By Jeff Foust on 2010 April 14 at 12:52 pm ET One of the highlights of yesterday’s National Space Symposium sessions was a speech by NASA administrator Charles Bolden at the beginning of the morning session. (His speech had been scheduled for Thursday afternoon, but moved up after the White House announced plans for a space conference in Florida that day.) It was unlikely that he would make any major announcements given that President Obama will be making his own space policy speech Thursday (only to have the White House release details of the slightly-revised plan at the end of the day yesterday), but many attendees expected—or at least hoped—to hear a better story about the new plan. They came away from the speech underwhelmed.
“This is a big week for the entire nation,” Bolden said in some comments not in his prepared remarks, “and it’s a week where probably more people than ever before will be thinking about space. It’s an important week for all of us in the space industry and it’s a particularly important week for NASA.” Most of his speech touched upon the basic themes of the new plan, including technology development and enhanced utilization of the ISS, that have been presented in similar forms in other fora.
If there was a recurring theme to the speech, it was that the new plan had the support of the president, who does care about human spaceflight despite comments to the contrary from some. “President Barack Obama is strongly committed to our future in space,” he said. “We are so committed that we have made the hard choice to undertake a challenging new direction. We are so passionate about space that we made the hard choice to step back from our current program and find a more affordable and sustainable path forward.” And a little later in the speech: “The President, with my full agreement, did something very bold. He made a change — a big change. He made the change that we believe is needed to set NASA on a sustainable course into the Solar System.”
But for those wanting to learn more about the details in the plan, or hear it told in a different and perhaps more compelling way, left the speech disappointed, based on anecdotal evidence: conversations with a wide range of people at the conference afterwards. Also, while the schedule appeared to have an hour available to Bolden to speak (a “Speaker TBA” immediately after his original 30-minute block was not in the final program), Bolden spoke for about 25 minutes, took no questions, and immediately left.
By Jeff Foust on 2010 April 14 at 8:50 am ET The White House released late yesterday a fact sheet about the new space exploration plan, an amalgam of details from the budget proposal released in February as well as the changes announced yesterday. “Our goal is to take advantage of the best work undertaken in the Constellation program,” it states in the section about Orion, which will be restructured to a “simpler and more efficient design” to serve as an ISS lifeboat. “We will be able to launch this vehicle within the next few years, creating an American crew escape capability that will increase the safety of our crews on the Space Station, reduce our dependence on foreign providers, and simplify requirements for other commercial crew providers,” it adds.
On heavy lift, the fact sheet states that the President “will commit to making a specific decision in 2015 on the development of a new heavy-lift rocket architecture” based on the technology funding in the original budget proposal. “The new rocket also will benefit from the budget’s proposed R&D on other breakthrough technologies in our new strategy for human exploration (such as in- space refueling), which should make possible a more cost-effective and optimized heavy lift capability as part of future exploration architectures.”
Speaking with Space News immediately after the announcement came out late yesterday, NASA deputy administrator Lori Garver said the Orion decision “allows you to keep the ability to go beyond low Earth orbit with humans”, but that for now work on Orion would be focused on the lifeboat mission only. Lockheed Martin, the prime contractor for Orion, would have the option to use Orion or a derivative design in any future commercial crew procurements.
The decision to retain Constellation was hailed by Sen. Mark Udall (D-CO), who just this week wrote to the president about his concerns over canceling Orion and the rest of Constellation. Udall, according to the AP report, says that decision shows that NASA and the White House “understand Colorado officials’ concerns.”
The announcement largely overshadowed another development late yesterday: a letter by legendary astronauts Neil Armstrong, Jim Lovell, and Gene Cernan critical of the new plan. While some of the elements of the new plan have merit, they wrote, “the accompanying decision to cancel the Constellation program… is devastating.” Lacking the ability to launch humans into orbit, they write, “destines our nation to become one of second or even third rate stature.” And in the final paragraph: “Without the skill and experience that actual spacecraft operation provides, the USA is far too likely to be on a long downhill slide to mediocrity.”
By Jeff Foust on 2010 April 13 at 7:38 pm ET There’s some late breaking news about what President Obama will announce Thursday, coming after the end of today’s sessions at the National Space Symposium in Colorado Springs. AP reports (and NASA officials here confirmed) that Orion will be revived as a crew return vehicle for the ISS. It will be launched unmanned and remain docked at the ISS as an emergency return vehicle, according to the reports. In addition, NASA will accelerate development of a heavy-lift launcher, selecting a design by 2015 and starting work thereafter.
Reuters is reporting something similar, and adding that NASA’s budget will increase by $6 billion over 5 years. It’s not clear, though, if this an additional $6 billion or simply repeating the $6 billion additional in the original FY11 budget proposal.
By Jeff Foust on 2010 April 13 at 9:11 am ET I’m in Colorado Springs this week for the National Space Symposium. Upon arriving at the Broadmoor yesterday afternoon this was the first thing that greeted me:
No, it’s not someone protesting NASA’s planned reliance on commercial ventures to transport crews to LEO. It’s one of the handful of protestors that turn up outside the conference site every year, usually protesting military space activities as well as more general military concerns (“Are Nuclear Weapons Legal?” asked one banner.)
The highlight of today is arguably speech this morning by NASA administrator Charles Bolden; there will also be a panel session in the afternoon on the NASA budget featuring deputy administrator Lori Garver. But perhaps the most intriguing thing on the schedule is this event notice sent out to media: “NASA Optimus Prime Announcement”. If the Autobots are working with NASA, the new exploration plan would seem like a shoe-in (not to mention that Transformers probably count as gamechanging technology.) No word if opponents of the new plan have reached out to Megatron.
By Jeff Foust on 2010 April 13 at 8:07 am ET A few items of interest as anticipation for this week’s presidential space conference at KSC builds:
More letter writing: a letter signed by a number of former astronauts, as well as former NASA administrator Mike Griffin and others, including Gene Kranz and Chris Kraft, criticizes the decision to cancel Constellation and asks the president to “demonstrate the vision and determination necessary to keep our nation at the forefront of human space exploration”. The letter doesn’t dwell on Constellation (indeed, it’s mentioned only once in the letter, in the very first sentence), but instead focuses on the concerns about abandoning human space exploration. “NASA must continue at the frontiers of human space exploration in order to develop the technology and set the standards of excellence that will enable commercial space ventures to eventually succeed. Canceling NASA’s human space operations, after 50 years of unparalleled achievement, makes that objective impossible.”
Also on Monday, Aerospace Industries Association president Marion Blakey called for specific milestones and deadlines in NASA’s new plan in a speech in Florida. “Kennedy didn’t say we’d go to the moon today; he said, ‘this decade’,” she said. “We need clear goals, milestones and dates, the building blocks and metrics of a concrete commitment to human spaceflight beyond low earth orbit.” She also called for a “national space strategy” that would “set out our goals for at least a generation so long-term investments can be made.”
Sunday’s “Save Space” rally in Cocoa, Florida, went off as planned, with as many as 4,000 people attending to hear speeches covering familiar talking points about saving space (or at least saving space jobs in the region). One comment from Florida Lt. Gov. Jeff Kottkamp, via the Save Space Twitter account: “we need to go back to the moon by 2015 and to Mars by 2020.” Good luck with that.
As for Thursday’s event, invitations have gone out (some as late as Sunday), so Central Florida News 13 asks, “who’s going?”. Some local officials have gotten invites, but surprisingly, neither Rep. Suzanne Kosmas (D-FL) nor Rep. Bill Posey (R-FL) has gotten one.
By Jeff Foust on 2010 April 12 at 6:39 pm ET Florida isn’t the only state worried about job losses with the pending demise of Constellation. On Monday Colorado’s two senators, Mark Udall (D) and Michael Bennet (D) announced that they had met with NASA administrator Charles Bolden about Constellation, presenting him with a letter to President Obama expressing their concerns. The letter covers a number of standard issues about the decision to end Constellation: job losses (over 1,000 in Colorado, where Lockheed Martin is doing work on Orion), concerns that it is premature to rely on the commercial sector, and impacts on the industrial base that could affect the Defense Department.
“We recognize that there are significant obstacles you must overcome with the Constellation program as it is currently configured, not the least of which is chronic under-funding,” they write in the letter to President Obama. “However, we believe there is a way forward that balances stimulation of commercial service providers with the proven capabilities of NASA and its industrial partners, a way that responsibly uses limited taxpayer dollars and allows NASA to continue to serve as an inspiration to future generations of scientists, engineers, and explorers.” They don’t specify what they have in mind, though.
The meeting with Bolden was no doubt timed to this Thursday’s presidential space conference at KSC, but it also takes place on the eve of the National Space Symposium in Colorado Springs. The future of Constellation is likely to be a hot topic among attendees (at least those who didn’t get invitations in recent days to go to KSC.) Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter (D) will reportedly talk about “the importance of the Orion program” in a speech Tuesday at the symposium, according to Denver Business Journal. There’s also concern in Colorado, according to the same report, that that Colorado was being “outhustled” by Florida officials, who are apparently lobbying to move some work from Colorado to Florida.
While the language by Sens. Udall and Bennet was pretty mild, the same can’t be said for Rep. John Culberson (R-TX), who spoke out about the cancellation of Constellation in a interview with National Journal’s Hotline On Call. “He’s proposing to cancel America’s manned space program, which is typical of this administration’s pattern of apologizing for America’s success, kowtowing to our enemies, bowing to foreign dictators and their obsession with trying to make terrorists like us,” Culberson says. However, Culberson is bipartisan in his criticism: “This is one of many unfortunate legacies left to us by the Bush administration. Unfortunately, President Bush’s quote, vision for space exploration was nothing more than a press release and a publicity stunt for the 2004 election. Because it was never followed up with sufficient funding to fulfill what he laid out.” Culberson, it should be noted, has served for some time on the subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee whose responsibility includes NASA.
By Jeff Foust on 2010 April 10 at 10:21 am ET With few officials details released yet about next Thursday’s space conference at KSC, the space community is seizing upon any bit of information about the event. That was the case yesterday when Florida Today reported that, according to the White House, President Obama will spend only two hours at KSC on the 15th, arriving at 1:45 pm EDT, giving a speech at 3 pm, and leaving at 3:45 pm. While it was clear for some time that he wouldn’t be spending the full day there (since he’s also attending fundraisers in Miami that day) many were clearly disappointed that he would not stay longer. Left unanswered, though, is the question of just how long Obama needs to be there: is two hours sufficient for giving his speech, having private meetings with various officials, and whatever else he needs to drum up support for this plan? It doesn’t leave that much time for sightseeing, to be certain.
What Obama will say in his speech is also still a mystery: will it be a defense of the current plan, or will he announce small- or large-scale tweaks to it? (Major changes seem less likely, as they would likely undo the work assignments NASA announced Thursday.) Speaking at the Space Access ’10 conference in Phoenix Thursday night, NASA’s Alan Ladwig offered a hint of one minor thing Obama might mention in his speech: a reference to the impending 20th anniversary of the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope. “Hopefully next week, when the president speaks down in Florida, if we’re able to work this out, he’s going to reveal the most recent photos from Hubble as part of the 20th anniversary,” Ladwig said.
Elsewhere, in an interview with Popular Mechanics, NASA deputy administrator Lori Garver said that despite a slow start, people are beginning to better appreciate the benefits of the agency’s new direction. “While the budget rollout might have been better planned and managed, we recognized the cancellation of Constellation was not going to be initially popular with those who had committed to the program,” she said. “There is a growing segment of the space community that understands what this budget proposal makes possible and strongly supports this program shift.” The challenge for the president next Thursday is to further broaden support in a region—Florida’s Space Coast—where concerns about job losses and their economic impact have generated vocal opposition among many to this new plan.
By Jeff Foust on 2010 April 9 at 12:30 pm ET As you might expect, most members of Congress who have expressed varying degrees of opposition to NASA’s new exploration plans were not allayed by NASA’s announcement yesterday assigning the new efforts among the various field centers. An example is Rep. Pete Olson, who posted a statement to his web site reacting to the announcement, noting that NASA administrator Charles Bolden called him to discuss what work the Johnson Space Center, in his district, would get. “I appreciate that assurance but the fact remains that this budget proposal still contains no option for human space flight so what missions will JSC control?” (The International Space Station immediately comes to mind.) He continued: “Opposition to killing Constellation, the program of record, is growing by the day and I will not stop fighting to maintain America’s ability to travel to low earth orbit and beyond without hitching an expensive ride with Russia.”
The new assignments also don’t sit well with members of Alabama’s Congressional delegation, the Huntsville Times reports. “Now that the administration has finally released its planned program assignments, it is clear that this is the end of America’s leadership in space,” Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) said, dismissing yesterday’s announcement as “a plan to rearrange NASA bureaucracy”. Added Richard Aderholt (R-AL): “Although Marshall and their innovative staff will be trusted with new program management opportunities, it doesn’t make up for the proposed abandonment of Ares and NASA’s manned space flight program by the president’s administration.”
Others, though, were cautiously supportive of the assignments. “The White House announcement today of some extra work for NASA in Florida is a step in the right direction – but there are miles to go,” tweeted Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL). (It should be noted that yesterday’s announcement was a NASA one, not a White House one, and the work assignments were made entirely within the agency, according to Bolden.) Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) was quite pleased with how the Glenn Research Center fared in the announcement. “While Constellation will be scaled back, Cleveland gets a whole lot more money, jobs and importance in the whole NASA program,” he said, according to the Cleveland Plain Dealer. Also supportive was Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), although he wanted to learn more. “Now, we’ve got to get down to the details.”
By Jeff Foust on 2010 April 8 at 4:58 pm ET Today’s short-notice NASA press conference primarily covered organizational issues within the agency: which centers would be responsible for what aspects of the new plan. For example, KSC will host the Commercial Crew Development Program Office, with JSC serving as deputy; the roles are reversed for the Flagship Technology Demonstrations, with JSC in the lead. With a few minor exceptions (like Marshall taking the Centennial Challenges program office, which had been run out of Headquarters) there wasn’t much surprising there, and more importantly, no sign of any significant deviations from the original plan as rolled out two months ago. He also noted that this assignment of projects to various centers was done within NASA, without input from the administration or Congress.
During the Q&A, NASA administrator Charles Bolden was asked about the presidential space conference scheduled for a week from today in Florida (presumably at KSC). “It is a work in progress,” he said. There are several goals for the event, Bolden added, starting with giving President Obama the opportunity “to continue to conversation he has been having with members of Congress”; this will include some “private moments” with members of Congress who will be at the event. Obama will then give a “major space policy speech” that, Bolden said, is designed to try and convince people “that he is dedicated to exploration and to human spaceflight.” That will be followed by several breakout panels (he later said four) on programs in the budget proposal.
But who will be there? Bolden confirmed the event is by invitation only, but exactly who has been invited (or even if there have been formal invitations sent out yet) isn’t clear. “I’m not the writer of the guest list,” Bolden said, but expected that it would include members of Congress and the media. In addition, he said, “there will be people who are involved in future concepts, whether they are commercial spaceflight developers, scientists, engineers, representatives of academia”: what he called “a broad cross-section of people” to offer diverse viewpoints. “We’ll try to cover a lot of ground in a short period of time in the panels.”
By Jeff Foust on 2010 April 8 at 8:44 am ET NASA announced early this morning that it will be holding a teleconference this afternoon to discuss the “the next steps in implementing the agency’s new exploration initiatives outlined in the new fiscal year 2011 budget.” The only other details about this event, called on rather short notice, is that it will feature much of the agency’s top leadership: administrator Charles Bolden, deputy administrator Lori Garver, the heads of the aeronautics, exploration, science, and space operations mission directorates, and new chief technologist Bobby Braun. The telecon will be at 2 pm EDT and will be streamed on the NASA web site. (I’m currently en route to Phoenix for the Space Access ’10 conference, but hopefully will be on the ground in time to tune in.)
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