By Jeff Foust on 2009 December 8 at 1:05 pm ET Yesterday’s rollout of Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo vehicle featured appearances by two sitting governors: Arnold Schwarzenegger of California and Bill Richardson of New Mexico. However, there wasn’t much in the way of politics at the event other than a brief statement by Richardson, echoing something he said over a year ago:
We know that being the home of commercial space travel is not only going to transform the economic landscape of New Mexico and open up boundless opportunities for our state, but it will make a difference for tomorrow’s astronauts. It will help with math and science instruction, and it’s critically important that America regain its leadership in math and science. [applause] And so today what we have is a launching, a launching of commercial space that hopefully will lead to America’s leadership again. And I call on the Obama Administration to embrace commercial space travel. [applause]
That comment is similar to remarks he gave in Las Cruces, New Mexico, in October 2008 during the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge. “[H]ere’s what I want to be sure of: that the Obama Administration is pro-commercial space,” he said at the time. “We’re going to push that. We’re going to make sure it’s pro-space: pro-government space but also pro-commercial space.” At that time he said he didn’t have any interest in taking a position in the administration, only to be nominated to be Commerce Secretary, and then withdraw his nomination because of an ongoing investigation. Richardson was never charged when the investigation concluded this summer, and an appearance at the White House state dinner last month raised speculation that Richardson might be angling for a return to Washington in some manner as he enters his final year in office in Santa Fe.
By Jeff Foust on 2009 December 5 at 2:02 pm ET To pick up an earlier theme of space advocacy and its problems, I’ve confirmed that the executive director of the Mars Society, Chris Carberry, has resigned. Carberry cited “irreconciable differences” with the organizations founder, Robert Zubrin, in an email and follwup phone call yesterday. There hasn’t been an official statement about the leadership change from the organization. In an appearance on The Space Show a month ago, Zubrin said the organization had about 1,500 dues-paying members, and 7,000 people “on the books”. The organization is also fighting an uphill policy battle, as the Augustine committee’s final report ruled out any near-term human missions to Mars.
By Jeff Foust on 2009 December 4 at 7:04 am ET In brief introductory comments at a Space Transportation Association (STA) breakfast, Congressman Parker Griffith (D-AL) sounded the alarm about NASA funding and what he perceived as a lack of interest in the subject by the president. “We cannot frame this Ares 1/Constellation project in terms of the current economy,” he said. “The decision to go forward with Constellation and Ares 1—proven technology—has to be made.” And as for the White House: “The fact that we are not getting a direct signal from our administration is bothersome. I think the heat needs to be turned up.”
The main speaker at the STA breakfast, Marshall Space Flight Center director Robert Lightfoot, briefly discussed the status of the agency’s deliberations on the Augustine committee’s report. “As an agency we’re in the process of assessing” the findings of the committee’s final report, he said. “We’re going to provide some recommendations to the administration, some feedback to the administration on that.” He did not, though, give any timetable for providing those recommendations to the White House.
Later, Lightfoot stressed the importance of encouraging commercial providers to provide access to LEO for ISS cargo and crew, without going into specifics about how to accomplish that. “If we can get the commercial operators to low Earth orbit, get that access in place, then NASA can focus on getting out of low Earth orbit,” he said. “Our goal is to enable them, not fight them… We’ve got to get past the ‘tyranny of or’—commercial or NASA—and get to the ‘power of and’, commercial and NASA.”
By Jeff Foust on 2009 December 3 at 12:39 pm ET Haven’t gotten your fill of discussion about the Augustine committee and its final report? MIT’s Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics is hosting a panel discussion about the committee’s work on December 11. Two members of the committee, chairman Norm Augustine and MIT professor Ed Crawley, will speak, among others.
By Jeff Foust on 2009 December 3 at 6:15 am ET Yesterday’s hearing on human spaceflight safety by the House Science and Technology Committee’s space subcommittee didn’t have a lot of surprises: the standing of Ares 1 as safer than the shuttle (or potential EELV- or shuttle-derived alternatives) was affirmed by some of the panelists, while the sole representative of the commercial sector, Brett Alexander, made the case that commercial systems can be safe and be ready to enter service before Constellation is ready. “Based on what we heard today,” subcommittee chairwoman Gabrielle Giffords said at the end of the hearing, “I see no justification for a change in direction on safety-related grounds.”
A sticking point for many in the hearing that while it was ostensibly intended to compare the safety of commercial systems versus that planned for Ares 1/Orion, Alexander was the only commercial witness of six, with no participation from companies like SpaceX, Orbital Sciences, or ULA, who have all talked at one point or another about building and/or launching commercial crew vehicles. (The Orlando Sentinel went so far as to call the hearing a “pro-Constellation rally”.) That dichotomy became clear when Giffords asked the entire panel two questions: could commercial crew systems be ready to fly when the Augustine committee suggested they could in its report, and would there be other markets for such systems besides transporting NASA astronauts to the ISS. Alexander was the only one who answered yes to both: the other five were skeptical to varying degrees (or, particularly on the markets question, deferred.) It was particularly ironic to see some of the panelists say there would be no additional markets for a commercial crew system when Mike Gold of Bigelow Aerospace—a company that would be a likely customer for such a system to service its planned orbital habitats—was sitting in the first row of the audience.
One point that Alexander tried to get across is that it should not be a competition between Ares 1 and commercial crew systems. “I don’t believe that Ares/Orion and commercial crew are competitive. I think that you need to do both,” he said, adding that commercial crew could carry out ISS servicing at a lower cost that Constellation and free up NASA to focus on exploration beyond LEO. Those comments were echoed by Giffords late in the hearing: “I hope that people don’t think that this is a competition of commercial versus NASA; it is simply not that.” However, she emphasized on more than one occasion that this was something that needed to be judged on its merits and not be swayed by “advocacy or unexamined optimism”, particularly in an era of limited resources. Such analysis will require more than just this two-and-a-half-hour hearing.
By Jeff Foust on 2009 December 2 at 6:33 am ET With all apologies to House Transportation Committee’s hearing on commercial space transportation, arguably the more interesting—or, at least, potentially more contentious—space-related hearing this morning will be two floors up in the Rayburn House Office Building, where the space subcommittee of the House Science and Technology Committee will examine the issue of the safety of human spaceflight. The committee has posted the hearing charter, which includes a detailed overview of the hearing topic and issues it plans to cover.
A review of the charter makes it clear that a major emphasis of the hearing will be whether commercial providers can meet NASA’s safety requirements, and even whether it’s in the best interest of such ventures to pursue ISS crew transportation services given their very early stage of development. Some sample issues:
- What would be the safety implications of terminating the government crew transportation system currently under development in favor of relying on as-yet-to-be-developed commercially provided crew transportation services? What would the government be able to do, if anything, to ensure that no reduction in planned safety levels occurred as a result?
- What do potential commercial crew transportation services providers consider to be an acceptable safety standard to which potential commercial providers must conform if their space transportation systems were to be chosen by NASA to carry its astronauts to low Earth orbit and the ISS? Would the same safety standard be used for non-NASA commercial human transportation missions?
- If a policy decision were made to require NASA to rely solely on commercial crew transfer services, which would have to meet NASA’s safety requirements to be considered for use by NASA astronauts, what impact would that have on the ability of emerging space companies to pursue innovation and design improvements made possible [as the industry has argued] by the accumulation of flight experience gained from commencing revenue operations unconstrained by a prior safety certification regime? Would it be in the interest of the emerging commercial orbital crew transportation industry to have to be reliant on the government as its primary/sole customer at this stage in its development?
This debate is also played out in dueling op-eds in this week’s issue of Space News (subscription required). In one, Congressman Ralph Hall, ranking member of the full science committee, warns that commercial crew options can’t be developed in time to fill the gap between shuttle and Ares/Orion. “[I]t is important to note that Congress did not endorse a commercial crew option as an appropriate solution for the United States to meet our responsibilities and commitments to our international partners. A commercial crew capability simply could not be properly evaluated and ready in time to safely fly our astronauts during the gap,” he writes. (A copy of his op-ed is freely available on the committee’s Republican caucus site). “As I said, astronaut safety must be the top priority.”
Patti Grace Smith, former associate administrator for commercial space transportation at the FAA, takes a different view. “Several policymakers seem to make the unwarranted leap of logic that if commercial space travel costs less than a government program, it is inherently less safe,” she writes, adding that during her time at the FAA, “I never had any serious commercial human spaceflight company come to me with plans for a launch vehicle that would be less safe than existing NASA systems, and they had no less commitment to maintaining safety at the highest level.”
The hearing will also take a look at the safety of the currently-planned successor to the shuttle, the Ares 1. There could be some tough questions for that system, though. The Orlando Sentinel noted that the 2005 ESAS study found that there should be at least seven uncrewed flights of the vehicle before it should carry a crewed Orion spacecraft, yet current plans call for only a single unmanned test flight. (Jeff Hanley, Constellation program manager and one of the witnesses at today’s hearing, explained to the Sentinel that “advances in engineering risk assessments” suggest the first crewed Ares 1/Orion flight will have a risk “on par” with the shuttle system today.) And NASA Watch notes that a chart used by another witness, Joseph Fragola, during an Augustine committee public meeting was different from an internal version, which showed that the Ares 1 risk falls short of the target of 1-in-1,000 for loss of crew set by the astronaut office.
So, yes, it should be an interesting hearing this morning. Whether it will change many minds on the issue, though, is another question entirely.
By Jeff Foust on 2009 December 1 at 7:09 am ET Two more space-related hearings are on the schedule for subcommittees of the House Science and Technology Committee this week and next. On Thursday afternoon the investigations and oversight subcommittee is holding a hearing on “Independent Audit of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration”. Scheduled witnesses are:
- Hon. Thomas Howard, Acting Inspector General, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)
- Mr. Daniel Murrin, Partner, Assurance and Advisory Business Services, Ernst & Young LLP
- Hon. Elizabeth Robinson, Chief Financial Officer, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)
Next Thursday, December 10, the space and aeronautics subcommittee will hold a hearing on “Decisions on the Future Direction and Funding for NASA: What Will They Mean for the U.S. Aerospace Workforce and Industrial Base?”. This appears to be the third and final in a series of hearings that subcommittee chairperson Gabrielle Giffords mentioned earlier this month, after a global space capabilities hearing November 19 and the safety hearing scheduled for tomorrow. The lineup for the December 10 hearing:
- 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
By Jeff Foust on 2009 December 1 at 6:55 am ET The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee released details about Wednesday’s hearing by its aviation subcommittee on commercial space transportation. As noted here a couple weeks ago, the hearing does appear based, at least in part, on a 2006 GAO report about the FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation. The announced list of witnesses:
- Dr. George C. Nield, Associate Administrator for Commercial Space Transportation, Federal Aviation Administration
- Dr. Gerald Dillingham, Director, Physical Infrastructure Issues, U.S. Government Accountability Office
- Mr. J.P. Stevens, Vice President, Space Systems, Aerospace Industries Association of America, Inc.
- Mr. Jeff Greason, Vice Chairman, Commercial Spaceflight Federation; President and Chief Executive Officer, XCOR Aerospace
- Mr. James A. Testwuide, Chairman, The Great Lakes Aerospace Science
and Education Center at Spaceport Sheboygan; Testifying on behalf of the
Wisconsin Aerospace Authority
By Jeff Foust on 2009 November 30 at 7:34 am ET When President Obama visited China earlier this month, the US and China issued a joint statement that included a passage about space cooperation, including “starting a dialogue on human space flight and space exploration”. Cooperation would be a good thing, right? Not necessarily, according to some.
In an Aviation Week op-ed last week, Eric Sterner warns cooperation could lead to more technology transfer, something that, in the 1990s, led to stiffened export control regulations that transferred commercial satellites and their components to the US Munitions List. Such transfer is worrisome, he argues, not only because it could aid Chinese military modernization but also because China is a “serial proliferator” who could then transfer such technologies to places like Iran and North Korea. “Until China’s intentions are clearer and its behavior has verifiably and persistently changed,” he concludes, “close cooperation entails risks that far exceed the potential benefits.”
In this week’s issue of The Space Review, Taylor Dinerman raises concerns about the appearance of cooperation between the US and China. If the US looks like it’s trying too hard to cooperate with China (or other countries, for that matter), it could give the appearance of weakness. He also notes that previous models for international cooperation, such as Apollo-Soyuz and ISS, don’t fit the current situation, in part because of the lack of knowledge about what is motivating China’s human spaceflight program. “If the US presents itself as too eager for partnership agreements or too weak to explore the solar system without assistance, then the world and the American people will only see softness.”
By Jeff Foust on 2009 November 30 at 7:21 am ET Last month most of the Texas Congressional delegation sent a letter to President Obama asking that $3 billion in stimulus funding be redirected to NASA. Beyond the question of whether the president has the authority to do so (as the money was specifically appropriated by Congress), there was another issue: a number of the congressmen who signed the letter had previously voted against the stimulus bill. That hasn’t escaped the attention of Democrats, namely the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC). In a press release last week, the DCCC called out 18 Texas Republicans who signed the letter but also voted against the bill. The citation for each representative is the same: the congressman “showed his hypocrisy after asking the Obama Administration for three billion in funds for NASA from the economic recovery act, which he voted against.” (The listings are so repetitive that the one for Rep. Mac Thornberry calls him Lamar Smith.)
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