Charlie expressed some concern over the potential of the commercial sector to be successful in any reasonable length of time. He indicated we might have to subsidize them until they are successful. And, I can say with authority because I wrote this down and out the words ‘wow’ right next to it, because Charlie did say it may be a bailout like GM and Chrysler. As a matter of fact, it may be the largest bailout in history.”
So did Bolden use the term bailout? If so, it’s hardly the best choice of words for someone trying to advocate for commercial crew transportation, given the strong negative connotations of the term, particularly today. It’s highly unlikely, though, that the scale of any such support for commercial crew providers would approach that of GM or Chrysler (who combined have received $76 billion in loans and equity investments from the federal government since late 2008); those bailouts are also considerably smaller than what some financial firms received at the height of the crisis. Nonetheless, if he did use that language, he did the commercial space industry—and his own agency—no favors.
At today’s Senate Commerce Committee hearing on the future of US human spaceflight, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX), the ranking member of the full committee, will bring up the issue of astronaut safety as an argument for extending the shuttle, the Houston Chronicle reports. She expressed concern to the paper about past anomalies with the Soyuz spacecraft, which will be the only means of transporting crews to and from the ISS from the time the shuttle is retired until a successor vehicle is available. Those anomalies “are very concerning because there has been no confirmation on their causes and we are unable to conduct our own investigation into them,” she told the Chronicle, referring to ballistic reentries by Soyuz spacecraft in 2007 and 2008. Russian officials said those were caused by the failure of explosive bolts to separate the Soyuz’s descent module from its service module, a problem that has been corrected according to both NASA and Roscosmos.
“Efforts to protect astronaut safety are traditionally non-negotiable on Capitol Hill,” the article notes, but the safety issue can cut both ways here. The 2009 NASA Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel (ASAP) report recommended against “significantly” extending the shuttle manifest, and in particular warned against extending the shuttle manifest a few missions at a time. “The risk of continuing to fly the Shuttle without a recertification and expending the resources to bring the vehicle up to modern standards is more than what we should ask astronauts to shoulder,” the report states, adding that while the shuttle has performed well since the Columbia accident, “the Panel believes that its probable decline is upon us.”
The Wall Street Journal, meanwhile, says another subject will likely come up in today’s hearing: the only-an-accountant-could-love topic of contract termination costs. NASA’s recent moves to warn Constellation contractors about setting aside funds for termination liability costs is strictly compliant with the law, the article notes, but is a break from precedent at NASA, at least for human spaceflight programs. “The current clash stems in part from NASA’s tradition of giving the Johnson Space Center… extra latitude in running programs,” the Journal reports. “According to industry and government officials, the Houston center frequently wasn’t required to comply strictly with the same accounting and program-management rules that applied to other parts of the agency.” Some, though, see the move as “a backdoor way to slow down or stop work on Constellation” given appropriations language that prevents NASA from canceling or altering the program during the current fiscal year.
The chair of the House appropriations subcommittee with oversight of NASA’s budget lost his reelection bid on Tuesday. Rep. Alan Mollohan (D-WV) lost in the Democratic primary to Mike Oliverio, a state senator, 56 to 44 percent. Oliverio capitalized on ethics problems Mollohan had faced, although the congressman was never charged with any wrongdoing. Mollohan serves as chairman of the Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee, whose jurisdiction includes NASA. In a March hearing by his subcommittee on the NASA FY11 budget proposal, Mollohan appeared to be generally supportive of it.
There’s an interesting passage in a Florida Today article today about comments by Rep. Suzanne Kosmas (D-FL) during a speech Monday in Titusville:
Kosmas is awaiting the release of a draft budget proposal for NASA from U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., who chairs the House Space and Aeronautics Subcommittee.
Kosmas is a member of that subcommittee, but has not heard when the proposal might be released or what it might contain.
Ignoring for a moment that the “draft budget proposal” would be an authorization bill, not an appropriations bill, it’s interesting that a subcommittee member whose district certainly has a stake in such legislation apparently isn’t involved in its drafting. Later, talking about pushing for a shuttle extension, Kosmas said, “I want to have my cake and eat it, too.” That’s tough to do when you can’t even get into the kitchen to see if they are, in fact, baking a cake.
Update 2pm: I spoke late this morning with a spokesman for Rep. Kosmas, who said she was misquoted in the article. She in fact is involved with the development of the authorization bill, but could not discuss specifics of the bill, nor when it will be formally taken up by the subcommittee, since those details haven’t been worked out yet. (The article has been updated to reflect this.)
Retired general Lester Lyles, a member of the Augustine Committee, warned a key House appropriator in a letter released today that NASA is underfunded and its key programs out of balance. In a letter (available at SpacePolicyOnline.com) Lyles and two co-signers, Raymond S. Colladay and Len Fisk, who together led a 2009 NRC study “America’s Future in Space: Aligning the Civil Space Program with National Needs”, told Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA) that NASA has shifted from an overemphasis on human spaceflight during the last few years to an underemphasis on it now.
“NASA has been under-funded and asked to do too much with too little, ever since President Bush announced his Vision for Space Exploration, which led to the development of Constellation,” they write to Wolf, the ranking member of the Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee. That emphasis on Constellation took funding from science and aeronautics programs, a shift “that did not serve all aspects of the nation well”.
The FY11 budget proposal helps remedy those problems, but they argue that it goes too far by canceling Constellation. “It makes no more sense to have a NASA with an under-emphasis on human spaceflight than it did to have a NASA with an over-emphasis,” they write. They appear to be looking for some middle ground, but fall short of calling for a restoration of Constellation.
“The burden of proof thus now lies with Congress and NASA to define and to develop a human spaceflight program that does not re-inflict damage on the breadth of NASA’s activities and that serves the nation well. It is possible to do this.” However, they don’t explain how they think it should be done.
The Senate Commerce Committee has announced the witnesses for Wednesday afternoon’s hearing on “The Future of U.S. Human Space Flight” and it’s a high-powered list:
The Honorable John P. Holdren
Director
Office of Science and Technology Policy
The Honorable Charles F. Bolden Jr.
Administrator
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
Mr. Neil A. Armstrong
Commander, Apollo 11
Astronaut (Ret.)
Captain Eugene A. Cernan
USN (Ret.)
Commander, Apollo 17, Astronaut (Ret.)
Mr. Norman R. Augustine
Chairman
Review of U.S. Human Space Flight Plans Committee
