By Jeff Foust on 2010 February 25 at 6:58 am ET To read some of the media accounts of yesterday’s hearing by the Senate Commerce Committee’s space subcommittee on NASA’s FY2011 budget proposal, NASA administrator Charles Bolden had a bad day. He faced “skeptical” senators who “vowed to fight” the new budget as they went on to “grill” Bolden and even “flayed” him. A closer examination, though, suggests that the hearing wasn’t nearly as dire as some of those accounts suggest.
“There’s a lot that’s good in this budget from this senator’s perspective,” subcommittee chairman Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL) said in his opening statement, citing increased funding for aeronautics and science as well as the extension of the ISS beyond 2015 and new technology development efforts. The key problem, he said, is that the way the budget was rolled out gave the perception that the administration was killing the human spaceflight program. Among other things, he wanted a clear statement of the long-term destination of human space exploration (which, as he’s stated previously, he believes should be Mars), and “continued testing of a booster as a technology testbed, a robust heavy-lift vehicle program, and the continued development of a spacecraft for the missions beyond low Earth orbit”, which Nelson later called “Rocket X”.
For one of those concerns, Nelson seem mollified by comments by Bolden that Mars was the “ultimate” goal for human space exploration. “General Bolden, you have just made some news,” Nelson said, then pressed Bolden to confirm that his statements had been vetted and approved by the White House. How meaningful they are is another story, though: Mars has notionally been seen as a long-term destination for human spaceflight, but Bolden could only say that the new plan would allow humans to go to Mars sooner than under the previous plan, and at one point Bolden said that even with an “infinite” amount of money he couldn’t get humans to Mars in the next decade.
Regarding any sort of heavy-lift launch vehicle testing for “Rocket X” or another vehicle, Bolden said he was always welcome to conduct additional testing, but only if it could fit into the budget. “We need to look at prudent ways to test, but not too much,” he said. “So any testing that I would be allowed to do for the testing of a heavy-lift launch vehicle would be fantastic, within fiscal constraints.”
Bolden did get grilled, and maybe even flayed, by the ranking member of the subcommittee, Sen. David Vitter (R-LA), who was particularly strident in his attacks on NASA deputy administrator, Lori Garver. Vitter believes Garver is the person responsible for the new budget and in an exchange with Bolden that nearly devolved to a game of “gotcha” tried to get him to admit it. (Sen. George LeMieux (R-FL), the only other senator in attendance, also tried to Bolden to identify who developed the budget proposal; Bolden declined to answer, saying that such “predecisional” discussions were protected.)
“I will fight with every ounce of energy I have to defeat this budget or anything like it,” Vitter said in his opening statement. But one wonders if his attacks on the agency’s number two official—implying to some degree that Bolden is more of a figurehead not involved in the decisionmaking process for the agency’s future—might win some sympathy for both of them, and the agency, in some quarters.
By Jeff Foust on 2010 February 24 at 8:48 am ET One major criticism of NASA’s change in policy is that it would cause the US to fall behind China in human spaceflight, allowing them to land humans on the Moon before the US could return. An example is this AFP article from this past weekend, where one policy expert saw it as “a confirmation of America’s decline” and China’s rise. (Nevermind that, as Dwayne Day pointed out last week, that there’s no hard evidence that China is mounting a program to send humans to the Moon by 2020 or any other date, as they focus instead on orbital spaceflight.)
One person who doesn’t find the idea of a Chinese human mission worrying—although for an unconventional reason—is Norm Augustine, chair of last year’s Review of US Human Space Flight Plans Committee. “I worry less about that,” he said in an after-dinner speech Tuesday night at an event hosted by the MIT Club of Washington. “If the Chinese go to the Moon, it will certainly be a wakeup call, but it will also be, ‘Well, we did that 50 years ago.'”
“My worry,” he continued, “will be that the Chinese will land on an asteroid and scare the hell out of us, as they could do relatively soon if they decide to do it. Maybe if they’re smart they won’t do it, because it probably will wake us up like Sputnik did.”
Why is a Chinese human mission to an asteroid so scary? He indicated that it would be a sign of rapid Chinese progress in human spaceflight, more so than a human mission to the Moon, because this would be the first time anyone had ventured to an asteroid. “It would suggest, I think, that the Chinese are moving far ahead from where they’re currently considered to be in terms of their capabilities. I think that’s not an unlikely event.”
By Jeff Foust on 2010 February 24 at 6:56 am ET Today is a busy day on Capitol Hill, with presidential science advisor John Holdren appearing before the House Science and Technology Committee this morning and the Commerce, Justice, and Science subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee this afternoon to talk about the overall R&D budget, including likely some discussion of NASA. Meanwhile, NASA administrator Charles Bolden will appear at a hearing of the Science and Space subcommittee of the Senate Commerce Committee, with several other witnesses testifying on a separate panel, all on the change in direction for the agency contained in the FY 2011 budget proposal.
While much of the political reaction to NASA’s new plan has been negative, some key people have recently spoken out in favor of it. In an essay in The Huffington Post, New Mexico governor Bill Richardson supported the agency’s new emphasis on commercial spaceflight for transporting cargo and crew to LEO. “This is a win-win decision; creating thousands of new high-tech jobs and helping America retain its leadership role in science and technology,” he writes. Also endorsing the plan is former NASA Ames director Scott Hubbard, in an op-ed in today’s San Francisco Chronicle. “This move from government-specified vehicles to the equivalent of buying an airline ticket has startled and dismayed many present and former NASA employees and contractors,” he writes. “Nevertheless, it is exactly the right move. It is past time for NASA to get out of the transport and trucking business.”
As you might expect, opponents of the budget proposal aren’t exactly swayed. “Now, the administration is willing to throw away 50 years of progress on a suborbital taxi cab that places the US further behind China and other nations who are willing to make the investments we used to because they understand the importance of human space exploration,” Rep. Pete Olson (R-TX) said in a speech on the House floor on Tuesday during a section of one-minute speeches by House members. “It a path to second place for the United States.” In a separate speech, Rep. Bill Posey (R-FL) decried NASA’s plans to reach out to Indonesia and other Muslim nations. “It looks to me like the administration is looking out for everyone except our own space workers,” he said.
Bolden, meanwhile, has responded to a letter from over two dozen House members claiming he was breaking the law by trying to wind down Constellation in the current fiscal year. “While you have received reports that NASA managers have instructed members of our teams to begin closeout activities on the Constellation Program, I have directed no such actions and have found no evidence that Constellation managers have issued such directions,” Bolden said in a letter sent to one of the members, Steven LaTourette (R-OH). Bolden did say he has directed the agency not to begin new Constellation work not currently under contract. The “tiger teams” created by the agency are necessary, he said, to prepare for all budget scenarios, including ones where Constellation is canceled.
The letter appeared to ease LaTourette’s concerns about NASA’s work. Bolden “answered our concerns and questions,” he told the Cleveland Plain Dealer. “The contracts aren’t on hold, and he recognizes this program has value. I’m looking forward to working with him through the appropriations process.”
By Jeff Foust on 2010 February 23 at 5:50 am ET Yesterday NASA released detailed budget documents, three weeks after the release of the high-level budget documents and just before the first in a series of Congressional hearings about the budget. Some highlights of the budget after a quick skim through them:
The budget documents make it clear that, going forward, technology development will be the core of the agency’s exploration program. In FY11 exploration R&D gets $1.55 billion, or 36% of the overall exploration budget; by FY11 those figures go up to $3.98 billion and 77%. Much of that technology spending will go towards projects like “Flagship Technology Demonstrators”: programs with total costs of $400 million-$1 billion that “offer high potential to demonstrate new capability and reduce the cost of future exploration missions”, such as in-space propellant transfer and storage, inflatable modules, and autonomous rendezvous and docking. The “Heavy Lift and Propulsion Technology” line will fund development of a new LOX/kerosene engine roughly equivalent to the RD-180, as well as in-space propulsion and “foundational” propulsion research. The budget will also fund “at least two” exploration precursor missions starting in FY11, one being a lunar mission designed to demonstrate teleoperation and transmission of “near-live video” (something that sounds a lot like what a qualifying Google Lunar X PRIZE spacecraft would do.)
After closeout of Constellation, the rest of the exploration budget goes to commercial spaceflight. There are few additional details about the commercial crew program in the budget, other than that funds “will be competed through COTS-like, fixed-price, milestone-based Space Act Agreements”; awards need not be for complete systems but instead could cover human-rating launch vehicles, developing spacecraft, or “new high-reliability rocket systems”. In addition, the $312 million in the FY11 budget for commercial cargo development is to “improve the chance of mission success” by either accelerating existing COTS milestones for SpaceX and Orbital Sciences or adding new ones, such as development of improved engines for the Taurus 2 and Falcon 9.
The exploration technology line item actually is bigger than the overall “Space Technology” line in the budget, which grows from under $600 million in FY11 to just over $1.2 billion in FY15. This budget includes a number of interesting projects, from
“Game Changing Technology” to the reestablishment of the NASA Institute of Advanced Concepts (NIAC). The budget also includes funding for smallsat technology development and an “Edison” class of smallsat demonstration missions. Centennial Challenges also would get a robust $10 million a year over five years; the prize program got $4 million in FY10 after several years of no funding. This section of the budget also includes the CRuSR program, which NASA deputy administrator Lori Garver said last week would bet getting $15 million/year in the budget (it’s part of a $17 million/year “Flight Opportunities” line item with FAST, which flies experiments on parabolic aircraft flights.)
The Space Operations part of the budget includes $428.6 million for the “21st Century Launch Complex” at the Kennedy Space Center, the beginning of nearly $2 billion of planned spending on the project over the next five years. The project “focuses on upgrades to the Florida launch range, expanding capabilities to support commercial launch providers, and transforming KSC into a modern facility”, although it looks more now to be a wish list of upgrades rather than a specific plan. Elsewhere in Space Operations, the budget would fund a study with the National Research Council on the agency’s Human Space Flight Operations program, including the “role and size of the human spaceflight office” in the post-shuttle era, which some have interpreted as the beginning of a potential downsizing of the astronaut corps.
In science, Earth Sciences gets a healthy increase over the current budget ($1.8 billion versus $1.42 billion in FY10), with continued increases to nearly $2.3 billion in FY15. The funding will be used to start or accelerate several missions identified in the last Earth sciences decadal survey in 2007; there’s also funding for a reflight of the Orbiting Carbon Observatory lost in a launch failure last year. Other science programs don’t do nearly so well: astrophysics, heliophysics, and planetary sciences see much less growth and are closer to, and even slightly smaller than, the outyear projections in the FY10 budget. Tucked away in the planetary sciences budget, under the “Lunar Quest Program”, is $15 million in FY11 to restart plutonium-238 production, needed for RTGs. This will be a joint program with the Department of Energy, which is requesting a similar amount for this in its FY11 budget (p. 51 of the PDF).
By Jeff Foust on 2010 February 21 at 6:25 pm ET On Sunday afternoon, journalist Miles O’Brien sent out a note to his over 5,000 Twitter followers inviting them to fill out a survey. The survey contains this explanation:
Veteran space journalist Miles O’Brien will testify on the Hill Wednesday, Feb. 24, regarding what the public thinks of President Obama’s space plan and NASA in general. What do you think? We appreciate your participation in this short survey. Thank you.
This is a reference to a hearing by the Senate Commerce Committee’s space subcommittee on Wednesday about NASA’s FY11 budget request. (The page, as of late Sunday, didn’t have the list of witnesses; presumably O’Brien will be joined by, among others, NASA administrator Charles Bolden.) O’Brien said he would share the results of the survey at the hearing.
The questions are pretty general, covering both high-level issues associated with the budget request (canceling Constellation, relying on commercial providers for crew access to LEO), as well as more general questions about NASA’s role in inspiration and education as well as its funding level. However, the mechanism for collecting this information is imperfect at best: not only is there all kinds of selection bias associated with online polling in general, the poll appears to allow people to complete the survey more than once (I tested it and got the same “Survey Completed” message when I filled out and submitted it again.)
Needless to say, any sort of concrete conclusions from this survey will be dubious at best, and perhaps not the best use of the committee’s time. What would be more useful would be some kind of scientific survey by a polling firm (Gallup, Rasmussen, Zogby, etc.). There haven’t been any NASA-related ones published that I’ve seen since the NASA budget came out at the beginning of the month; the most recent was a Rasmussen poll in mid-January, which found that while 64% of respondents had a favorable view of NASA, 50% wanted to “cut back on space exploration” because of the economy.
By Jeff Foust on 2010 February 19 at 8:32 pm ET The Space Exploration Alliance (SEA) will be conducting its annual legislative blitz next week on Capitol Hill, with plans to meet with over 100 congressional offices. In a press release the organization siad their general goal is to “strengthen” the White House’s plan for NASA. “While the new space plan has some extremely worthy goals, it needs more definition,” said Chris Carberry, chairman of the SEA’s steering committee. “We plan to urge Congress, NASA, and the Administration to strengthen the plan by adding ambitious timelines for achieving its goals and making sure that there are worthy destinations for the United States space program.”
By Jeff Foust on 2010 February 19 at 8:23 pm ET Rep. Rob Bishop (R-UT) continues to remain concerned about the effects the cancellation of Constellation will have on workers in his district who planned to build the solid rocket motors for Ares 1 and Ares 5. However, in comments to the Davis County Clipper, his arguments at least stretch the bounds of logic. “If measures are taken to cut these programs, it only helps open the door wider for such rogue nations as North Korea and Iran to continue their missile development programs, Bishop said,” the article states, apparently an extension of concerns that cancelling Ares would hurt the nation’s solid rocket motor industrial base and thus impact the Defense Department. And a quote from Bishop: “Common sense tells us we should not turn the space above us over to the Russians and Chinese.”
Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) also continues to express his concerns about the cancellation of Constellation, according to the Birmingham Business Journal:
Shelby wants help from senators in Florida, California and Texas to protect the NASA programs that provide jobs in those states. He challenged Obama to find other projects to cut from if NASA is to lose funding.
“If they are going to end that, they need to look at everything,†Shelby said.
Of course, NASA, at the topline level, isn’t losing funding: its budget is growing to $19 billion in the FY11 request and up to $21 billion by FY15. (The same article also mentions Shelby’s concerns about deficit spending, while noting the earmarks he secured for Alabama colleges.)
Rep. Suzanne Kosmas (D-FL), meanwhile, has a solution in the works for the policy problems she sees in the administration’s NASA plan: extend the shuttle. Florida Today reports that Kosmas is working on legislation that would authorize 1-2 shuttle flights a year through 2015. (This sounds at least somewhat similar to the Posey/Wasserman-Schultz HR 1962 bill introduced last year, which has made no progress since its introduction; it’s not clear how this would be any more successful.) The bill would also direct NASA to examine how to salvage a heavy-lift booster from the remnants of Constellation and also report to Congress on “specific safety requirements” for commercial human spaceflight. “Congress is responding to the president’s lack of specificity, lack of an action plan, lack of vision and direction,” Kosmas said.
Rep. Mike Coffman (R-CO), who previously expressed his opposition to cancelling Constellation, has gotten three colleagues from Colorado to join him. Reps. Ed Perlmutter (D), Doug Lamborn (R), and Betsy Markey (D) signed a letter to President Obama asking him to reconsider. “While we are encouraged by the FY11 net increase in NASA funding with a new focus on building international partnerships and science education, we believe the Constellation program should remain a national priority.”
Rep. Pete Olson (R-TX) vowed earlier this week to fight for Constellation in Congress as the FY11 budget works its way through the House. “Congress is going to challenge this plan,” the Houston Chronicle quotes Olson as saying at a meeting Wednesday. However, that’s mild compared to what one potential Democratic challenger says should be done. “If you want to save NASA, call for the impeachment of Obama,” said Kesha Rogers, a candidate in the Democratic primary in the 22nd district, which Olson now represents. Rogers is linked to Lyndon LaRouche, who made a similar call for the president’s impeachment because of his NASA policy earlier this month.
By Jeff Foust on 2010 February 19 at 8:11 am ET One of the now-standard criticisms of NASA’s change in direction is that the agency is relying far too much on a commercial space transportation sector that, in the eyes of critics, isn’t up to the task, while at the same time abandoning existing, largely government-owned and -operated capabilities and the thousands of jobs that sustain them. It’s a complaint that agency officials, and others, have been pushing back against, and they found a receptive audience Thursday at the Next-Generation Suborbital Researchers Conference in Boulder, Colorado.
In a plenary session Thursday morning, NASA deputy administrator Lori Garver likened the current situation to the figure skating competition ongoing at the Olympics. “We are doing wonderful, beautiful, amazing things, but on very thin ice,” she said. Greater participation by the commercial sector, she said, was essential in making the general public feel more connected to, and interested in, spaceflight. “NASA and space belongs to all of us. Space needs to become something the people can personally participate in, rather than just marvel from afar,” she said. “We do hope that through programs like this, people will feel more connected.”
Garver announced at the meeting that the agency’s Commercial Reusable Suborbital Research (CRuSR) program, designed to support opportunities for flying research and education payloads on commercial suborbital RLVs under development. That program got $2.5 million in the current fiscal year budget, but Garver said that CRuSR would be funded at $15 million in the FY11 request, a level that would be maintained over the five-year budget planning horizon. “Suborbital puts us on a sustainable step-by-step path to build an industry that evolves to low cost access to orbit,” she said.
But what about the risks of relying on vehicle providers that have yet to prove their capabilities of flying suborbital payloads, let along orbital flights of cargo crew? “One of the criticisms that we’ve had is that there will be risk involved,” Garver said. “Well, folks, as you all know, NASA takes risks. That’s what we do all day.”
Later in the plenary session, George Nield, FAA associate administrator for commercial space transportation, weighed in on the debate about relying on the commercial sector, saying he was “a little troubled” by the intensity of some of the negative reaction to the new plan. “I’ve read some comments that have expressed disappointment, indignation, disdain, and even ridicule about commercial space transportation,” he said. “Although the critics seem small in number, their vehemence surprises me.”
Nield said he believes some of that concern stems from a mistaken perception that commercial space transportation is new, and thus by implication unsafe, when in fact it’s been around for decades, and companies have played a role in government space efforts since the beginning of the space age. “So I don’t see the value in bashing one of the partners just because the relationship going forward may be a little different than it has been in the past.”
“While it’s entirely legitimate to raise questions,” he added, “it doesn’t do America’s future in space any good at all to raise fears in what might be interpreted as an effort to undermine an industry that has served the nation well and is now prepared to expand its contribution.”
Nield concluded his remarks by referring to a book titled The Ordeal of Change by Eric Hoffer, a book about, according to its description, “the duality and essentiality of change in man throughout history”. “I suppose where we are right now in America’s space program is at a crossroads, where we can decide to make change an ordeal or we can make it a better deal.”
[Disclosure: while my employer does work for FAA/AST, we’re not involved in writing Nield’s speeches.]
By Jeff Foust on 2010 February 18 at 8:38 am ET Florida Governor Charlie Crist, who is also running for the US Senate, issued his views on NASA that he tied into the president’s call to the ISS yesterday. “[P]hone calls do not make up for the President’s disappointing decision to end NASA’s Constellation program,” Crist said in the statement. “By cutting this program, President Obama is putting an end to significant investment in moon exploration and costing Florida’s Space Coast thousands of jobs.” It’s not surprising that Crist would keep his distance from the White House plan, regardless of the number of jobs threatened in his state: he’s in a tough primary battle with a more conservative opponent, Marco Rubio.
The three Republican candidates for Alabama’s fifth district, including new Republican and incumbent Parker Griffith, discussed NASA at a Huntsville luncheon yesterday, but didn’t appear to say much, according to a report by a local TV station. Griffith said that he is “working with the NASA caucus as we speak” on space exploration policy. One challenger, Mo Brooks, said that “we have to promote our views explain why its so beneficial to the United States and explain how space is the high ground.” Brooks, incidentally, warned of “this drift toward socialism and socialism doesn’t work. That’s where this President wants us to go.” One wonders what he thinks of NASA’s plans to turn to the private sector for human access to LEO…
Rep. Steve LaTourette (R-OH) is one of over two dozen members of the House who signed the letter warning NASA administrator Charles Bolden he may be breaking the law by trying to shut down Constellation this year, but that doesn’t mean he’s good friends with another opponent of Constellation’s cancellation, Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL). LaTourette tells the Cleveland Plain Dealer that he’s worried that other NASA centers may be “pirating” NASA Glenn projects if Constellation is ended, citing in particular the Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama:
“The biggest pigs were the guys down in Alabama,” said LaTourette, a Republican from Bainbridge Township. “They were always trying to take stuff away from NASA Glenn, and it was because of Sen. [Richard] Shelby.”
“Nobody with a straight face could tell you it was based on merit,” LaTourette said. “It was because Shelby was a pretty big wheel in the United States Senate.”
Not surprisingly, the article concludes with a note that Sen. Shelby’s office did not return a request for comment on LaTourette’s remarks.
By Jeff Foust on 2010 February 18 at 1:31 am ET If you’re curious to learn more about why The Planetary Society is supporting NASA’s new direction, the society is planning an interactive webcast on Thursday at 2pm EST featuring executive director Lou Friedman and vice president Bill Nye. From a press release about the upcoming webcast: “The Planetary Society believes that the new NASA plan will help advance readiness to see human space exploration move beyond Earth orbit into the solar system and eventually to Mars.”
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