Garver: sorry, shuttle supporters, it’s too late

As efforts are ramping up on Capitol Hill to try and extend the life of the shuttle beyond this year to deal with the gap in US human space access, there’s a separate but related issue: is it even feasible, from a technical (as opposed to fiscal or legislative) perspective, to extend the shuttle by any meaningful degree? NASA deputy administrator Lori Garver, speaking this morning at a Women in Aerospace breakfast event in downtown Washington, said the answer is no.

“The first question I asked when I came back to NASA was, ‘Could we extend the shuttle?'” Garver said in response to a question on the subject. “I was told by the entire shuttle NASA folks that, in fact, that time had come and gone. It was not an issue of money at that point, it was an issue of second-tier suppliers, there would be at least a two-year gap between our last flight and the next one, et cetera.” That situation, she said, was a result a previous policies: “We inherited what we inherited.”

Garver didn’t address reports that a team at NASA is developing a “Plan B” alternative to the agency’s current plan, but gave every indication that the agency was committed to its current budget proposal. “Taking on the status quo is not easy,” she said. “I don’t feel that there’s tremendous surprise” within NASA to the budget proposal’s reaction in Congress. “However, I do feel that we that, as we do a better job communicating with them and educating them about what we actually plan to do, that there will be more receptivity. I definitely feel that this is the kind of program that there will be broad support for over the long run.”

Most of her prepared remarks covered familiar issues, including an overview of the budget and the various programs supported in the FY11 proposal. Briefly addressing complaints that the new policy doesn’t have any specific destinations and timelines for human exploration, she said, “Our work will be driven towards the capabilities we need for the destinations that we know we’ve wanted to go for decades: the Moon, the near Earth asteroids, Mars, and the moons of Mars are all still the destinations for human exploration and expansion into space,” he said. “That has not changed over the time since we could first look up and see the Moon. And with the technologies that we will develop with this budget, with the additional resources, we believe we can make more rapid strides.”

She also had a word for those seeking to preserve Constellation. She said she did not begrudge their efforts to try and save the program, but warned them of the budgetary consequences of preserving Constellation, noting that it would take an additional $5 billion a year to get the program back on track. “If Constellation is put back into that budget without that $5 billion a year increase, where will we cut the budget?” she said. “We need to talk honestly about these programs without at all being derogatory about the very, very capable workforce who have spent their time, energies, and lives working on this.”

“If we are not successful with this budget,” she warned, “I think there is a very real risk that the growth that is proposed in this budget… will not be sustained if we aren’t able to come together at some point over the next few months and work towards common ground.”

Increased funding in India; a new budget coming in Canada

India’s latest budget, released last week, features a substantial funding increase for the nation’s space agency, ISRO: 50 billion rupees (US$1.09 billion) for the 2010-11 fiscal year, compared to 31.72 billion rupees ($690 million) in the last budget. That budget includes 1.5 billion rupees (US$32.7 million) to ramp up work on its human spaceflight program.

The Canadian government is expected to release its next budget today, but space was mentioned in yesterday’s “Speech from the Throne” that opened the latest session of Parliament. “Canada has been a spacefaring nation for nearly 50 years,” said Governor General Michaëlle Jean. “Our Government will extend support for advanced research, development and prototyping of new space-based technologies, especially in support of Arctic sovereignty.”

Others, though, are skeptical that there will be significant new initiatives in the new Canadian budget. Marc Boucher at SpaceRef Canada notes the lack of a “Long-Term Space Plan” as was promised 18 months ago, and the likelihood of tight federal budgets for the near future. “While the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) is not expected to see a significant change in its budget this coming year, it is possible that cuts are forthcoming in future budgets which were already scheduled to decline as the government reigns in spending,” he writes.

Is there a Plan B in the works at NASA?

That’s the claim of a Wall Street Journal today, which states that administrator Charles Bolden is seeking alternatives to the current plan rolled out just over a month ago because of the strong and largely negative reaction it’s received on Capitol Hill. What might this “Plan B” contain? A memo cited the article mentions development of a crewed spacecraft and a heavy-lift launch vehicle, as well as a launch vehicle test program: all items that have come up in Congressional hearings, particularly Sen. Bill Nelson’s Senate committee hearing last week, where he spoke about the need for continued development of a “Rocket X”.

Left unclear is how much support such an alternative plan might have within the White House: any alternative plan would have to fit within the budget levels of the budget proposal, but would the administration support a redirection of funds away from, say, technology development or commercial crew programs towards continued development of at least some elements of Constellation?

One other interesting Texas election result

While incumbents fared well in Tuesday’s primary elections in Texas, as noted here yesterday, there was one interesting result in the Democratic primary in the 22nd district, currently represented by Republican Rep. Pete Olson: Kesha Rogers won a three-person race with 52.3% of the vote. Rogers is an acolyte of Lyndon LaRouche and, among other things, has argued that President Obama should be impeached because of his NASA policy (among other alleged sins). “If you want to save NASA, call for the impeachment of Obama,” she said while campaigning last month. Should make for some interesting debates in the general election, if nothing else…

Hutchison’s bid to preserve US access to the ISS

On Wednesday, a day after losing her Texas gubernatorial bid, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison announced she was introducing legislation to close the gap in US human spaceflight. “We must close the gap in US human space flight or face the reality that we will be totally dependent on Russia for access to space until the next generation of space vehicle is developed,” she said in a statement announcing the bill.

The bill is being described as a shuttle extension bill, and it does include provisions to keep the shuttle flying beyond this year. However, the bill’s provisions are similar to what Jeff Bingham suggested it would contain back in January, focusing not just on the shuttle but other needs to ensure optimum US access to and utilization of the ISS. A summary of some of the key provisions of “Human Space Flight Capability Assurance and Enhancement Act of 2010″:

Shuttle:

  • The bill would require NASA to create a five-person committee to assess the ability to safely fly the shuttle for up to five more years, at a flight rate of up to two missions a year; their report would be due 120 days after the bill’s enactment.
  • Shuttle missions would have to continue until the remain flights on the current manifest are flown, as well as any other ISS equipment that had been manifested to fly as of November 2005, and a determination from the president that termination of shuttle flights “will not cause a degradation of the equipment, logistics, cargo up-mass and down-mass delivery capability necessary” for full operation of the ISS.

Station:

  • ISS operations would be extended to at least 2020. NASA would be required to carry out a review of all the elements of the station to identify needs for spare parts or replacements within 90 days of the bill’s enactment.
  • NASA would create an “office of responsibility” for the ISS National Laboratory within the Space Operations Mission Directorate, headed by someone at the deputy associate administrator level. It would also be required to enter into an agreement with a nonprofit organization who would be responsible for “developing and implementing research and development projects” for the station’s US segment. This organization would be guaranteed access to 50 percent of the research facilities on the US segment, gradually growing to 100 percent by 2020.

Transportation:

  • The bill would require NASA to develop a plan for creating a “National Space Transportation System” with 90 days of the bill’s enactment. This would include “an architecture of government developed and operated space transportation systems”, which could include elements of Constellation “to the extent that such elements are determined to be cost effective and operationally effective”.
  • NASA would also be required to perform a review of alternative heavy-lift options, specifically including shuttle-derived concepts. It also would incorporate “alternative vehicles… developed in an evolutionary fashion with the objective of supporting initial crew and cargo transportation to the International Space Station by the end of 2013 and missions beyond low-Earth orbit by the end of 2018.” NASA would select a heavy-lift vehicle concept and crew vehicle design within six months.
  • On the commercial side, NASA would be directed to develop human-rating standards and perform a market study, as well as examine procurement mechanisms “to determine the most cost-effective means of procuring commercial crew capabilities and related services”. Once commercial systems are available, the legislation notes in a “sense of Congress” provision that “the United States should make use of domestic commercially-provided crew transfer and crew rescue services to the maximum extent practicable.”

The key question, of course, is what odds this bill has of making it through Congress. Hutchison’s statement notes that companion legislation will be introduced in the House next week by Reps. Suzanne Kosmas (D-FL) and Bill Posey (R-FL). However, neither representative has much clout there, being freshmen; Posey’s separate legislation introduced nearly a year ago to extend the shuttle’s life has gone nowhere. Hutchison, though, has much greater influence as the ranking member of the full Senate Commerce Committee—assuming she plans to stay in the Senate and see the legislation through.

What next for Hutchison?

Yesterday’s Texas primaries contained few surprises, despite an usually large number of challengers for incumbents. Ralph Hall, the ranking member of the House Science and Technology Committee, defeated five challengers in the Republican primary, getting 57% of the vote. And in perhaps the most widely-watched race, incumbent Gov. Rick Perry defeated Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison in the Republican primary for governor, getting just over 50% in the three-person race and thus avoiding a runoff with Hutchison.

This raises the question of how much longer Hutchison, one of the more active space advocates in the Senate, will remain in office. During the primary campaign she had originally planned to resign from the Senate to focus full-time on her gubernatorial campaign, then backtracked and decided to remain in office through the primary campaign in order to stay focused on issues like health care reform. She had suggested that she would resign from the Senate later this year regardless of the outcome of Tuesday’s race, even though her term in the Senate runs through 2012. Will she remain in office long enough to, for example, work on NASA-specific legislation like the one discussed at a Washington event in January that would extend the shuttle and support development of crewed commercial vehicles to ensure access to the ISS?

What the states are up to

While all the attention of late has been on policy machinations taking place in Washington, there’s activity at the state level as well. On Wednesday Florida’s space industry will be conducting it’s annual Florida Space Day in Tallahassee. While the specifics of their meetings with state legislators aren’t stated (the site still states “More info to come soon” just a day before the event) they’ll likely seek support for space industry incentives proposed by Gov. Crist in January as well as a separate “Space Transition and Revitalization Act” he announced in February. Those are part of efforts designed to partially mitigate the job losses associated with the impending retirement of the shuttle and cancellation of Constellation, which was the purpose of a rally Saturday in Titusville that drew up to 2,000 people.

While the NASA FY11 budget may not have a lot of supporters on the Space Coast of Florida, it may have some in the House of Delegates in Virginia. A resolution introduced by Del. Tarry Kilgore, HR 21, commends NASA for “fostering greater development of commercial space launch services” in the proposed budget. Virginia hopes to benefit from this greater emphasis on commercial services with the Mid-Altantic Regional Spaceport, which will host launches of Orbital Science’s Taurus 2 rocket and Cygnus spacecraft on cargo missions to the ISS. On his Spaceports blog, Jack Kennedy also notes that the Virginia legislature is working to remove a sunset provision from a spaceflight indemnification law. That legislation, passed in 2007, protects commercial human spaceflight operators in the state from liability in the event of accidents; it currently expires on July 1, 2013.

Virginia was the first state to pass such indemnification legislation, and was followed by Florida. Now New Mexico has a similar law, after Gov. Bill Richardson signed the Space Flight Informed Consent Act into law Saturday in Las Cruces. The bill, SB 9, passed both houses of the state legislature without a single no vote.

Briefly noted: Rutan’s clarification; other criticism and praise

Some people were surprised earlier this week when the Wall Street Journal reported that Burt Rutan submitted a letter to Congress critical of the administration’s move to commercialize human spaceflight. “That would be a very big mistake for America to make,” according to a brief excerpt of the letter quoted by the Journal.

However, Rutan has since issued a statement, published by Flightglobal, claiming that the newspaper “chose to cherry-pick and miss-quote” his comments. While the text of his letter to Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA), ranking member of the appropriations subcommittee with oversight of NASA, hasn’t been released, his statement made clear he is not opposed to NASA supporting commercial human spaceflight. “In short, it is a good idea indeed for the commercial community to compete to re-supply the ISS and to bring about space access for the public to enjoy. I applaud the efforts of SpaceX, Virgin and Orbital in that regard and feel these activities should have been done at least two decades ago,” he writes. He is concerned about “a surrender of our preeminence in human spaceflight”, but is not a supporter of Constellation because of its lack of “technical breakthroughs”. “I do not think that NASA should ‘give up’ on manned spaceflight, just that they should be doing it while meeting” two criteria: achieving technical breakthroughs through basic research, and providing inspiration for students to pursue careers in science and engineering.

A day after the article about Rutan’s criticism, the Journal published a short op-ed from Buzz Aldrin in favor of the agency’s new direction, in part because of its apparent long-term focus on Mars:

The new direction that Mr. Obama has set in this budget is the kind of bold initiative we have needed for many years. Mankind must explore and America must lead—in all aspects of space exploration, not least manned space exploration. But we must be willing to embrace real vision and reach for Mars with the patience that leadership has always required.

Another supporter is John Carmack, the founder of Armadillo Aerospace. “[H]onestly, I thought the program was going to drag on for another half decade and piss away several more tens of billions of dollars before being re-scoped due to failure to deliver,” he wrote in an essay on VentureBeat. “I don’t really blame NASA — hey, building rockets is fun! It just isn’t the best organization to do it.” Turning to the commercial sector for transportation to LEO of cargo and crews “may be the most beneficial thing NASA has ever done”.

Kendrick Meek, a Democratic candidate for the Senate in Florida, would disagree. “Establishing commercial spaceflights is critical to maintaining our nation’s leadership in space, but we cannot rely on private expeditions to take the place of NASA-administered spaceflights just yet,” Meek wrote in an op-ed in TCPalm.com. “It will take decades to build a safe and functioning commercial program.” He adds that the thousands of jobs expected to be lost in Florida with the retirement of the shuttle is “simply unacceptable”.

However, KSC director Robert Cabana is providing some tough love to local politicians. “Commercial space and low-Earth orbit is our future. It’s time to transition,” he told the Brevard County Commission earlier this week, as reported by Florida Today. Local officials, he said, can choose to embrace the change and find out how to make the best of it for the region, or argue it’s not what they want “and we’re going to get left behind.”

ProSpace’s 2010 agenda

ProSpace, which will be holding its March Storm lobbying effort on Capitol Hill next week, has released its agenda of issues it plans to bring up in those meetings. The key items cover topics in export reform, exploration, and commercialization:

ITAR reform

  • Support the addition to the Senate version of the Foreign Relations Authorization Act the authority to remove widely available satellite systems and components from the ITAR list.
  • Make certain that the bill presented to both the House and Senate for final passage retains this provision that is so vital to this nation’s international competitiveness.

Exploration

  • Require NASA to focus its human space flight development programs on technologies and processes designed for travel in space beyond low earth orbit.
  • Support robust funding for space exploration technology demonstration projects.

Commercial Services

  • Support the transition to commercial crew and cargo services for the International Space Station.

ProSpace will be performing training on Sunday the 28th and making Congressional visits on Monday and Tuesday.

Holdren versus the appropriators

Presidential science advisor John Holdren faced some questions about NASA’s FY11 budget proposal at a hearing of the House Science and Technology Committee on Wednesday morning, but those questions were fairly limited because the committee will be holding a hearing with NASA administrator Charles Bolden on Thursday, and most members decided to hold off until then. Those who did ask Holdren about NASA tended to be critical of the budget proposal, with the exception of Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), who wanted to “commend” the administration for its commercial approach to human spaceflight. “Your administration has tried to take an honest approach to looking at what NASA is all about,” he said, adding he was critical of the billions that had been spent on Constellation with little progress to show for it.

Wednesday afternoon, while Bolden was meeting with senators, Holdren appeared before a the Commerce, Justice, and Science subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee on the FY1 R&D budget. While the chairman of the subcommittee, Rep. Alan Mollohan (D-WV), only mentioned NASA briefly in his opening statement, the subcommittee’s ranking member, Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA), was more pointed in his criticism of the NASA budget proposal. “Based on the little information that has been provided to the Congress, it appears that this plan was hastily developed without proper vetting from NASA’s scientific, engineering and human spaceflight experts,” he claimed in his opening statement, and went on to provide some comments from Apollo-era astronauts and former NASA administrator Mike Griffin, all opposed to the plan. He also cited a similarly critical letter from Burt Rutan, who is “fearful that the commercial guys will fail” in providing cargo and crew services to NASA.

“By killing the exploration program in favor of a vaguely defined ‘research and development’ program,” Wolf continued in his statement, “you are guaranteeing that the Chinese, Russians, and others will be closing the exploration gap.”

Another subcommittee member critical of the plan was Rep. Robert Aderholt (R-AL), who released a statement as well as a transcript of his exchange with Holdren at the hearing. “I appreciate Dr. Holdren’s attendance at today’s hearing; however his testimony and answers simply did not calm my fears that our nation’s space program will not remain a leading science program,” Aderholt said in his statement. “I urge President Obama and the administration to scrap this plan to end Constellation and give NASA the appropriate funding to remain a world leader.”

In the transcript of his exchange with Holdren, Aderholt took an interesting tack: claiming that Constellation would be less expensive to operate than a commercial alternative:

Fixed costs for launching Ares I would be about $1.2 billion a year; any launch system is going to have that high a cost or higher. The marginal cost, or cost per rocket, would be about $120 million for Ares I, plus about $50 million for the Orion capsule. The latest estimate for a completed Falcon 9 is about $130 million. Meanwhile, we should note that the original March 2006 contracts NASA signed with the two companies which won COTS contracts called for 3 demonstration flights by the fall of 2008, showing the ability to deliver cargo to the International Space Station. Almost four years later, we are still waiting on that first flight.

Aderholt also asked Holdren about what market studies had been done “which proves that multiple rocket companies can survive without continued taxpayer support”. Holdren didn’t give a specific answer other than the companies in the launch industry themselves had done such studies. “I’m sure there have been market studies, I mean, these folks aren’t crazy.”