By Jeff Foust on 2010 January 26 at 8:22 pm ET The New York Times reports late today that NASA will embark on a “major evaluation of its human spaceflight program” in the coming months. The Times compares the planned “multimonth” study with the Exploration Systems Architecture Study (ESAS) performed by NASA in mid-2005 that led to the current Constellation architecture. One unidentified person said the study would be “putting meat on the bones” of the Augustine committee options, although it’s not clear if this study will be done to fill in the details after the White House selects an option, or if this will provide additional information before the administration makes a final decision (and if the latter, it makes one wonder what the White House and NASA have been doing the last three months.)
The Times report adds, like some previous reports, that NASA is in line for a budget increase in FY11 of less than $1 billion. But what about that planned freeze of non-security discretionary spending? The deputy director of OMB, Rob Nabors, said today that “it would not be the case that a request for NASA will be identical to the request that happened last year,” according to Space News. (Then that wouldn’t exactly be a freeze, would it?)
By Jeff Foust on 2010 January 26 at 6:42 am ET As expected, the FY2011 budget proposal for NASA will be released next Monday, with a press conference planned for Monday morning, according to Space News. That may be followed by a separate press conference the next day at the National Press Club; what the difference in topics between the two press conferences isn’t clear. The Office of Science and Technology Policy is planning its own press conference Monday at AAAS headquarters about the administration’s R&D priorities, including NASA.
White it appears that NASA may not get the billion-dollar increase previously anticipated, any increase may put it in better condition than many other government agencies. POLITICO reports that the White House is planning a three-year freeze on discretionary “non-security” spending. However, the report adds that there is some flexibility in at least the FY11 request: “One-time costs, like the 2010 Census, will also be coming down, and this could help pay for more money for NASA, for example.”
Meanwhile, the House Science and Technology Committee’s space subcommittee is planning a hearing next Wednesday titled “Key Issues and Challenges Facing NASA: Views of the Agency’s Watchdogs”. The hearing’s witnesses include NASA inspector general Paul Martin, Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel chairman Joseph W. Dyer, and Cristina T. Chaplain of the Government Accountability Office.
By Jeff Foust on 2010 January 25 at 1:07 pm ET In a lengthy article about Congressman Parker Griffith’s party switch published today by the Huntsville Times, Griffith says that a lack of “enthusiasm” from the Obama Administration on human spaceflight was one of the reasons he decided to switch from the Democratic to the Republican Party. “Missile defense has been on the back burner; there is no enthusiasm in the White House for manned spaceflight,” Griffith told the Times. “Over time, I was (convinced) [to switch parties] because it was Republicans who came to my aid on these issues.”
However, during the switch Griffith lost his seat on the House Science and Technology Committee and has not gotten it back yet. Griffith told the paper on Friday that he finally expected to get committee assignments in five to ten days, although those assignments had been expected earlier in the month. There were no pre-arrangements with the Republican House leadership about assignments, he said, since his party switch was his own decision and not something negotiated with Republicans. (The article claims that Griffith was the vice chair of the science committee’s space subcommittee, but that’s incorrect: that position has been held since last year by Congresswoman Donna Edwards of Maryland.)
Regardless of his committee assignments, and despite facing a strong challenges from Republicans and Democrats in the primary and general election, one local expert expects Griffith to keep his seat. “I think Parker Griffith will probably do very well in both the primary and the general election,” Tommy Williams, a retired political science professor, told the Times. “Incumbency is usually very beneficial.” Usually, although not necessary this year, and not necessarily in this district.
By Jeff Foust on 2010 January 24 at 7:04 pm ET A couple of recent reports suggest that it’s increasingly likely that the new space exploration policy to be released in the near future by the White House will include a provision for funding a commercial crew development program. Space News reported Friday that the FY2011 budget proposal “would fund a multibillion-dollar effort to foster development of commercial systems” for transporting crews to and from the ISS. On Sunday, the Wall Street Journal said its own sources indicated a commercial crew transportation program would be in the budget proposal. The Journal, though, describes the administration’s support for the initiative as “murky” based on its sources, who claim that “the budget isn’t expected to outline a clear, long-term funding plan.”
By Jeff Foust on 2010 January 23 at 8:08 am ET Last week Defense News reported that the Defense Department’s 2010 Space Posture Review would be delayed by at least several months, and perhaps by up to a year. That has also been reported by DoD Buzz, which added an interesting item: the review may recommend that the US scrap building several additional GPS satellites in favor of working more closely with Europe and its satellite navigation system, Galileo, currently under development.
So what can we expect in terms of military space policy? Speaking at an event about the Space Security Index Thursday at the Canadian Embassy in Washington, Peter Hays, an SAIC senior scientist working at the National Security Space Office, offered some insights. While not directly involved in the development of the review, and also speaking solely for himself, he said he understood that the current plan was to release a “shorter, non-perscriptive” version of the review early next month, along with the FY2011 budget request. That would be the same time as the Defense Department plans to release the Quadrennial Defense Review, an overall defense policy report that the Space Posture Review was designed to support.
Hays said one unnamed person who was involved with the review process described the debate about it as splitting into four camps: “ostriches” who saw no reason to change what we do in space; a “steroids camp” that advocated doing the same as what we’re doing today in space, but more of it; soft power advocates who wanted more international cooperation and commercial partnerships as well as negotiations for “rules of the road” in space; and a “hard power” group that would increase the “less benign” capabilities of the Defense Department to protect US space capabilities. “Clearly if you have these kinds of divergent views and no resolution amongst them, it’s going to be difficult to fashion a holistic and theoretically, foundationally based clean-sheet approach to all of this,” Hays said.
The rest of the work that had gone into the review would be reworked, he said, as part of a “national security space strategy”. That would come out after the completion of a new overall national space policy. The current schedule calls for completing that policy by early summer, although Hays was skeptical that schedule could be kept. He noted that it took several years for the Bush Administration to develop its national space policy, a process that started in 2002 and was not completed until August 2006, thus he thought it was unlikely the current administration could complete its own space policy so quickly. “Perhaps the Obama Administration has a time machine, but I’m not optimistic that they’re going to be able to do all this work on the timeline that they’ve outlined,” he said.
By Jeff Foust on 2010 January 23 at 7:22 am ET The Orlando Sentinel provided an update earlier this week on efforts to extend the shuttle program beyond its currently remaining five flights. As you might expect, there wasn’t much to update: there’s been little recent progress, and even advocates like Congressman Bill Posey (R-FL), who has introduced legislation to extend (HR 1962) to authorize funding for continued shuttle operations, admit there’s not much interest among his colleagues or from the White House. “It’s been a fairly lonely crusade; I have to admit that,” Posey told the Sentinel.
That doesn’t mean he hasn’t stopped trying. On Thursday he announced he wrote President Obama, asking him to keep flying the shuttle to avoid a gap in US government human spaceflight access. “For an amount equal to less than 1% of last year’s stimulus bill, we could fly the Shuttle for an additional five years, close the space gap, and keep America first in space,” Posey said. That amount comes from his estimate that a shuttle extension would cost only $1.5 billion a year, or $7.5 billion over five years, compared to the $787-billion price of last year’s stimulus bill. However, a United Space Alliance official put the cost of flying five more missions—the number that could be added using existing spare parts—through 2012 at $1.8-2.4 billion a year, according to the Sentinel. Compare those figures to the $3.16 billion included in the final FY2010 appropriations bill for shuttle operations.
Posey, in his letter to the president, urged the president to extend the shuttle, and even invited him to next month’s STS-130 launch. “Your leadership is direly needed today to ensure that your stated objectives for our nation and our space program are realized,” Posey wrote.
By Jeff Foust on 2010 January 21 at 6:56 am ET A special space state report:
A new Florida Space Caucus met this week in Tallahassee to discuss planned legislation to support the state’s space industry. The 42-member caucus plans to support a “handful” of bills this year, including incentives for companies as well as dedicated funding for Space Florida, the state space development agency. This is of particular concern given updated reports up to 7,000 people at KSC will lose their jobs when the shuttle retires. “I’m on a personal mission to save every job possible,” said Lt. Governor Jeff Kottkamp.
Officials in Ohio, meanwhile, want to remind people that it’s not just KSC and other centers closely tied to the shuttle program that deserve attention. An Ohio congressional delegation and members of the governor’s office met with NASA administrator Charles Bolden on Wednesday and left feeling “encouraged”. “I believe he is someone who we can work with effectively to enhance the core competencies that have already been solidified at NASA Glenn,” Sen. George Voinovich said in a statement released after the meeting. Ohio’s other senator, Sherrod Brown, also expressed support for NASA Glenn, writing a letter directly to President Obama asking him “to retain critical research and development” programs at the center and bring in new work, including alternative energy research.
Republican members of Texas’ Congressional delegation, including the ranking member of the House Science and Technology Committee, are facing an unusually large number of primary challengers this year, many of whom have ties to the conservative “Tea Party” movement, the Houston Chronicle reports. Ralph Hall, top Republican on the science committee, is facing five challengers in the GOP primary, including two people who associate themselves with the movement, one of whom has even included the nickname “Tea” in his name on the ballot. “We have to reach the varmints we can get to,” explained the head of Houston’s Tea Party group.
In Virginia, NASA and the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport will be topics during a debate among Republican candidates for Congress tonight on the Eastern Shore. The six are vying to take on the current member from Virginia’s 2nd District, Democrat Glenn Nye, in the general election in November.
By Jeff Foust on 2010 January 20 at 7:53 pm ET Besides the question of what the president’s new space exploration plan might be, the next most important (or, at least, most frequently asked) questions have been when the plan will be announced and how much additional money the White House will request for NASA, at least in the FY2011 budget. We’re starting to get some hints as to what those answers might be, but they won’t necessarily be appealing to some space advocates.
Regarding when, White House senior advisor David Axelrod told the Orlando Sentinel that the plan will be released as part of the FY11 budget request, due out on February 1. “The president is going to speak to that through his budget,” Axelrod said. While some are hoping the president might reference those plans in his State of the Union address, scheduled for next Wednesday, Axelrod said Obama would not do a standalone speech, as President George W. Bush did when he announced the Vision for Space Exploration at NASA Headquarters in January 2004. Sen. Bill Nelson, the Sentinel report notes, had been pushing for a similar dedicated speech.
As for how much, Space News has some bad news today: the FY11 request won’t include a billion-dollar increase as had been previously rumored. Sources “with close ties to the administration” told the publication that NASA’s budget would increase in the FY11 request, but by a smaller, unspecified amount.
One other item to keep in mind: there’s at least one rumor going around that the FY11 budget proposal won’t include anything about a revised space exploration plan: that would be handled through a supplemental request at a later date.
By Jeff Foust on 2010 January 20 at 7:25 am ET Today marks one year since Barack Obama was sworn in as the 44th President of the United States. This marks an opportunity to examine what he has—and has not—accomplished during that time, in this case in terms of space policy. While the president himself gives himself a “good solid B-plus”, on space policy a more appropriate grade might be “Incomplete”, as many of his initiatives outlined in his campaign’s space policy issued in August 2008 haven’t been enacted or are still in the works—and on which we may see progress in the coming weeks when the White House releases its revised space exploration plans. A quick review of what candidate Obama proposed in key sections of that white paper and what President Obama has accomplished so far follows.
Closing the Gap (p. 2 of the white paper): In this section, Obama endorsed plans to add at least one more shuttle flight, accelerate development of the shuttle’s replacement, stimulate private-sector spaceflight development efforts, and “enlist” international partners to provide cargo and crew ISS transport. Of the four, only the first has seen any progress, and that was done by Congress prior to Obama’s election when the NASA Authorization Act of 2008 directed NASA to add a shuttle flight to fly the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer to the ISS; that mission is now on the shuttle manifest as STS-134. A further shuttle extension is being pressed by some in Congress, but the odds of that seem long. The other provisions are still incomplete, although we may see progress when the new space exploration policy comes out.
Completing and Enhancing the International Space Station (pp. 2-3): Obama proposed greater utilization of the ISS and enhanced cooperation in this section. One aspect of this, “consider options to extend ISS
operations beyond 2016″, seems increasingly likely to be part of the new policy, and does have some support in Congress. An interesting provision is to “use the ISS as a strategic tool in diplomatic relations with non
traditional partners”; that hasn’t happened yet, but there does seem to be growing interest within NASA in general about engaging non-traditional partners, as administrator Bolden said earlier this month.
Embracing Human Space Exploration (p. 3): In this section Obama “endorses the goal of sending human missions to the Moon by 2020″, something that seems unlikely now, regardless of the Augustine Committee option chosen, given current progress on the exploration program and funding levels. This section also includes a section examining on the use of private spaceflight capabilities for “lower earth orbit cargo transport”; this, again, will have to wait on the new space policy to see how much emphasis it puts on the private sector.
Better Coordination with Other Federal Agencies Involved in Space (p. 4): A key aspect of this section, as well as earlier in the white paper, involved the re-establishment of the National Aeronautics and Space Council. To date, though, the council has not been stood up, nor is there any sign that it’s coming soon, or at all, perplexing some space advocates. As Dwayne Day noted in The Space Review last month, that might be because Obama has simply decided he doesn’t want to have one, concluding he doesn’t need “yet another actor trying to exert influence on the president and make demands on his time.”
Emphasizing an International, Cooperative Approach to Space Security (p. 5): Although space situational awareness became a hot topic shortly after Obama took office, thanks to the collision of an Iridium satellite and a Russian spacecraft, there haven’t been major policy developments like the ones outlined in the white paper, such as negotiating “rules of the road” for space operations and taking steps to oppose the weaponization of space (treaties proposed by Russia and China on that have not made much, if any, progress in the last year.) Obama’s endorsement of Operationally Responsive Space (ORS) has translated into stable funding for the ORS Office this last year, although there’s still skepticism in some quarters about the effectiveness of small, rapidly-launched satellites.
Revising Regulations for Aerospace Export Control (p. 6): The white paper states that, if elected, “Barack Obama will direct a review of the ITAR to reevaluate restrictions imposed on American companies, with a special focus on space hardware that is currently restricted from commercial export”. While not complete, there are signs of progress. Space News reported last week that the president has directed a review of steps needed to overhaul export control, with recommendations due to him by the end of this month. This comes after an earlier review of rules involving the export of unclassified and dual-use technologies, including satellites and their components. Last June the House passed HR 2410, legislation that includes provisions directing a rolling review of the technologies included under ITAR as well as giving the president the ability to remove satellites and related components from it altogether (although still prohibiting their export to China). That bill is awaiting action in the Senate.
There are other provisions in the policy white paper that I don’t have the time to review here. PolitiFact offers an extensive list of space policy promises made by Obama and whether they’ve been kept, although you may disagree with some of their assessments (“support human mission to the Moon by 2020″ is rated as “in the works”, even as it looks increasingly unlikely that will happen even if the White House picks a “Moon First” option from the Augustine Committee report). What is clear that the president’s implementation of his space policy is very much a work of progress after 52 weeks on the job, although the next several weeks may provide new insights regarding what elements of that policy will be implemented, as well as when and how.
By Jeff Foust on 2010 January 20 at 5:57 am ET For the second day in a row, a state governor mentioned a state spaceport in an address to legislators, with a request for support. On Monday Virginia governor Bob McDonnell asked for state support of the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport. On Tuesday, New Mexico governor Bill Richardson, in his final State of the State address (he is term-limited and can’t run for reelection this year), mentioned his state’s Spaceport America, and made a request for spaceflight-related legislation:
I’m pleased to report that Spaceport America is ahead of schedule and under budget.
As we speak four hundred and sixty-seven new workers are on the job constructing the first commercial spaceport in the world, with one hundred and fifty to three hundred more hires expected over this year.
The Spaceport is fulfilling its promise of inspiring young men and women to study math and science, developing our southern and statewide economy, and expanding tourism.
For those who doubt if the Spaceport will bring in business, you should know that Virgin Galactic has over forty two million dollars deposited for more than three hundred reservations.
The demand is there.
New Mexico will get its return on investment.
To make sure New Mexico remains competitive against Virginia, Florida and Texas, I’m asking this body to pass legislation allowing participants to assume the risks of spaceflight.
The last paragraph is a reference to the “Space Flight Informed Consent Act”, legislation introduced into the state Senate this year that would indemnify vehicle operators from claims of liability provided that spaceflight participants sign a waiver (with the exception of cases of “gross negligence”). As Richardson noted, three states have already passed similar legislation, starting with Virginia in 2007.
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