By Jeff Foust on 2009 July 10 at 6:25 am ET The space subcommittee of the House Science and Technology Committee will hold a hearing next Thursday, the 16th, on “Enhancing the Relevance of Space to Address National Needs”. The witness list isn’t published on the site yet, but according to an email sent out late yesterday, the current list includes:
- General (Ret.) Lester L. Lyles, Chair of the Committee on the Rationale and Goals of the U.S. Civil Space Program, Aeronautics & Space Engineering Board, National Research Council
- Ms. Patti Grace Smith, Board of Directors, The Space Foundation
- Ms. Debbie Adler Myers, General Manager, Science Channel, Discovery Communications
- Mr. Miles O’Brien, Journalist
The hearing is at 10 am on the 16th in Rayburn 2318.
By Jeff Foust on 2009 July 9 at 6:58 am ET Last week it appeared that Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) had convinced NASA and the White House to shift $100 million in stimulus funds from supporting commercial crew efforts to Constellation. As the Waco Tribune-Herald reports, some members of the Texas Congressional delegation are opposed to the move. Why? SpaceX has its rocket engine testing facilities near Waco, and company officials claim that it could double its workforce there if it’s able to secure development contracts for carrying crew to the ISS. Congressman Chet Edwards (D-TX), whose district includes Waco, said he’s arranged meetings between “congressional leaders” and SpaceX’s Elon Musk, while SpaceX vice president Larry Williams tells the paper that the company has talked with staffers for Sen. Shelby that “could lead to a compromise.” Meanwhile, Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) tells the paper that the stimulus funding “will be distributed through the competitive bidding process just like the process for NASA funding each year”, and adds that he hopes Texas will get its fair share.
Meanwhile, the Orlando Sentinel reports today that Sen. Shelby is still trying to drum up support for Constellation over alternative proposals. According to the article, Shelby met with executives of Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and others “to discuss creating a media campaign to counter Ares I critics and alternative ideas.” That plan “never materialized”, and the Sentinel added that the companies are now pitching their own alternatives to Constellation to the Augustine committee.
By Jeff Foust on 2009 July 9 at 6:35 am ET For all the talk about a rapid confirmation of Charles Bolden and Lori Garver to be NASA administrator and deputy administrator, it’s a bit ironic that Wednesday’s confirmation hearing before the Senate Commerce Committee started late. A recess plus an “executive session” to deal with several bills that lasted much longer than the scheduled 10 minutes meant that the hearing started about an hour late. Moreover, while Bolden and Garver were scheduled to be the first to appear, they had to wait for a long line of members of Congress and others to provide statements endorsing all the nominees under consideration, not just Bolden and Garver. There was also the added schedule pressure of a 4 pm meeting on health care that some committee members, including chairman Sen. John Rockefeller (D-WV), had to attend.
Given all that, the hearing got off on a sightly awkward footing. Rather than allowing Bolden and Garver to give their opening statements, Rockefeller launched immediately into questions. “Obviously your backgrounds are fantastic, and there’s no question you’re the right people for the jobs,” he said, then noted that we’re on the eve of the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11, and mentioned a discussion he had once with Sen. Bill Nelson. “I questioned, did NASA really have a future? People refer to what has been done, very few refer to what might be done… If we’re going to do NASA, it’s going to be done right.” He continued: “I need bolstering on NASA, personally, I need bolstering. I wonder what specific proposals… what do you propose to do to take what was the inspiration of the nation, which it’s not today, the inspiration of the nation… what do you plan to do to change this posture?”
Bolden and Garver then attempted to respond to the question by going through their opening statements. Bolden in particular cited four challenges “if we choose to lead” in space:
- “Build upon our investment” in the International Space Station and “safely and efficiently” fly out the remaining shuttle missions;
- “Accelerate with a sense of urgency” the development of the next-generation of launch systems [not mentioning Ares, Orion, or Constellation by name] to support human space exploration;
- Enhance NASA’s “credible scientific, technological, and engineering leadership” to better understand the Earth’s environment;
- “Inspire a rising generation” to focus on careers in science, technology, engineering, and math and “making NASA programs relevant to the American public.”
Those answers, though, weren’t sufficient for Rockefeller. “I characterized NASA as adrift,” he said, and pressed them for more details on how they would cope with this. Bolden and Garver then responded with their discussion of concerns about technology development, inspiring youth, observing and understanding the Earth. “The nation has to decide where it wants to go,” Bolden said. “I think it’s beyond low Earth orbit, but we also have to look inward.”
The rest of the hearing went pretty smoothly: Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) asked about the role of the ISS (noting that we have invested “hundreds of millions of dollars” building it), while Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL) brought up the Augustine committee’s work and the fact that NASA had been “starved for funds” for the last decade. Finally, Sen. Tom Udall (D-NM) brought up a local issue, NASA’s use of White Sands, and that was it.
One thing that struck me listening to the hearing is that both Bolden and Garver, on multiple occasions, mentioned commercial and entrepreneurial ventures, both as something NASA can enable and as something that can help NASA carry out its mission. “The International Space Station represents what I like to call a bridge to exploration beyond low Earth orbit,” Bolden said in response to Sen. Hutchison. “It is the way that we will allow commercial ventures, entrepreneurial ventures, to have a place where they can seek to go to carry cargo, and one of these days, maybe even carry crew.” And in his opening statement: “I dream of a day when any American can launch into space and see the magnificence and grandeur of our home planet Earth, as I have been blessed to do.”
The hearing adjourned without taking any action on the nominations, although it’s clear it’s a matter of when, not if, they’ll be confirmed. The unofficial goal widely discussed is to have them confirmed in time for the Apollo 11 40th anniversary celebrations, but those begin in just over a week. It’s worth noting that a press release issued earlier this week by NASA about a roundtable discussion on the history and legacy of Apollo notes that event will include remarks by acting administrator Chris Scolese.
By Jeff Foust on 2009 July 8 at 6:33 am ET This afternoon the Senate Commerce Committee will hold nomination hearings for Charles Bolden and Lori Garver to the posts of NASA administrator and deputy administrator, respectively. (Note that the hearing, which also includes several other non-NASA nominees, is officially slated to begin at 2:10 pm, not 2 pm; there’s a 10-minute executive session at 2 pm to mark up some unrelated legislation.) The committee has a webcast of the hearing, and NASA TV will also carry the hearing.
By Jeff Foust on 2009 July 7 at 11:12 am ET The Space Studies Board of the National Research Council published today a long-awaited report on the US civil space program: “America’s Future in Space: Aligning the Civil Space Program with National Needs”. The report was prepared by a committee led by Lester Lyles, the former general and one-time candidate for the job of NASA administrator, with an A-level set of representatives from industry, academia, and other organizations. Their charter was to “to advise the nation on key goals and critical issues in 21st century U.S. civil space policy.” As such, the report is a relatively high-level overview of what the US civil space program (one that, in this report, includes not just NASA and other non-national security government agencies but also the commercial sector and academia) should be doing in space, without delving deeply into technical or programmatic specifics.
The best way to summarize this report is to first list the goals the committee identified for US civil space activities:
- To re-establish leadership for the protection of Earth and its inhabitants through the use of space research and technology;
- To sustain U.S. leadership in science by seeking knowledge of the universe and searching for life beyond Earth;
- To expand the frontiers of human activities in space;
- To provide technological, economic, and societal benefits that contribute solutions to the nation’s most pressing problems;
- To inspire current and future generations; and
- To enhance U.S. global strategic leadership through leadership in civil space activities.
The committee then identified seven recommendations for achieving those goals:
Recommendation 1. Emphasis should be placed on aligning space program capabilities with current high-priority national imperatives, including those where space is not traditionally considered. The U.S. civil space program has long demonstrated a capacity to effectively serve U.S. national interests.
Recommendation 2. NASA and NOAA should lead the formation of an international satellite-observing architecture capable of monitoring global climate change and its consequences and support the research needed to interpret and understand the data in time for meaningful policy decisions.
Recommendation 3. NASA, in cooperation with other agencies and international partners, should continue to lead a program of scientific exploration and discovery.
Recommendation 4. NASA should revitalize its advanced technology development program by establishing a DARPA-like organization within NASA as a priority mission area to support preeminent civil, national security (if dual-use), and commercial space programs.
Recommendation 5. The government, under White House leadership, should pursue international cooperation in space proactively as a means to advance U.S. strategic leadership and meet national and mutual international goals.
Recommendation 6. NASA should be on the leading edge of actively pursuing human spaceflight, to extend the human experience into new frontiers, challenge technology, bring global prestige, and excite the public’s imagination.
Recommendation 7. The President of the United States should task senior executive-branch officials to align agency and department strategies; identify gaps or shortfalls in policy coverage, policy implementation, and in resource allocation; and identify new opportunities for space-based endeavors that will help to address the goals of both the U.S. civil and national security space programs.
Some of these are pretty bland (“continue to lead a program of scientific exploration and discovery”), although the proposal for a DARPA-like advanced technology office with NASA is particularly specific and interesting, given the decline in advanced technology investment in NASA in recent years. The last recommendation would also appear to be an endorsement of a proposal made by President Obama during last year’s campaign to re-establish the National Space Council in some form.
The report, notably, does not pass judgement on the Vision for Space Exploration or NASA’s current technical implementation of that policy. The report does have this to say, however, about what the underlying purposes of a human spaceflight program should—and should not—be:
It is not sufficient for the United States simply to have a human spaceflight program, or to judge its success based on comparisons with the capabilities or aspirations of other nations. Rather, the priorities for U.S. human spaceflight should be determined by which efforts have the greatest potential for, and likelihood of, producing transformative cultural, scientific, commercial, or technical outcomes. Such results could include achievement of fundamentally new understanding or perspectives, or development of an essential new enabling capability that leads to an opportunity to visit and observe some new location. Meeting a high standard for performance can ensure that the United States’ human spaceflight program is able to be a leader among the nations with human spaceflight capability and that human spaceflight can serve the broad needs of the nation for technology development, economic growth, and inspiration—fundamental components of the nation’s strategic leadership.
How influential will this report be? Lyles is currently on the Review of US Human Space Flight Plans committee (aka the Augustine committee), as is another committee member, Wanda Austin. A third Augustine committee member, Charles Kennel, served as a reviewer of the report—as did NASA administrator nominee Charles Bolden. So, at the very least, it should have a little more weight than the average report tossed over the White House transom.
By Jeff Foust on 2009 July 3 at 3:09 am ET Earlier this week NASA Watch reported that Sen. Shelby was fighting to redirect stimulus money from commercial crew activities to Constellation, going so far, reportedly, as to threaten to put a hold on the nominations of Charles Bolden and Lori Garver, and had won some kind of compromise on the funding from the administration (which, through NASA, had submitted the spending plan for the $1 billion in overall stimulus funding appropriated to the space agency.) Today’s Orlando Sentinel has a few more details, including that $100 million of the $150 million originally planned for commercial crew work will go to Constellation instead. The exact spending plans, including what NASA will do with the much smaller commercial crew funding apparently remaining, haven’t been released yet, although Sen. Barbara Mikulski tells the Sentinel that she expects “the issue to be resolved” next week.
Shelby’s argument has been that the exploration funding in the bill was intended solely for reducing the Shuttle-Constellation gap, a spokesman for the Alabama Republican told the paper (although there is no specific language dictating that in the bill). And certainly Constellation can use every bit of additional funding it can get. However, would that $100 million have a greater effect towards reducing the gap in US human space access if it’s spent on Constellation (where it might accelerate schedules by on the order of a month), or on commercial efforts that might (but are certainly not guaranteed to) be operational years before Ares 1 and Orion?
One other item: an OMB official tells the Sentinel that Shelby is apparently the only member of Congress that has attempted to block spending of any part of massive stimulus package.
By Jeff Foust on 2009 July 2 at 3:42 am ET [Note: apologies for the lack of posts recently; I’m actually on vacation this week.]
The Senate Commerce Committee formally announced yesterday what had been expected for some time: they will hold a nomination hearing for NASA administrator nominee Charles Bolden and deputy administrator nominee Lori Garver next week, on the afternoon of July 8. It had been clear for some time that they were not going to be able to squeeze in a nomination hearing before Congress went on recess this week, but there is a desire to get the two confirmed in advance of the Apollo 11 40th anniversary events later in July. Also note that Bolden and Garver are just two of the five nominees that will be the subject of the hearing.
It’s worth noting that despite all the claims made when the nominations were announced on May 23 to confirm them expediently, the two will take longer than confirm than Mike Griffin, who took about one month from the time his nomination was announced in mid-March 2005 to when he was confirmed by the full Senate. And that doesn’t factor in any potential complications that could delay the confirmation (not likely at this stage, but always possible when any member of the Senate can put a hold on any nomination for any reason, regardless of whether it’s related to the nominee or not.)
By Jeff Foust on 2009 June 25 at 12:38 pm ET The Commerce, Justice, and Science subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee marked up their FY2010 appropriations bill yesterday and appear to have more closely followed the White House’s request than the House did earlier this month. According to the summary, the bill provides $18.68 billion for NASA overall, equal to the administration’s topline request. The summary doesn’t give the full breakout of funds by account so it’s hard to tell how closely this matches the president’s request (especially if they created a “Construction and environmental compliance” account like the House did.)
Also unclear is the fate of some smaller programs, like Centennial Challenges and related innovation efforts that are feared to be on the chopping block despite their small ($20 million) price tag. However, we do know thanks to the Orlando Sentinel that the bill includes three earmarks for Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL) totaling $1.6 million, primarily for facilities at the Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.
The full Senate Appropriations Committee is scheduled to take up the bill at 3 pm this afternoon.
By Jeff Foust on 2009 June 24 at 7:32 am ET The Senate Appropriations Committee is scheduled to take action this week on an appropriations bill that includes funding for NASA. The Commerce, Justice, and Science (CJS) appropriations committee will markup its version of the bill at 2:30 pm today (138 Dirksen); the full appropriations committee will then deal with the bill tomorrow at 3 pm (106 Dirksen). Recall that the full House passed a CJS appropriations bill, HR 2847, last week that funded NASA at $18.2 billion for fiscal year 2010, including a significant cut in exploration.
By Jeff Foust on 2009 June 18 at 11:10 am ET I was at the Augustine committee meeting in DC yesterday, the first public meeting (of four currently planned) to solicit input on the future of NASA’s human spaceflight plans. Since the process is just now underway, it’s hard to draw too many conclusions about the meeting, but I did want to pass along some thoughts and observations from the meeting for those who weren’t there:
* The meeting was very much an information-gathering meeting, and at times seemed like drinking from a firehose: they went from 9 am to 5 pm with only a short break (originally 30 minutes, but stretched out in practice to more like 45) for lunch. The meeting was a series of presentations, ranging from the status of Constellation to proposals for alternatives, as well as perspectives from the White House (science advisor John Holdren), Congress (Rep. Pete Olson and Sen. Bill Nelson, with submissions read for the record from Rep. Ralph Hall and Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison) and international partners (ESA’s Jean-Jacques Dordain and Roskosmos’s Anatoly Perminov).
* If the committee members had any initial opinions about the current status of NASA’s activities, they largely kept them to themselves, instead keeping to asking questions or making some basic concluding comments at the end of the day. Three of the ten committee members – Charles Kennel, Lester Lyles, and Sally Ride – had prior commitments and were not at the meeting.
* The afternoon session was largely devoted to either alternatives to the current Constellation system (EELV, DIRECT, and a shuttle-derived side-mount proposal) and COTS/ISS commercial resupply. A lot of attention in particular was devoted to the DIRECT concept, presented by Stephen Metschan. Depending on your point of view the committee seemed either interested in or skeptical about the idea (I heard both reactions afterwards) although the latter seemed evident in Leroy Chiao’s question to Metschan: “Who are you guys?”
* More interesting than the DIRECT presentation, though (since the merits and demerits of DIRECT have been widely discussed for some time now) was United Launch Alliance’s presentation on EELV alternatives to Ares, perhaps the most detailed public presentation to date by the company on this. Michael Gass, president and CEO of ULA, said that a modified Delta 4 Heavy could launch Orion as early as 2014 with a performance margin in excess of 20%. That would require $800 million for a new pad and $500 million in human-rating work, and then $300 million a launch. He also said Atlas 5 could start commercial crew missions to ISS in 2013 (with another company providing the spacecraft); that would require $400 million in non-recurring costs and then $130 million a launch. Gary Pulliam of the Aerospace Corporation then followed with a summary of their EELV-vs-Ares study previously reported.
* In brief comments early in the day, Holdren reiterated that President Obama is interested in space, noting his conversations with the crews of the last two shuttle missions, adding that Obama would continue the practice in the future. Obama, Holdren said, “is excited by human spaceflight… this is a president who gets it, he understands the importance of space, he understands the importance of human spaceflight.”
* Several people, including Sen. Nelson, said that they believed that the committee has particular power to shape the future of the country’s human spaceflight effort with their recommendations. “In essence, what you decide is going to be the significant influence for the White House, and therefore also for the Congress,” he said in brief remarks just before lunch. However, what the committee will provide is just that: recommendations. Augustine said in a press conference after the meeting that they would provide the White House with a number of options, graded against a set of criteria (risk, cost, capability) they are still developing. Like so many other panels in the past, it will be up to the White House and Congress to turn those recommendations into policies, plans, and legislation. And the historical track record is not necessarily promising.
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