By Jeff Foust on 2009 June 9 at 8:54 pm ET The full House Appropriations Committee carried out their markup of the Commerce, Justice, and Science appropriations for FY10 and made no significant changes, if any at all, to what the subcommittee approved, keeping the agency at $18.2 billion overall. The cut in exploration remained intact “pending the recommendations of the Augustine panel”. Few other details were included in the release, although the bill should show up in Thomas later this week.
The bill now heads to the House floor. A tentative schedule released by the appropriations committee calls for the CJS bill to be debated next Tuesday and Wednesday. By coincidence, the Augustine panel is scheduled to hold its first public meeting next Wednesday in DC.
By Jeff Foust on 2009 June 9 at 6:50 am ET In this off year in the Congressional election cycle, one of the few elections of interest is the Virginia gubernatorial race. The primaries are today, although only the Democratic nomination is contested, with three major candidates: Creigh Deeds, Terry McAuliffe, and Brian Moran. The good news for space advocates in the state is that all three Democrats, as well as Republican Bob McDonnell, have all endorsed continued development of the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS) at Wallops Island.
Among the Democratic candidates, Deeds and McAuliffe endorsed additional funding for MARS at a forum in April, according to Jack Kennedy’s Spaceports blog. McAuliffe, the former head of the Democratic National Committee, added that he would “leverage his contacts to pull more commercial space launch firms” to the facility. Moran, meanwhile, expressed his support for the spaceport in a Washington Post online chat last month, saying that MARS has “tremendous potential”.
McDonnell, meanwhile, expressed his support for MARS in an interview with Human Events last week. He didn’t explicitly say he would increase funding for the spaceport, but did say that “there are some things to do to boost state support of that, to help them with more research and development, to help them get more contracts.” MARS also is mentioned at the very end of the “Jobs and Economic Growth” section of his campaign web site: “We will set a goal of developing the top commercial space port in the country at Wallops Island on the Eastern Shore.”
The same section of McDonnell’s web site also notes his support for “the safe offshore exploration and drilling of oil and natural gas”. This could, potentially, raise a conflict with the spaceport: some fear that offshore drilling operations could sharply restrict or event prevent launch operations from Wallops because of range safety concerns. Moran raised that point in his Washington Post chat: “We can’t realize the potential of this innovative approach if we build oil rigs off the Eastern Shore.”
By Jeff Foust on 2009 June 8 at 10:05 pm ET Space News reports in its print edition this week that Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) is holding up the release of “most if not all” of the $1 billion allocated to NASA in the stimulus bill approved earlier this year. The problem is that NASA is planning to spend $150 million of the $400 million appropriated to exploration for ISS commercial resupply activity, including early work to support commercial crew missions to the station. As you may recall, Shelby expressed his opposition to such spending in a hearing last month, saying that “manned spaceflight is something that is still in the realm of government” and that companies like SpaceX that have proposed such flights “cannot substitute for the painful truth of failed performance at present.”
According to the article (not available online to the best of my knowledge) several congressional sources confirmed Shelby’s hold on the funding, although his office had not provided any comment to the publication prior to going to press. (While not explicitly stated in the article, Shelby is apparently holding up approval of the spending plan that NASA was required to submit to Congress within 60 days of the bill’s enactment.) According to the article “meetings were under way at press time to resolve the standoff”.
By Jeff Foust on 2009 June 8 at 8:13 pm ET On Tuesday the full House Appropriations Committee is scheduled to take up the markup of the Commerce, Justice, and Science (CJS) appropriations that the subcommittee handled last week, slashing several hundred million from the administration’s proposal and calling a “time-out” on exploration. In a bid to try and reverse that cut, two members have put out a bipartisan appeal to the committee leadership. Reps. Suzanne Kosmas (D-FL) and Bill Posey (R-FL), who represent adjacent districts on Florida’s Space Coast, asked Committee chairman David Obey and ranking member Jerry Lewis to restore funding to NASA. “[W]e urge you to increase topline funding for NASA to at least match the President’s request of $18.686 billion and to provide additional funding for the development of our next generation exploration capabilities,” they write in the letter, which also went to the chair and ranking member of the CJS subcommittee.
Later in the letter: “We believe the current level of funding as passed by the CJS subcommittee is inadequate for the future of our human space flight program.” They also asked the committee leadership for its assurance that, once Review of U.S. Human Space Flight Plans Committee (aka the Augustine Committee) issues its recommendations, “the Congress will also work to provide appropriate resources later this summer and not wait until next year’s budget cycle.”
Will this be effective? Another way of asking the question is this: how persuaded would Congressman Obey, who has been skeptical of NASA exploration programs in the past, be by a request from two freshman members of Congress, one of which from the minority party? At the very least, it makes Reps. Kosmas and Posey appear hard at work protecting the interests of their constituents.
By Jeff Foust on 2009 June 8 at 8:12 pm ET In you missed it at the end of last week, the web site of the Review of U.S. Human Space Flight Plans Committee (better known as the Augustine Committee after its chairman, Norm Augustine) now has a web site. There’s a strong focus on interactivity here: there’s a list of questions submitted by the public, with answers; you can even vote up or down questions and suggestions submitted by others. (Hopefully they don’t get “rickrolled” like another online poll earlier this year about who should be administrator.) The committee also has an account on the popular microblogging service Twitter, where they provide updates in 140-character bites. (They even have an old-fashioned email address for submitting documents and other inquiries.)
There’s also a tentative schedule of committee hearings and other events, starting with the previously-announced June 17th public meeting in Washington. Additional public hearings are planned for July 28 (Huntsville), July 30 (Cape Canaveral), and August 5 (Washington); there’s also a closed “fact finding meeting” July 29 in Houston (why no love for the public in Houston?)
By Jeff Foust on 2009 June 4 at 12:55 pm ET The Commerce, Justice, and Science subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee held a markup of their fiscal year 2010 appropriations bill on Thursday morning. (Because of a typo it originally appeared on their web site that they would be meeting at 9 pm, rather than 9 am; in any case the markup session wasn’t webcast.) The top level figures for NASA’s main accounts that came out of the markup are as follows:
| Account |
FY09 |
FY10 Request |
FY10 Markup |
| Science |
4,503.0 |
4,477.2 |
4,496.1 |
| Aeronautics |
500.0 |
507.0 |
501.0 |
| Exploration |
3,505.5 |
3,963.1 |
3,293.2 |
| Space operations |
5,764.7 |
6,175.6 |
6,097.3 |
| Education |
169.2 |
126.1 |
175.0 |
| Cross agency support |
3,306.4 |
3,400.6 |
3,164.0 |
| Construction and environmental compliance |
0.0 |
0.0 |
441.7 |
| Office of Inspector General |
33.6 |
36.4 |
35.0 |
| TOTAL |
17,782.4 |
18,686.0 |
18,203.3 |
[Source document. All values in millions of dollars.]
The biggest change is that Exploration is cut significantly, from $3.96 billion in the President’s request to $3.29 billion in the markup. In an accompanying statement, subcommittee chairman Rep. Alan Mollohan (D-WV) says that uncertainty about NASA’s future exploration direction is the reason for this temporary “time-out” in spending:
For NASA, the bill provides a total of $18.2 billion, an increase of $421 million over last year’s level. Investments have been made in Earth science to further the decadal surveys. The recommendation, however, acknowledges that the Administration has established a blue ribbon panel, led by Dr. Norm Augustine, to review the current vision for human space flight. Funds are provided in the bill to continue investments in human space flight at the same level as provided in fiscal year 2009. Reductions from the budget request should not be viewed as a diminution of my support or that of the Subcommittee in NASA’s human space flight activities. Rather, the deferral is taken without prejudice; it is a pause, a time-out, to allow the President to establish his vision for human space exploration and to commit to realistic future funding levels to realize this vision.
The Subcommittee looks forward to receiving the findings of Dr. Augustine’s panel and the recommendation of the Administration on the way forward. I do believe, however, in order to avoid continuing cost increases and further delays in the initial operating capability of our Nation’s next generation of human space flight architecture to follow the Shuttle’s successful and impressive run, it is imperative that the Administration and Congress provide the necessary resources to meet that policy directive – in the annual President’s budget and the annual Congressional budget process. When President Kennedy said we would put a man on the moon, the Nation followed – in spirit and with the resources to get the job done. We collectively should do no differently today.
The other major change is the creation of a new line item, “Construction and environmental compliance”, with over $440 million in FY10, nearly as much as aeronautics. No explanation is included in Mollohan’s statement about the funding.
By Jeff Foust on 2009 June 3 at 7:59 am ET While working on a recent article about Charles Bolden’s nomination to be NASA administrator, I checked out the latest report by the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel (ASAP), the independent review panel that Bolden has been a member of the last few years. There wasn’t much in the panel’s findings that could be directly tied to Bolden, but there was something else interesting in the 2008 report, published a little over a month ago: a memo from then-administrator Mike Griffin. The memo, dated November 10, 2008, responded to a set of questions posed by ASAP on “agency transition issues prior to the presidential transition” and could be, in a sense, be considered something of an exit interview by Griffin (although at the time he was still hoping to be retained by the incoming administration.)
Perhaps the most interesting question posed by ASAP is their request for the top five goals for the next administrator, since, as it turns out, ASAP’s membership included the person picked to be the next administrator. Griffin’s response, summarized:
- Retain the current exploration strategy, the “matrix management” system reestablished by Griffin, and remove “excess process” from the agency. “If these things are not done, nothing else counts.”
- Seek additional funding for NASA, on the order of $3 billion a year “to repair and upgrade our institutional infrastructure, initiate sorely needed research and technology development efforts, and robustly execute those programs with which we are already charged.”
- Greater direct interaction between the president and the NASA administrator “to minimize and control attempts by, and the deleterious effects of, numerous White House EOP [Executive Office of the President] staff imposing their personal agendas on the conduct of NASA affairs.” He continues: “The president owes it to his NASA Administrator to ensure that other voices and other agendas are not prevailing over that of the president, merely because they can. The ‘mattress mice’ — many of them career civil servants, not political appointees — who serve on the EOP staff are always there.”
- The need for “top-level technical and program management talent”, with experience in the space business, in top management positions at NASA. “We spent almost 15 years conducting an experiment at NASA, an experiment whose purpose seemed to be to demonstrate that it was possible for people without relevant domain expertise to manage a highly technical agency. It did not work.”
- “Re-establish the freedom to fail, now and then, without requiring that heads roll.” He worries that without that freedom the agency will become too conservative in the programs it pursues. “In my opinion, it would be a good idea if every policymaker had to pass a regular test on the content of President Theodore Roosevelt’s famous ‘Man in the Arena’ speech.”
Some other highlights of the memo:
- When asked what about the job was either harder or easier than expected, Griffin said nothing. “I’ve really had few surprises, if any, in this job.” By comparison, associate administrator (and current acting administrator) Chris Scolese, responding to the same questions in a separate memo also included in the ASAP report, provided a detailed list of items for both.
- Asked what he would do differently if he could start over, Griffin indicated that he made a few picks for key management positions in NASA that he later regretted. “Two or three of those choices have been quite poor, and the responsibility for them lies absolutely with me. If I could ‘start over’, I would make better choices for those positions.” He added that he also would have “eschewed any commentary on global warming”.
- Griffin said in another question that (not surprisingly) he thought NASA was on the right path with its exploration strategy. “It is imperative that progress continue on the exploration strategy without a new round of soul-searching debate or another extensive study. Any delay will only serve to increase the gap in U.S. human spaceflight capabilities, and further erode our leadership in human space exploration.”
By Jeff Foust on 2009 June 2 at 7:50 am ET On Monday NASA formally announced the members of the Augustine panel, with few, if any, surprises in its membership. Most of the names had been previously reported by the Orlando Sentinel on Thursday (and another, Leroy Chiao, on Friday); the only name missing was Charles Kennel.
Also on Monday, acting administrator Chris Scolese signed the committee’s charter, identifying four key objectives:
1) expediting a new U.S. capability to support utilization of the International Space Station (ISS);
2) supporting missions to the Moon and other destinations beyond low-Earth orbit (LEO);
3) stimulating commercial space flight capability;
4) fitting within the current budget profile for NASA exploration activities.
In addition to those objectives, the panel should, according to the charter, “the review should examine the appropriate amount of research and development and complementary robotic activities needed to make human space flight activities most productive and affordable over the long term, as well as appropriate opportunities for international collaboration. It should also evaluate what capabilities would be enabled by each of the potential architectures considered. It should evaluate options for extending ISS operations beyond 2016.”
One interesting item in the charter: the committee is supposed to issue its final report “within 120 days of the first meeting” of the committee, yet the panel is also supposed to “present its results in time to support an administration decision on the way forward by August 2009″, according to the press release. A quick check of the calendar confirms that the end of August is only about 90 days away, not 120.
In yesterday’s issue of The Space Review, I report on some comments about the Augustine committee and what it should do from the ISDC. Much of it is from comments by now-confirmed panelist Jeff Greason previously reported here, but there are some other comments from the likes of Buzz Aldrin and Robert Zubrin. Both of them would like to see the panel recommend a shift of emphasis from the Moon to Mars.
Finally, committee member Leroy Chiao is openly soliciting ideas to be considered by the panel on his blog.
By Jeff Foust on 2009 May 29 at 8:01 am ET The Orlando Sentinel published yesterday a list of likely members of the human spaceflight review panel to be chaired by Norm Augustine. The names haven’t been formally announced and are subject to change (and aren’t complete, as the Sentinel’s list includes eight people, plus Augustine, for a planned ten-person panel.) However, presumably a final should be out soon, particularly because it’s been three weeks since the panel was announced to perform a 90-day review.
Many of the names on the list, like Lester Lyles and Sally Ride, aren’t surprising, given their backgrounds and previous experiences on such panels. One name that did stand out, though, was Jeff Greason, the president and founder of XCOR Aerospace, a NewSpace company. If that list is correct, it does put into a different context his speech at the International Space Development Conference in Orlando on Thursday morning. Much of his talk was about what XCOR is doing, particularly in the development of its Lynx suborbital vehicle, but he also did take some to talk about NASA and civil space policy.
“There’s been a lot of discussion over the years about what NASA is doing and what NASA should so, but there’s a question that gets asked far too seldom, which is why do we have NASA?” he said, adding that he was expressing solely his own opinions. “Why do we have a civil space program at all? What’s it for? Any discussion about what NASA should do or how it should do it—which is the thing we all do talk about a lot—presupposes an agreement on why we are doing it at all that I don’t think exists.”
The closest thing to a NASA mission statement, Greason said, was the first five objectives outlined in section 102(d) of the National Aeronautics and Space Act, the legislation that created NASA:
(1) The expansion of human knowledge of the Earth and of phenomena in the atmosphere and space;
(2) The improvement of the usefulness, performance, speed, safety, and efficiency of aeronautical and space vehicles;
(3) The development and operation of vehicles capable of carrying instruments, equipment, supplies, and living organisms through space;
(4) The establishment of long-range studies of the potential benefits to be gained from, the opportunities for, and the problems involved in the utilization of aeronautical and space activities for peaceful and scientific purposes;
(5) The preservation of the role of the United States as a leader in aeronautical and space science and technology and in the application thereof to the conduct of peaceful activities within and outside the atmosphere;
That was crafted in the Cold War-fueled Space Race between the US and USSR, but he said that even today “this set of mission states does wrap around a key set of central objectives for NASA that makes sense.” Any discussion of NASA versus the private sector, he added, “totally misses the point that they are two halves of a common goal.” That is, he said, because the exploration that part of NASA’s mission helps the country prosper (as exploration has helped other civilizations prosper in the past), but only if people can do something with the knowledge gained from such exploration.
“That is the one thing we have lost sight of in our civil space program, and that’s the why we do what we do,” he said. “There is an infinitely large number of ways that you can go about exploring, but there is not an infinitely large subset of those ways which not only result in exploration, but would also result in a path left behind… and things being done in a way that the nation and the world can make use of what we have found.”
He said that, given the limited budgets available for NASA, the nation should focus on space exploration in such a way that “views it as an integrated whole”, so that it fulfills all the goals mentioned in the NASA “mission statement”. That includes item number 4, studying the potential benefits of these activities, something that he said he rarely hears discussed. “That’s a clarion call that we’ve missed for why we do what we do, and why we should do things differently going forward.”
By Jeff Foust on 2009 May 29 at 6:15 am ET Last week Sen. Bill Nelson made a vigorous defense of COTS Capability D (COTS-D) during a hearing with acting NASA administrator Chris Scolese, pressing Scolese on why NASA wasn’t funding Space Act agreements for COTS-D as directed by the NASA Authorization Act of 2008. Those comments stood out in broad relief compared to the criticism directed towards commercial ISS crew transportation made earlier the same day by Sen. Richard Shelby.
Now, the Orlando Sentinel reports, Nelson may be backtracking on that support, claiming that he wasn’t necessarily supporting COTS-D, despite his comments in last Thursday’s hearing. “Whatever you heard, I want to make sure you understand I wasn’t specifically pushing COTS-D,” Nelson told the Sentinel. “What I was pushing was launch complex 36 [at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station]. … COTS-D first off is a human-rated program and that has not been sanctioned by NASA yet.â€
It’s hard to go back to Nelson’s statements last week and conclude that he was somehow referring to LC-36. One of the major criticisms of efforts to develop LC-36 into a new commercial launch facility, the paper noted, is the lack of customers for it, something that COTS-D would not address: SpaceX has its own site at Cape Canaveral; ULA has existing facilities for Atlas 5 and Delta 4 that would likely be used for any potential ISS crew transportation efforts; and Orbital Sciences, if it decided to pursue ISS crew transportation in the future (it’s not now), is investing in the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport in Virginia. The connection between COTS-D and LC-36 appears all but non-existent.
Meanwhile, in a panel on COTS at the International Space Development Conference in Orlando on Thursday afternoon, Alan Lindenmoyer, manager of NASA’s Commercial Crew and Cargo Program Office, was asked by NASA didn’t fund SpaceX’s COTS-D option. Lindenmoyer suggested it was solely a matter of funding: that option was valued at $300 million, while NASA was only offering $150 million in stimulus funding for commercial crew programs. “We just simply don’t have the funding appropriated at this time to execute the option or pursue any other COTS-D capability at this time,” he said. That seemed to suggest that if they had $300 million available, they would have considered the existing option in the SpaceX agreement; Scolese, in the hearing last week, indicated that he felt they would need “several times” the $150 million available to demonstrate a commercial crew transportation capability.
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