By Jeff Foust on 2009 August 29 at 6:45 pm ET On Friday NASA deputy administrator Lori Garver spoke at NASA Ames. Her prepared remarks aren’t on the NASA web site, but highlights of the speech and answers to questions were live-tweeted by one attendee, Matthew F. Reyes. Some of those highlights include praising NASA’s COTS program for doing “a good job letting private enterprise learn from mistakes”, saying that funding R&D work on low technology readiness level (TRL) is a “critical priority” for NASA, and suggesting that NASA “has not sold a return to the Moon” as an important mission.
One comment in particular by Garver stuck out to me, though: “OMB controlling NASA & being responsible for the Agency’s problems is a myth.” That comment seemed aimed directly at former administrator Mike Griffin, who has complained about the . As you may recall, Griffin complained about the OMB in his Goddard Memorial Dinner speech in April, saying that the office had taken out billions of dollars of money intended for carrying out the Vision for Space Exploration over the last several years. Current NASA leadership apparently sees things differently.
By Jeff Foust on 2009 August 26 at 1:10 pm ET For many months one of the mantras in the space community was to “close the gap”: find money to extend the life of the shuttle, accelerate Constellation, or both, to minimize the gap in US human spaceflight access (at least by government vehicles). That battle cry has died down in recent months, particularly as the Augustine committee found evidence that keeping the current program on its current schedule may prove to be prohibitively expensive. That makes it difficult to push for trying to accelerate the current plan.
However, it hasn’t stopped some people on Florida’s Space Coast for continue to push to close the gap. Florida Today reported yesterday that a group called the Aerospace Career Development Council is calling for an increase in NASA’s budget to close the gap in the draft version of a “Federal Space Policy Agenda” document the group is completing. That means both extending the shuttle and “speeding the development of the next manned rocket system”, according to the article. It’s not clear if the draft report specifically mentions Ares 1/Orion or not, although one of the council member quoted in the article is USA’s Florida head for Constellation. The document, in its final version, will go to federal, state, and local officials “in hopes they can use it to win funding for programs that preserve space industry jobs at Kennedy Space Center”, according to the report. With sky-high (Moon-high?) funding requests like that, though, it better be awfully persuasive.
By Jeff Foust on 2009 August 21 at 1:20 pm ET At first, space would be one of the least likely areas to get tangled into the shoutfest, er, debate about health care that’s been raging the last few weeks in town hall meetings, the Internet, and cable TV. (In space, no one can hear you scream, right?) No such luck. On Wednesday, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said that the president “would orbit the moon if he thought it would help,” according to CBS News. “We’ll get in a rocket and fly around the moon if that’s what it takes to get people together.” Of course, we’d a need a rocket and spacecraft capable of doing that, which might be a long time coming in some of the scenarios being considered by the Augustine committee.
Then there was Congressman Barney Frank’s now-famous putdown of a town hall speaker: “On what planet do you spend most of your time?” Ironic, to some degree, coming from Frank, given his past opposition to some aspects of space exploration, notably human spaceflight, such as in this debate last October. To think that with more resources NASA might be better able to answer Frank’s question…
Finally, the Space Frontier Foundation issued a press release (not available on their web site, as best as I could find) with this provocative title: “Ares Needs a Death Panel”, a reference to one of the most controversial claims about the proposed health care reforms. Other than one quote from Foundation co-founder Rick Tumlinson (“Pouring more money into Ares now is the equivalent of giving a taxpayer-funded I.V. to a corpse.”) the release doesn’t stick to the health care theme—a wise choice, perhaps, given the visceral reactions the phrase “death panels” can generate these days.
By Jeff Foust on 2009 August 19 at 7:26 am ET While Congress is on summer recess this month, some members are keeping an eye on the Augustine committee’s deliberations and making public comments about them. On Monday Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ), chair of the space subcommittee of the House Science Committee, issued a statement on “threats to NASA’s budget”, citing the comments by the Augustine committee last week that human exploration programs weren’t possible on the current schedule with the current budget. In it, she said the nation needs “a sustained national commitment, including adequate funding” to realize a “robust initiative” of exploration. “The Obama Administration and Congress have a singular opportunity to ensure that America remains a preeminent space-faring nation over the coming decades. The rest of the world is watching, and my hope is that we step up to the challenge.”
Giffords’ statement comes a day after an op-ed in TCPalm.com by Congressman Bill Posey (R-FL), whose district includes part of the Space Coast. In it he, too, calls for funding sufficient to carry out the nation’s exploration goals. “Budgets are a reality, but proper leadership can and should match the budget to a worthy mission – not the mission to the budget,” he writes. He said he asked the Augustine committee “to think outside the arbitrary budget numbers placed on NASA – $18.8 billion out of a total $3.6 trillion budget, less than half a percent of the federal budget.”
By Jeff Foust on 2009 August 15 at 9:43 am ET This week Bob McDonnell, the Republican candidate for governor of Virginia, toured the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS), the commercial spaceport on Wallops Island, Virginia. He used the visit to release his plans to support the continued development of MARS to make it “America’s top commercial Spaceport”.
The biggest part of the plan is a pledge to increase the state’s funding of MARS ten-fold—although that would only increase it to $1 million, an idea of how much of a shoestring budget the spaceport has operated under. (MARS does also get funding from Maryland.) Other aspects of the plan include creating an “aerospace business roundtable” to plan for future projects at the spaceport, “aggressively” recruit companies to use the spaceport, and promote space tourism initiatives that would use MARS (as the plan states, McDonnell “understands the value of our hospitality industry and fully intends to promote our Commonwealth to ‘space lovers’”).
One issue that the plan doesn’t address, though, is any potential conflict between use of MARS and offshore drilling, which McDonnell has endorsed. Some have previously raised concerns that offshore drilling could greatly restrict operations at MARS.
Meanwhile, the campaign of the Democratic candidate, Creigh Deeds, circulated a letter (not posted on his campaign web site) noting his support for the spaceport. While the timing of the release suggested to some that Deeds was playing a “grown up version of follow the leader”, it turns out the letter to the board of supervisors in Accomack County, where MARS is located, was submitted on Monday, three days before McDonnell’s announcement. In that letter Deeds supports some of the same initiatives to recruit companies, including space tourism, to MARS, although he does not call for any specific increase in state funding for the spaceport.
By Jeff Foust on 2009 August 13 at 11:14 am ET I missed the final, extended public meeting of the Review of US Human Space Flight Plans (aka Augustine) committee on Wednesday, unfortunately (I’m at the annual smallsat conference at Utah State University this week). So instead here’s a brief summary of the reports that came out of the hearing:
If there was a central theme, is that the money is not there to carry out the exploration program. As panel member Sally Ride put it, “We haven’t found a scenario that includes exploration that’s viable.” And committee chairman Norm Augustine: “It will be difficult with the current budget to do anything that’s terribly inspiring in the human spaceflight area.”
The committee concluded that it would take an extra $50 billion to carry out the current plan, a chunk of money that most people assume isn’t likely to materialize. One alternative under consideration is the so-called “deep space” option that would feature human missions to orbit the Moon, visit NEOs, and eventually Mars; that would cost an additional $3 billion a year. Also under consideration: extending the shuttle though 2015 as well as stretching out the current Constellation plan to fit into the budget, which would delay a human return to the Moon to the late 2020s at the earliest.
Bad news for Mars advocates is that the panel dropped a direct-to-Mars scenario from consideration. “We think Mars direct (flight) is not a mission we are prepared to take on technically or financially,” Augustine said. (This doubtless will not go over well with those Mars advocates that either distributed or endorsed this Mars Direct placard found at the previous committee meeting last week.)
Good news for commercial spaceflight advocates, though, is that “virtually every” remaining scenario includes the development of commercial human space transportation, something the Next Steps in Space coalition trumpeted in a press release Thursday. “We are confident that U.S. based commercial space companies will enhance the scientific and research capabilities of the ISS and ensure that funding now slated to go to Russia can contribute to high tech jobs here at home,” said coalition spokesman Bob Hopkins.
The Augustine committee is expected to brief NASA and the White House on its interim findings on Friday, with the final report scheduled for publication at the end of the month. In a Space News interview earlier this week, Augustine said the committee would present as many as eight options, although by the end of yesterday’s meeting there appeared to be only about four major options remaining. He emphasized that the committee will provide options, not recommendations. “We were asked to provide options and I would undermine the president’s ability to make a sound recommendation if I were to voice my opinion,” he said. “But one of the major facts being weighed is what we can afford. I just don’t have the ability to judge that.” And affordability is going to be a key issue, as it appears clear after yesterday’s meeting that the current plan, with its current schedule, is not affordable.
By Jeff Foust on 2009 August 12 at 10:55 am ET The Defense Department announced yesterday the appointment of Robert Butler as deputy assistant secretary of defense for cyber and space policy. This job is a new position, part of a reorganization of the DOD’s policy office led by new Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Michèle Flournoy that paired space and cyberspace issues.
Butler’s background, though, seems to be primarily on the cyber side, as NextGov reported. He has “real, hands-on programming experience” from his early career in the Air Force, and later served in a number of intelligence positions; he was the head the military intelligence business for Computer Sciences Corporation prior to his appointment. It’s not clear how much of that experience dealt with space systems, but at first glance it does raise the question of how much attention space will get from the new office compared to cyberspace.
By Jeff Foust on 2009 August 9 at 10:08 am ET The report accompanying the House version of the 2010 defense appropriations bill approved by the full House shortly before it went on summer recess includes several space-related ; of interest:
- Perhaps the biggest item in the bill is language that blocks the Defense Department from spending any money appropriated for the National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS) “until the Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics certifies in writing to the congressional defense committees that the NPOESS program is being managed in compliance with the Department of Defense 5000-series acquisition guidelines and that the participants are complying with the MOA [memorandum of agreement] signed on December 18, 2008.” The report also calls for an updated independent assessment of the program’s cost and schedule.
- The appropriations committee, the report notes, “is concerned that there is no clear path for space system investment.” The report calls for the development of an annual long-range (30 years) report that “will provide a necessary roadmap for future government and industrial base investments.” The same section also presses the DOD to create a major force program category for space by the FY2011 budget submission next February.
- The report directs the Air Force and the NRO to create a “sustainment plan” for the EELV program that would allow it to continue until 2030. That plan would address in particular liquid-propellant rocket engine development “identify the minimum level of investments and areas of technology development required to ensure the United States has a robust and viable liquid rocket engine industrial base beyond 2015″, particularly for upper stages. The same report language also calls for a review of the merger that created United Launch Alliance, assessing the cost savings promised at the time of the merger. (Another part of the report calls for development of a “five-year investment strategy” for the next block of both EELV vehicles as well as the SBIRS missile warning satellites.)
By Jeff Foust on 2009 August 7 at 12:58 pm ET In 2007 a little-known organization, the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC), was quietly terminated by NASA. For nine years the organization spent about $4 million a year supporing the earliest stages of development of technologies that could, in decades’ time, have a “significant impact” on future NASA missions. NIAC died because it had been shifted over time into the agency’s Exploration Systems Mission Directorate, where many programs not closely aligned with the implementation of the Vision for Space Exploration were eliminated. However, a new report is calling on NASA to recreate NIAC.
The 2008 NASA appopriations bill included a provision directing NASA to request the National Research Council to undertake a study on the effectiveness of NIAC and make corresponding recommendations. The final report on that study, released today (and now available online), finds that the original NIAC met its goals in developing technologies that could benefit future NASA missions. It notes in particular three technologies or mission concepts originally supported by NIAC, a mini-magnetospheric plasma propulsion technology, an x-ray interferometry imaging mission concept, and a extrasolar planetary systems imager, that won additional support from NASA after their NIAC work was completed.
Concluding that the original NIAC was a success, the report calls on NASA to “reestablish a NIAC-like entity” to undertake the same cutting-edge research the original NIAC performed. This organization, which the report dubs “NIAC2″, would be located in the office of the NASA administrator, rather than one of the mission directorates (avoiding the problems with ESMD that led to the original NIAC’s demise). It would be similar to the original NIAC, although NIAC2 would be open to proposals from internal NASA teams (rather than exclusively fund outside proposals, as NIAC did) and include concepts that could “provide major benefit to a future NASA mission” in as little as 10 years.
By Jeff Foust on 2009 August 7 at 12:35 pm ET According to news reports, Mel Martinez will announce today plans to resign later this month from the US Senate. Martinez, a Florida Republican, has previously announced plans not to seek re-election in 2010, but his decision to step down this month for “personal reasons” took many by surprise. He has not been that active on space issues despite hailing from Florida (particularly when compared to Florida’s other senator, Bill Nelson), but has spoken out on the topic from time to time, such as an event on Capitol Hill last summer on the need to shorten the Shuttle-Constellation gap and, during the presidential campaign last fall, called Republican candidate and fellow senator John McCain the best friend of the space program. Just last week Sen. Martinez provided remarks to the Augustine committee during its public hearing in Cocoa Beach, Florida. In that speech he said the shuttle program should not be extended beyond its current manifest, warned that “changing requirements and moving to a different architecture” for Constellation would “increase costs and likely delay the successful launch of our next heavy lift launch vehicle”, and endorsed human missions to the Moon, Mars, and “other near-earth objects”.
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