Space Politics

Holdren hearing today

By Jeff Foust on 2009 May 14 at 7:30 am ET

The House Science and Technology Committee is holding a hearing titled “An Overview of the Federal R&D Budget for FY 2010″ this afternoon at 2 pm. The witness will be OSTP director John Holdren. While that’s a pretty broad scope, a few questions about NASA and related policy issues seem likely. There will also be a separate hearing next week on NASA’s FY10 budget proposal with acting administrator Chris Scolese scheduled to testify.

Waiting for Augustine

By Jeff Foust on 2009 May 14 at 7:25 am ET

It is, perhaps, a little surprising that nearly a week after the White House announced that it would conduct an independent review of NASA’s human spaceflight plans, few additional details about that review have been announced. Beyond the chairman, Norm Augustine, the other members of the panel haven’t been announced, nor any additional details about that review beyond what Augustine conveyed in a brief telecon with reporters last Friday. With only about 90 days to perform their work, one assumes those details will be forthcoming very soon.

In the meantime, though, the lack of detail has allowed people to make their own, widely varying guesses about what the panel will conclude. Sen. Bill Nelson said that he expects the panel to endorse the current Constellation architecture. “Then if the president will get behind pushing that, we can speed up development of the new rocket,” Nelson said, according to WDBO radio. Robert Lightfoot, acting director of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, told the Huntsville Times that it will be “a very fair study”. Curiously, he adds that not only will Marshall have a member on Augustine’s panel, “all the centers will” (which makes you wonder how independent this panel is, if correct.) On the other hand, in an essay in this week’s issue of The Space Review, Michael Huang fears the worst for human spaceflight given Augustine’s work on his 1990 commission, which emphasized space science over human spaceflight.

And from the Department of Bad Timing, Aviation Week published an interview with Augustine, but with nothing about the panel he would be chairing. Presumably the interview took place prior to Augustine’s appointment to run the panel, with no opportunity to follow up before publication.

Stephen Harper: was once “inspired to dream of space travel”

By Jeff Foust on 2009 May 13 at 9:19 pm ET

Remember last year when then-candidate Barack Obama recalled growing up on Star Trek and believing in the final frontier? Turns out he’s not the only global leader who claims finding inspiration in space (real or fictional) at an early age. On Wednesday the Canadian Space Agency announced its two newest astronauts, an announcement that warranted a statement from Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper. The statement includes some generic platitudes about the two men selected and the “incredible depth of talent in Canada” in the form of the 5,351 applicants for the two openings. “I am excited to meet these two Canadians who may be travelling into space,” Harper added. “I was one of many young people who were inspired to dream of space travel after hearing of the first manned spaceflights.”

Augustine and Griffin from the archives

By Jeff Foust on 2009 May 8 at 7:12 am ET

As expected, the White House has ordered an independent review of Constellation to be chaired by Norm Augustine and be completed by August. That exploration architecture is at the heart of Mike Griffin’s legacy at NASA administrator. So it was interesting that someone reminded me that both Augustine and Griffin were witnesses at the same hearing of the House Science Committee back in March 2004, when the committee was taking an initial look at the Vision for Space Exploration announced two months earlier. Augustine appeared in his role as former chairman of the “Committee on the Future of the U.S. Space Program” (aka the Augustine Commission) in 1990, while Griffin spoke as president of In-Q-Tel and incoming head of the Space Department at APL (the hearing took place almost exactly one year before Griffin was nominated to become NASA administrator).

Given that one of the major criticisms of Constellation has been its cost (in addition to technical and schedule issues, which also affect its cost), it was interesting to see some of their comments in the prepared testimony. Augustine had this to say about spending:

[I]t would be a grave mistake to try to pursue a space program â€œon the cheapâ€. To do so is in my opinion an invitation to disaster. There is a tendency in any â€œcan-doâ€ organization to believe that it can operate with almost any budget that is made available. The fact is that trying to do so is a mistakeâ€”particularly when safety is a major consideration. I am not arguing for profligacy; rather, I am simply pointing out that space activity is expensive and that it is difficult. One might even say that it is rocket science!

Griffin, meanwhile, addressed costs in greater detail in his remarks, suggesting that the initial estimates of the cost of developing the infrastructure needed to return to the Moon might, if anything, be “somewhat high”. He adds:

Additional perspective can be gained by noting that the cost of the entire Apollo program was about $130 B in todayâ€™s dollars. This included massive technology and infrastructure development, as well as the operational cost of eleven manned missions, including six lunar landings. It does not seem reasonable that 40% or more of this figure should be required to execute a single mission of a similar class today.

For advocates of spaceflight, including myself, more money is always better, and is certainly preferable to less money! But I would submit that our first order of business is to examine our culture, the aerospace culture, and ourselves, to understand why we believe it costs so very much more to operate in space than to perform almost any other human activity.

According to a committee press release, Griffin, when asked by Congressman Dana Rohrabacher about the costs of going to the Moon and Mars, said, “I believe that the first expeditions to Mars should be accomplishable within an amount of funding approximately equal to what we spent on Apollo…in today’s dollars, about $130 billion. Certainly that would envelope it. I believe that it should be possible to return to the moon for in the neighborhood of $30 billion in today’s dollars. And those are both fairly comfortable amounts.”

With the costs of returning to the Moon now significantly higher than what Griffin personally estimated five years ago, a key question for Augustine and his new panel is whether current plans are simply expensive and difficult, or profligate.

Holdren on Science Friday

By Jeff Foust on 2009 May 8 at 6:27 am ET

This afternoon presidential science advisor John Holdren will appear on NPR’s “Science Friday” broadcast to talk about, among other issues, “the road ahead for NASA”. Potential topics there could include the human spaceflight review announced yesterday, the status of the recreation of the National Space Council, and the FY2010 budget.

Budget and policy discussion area

By Jeff Foust on 2009 May 7 at 6:47 am ET

I am tied up all day today at a space debris workshop at McGill University in Montreal, so I won’t be providing updates on the budget details released later today until tonight. So I’m leaving this post open to comment on the budget and any other policy announcements (such as the anticipated Constellation review) that might come out today.

Cautious optimism about space in Canada

By Jeff Foust on 2009 May 7 at 6:42 am ET

the aftermath of the attempted acquisition of MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates’ (MDA) space unit by American company ATK, a deal that was eventually blocked by the Canadian government. Shortly after that a Canadian think tank, the Rideau Institute, issued a white paper on Canadian space policy calling for, among other things, the appointment of a permanent president of the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) and the formulation of a national space policy.

Yesterday the Rideau Institute released a 2009 version of its assessment of Canada’s space sector, and saw signs of improvement. Plans by the Canadian goverment to add C$110 million to CSA’s budget over the next three years, as well as the appointment last fall of Steve MacLean as CSA’s new president, are favorably assessed in the report, as is an ongoing effort to develop a strategic plan for the space agency. The report adds that despite the current recession “observers of the Canadian space sector are optimistic about the year ahead.” However, the report notes that “the underlying problems affecting the agency [CSA] have remained largely unsolved” and that they are no closer to a government-wide space policy desired by many in the Canadian space field.

Nine shuttle missions in under 140 characters

By Jeff Foust on 2009 May 6 at 9:12 pm ET

It would seem that shuttle supporters have won a victory in their efforts to last keep all the remaining missions on the manifest despite the looming September 2010 deadline for its retirement—and chose an unusual means of announcing it. “White House tells me the president will fly all nine remaining shuttle missions – even if it means flying the shuttle an extra year,” said Sen. Bill Nelson (or at least someone representing the senator) via the microblogging service Twitter. Nelson didn’t say anything else, although Florida Today provides a little more detail: that news came out of briefings with the White House over the last two days, although the White House still believes that the remaining missions can be flown by the end of FY 2010.

Reviewing Griffin’s tenure at NASA

By Jeff Foust on 2009 May 6 at 12:23 pm ET

While we await the NASA budget tomorrow and a potential announcement of a review that could put the future of Constellation (at least in its current configuration) in question, it may be useful to look back at Griffin’s nearly four years as NASA administrator. A reader pointed me to a new white paper, Launching a New Mission: Michael Griffin and NASAâ€™s Return to the Moon, published late last month by the IBM Center for Business in Government. The report is written by W. Henry Lambright, a professor of public administration and political science at Syracuse University; Lambright also wrote similar studies of Griffin’s two predecessors, Sean O’Keefe and Dan Goldin.

The report is a chronological overview of Griffin’s time at NASA, along with a set of lessons learned at the end. Most of the material should be familiar to people who followed NASA affairs in the last four years, although one passage (on page 16) caught my attention, regarding a late 2005 meeting at the White House that featured President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Griffin, and several other key officials about the future of NASA and its budget:

Decision making escalated to political levels of the White House in December 2005. President Bush did not customarily intervene in agency-OMB budget fights. He was a delegator, and saw his decision role as strategic, not tactical. That he was willing to have a White House meeting of â€œprincipals,â€ including himself, was indicative of the importance of this juncture in the implementation of his 2004 decision. the nasa shuttle budget crisis was pivotal in how well and quickly implementation could go. Griffin wanted the Moon-Mars program carried out, but many other non-NASA priorities argued for holding expenditures to the absolute minimum.

The key protagonists at the meeting were OMB director Bolton and NASA administrator Griffin. President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Science Advisor John Marburger, a State Department representative, and various other officials and aides attended. The questions to be decided came down to two. First, should NASA fly out the shuttle to 2010, finish the space station, or not do so? Second, should the Science Mission Directorate be flat-lined with funds reallocated to Human Space Flight to mitigate the shuttle shortfall? Doing so would protect the new exploration mission and make it possible to accelerate Orion/Ares.

Bolton spoke for OMB. His position was that the shuttle and space station programs should end early. OMB especially opposed spending more money on the shuttle. â€œit sucks money out of the budget and is a dead-end program,â€ was the longstanding OMB view. Griffin argued that Americaâ€™s good faith with its international partners was at stake in finishing ISS, and to do that NASA needed the shuttle. The State Department representative spoke up for the interests of the partners. Cheney raised the issue of shuttle safety. Bush asked about the possibility of another accident. Griffin said the odds were one in one hundred. Bush indicated that was acceptable. The president wanted to know what would happen if he ended the shuttle and space station programs early. â€œYou could do that,â€ Candida Wolfe, his legislative aide, responded, â€œbut Congress would overturn your decision.â€ Congress would be cognizant of the domestic job losses as well as international partner considerations. Bush decided that NASA would stay the course—fly out the shuttle to 2010 and complete the space station.

The second question had to do with the transfer of money from science to shuttle and thereby protection/acceleration of manned exploration. Griffin argued in favor of the science flat-lining strategy. OMB opposed this position. Science Advisor Marburger spoke up in favor of science as a priority. The presidentâ€™s decision was to give NASA a modest overall raise. Science would also get a small raise while the shuttle continued. Exploration Systems would thus have to pay for some of the extra shuttle costs. Griffin would not have the money needed to accelerate Orion/Ares, but enough to keep the original goal of 2014.

As Griffin saw it, he won his dispute with OMB on the first question, and lost on the second.

The source for that section, according to the footnotes, was an interview Lambright had with Griffin last February.

That long-awaited Constellation review

By Jeff Foust on 2009 May 6 at 4:37 am ET

It appears that a review of NASA’s Constellation program that had been anticipated by many for weeks, if not months, will finally be moving forward. The Orlando Sentinel reported yesterday afternoon that the White house will officially order that review later this week, perhaps when the detailed NASA budget request for FY2010 is released on Thursday. The review could start later this month and be done in 60 to 90 days. According to Florida Today, the likely chair of the review panel will be Norm Augustine, former chairman and CEO of Lockheed Martin (and neither Lori Garver nor Pete Worden, contrary to previous reports). The White House declined to comment on the upcoming review, telling Florida Today only that “the administration believes it is extremely important to ensure that the nation is on a vigorous and sustainable path to achieving its boldest aspirations in space.”

Such a review would not seem to bode well for the Ares 1 in particular, but at least one supporter remained confident about its prospects despite the impending review. “The Ares 1 and 5 vehicles have been through several studies and reviews and I am confident that any additional study will show that the Ares program is our best option to take our astronauts safely to the space station and beyond,” Congressman Parker Griffith (D-AL) told the Huntsville Times.