By Jeff Foust on 2009 December 14 at 1:21 pm ET During the 2008 presidential campaign then-candidate Barack Obama pledged to reinstate the National Aeronautics and Space Council (usually just referred to as the National Space Council), a point he made in his space policy white paper:
There is currently no organizational authority in the Federal government with a sufficiently broad mandate to oversee a comprehensive and integrated strategy and policy dealing with all aspects of the government’s space- related programs, including those being managed by NASA, the Department of Defense, the National Reconnaissance Office, the Commerce Department, the Transportation Department, and other federal agencies. This wasn’t always the case. Between 1958 and 1973, the National Aeronautics and Space Council oversaw the entire space arena for four presidents; the Council was briefly revived from 1989 to 1992. Barack Obama will re-establish this Council reporting to the president. It will oversee and coordinate civilian, military, commercial and national security space activities. It will solicit public participation, engage the international community, and work toward a 21st century vision of space that constantly pushes the envelope on new technologies as it pursues a balanced national portfolio that expands our reach into the heavens and improves life here on Earth.
But nearly a year into his administration, there’s been no sign of any effort to reestablish the council. In today’s issue of The Space Review, Dwayne Day tries to answer that question, suggesting in the end that the “inherent contradiction” of such a council might be the barrier to its creation:
Space council advocates want a space council in order to elevate civil space policy within the White House and increase the likelihood that civil space issues will be considered by the president. In other words, to lobby the president on behalf of civil space. And the last thing that presidents, or their senior advisors, want is yet another actor trying to exert influence on the president and make demands on his time.
We may get a clearer understanding of this once the ongoing space policy review within the administration is completed.
By Jeff Foust on 2009 December 14 at 1:12 pm ET Congressman Bart Gordon (D-TN), chairman of the House Science and Technology Committee, announced this morning that he will not seek reelection in 2010. Gordon, who was first elected to Congress in 1984, said it was time for him to being a “new chapter” in his life. “When I was elected, I was the youngest member of the Tennessee congressional delegation; now, I’m one of the oldest. In fact, I have members of my staff who weren’t even born when I took office.” Gordon took over the chairmanship of the committee when Democrats gained a majority in the House after the 2006 elections; he had been the ranking member since early 2004 after Ralph Hall switch parties.
In a separate press release by the science committee, Gordon said that passing a reauthorization bill for NASA would be one his priorities in his final year in office. The committee had previously planned working on such a bill this year, but elected to wait until the White House made its decision on the future direction of NASA’s human spaceflight program.
Update 3 pm: Congressman Jerry Costello (D-IL) has already tossed his hat in the ring to succeed Gordon, according to a release sent out this afternoon: “As the second ranking Democrat on the Science and Technology Committee, I am interested in and will pursue the chairmanship of the full committee and look forward to discussing it with our Democratic leadership and my colleagues in our caucus.”
By Jeff Foust on 2009 December 13 at 10:49 am ET We noted here last week that Congressman Parker Griffith (D-AL) had some strong comments about the lack of a space policy decision for the White House to date, and the underlying concern that such a decision could jeopardize the future of the Ares 1 (which is being developed by NASA Marshall, in his district). At a hearing Thursday on workforce and industrial base issues by the House Science and Technology Committee, Parker sounded off again on the topic when it was his turn to question the witnesses:
The space program, however, will be either successful or unsuccessful in the next 16 months. The verbal expression of commitment to the space program is basically inadequate. Without national commitment of money and tangible enthusiasm from the executive branch, we will send a message of confusion and indecision to our scientific community. Mr. Augustine said it best when he said, “Get in or get out.” It’s unfair to the astronauts, it’s unfair to the scientific community, and it is unfair to those children who have an interest in science that we’re trying to attract into this absolutely vital, vital part of not only our economy, but the development of science for science’s sake.
I appreciate the concept that maybe we could use this as a diplomatic effort, and I would love to see that as a sideline, but basically this is research and development. America represents 5 percent of the world’s population; 95 percent live somewhere else. We have seen the benefits of NASA human spaceflight, it has been proven to us over and over again that this has to be a national commitment and leadership has got to come out of the executive branch.
We are in fact in a space race to the Moon with the Chinese and we have not decided to put a team on the court yet. What better opportunity than the successful launch of Ares 1-X to segue into a national announcement that we are now committed to the Moon in 2020, 2019, 2018. What better opportunity have we had to say to America’s children, “Science and math is cool.” What better opportunity? Imagine had we spent the time that we have spent on cap-and-trade, stimulus, health care, had we spent that on science education and the development of our human spaceflight program. We would be sitting here today feeling very, very good. Today, we are very, very anxious…
We can no longer discuss this. This needs to be a commitment from the executive branch and the leadership of Congress. If we delay it we are playing into the hands of our competitors, and we as America want to win. We are winners.
By Jeff Foust on 2009 December 12 at 5:04 pm ET At Thursday’s Women in Aerospace breakfast event in Washington, NOAA administrator Jane Lubchenco passed along this anecdote from Capitol Hill:
I was visiting the Hill, talking to members of Congress about the importance of our satellite systems, and a member of Congress who shall go unnamed said to me, “I don’t need your satellites. I have The Weather Channel.”
Lubchenco may have decided to keep this member anonymous, but inquiring minds want to know: who in Congress thinks that NOAA’s satellites are redundant because of The Weather Channel? I’ve heard variations of this over the years, which leads me to wonder who—if anyone—made that claim.
By Jeff Foust on 2009 December 11 at 12:57 pm ET A person attending this morning’s Augustine committee panel session at MIT passed along, via Twitter, this comment from committee chairman Norm Augustine: “I’m told that some of the decision documents are on [Obama’s] desk right now”. That should not be that surprising, since a decision would have to be made soon (if not already) to affect FY11 budget planning, but it’s noteworthy for the impatient out there. (Of course, given the president’s deliberative decision style, just because the “decision documents” are on his desk doesn’t mean he’s immediately going to act on them.)
By Jeff Foust on 2009 December 11 at 7:11 am ET Space advocates in the UK finally got something Thursday they had long sought: a national space agency. Minister for Science Innovation Lord Drayson announced the plans for the space agency Thursday at the Rutherford Appleton Space Conference. The “bureaucracy busting agency” will bring together a number of government departments and other offices and was billed as a way to further growth of the country’s space sector. Many other details about the new agency, though, including its name, budget, and exactly when it will be stood up, weren’t announced (the BBC reports that the government will use a competition to select a name and logo).
Things aren’t looking so rosy in Japan, where the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) is getting a “frosty reception” from the new government, the Financial Times reports. The Democratic Party of Japan, which took power after national elections this fall, is reportedly concerned about “unclear costing” and “vague risk assessments” of JAXA programs, despite a number of recent successes, such as the H-2B rocket and HTV cargo spacecraft. The government is recommending a 10-percent cut for JAXA, which agency officials fear could jeopardize their commitments to supporting the ISS.
By Jeff Foust on 2009 December 11 at 6:55 am ET NASA administrator Charles Bolden’s comments earlier this week that greater international cooperation would be a priority for NASA in the near future has attracted some debate. To learn more about potential advantages of obstacles to such cooperation, Scott Pace of GWU’s Space Policy Institute is speaking on “International Opportunities and Challenges for U.S. Space Policy” at the Applied Physics Lab weekly Colloquium at 2 pm today.
By Jeff Foust on 2009 December 10 at 5:51 am ET The full House Science and Technology Committee is holding a hearing this morning titled “Decisions on the Future Direction and Funding for NASA: What Will They Mean for the U.S. Aerospace Workforce and Industrial Base? “ (This was originally planned to be held by the space subcommittee, the third in a series of hearings on the agency’s future by the subcommittee, but was promoted to the full committee last week.) The witnesses:
- Dr. Richard Aubrecht, Vice President, Strategy and Technology, Moog Inc.
- Ms. Marion C. Blakey, President and Chief Executive Officer, Aerospace Industries AssociationÂ
- Mr. David Thompson, President, American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics
- Mr. A. Thomas Young, Lockheed Martin Corporation (Ret.) Â
The hearing charter provides a preview of the hearing.
By Jeff Foust on 2009 December 10 at 5:39 am ET Those who attended yesterday’s AIAA/WIA joint luncheon expecting the speaker, NASA administrator Charles Bolden, to make major announcements about the future direction of the agency came away disappointed. “I’m not going to talk about Augustine,” he said early in his speech, referring to the Augustine committee and its final report released in October. “If you came to hear about Augustine, you can leave now.”
Instead, much of his speech focused on some other issues that he deemed important for the agency: education, NASA’s workforce, and technology development. On the last point, he said NASA has done “OK” historically, but could improve. “We need to change our mindset and the way we work together to have our people start thinking of NASA not just as a collection of incredible missions but as a developer of the innovative technology that helps drive our nation’s economy,” he said. That means, he said, working across mission directorates as well as outside the agency with industry and academia.
“Our missions and programs in human spaceflight, in aeronautics, and in science make us important and relevant,” he said. “We need to do a better job of explaining who we are, what we do, and the important of our missions to our stakeholders and the public, but that’s the subject for another luncheon talk.”
While Bolden didn’t talk about the Augustine committee’s work, he did drop hints that significant change in one manner or another was coming to the agency. “We’re going to be fightin’ and fussin’ over the coming year. Some of you are not going to like me because were not going to do the same kinds of things we’ve always done. We can’t. We can’t do that and survive,” he warned. “We cannot continue to operate the way we have. Things have got to change.”
One area of change that Bolden did say was coming was greater international cooperation. “That’s what the president wants to do, and he didn’t have to tell me that, because that’s what I’ve been doing all my life,” he said, noting that be believes that the two organizations who do more for diplomacy than anyone else are the armed forces and NASA. That international cooperation, he added, would include “non-traditional partners”, such as China. “There are not a lot of things I can tell you with certainty, but I can tell you that; he said do that,” Bolden said, referring to the president. Later, in a brief Q&A session, he added about working with the Chinese, “I’d rather work with them than fight them.”
Bolden also addresses the subject of ITAR reform during the Q&A, praising the efforts by Defense Secretary Robert Gates to push for reform. “The leader in our country right now in trying to work ITAR initiatives and trying to revamp it is the secretary of defense,” Bolden said. He credited “NASA’s persistent emphasis” on ITAR for winning over support for reform elsewhere in government.
By Jeff Foust on 2009 December 9 at 7:17 am ET Congressional appropriations negotiators reached agreement last night on an omnibus spending bill for FY 2010 that is largely good news for NASA. Only the top-level details of the consolidated appropriations bill have been released by House and Senate appropriators, but the summary for the Commerce, Justice, and Science section indicates NASA will get $18.7 billion in 2010, approximately the same as the the original budget request.
The biggest issue had been funding for exploration, after the House slashed exploration by nearly $700 million. That funding has been largely restored, with $3.8 billion in the final bill “to extend America’s capabilities in human spaceflight”. The summary includes this explanation:
In October 2009, the Review of U.S. Human Spaceflight Plans Committee (The Augustine Commission) reported its findings on NASA’s human spaceflight program. The Augustine Commission raised several issues regarding the current program and budget profile that will require thoughtful consideration by the Administration. In the absence of a bona fide proposal from the Administration on the future of U.S. human spaceflight activities and investments, the bill provides the budget request of $3.8 billion for activities to support human spaceflight in fiscal year 2010; however, the bill requires that any program termination or elimination or the creation of any new program, project or activity not contemplated in the budget request must be approved in subsequent appropriations Acts.
That would seem to tie the funds to the current Constellation architecture even if the White House directs NASA in the coming weeks to take an alternative approach.
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