By Jeff Foust on 2010 March 27 at 9:03 am ET Last week a group of senators led by Sen. George LeMieux (R-FL) introduced an amendment to the FAA reauthorization bill defending Constellation. That amendment reiterated an earlier provision in the FY2010 appropriations bill preventing NASA from terminating any part of Constellation and related measures. That amendment, though, was never taken up, and the FAA legislation was passed without it.
That, though, has not deterred LeMieux and his colleagues. On Thursday he introduced S. 3180, a bill that contains the same provisions as his earlier amendment, including requiring the GAO to perform an assessment of Constellation and providing “assurance” that the remaining payloads on the shuttle manifest will be launched. It also waives provisions of the Anti-Deficiency Act so that they can’t “be utilized as a basis for the termination or elimination” of any part of Constellation. The bill has six cosponsors, similar to that his earlier amendment but with one key difference: Sen. Bob Bennett (R-UT) is replaced by Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX). That could be important as the bill has been referred to the Senate Commerce Committee, where Sen. Hutchison is the ranking member.
By Jeff Foust on 2010 March 27 at 8:48 am ET In comments yesterday at a Space Transportation Association luncheon introducing Gary Payton (the subject of a separate, later post), Rep. Pete Olson (R-TX) had something of a confession to make: despite living in the Houston area, his favorite NFL team is not the Houston Texans but rather the Green Bay Packers. (“It’s a long, long story,” he said.) However, it gave him an opportunity to cite comments by that team’s legendary coach, Vince Lombardi. Asked about finishing second, Olson recalled, Lombardi said, “I don’t ever want to finish second again. There’s a second-place bowl game, but it’s a game for losers played by losers.”
Olson used that as inspiration for his goal of keeping the United States first in human spaceflight, a position he said it’s held for half a century but is put “in extreme risk” by the FY2011 budget proposal. “And if I have anything to say about it,” Olson continued, “the United States is not going to be a loser in space. We’re going to be number one until Jesus comes back.”
By Jeff Foust on 2010 March 26 at 7:25 am ET Earlier this month, in a speech at the Ex-Im Bank in Washington, President Obama announced that an export reform proposal was in the works and would be released by Defense Secretary Robert Gates “within the next couple of weeks”. It’s been a couple of weeks since that speech and the reform proposal hasn’t been released yet, although it is expected “imminently”, according to some. Also, it’s just one front of several in the effort to reduce obstacles for the domestic space industry to compete in the global market.
Another effort is HR 2410, the State Department authorization act. The legislation gives the president the authority to remove satellites and related components from the US Munitions List (USML), hence removing them from the jurisdiction of ITAR. (It would not, though, allow the export of such items to China.) Other provisions of the legislation would direct an ongoing review of the USML “to determine those technologies and goods that warrant different or additional controls”, which could benefit the space industry even if the White House didn’t exercise the provision to remove satellites and related components from the list wholesale.
The legislation passed the House last year, but for several months has been sitting in the Senate, raising fears they may never consider it. But speaking on an ITAR panel at the Satellite 2010 conference last week, David Fite, a staffer on the House Foreign Affairs Committee but speaking only for himself, said things were going “somewhat on schedule” compared to authorization bills in previous Congresses. That schedule would have the Senate passing its version of the authorization bill by the summer and a conference report reconciling the differences between the two in September or October.
The other front for reform is a Congressionally-mandated study underway by the Defense Department, known as the “1248 review” after the section of the FY2010 Defense Department authorization act that ordered it. The legislation requires DoD and State to “carry out an assessment of the national security risks of removing satellites and related components from the United States Munitions List”. That report, which will feature input from industry and other government agencies, will include recommendations of what space-related technologies should remain on the USML as well as other improvements to space export control policies and processes. “With all the export control reform efforts that are ongoing, we see what we’re doing as consistent with those activities,” said Jay Walding of the DoD’s Defense Technology Security Administration (DTSA) at the Satellite 2010 panel. That report is due to Congress in late April.
Do these multiple efforts improve the odds for some kind of long-awaited relief from current export control policies? “We are in an election year,” cautioned Fite. In his 11 years on Capitol Hill, he said, “I have never seen an environment that has been this partisan.” Bill Reinsch, president of the National Foreign Trade Council, concurred. “The danger is that this will become a political issue in an election year, which means it’s not going to be addressed on its merits, it will be addressed by slogans.” That will make it harder for reform to make its way through Congress and could also hurt the administration’s other reform efforts. Separately, he warned, the administration has to win over “the bureaucracy” that will implement any reforms, but have differing ideas of how to do it. “These are complicated issues,” Reinsch said. “People are going to have different ideas of how to do them.” In other words, while the prospects for reform are better than they have been since satellites and related components were put on the USML over a decade ago, actually enacting change is no sure thing.
By Jeff Foust on 2010 March 25 at 7:22 am ET Appearing before the space subcommittee of the House Science and Technology Committee yesterday, former Lockheed Martin executive Tom Young, a veteran of a number of space-related committees and reviews in the last decade, described his issues with the NASA budget proposal. During his testimony he made several references to a “plan A”. “A plan A is needed which is absent from the proposed fiscal year 2011 budget,” he said. “The availability of a plan A will facilitate informed decisions relative to funding and affordability of a human spaceflight program that will be in place for decades.” This “plan A” would be funded in part from the money in the budget proposal for commercial crew transportation, robotic precursor missions, Constellation closeout, and an unspecified portion of money planned for technology development.
But what exactly would “plan A” be? Young didn’t explicitly describe it, but his testimony suggests it would be a lot like the so-called “program of record” NASA is currently implementing, perhaps with some tweaks. “I believe the most logical path forward is to commit to a transportation system based upon the Ares 1 investment,” he said, with “consideration” given to evolving it into a heavy-lift system, although not explicitly mentioning Ares 5. He also endorsed Orion: “Significant investment has been made in Orion and it should be the basis of a capsule to support space station operations and be the basis for initiating exploration beyond Earth orbit.” Or, to put it bluntly: “Constellation should not be cancelled.” Later, in response to a question by Rep. Pete Olson (R-TX), ranking member of the subcommittee, Young said, “No alternative strikes me as being as credible as Ares 1/Orion as the basis for a space transportation system to low Earth orbit and to the space station.” Deviating from that program at this time “would be a mistake.”
Young showed a little more flexibility on where humans should go beyond low Earth orbit. On one hand, he stated that “I believe human exploration must have ‘boots on the ground,'” he said, expressing concerns that the Moon might be bypassed. Later, though, he acknowledged that “deferral of the lunar option may be required depending upon available budget” and that a human asteroid mission “may be less challenging and expensive” than a lunar landing.
Young also made it clear that there was no room in his plan A for commercial crew transportation. “I believe we are a long way from having a commercial industry capable of satisfying human space transportation needs,” he said. “The commercial crew option should not be approved.” He repeated that sentence for emphasis in his opening statement. Instead, he spoke of the need for a “national” system that combines the strengths of government and industry to develop human space transportation systems. He drew parallels to the problems with military space programs in the 1990s when the government took a more hands-off approach to program management, which led to major cost overruns and program failures.
“I do not think there is a sufficiently high probability that commercial crew will be successful,” Young said later in the hearing. “So I think we’re looking at decades with no exploration” under the proposed plan. Young then mentioned his seven-year-old grandson’s interest in space. “How do I tell him, that if this program is implemented, the next time NASA flies in space, he could well be 30 years old?”
By Jeff Foust on 2010 March 25 at 6:34 am ET Hoping to raise awareness and attention to their concerns, Space Coast officials are planning an April 11 rally to protest the NASA budget proposal. Organizers are working with everyone from churches to businesses and hope to get 5,000 people to attend the event, scheduled for four days before the presidential space conference at the Kennedy Space Center. (Florida Today, in addition to reporting on the planned rally, is also encouraging people to attend through its editorial page.) Among those scheduled to attend is Florida Lt. Gov. Jeff Kottkamp, who has challenged President Obama to a debate on space issues. Good luck with that.
While some Florida legislators are seeking to extend the life of the shuttle, others in New York, including Democratic senators Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, are also interested in the shuttle. Not extending it, mind you, but securing an orbiter for the Intrepid Sea-Air-Space Museum in New York City when the fleet is retired. Schumer tells the New York Daily News that he thinks the Intrepid’s bid is in “very, very good shape” after a meeting he had Wednesday with NASA administrator Charles Bolden.
However, not mentioned in the article is a provision tucked into legislation introduced earlier this month that could shortcircuit the bid by the Intrepid and many other cities seeking to land an orbiter, from Seattle to Tulsa. The “Human Space Flight Capability Assurance and Enhancement Act of 2010″ (S. 3068 and HR 4804) states that, once the shuttle fleet is decommissioned (several years later than planned), the orbiters would be awarded to institutions under a competitive process like the current one, but with “priority consideration given to eligible applicants meeting all conditions of that plan which would provide for the location, display, and maintenance of one Orbiter at or near the Johnson Space Center, in Houston, Texas, and one Orbiter at or near the Kennedy Space Center near Titusville, Florida.” With one orbiter already expected to go the National Air and Space Museum, that would shut out the Intrepid and anyone else.
By Jeff Foust on 2010 March 24 at 7:52 pm ET Late today the Senate Appropriations Committee announced that Thursday’s scheduled hearing of the Commerce, Justice, and Science subcommittee on the NASA budget proposal has been postponed. The reason for the postponement is the series of votes on the Senate floor dealing with the health care reconciliation legislation. According to Space News the hearing has been rescheduled for April 22, a week after President Obama’s space conference in Florida.
By Jeff Foust on 2010 March 24 at 7:37 am ET One interesting comment by NASA administrator Charles Bolden that got lost in the broader debate was his comments about developing a “common crew module” that could be launched on multiple vehicles, rather than have each potential commercial crew provider develop their own spacecraft. “One of the things I would like to do is to help them use some of the research and development money that we have to help build a common crew module that could be interchangeably used on a number of launch vehicles,” he said. Such an approach would result in cost savings and simplify training for crews, he said. “I would like to help the commercial entities design a single crew module because it’s good for us to train in… and that can be used interchangeably on any launch vehicle. We can’t do that today, or we haven’t done that today.” Left unsaid is whether such an approach would incorporate any elements of Orion.
Bolden also said at one point that one approach he was envisioning for commercial crew transportation was a “lease” approach, suggesting that NASA would have a greater role than simply purchasing tickets on commercially-owned and -operated vehicles. “The people in the mission control center will be partially those from the company that built the vehicle and partially from NASA engineers and flight controllers,” he said. “In my operational concept, the flight director is still a NASA person, the one NASA person that you can count on being in the control center.”
In questions about Ares 1, Bolden said that the flight costs were extremely high: $4-4.5 billion a year. Later, in questions from Rep. Robert Aderholt (R-AL), Bolden suggested that the per-flight costs of Ares 1, or a vehicle like it, were well over $1 billion. “When I talk about things that shocked me, because I wanted to use an Ares-type vehicle as a test vehicle, and when I asked the question of how much would it cost me to me fly not an Ares 1 but that kind of vehicle, then the number given me at the time was $1.6 billion per flight,” he said. Aderholt said his staff had been told that Ares 1 costs were $1.1 billion/year for three flights.
On a very separate topic, Rep. John Culberson (R-TX) sharply criticized a speech given by NASA deputy administrator Lori Garver two weeks ago at the Goddard Memorial Symposium. Garver, he claimed, said in the speech that “NASA’s priorities are to fight poverty, promote world peace and societal advancement, and protect the environment.” “I’d suggest to you,” Culberson continued, “that Ms. Garver has completely lost sight of the core mission of NASA, which is to preserve and protect America’s leadership in manned space, manned and robotic space exploration; to pioneer the future in space exploration, scientific discovery, and aeronautics research; to go where no one has gone before; and explore new worlds.” (Evidently the goal of seeking out new life forms and new civilizations is deferred to the Federation.) A careful reading of Garver’s speech referred to what she said were the president’s priorities (economic development, international leadership/geopolitics, education, and the environment) and this advice: “This [NASA] budget is only sustainable in future years if we truly do as the President asks and change the way we operate as an agency to focus on our Nation’s priorities.”
Finally, two takes on yesterday’s hearing. One from the Huntsville Times: “The Obama administration’s plan to cancel the Constellation space program received heavy criticism Tuesday after a congressional subcommittee hearing.” And one from the Orlando Sentinel: “Congressional opposition to a new White House plan for NASA appears to have softened slightly, as Democratic lawmakers on a key U.S. House panel said they would be willing to work with the administration during a Tuesday hearing with NASA chief Charles Bolden.”
By Jeff Foust on 2010 March 23 at 9:21 pm ET The Wall Street Journal published an article earlier today claiming that NASA is “scrambling to come up with a new budget proposal” because of congressional criticism of the existing one. The article, first published just before today’s budget hearing and updated afterwards, includes comments by Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA), ranking member of the Commerce, Justice, and Science subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee, who said that opposition to the current proposal “appears overwhelming” and there are enough members of the committee on both sides of the aisle ready to block the plan’s passage.
If there is such work, though (which presumably would have to be supported by the White House), NASA administrator Charles Bolden wasn’t letting on during the subcommittee’s hearing about the budget proposal this afternoon. Bolden reiterated his wholehearted support for the plan. “I think that the budget that we got is the best budget for the nation and the best budget for NASA, and it essentially represents what I recommended to the president,” Bolden said during questioning from Wolf.
Later, when asked by Wolf about the request he and other members made for a 30-day study of alternatives, Bolden said there was no examination of alternative concepts underway. “There is no alternative plan, there is no alternative budget,” he said. “I stick by the budget that I helped the president develop. So if the question is, ‘Am I developing a Plan B?’, there is no Plan B.”
However, it is clear that there is opposition to the plan in Congress; the question is how much. “The president’s proposal for space exploration has not been embraced by many members of Congress,” Wolf said. “There are some that have, but overall, it has not.” Later, Rep. John Culberson (R-TX) claimed, “We’ve only been able to find one member of the House who supports the president’s budget proposal.” Culberson didn’t name that member, although in previous hearings the one member who has wholeheartedly endorsed the budget proposal, particularly its emphasis on commercial crew transportation, has been Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA).
In Tuesday’s hearing, while Bolden got some critical questions, the reception was certainly no worse than what he got last month before the House Science and Technology Committee; some members even appeared to be favorably disposed in general to the budget proposal or at least not actively opposed to it, based on the questions they asked. Interestingly, more of the questions focused on development of heavy-lift launch capabilities under the new plan than the commercial crew aspect of the budget proposal. That’s not necessarily good news for commercial crew, though: as I noted in this week’s issue of The Space Review, Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL) was asking last week about using commercial crew funding for heavy-lift launch vehicle development in a hearing by his subcommittee on commercial space capabilities.
The one hint that there may be some reconsideration of elements of the NASA budget proposal came at the end of the hearing, when Bolden noted the president’s interest in space policy. “He is engaged in space policy. I spent a half-hour this morning not with him but with the deputy chief of staff because he is engaged,” Bolden said. (There are actually two deputy chiefs of staff at the White House, Jim Messina and Mona Sutphen; it’s not clear who he met.) “He has promised that we’re going to find a solution to this problem, and he has stated—or through his deputy chief of staff he has stated—that we’re going to find a way to come together because it’s important for the nation.” He continued: “I don’t think it’s a matter of anybody backing down, I think it’s a matter of us trying to find common ground on what is an incredible budget… I’m confident that we’re going to find a solution that will be good because no one will be happy.”
By Jeff Foust on 2010 March 23 at 9:06 am ET One can expect the appropriations hearings this week to touch upon concerns from some members that NASA is already taking steps to shut down Constellation, contrary to language in the FY2010 appropriations bill for the agency. The Orlando Sentinel examines the issue and finds that while NASA is terminating some planned procurements, it is continuing others, such as a $34.5-million contract for work on the Ares 1 upper stage. A NASA spokesman tells that paper that the agency is “fully complying” with the law, but is refraining from starting new work or expanding the scope of existing work related to Constellation.
While many of his fellow former astronauts have spoken out against the administration’s new direction for NASA, Apollo 14’s Edgar Mitchell, is largely supportive of the new plan in an essay in EE Times. “A new entrepreneurial spirit, coupled with NASA’s years of practical experience sending humans into space, can free humankind from its rut in low-Earth orbit and get it back to exploring the solar system,” he writes.
While Mitchell is comfortable with NASA’s planned greater reliance on the commercial sector, Buffalo News columnist Douglas Turner isn’t. “Now the Obama administration wants to put private contractors in the driver’s seat and transform NASA into some kind of a passive, benign observer of what the contractors do, or connected wheeler-dealers,” he writes in an essay Monday. Companies that could benefit from the change in policy, specifically SpaceX and Orbital Sciences, “both have fulfilled the main requirement for doing business here. They are both big campaign contributors.”
On the other hand, Planetary Society executive director Lou Friedman endorses NASA’s new direction in an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times on Monday. “Declaring a destination is not enough. We have to prepare our way into the solar system, and the flexible path defined in 2009 by the Augustine Committee… will do just that,” he writes. As for the agency’s new direction: “Let’s give it a chance.”
By Jeff Foust on 2010 March 23 at 6:53 am ET NASA will be the subject of three hearings this week on Capitol Hill, including two by important appropriations subcommittees:
All three will be covered by NASA TV and at least the first two will be webcast by the respective committees.
|
|
