By Jeff Foust on 2009 November 6 at 7:18 pm ET Members of Alabama’s Congressional delegation have spoken out in recent weeks in favor of continuing the current Constellation program, including the Ares 1 launch vehicle; now that message is reaching down to local politics as well. As the Huntsville Times reported Friday, Huntsville, Alabama, mayor Tommy Battle says the city needs to support continued development of the Ares 1:
Speaking to a sellout crowd of 1,300 people at the Von Braun Center’s North Hall, Battle said the Rocket City has to find a way to keep the Marshall Space Flight Center-managed program alive. Last month, the White House’s Augustine Commission recommended that NASA scrap the Ares I and focus instead on the Ares V large cargo rocket.
Battle drew loud applause when he said Huntsville needs to “convince Congress, convince the White House that we have the finest pool of intelligence and technologically advanced people that have ever been on earth in the business of space.
“If you ever let that pool disperse,” he said, “you’ll never get it back.”
Of course, the “Augustine Commission” might be surprised that it recommended that the Ares 1 be scrapped, since the report included no recommendations and did feature options that use the Ares 1. And while some members of the committee might prefer other options, we know that at least one member, Lester Lyles, supports the “program of record” and said he personally wanted to see the development of Ares 1 continued.
By Jeff Foust on 2009 November 6 at 1:20 pm ET Yesterday the Senate passed its version of HR 2847, the Commerce, Justice, and Science appropriations bill, which includes NASA. The bill funds NASA at $18.686 billion, the same level as requested in the White House budget proposal and more than $480 million above what the House passed earlier this year. This passage was spun in some places, like a Houston Chronicle article, as a vote to “restore” funding cut by the House; however, the Senate had never gone along with the House cut in the first place. Moreover, the final budget still needs to be worked out in conference between the House and the Senate, with no guarantee that the Senate’s funding level will prevail.
By Jeff Foust on 2009 November 5 at 1:07 pm ET While Save Space has gone into overtime in its bid to solicit a half-million letters to the White House on space exploration policy, members of Congress are also writing letters, to both fellow members of Congress as well as the White House. The Orlando Sentinel reported Wednesday on the latest effort by Congressman Bill Posey (R-FL) to extend the space shuttle past its current retirement in early 2011. Posey’s letter to Congressional appropriators asks them to include language in the final version of the appropriations legislation that funds NASA that would keep the agency from carrying out anything that “would preclude the possibility of flying the Shuttle beyond the current flight manifest”. Keeping the shuttle flying has a been a key issue for him to reduce the gap and its effects on the Space Coast’s economy: earlier this year he and Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) introduced HR 1962, a bill that would authorize NASA to continue flying the shuttle trough 2015 (that bill, though, has not gone anywhere since its introduction in April.)
Posey has also joined a separate effort, led by Reps. Suzanne Kosmas (D-FL) and Ken Calvert (R-CA), to get members of Congress to sign onto a letter to President Obama for additional NASA funding. “We must ensure the President works with Congress to take this unique and fleeting opportunity to show a true commitment to NASA,” the “Dear Colleague” letter states, according to a copy published by the National Space Society. The deadline for signing onto the letter was today; ten members had done so according to the NSS posting last week.
By Jeff Foust on 2009 November 2 at 12:52 pm ET A decision on the future on NASA’s human spaceflight program could be coming in time for Thanksgiving, according to a key senator. Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL) told WFTV in Orlando that he expects President Obama to make a decision “sometime around the Thanksgiving holiday” on which direction he wants to take the space program. Nelson bases that expectation on a meeting he “recently” held with the president on the subject.
Nelson, though, seemed to be hinting that the $3 billion a year in addition funding identified by the Augustine committee, and endorsed by space supporters in Congress, may not be forthcoming, or at least would not be sufficient. “He is very sensitive to this and I really believe the President is a fan of the space program and, at the end of the day, I am optimistic,” he told WFTV. “But in a very tough money time, it’s going to take a lot more money to make up for the deficiencies of the last decade.”
By Jeff Foust on 2009 October 31 at 2:50 pm ET The sense of many in the space community this year has been one of impatience, bordering on frustration: with a new administration in place, they had been hoping for change in national space policy, or at least a confirmation of existing policy. Yet earlier this year people waited for months before the White House nominated a NASA administrator, Charles Bolden; now they’re waiting for weeks, perhaps months, for a decision on which option, if any, contained in the Augustine committee report to implement.
That waiting is wearing thin with some, such as Space Foundation CEO Elliot Pulham, who likens the situation to the famous Samuel Beckett play “Waiting for Godot”. “[W]hen it comes to space policy and programs, this administration has done nothing remarkable during the first 25 percent of its term,” Pulham writes (rounding up a bit, as the administration is only a little over nine months into its four-year term.) He cites not just the Bolden nomination and Augustine committee decision delays, but other issues such as a lack of progress on export control reform and a large number of unfilled political positions within the Pentagon. The former issue, at least, is something largely beyond the direct control of the White House, although progress is being made: HR 2410, a State Department authorization bill that includes some ITAR reform elements, passed the House in June and is awaiting action in the Senate.
Left out is a key point: many other people, in a wide range of other policy areas, don’t believe the White House is moving fast enough on the issues they care about. In the cover story in this week’s Newsweek, Anna Quindlen observes that President Obama takes a far more incremental approach than people thought he would during last year’s campaign. “He is methodical, thoughtful, cerebral, a believer in consensus and process,” she writes. “In an incremental system, Barack Obama is an incremental man.” And that, she believes, isn’t a bad thing. “[C]ampaigns are bad crucibles in which to forge the future. They speak to great aspirations; government amounts to the dripping of water on stone.”
So those who have great aspirations for space policy might want to practice their patience. Pulham acknowledges that the president is facing a number of other major policy issues, from Afghanistan to health care to the economy, but still wants space to get a bigger share of attention: “I would argue that nothing is more important to national security and economic security, and nothing is a better investment in economic vitality and national economic stimulus, than the exploration, development, and utilization of space.” If the space community did a more effective job communicating that importance to policymakers and the general public alike, perhaps the White House would be paying more attention, and sooner, to space—although there’s still no guarantee that they’d like the outcome of those policy deliberations.
By Jeff Foust on 2009 October 29 at 7:03 am ET It should be little surprise that many of the same members of Congress who issued comments about the Augustine committee report last week also issued statements after the successful test flight of the Ares 1-X rocket Wednesday. Indeed, they were able in many cases to repeat the same themes as their comments last week. For example, Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ), chair of the House Science and Technology Committee’s space subcommittee, had this to say in response to the launch: “It is one more significant achievement for the Constellation program, and a clear indication that NASA is on track with its human space exploration program.”
Congressman Bill Posey (R-FL) reiterated his call for more funding for NASA: “It’s my hope that the President will now give NASA the resources it needs to close the space gap.”
On the Senate side, Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) said the launch was a vindication for Constellation: “If we are to maintain our leadership in space, the work on Constellation must continue with the further development of the Ares vehicles, which provide the safest and most capable transport of our astronauts to the space station, the Moon, and beyond. Without Ares, the backbone of the Constellation program, there will be no successful U.S. human exploration program at NASA.”
Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) called the launch an “important milestone” but noted it’s not the only thing that needs to happen for the program to be successful. “We have many issues to resolve in charting the path forward for the U.S. space program, but this test and the upcoming launch of the space shuttle next month proves NASA still has the ‘Right Stuff.’ Now we need to work with the President and make sure NASA has the right budget to be able to do its job.”
By Jeff Foust on 2009 October 29 at 6:11 am ET The AIAA is planning an event this Monday afternoon, November 2, titled “Aerospace Industry Leaders to Debate America’s Next Steps in Space” on Capitol Hill. The half-day event will feature two panels, one discussing access to LEO and servicing of the ISS and the other focusing on heavy-lift launch vehicle development and exploration beyond LEO. The event is free and open to the public.
By Jeff Foust on 2009 October 25 at 1:13 pm ET Florida Today provides an update today on the status of Save Space, a Space Coast effort to get half a million letters in support of space exploration delivered to the White House. The article gives the impression that the movement is gaining momentum (“catching on”, as the headline puts it; “gaining steam”, as the lede paragraph claims), noting milestones like donated space on digital billboards across the country and the number of partner organizations that have joined, from Space Florida to local businesses like Taco Shack of Titusville. (Another partner organization is Florida Today itself, something the article fails to disclose.)
However, there’s little evidence in the article that Save Space is anywhere near its goal of 500,000 letters by the end of this month. A spokesperson for the Brevard County government, which is hosting the site, says that it’s “impossible to determine” just how many letters have been sent to the White House. The other statistics provided don’t sound optimistic: for example, the spokesperson said that the site has generated 42,000 “hits”. If she’s technically correct, that’s very poor, since each page will generate several hits for the various files that comprise it. Even if she meant visitors (or, better, unique visitors), that’s still a tiny fraction of the 500,000 letters, unless each visitor plans on writing more than 10 letters. The Save Space Facebook page just passed 2,000 fans, the article adds, a stat that sounds good but again is still far short of the 500,000.
If the organizers could come through on their goal of 500,000 letters, they likely would get noticed by the White House: as POLITICO reported last week, the White House is currently getting 65,000 letters a week, on top of thousands more phone calls, faxes, and emails: enough that there’s a backlog of mail that has to be processed. Dumping 500,000 letters there over a short period of time would presumably get some attention. A few thousand? Not so much.
The campaign is now backing away from that October 31 deadline, as the article states it will now be “an open-ended venture” until the president makes a policy decision. That might give them more time to collect more letters, but no guarantee they’ll rise above the noise of other mail arriving at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
[Note: I’m on travel the next few days, so updates here will be limited.]
By Jeff Foust on 2009 October 23 at 12:19 pm ET In a statement in response to the Augustine committee’s final report, Sen. Richard Shelby again emphasized his concerns regarding safety that he mentioned in a Senate floor speech earlier this week:
While I commend the Augustine Commission for their work, I find many of the options proposed in their final report to be unsatisfactory and disappointing.
The Chairman of the Review of U.S. Human Space Flight Plans Committee, Norm Augustine, announced that safety would be paramount. Yet the report does not adequately take into account any safety measures and does not thoroughly examine any of the reliability aspects of the various human space flight vehicle options considered.
The report was also criticized by Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), who said, “The report suggests a number of significant changes to NASA and the industry, but it doesn’t address what effect they would have on Huntsville’s workforce,” according to the Huntsville Times. The same report also said that Rep. Robert Aderholt (R-AL) complained that “the report provide[s] no safety data that would help the White House or leaders in Congress to guide the future of NASA.” Neither, as of this morning, had posted statements about the reports on their web sites.
Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) also released a brief statement about the committee’s report:
“America is at a critical point in human spaceflight, because we stand on the brink of losing our 40-year advantage in space,†said Senator Hutchison. “The release of this report today marks the beginning of what must be a crucial discussion about America’s future role in space. Our current programs are simply unsustainable under the NASA budget and could potentially make plans to use the station until 2020 impossible. Failure to act threatens America’s foundation in space. Congress and the President must work together to address these mounting challenges if our nation is to continue its role as a world leader in space.â€
By Jeff Foust on 2009 October 22 at 8:42 pm ET Shortly after the Augustine committee released its final report, Alan Ladwig of NASA spoke at the luncheon of the International Symposium for Personal and Commercial Spaceflight in New Mexico. Ladwig, filling in for deputy administrator Lori Garver (who was scheduled to speak but stayed in Washington because of the report’s release) did briefly address the “800-pound gorilla in the room”—the report—but without going into detail about what direction NASA would go. “It remains premature for anyone at NASA to draw conclusions or speculate about future spaceflight plans or policies based on the committee’s final report,” he said.
He said that policy leaders from a number of organizations would now meet to “transform the Augustine options into a recommendation or recommendations to be considered and acted on by the president.” He hoped that decisions would be made in time to influence the FY2010 budget and to be incorporated into FY2011 budget request. He noted that the budget request normally isn’t released until late January or early February. “So while it is likely that we’ll hear something about our fate from the president before the end of the year,” he suggested, “a complete view of the new-and-improved NASA may not be completely defined until the release of the 2011 budget.”
The organizations that would be involved in that process, Ladwig said, likely includes OSTP, OMB, “probably” the National Security Council, and “maybe” the National Economic Council. “Hopefully they’ll be smart enough not to make the mistake that was made back in 1989″, when the first Bush administration didn’t coordinate with Congress on the planning for the Space Exploration Initiative, he said. He added that he would not be surprised if President Obama himself got involved in the deliberations at some point before the plans were finalized. “He likes to get involved in these discussions sooner than later, so I don’t envision that he’ll be sitting by and won’t see anything about this until the very last moment.”
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