By Jeff Foust on 2009 March 9 at 1:19 pm ET In today’s issue of The Space Review, I have an article summarizing a recent space policy roundtable in DC organized by CSIS. (Because of the ground rules of the discussion, none of the comments are attributed to any of the attendees.) A quick summary of the article:
- The problem is not developing policy but actually carrying it out: as one speaker put it, “But as we now understand, policy is not self-actualizing.”
- At least part of that problem with implementing policy is a lack of executive leadership for space, in both a “fragmentation” of authority among various agencies and a lack of strong leadership in the White House. “The bottom line is that the country really isn’t serious about getting a good space program,” one panelist said, resulting in a space program that is “good enough” but not good.
- The panelists were not enthused by President Obama’s proposal to re-establish the National Space Council. Some advocated an alternative approach that would create something like a senior director for space within the National Security Council, with a small staff; that would tie it closer to the national security space community and also allow for short lines of communications into the president’s inner circle.
By Jeff Foust on 2009 March 5 at 6:54 am ET A Florida Today article reports on a hearing by the Commerce, Justice, and Science subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee on “The Place of NASA & NSF in the Overall Science Enterprise” (a hearing that, unfortunately, was neither webcast nor summarized by the subcommittee). At the hearing, Congressman Frank Wolf (R-VA) argued that a lack of a permanent administrator was hurting NASA in budget talks. The administration is making major budget decisions for the agency and “NASA needs to be at the table when these decisions are being made,” Wolf is quoted as saying.
If NASA was the only agency without confirmed new leadership (and if that leadership was really effective in negotiating budgets with the White House, a completely different issue), Wolf might have a point. However, many other federal agencies are at a similar disadvantage. As a front-page article in Wednesday’s Washington Post notes, intensified vetting and other delays have kept many appointees from being confirmed for various posts, with just 28 of 71 people “tapped” for positions having been confirmed, meaning that there are a lot of people in limbo, let alone those open positions like NASA administrator who yet to have a nominee. And nominations can be held up for reasons having nothing to do with the nominees themselves: the Post reported earlier this week that the nominations of OSTP director John Holdren and NOAA administrator Jane Lubchenco had been put on hold by Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) “as leverage to get Senate leaders’ attention for a matter related to Cuba rather than questioning the nominees’ credentials”.
This also suggests that even if the Obama Administration nominated someone to be NASA administrator today, he or she would not be in office for some time: the Post article on the nomination delays stated that the average time from nomination to confirmation was 65 days. If the NASA administrator position hewed to that average, that would mean the administrator would not be in place until early May, well after the complete FY10 budget submission makes its way to Congress. However, NASA won’t be the only agency in the same situation.
By Jeff Foust on 2009 March 5 at 6:46 am ET Give Rep. Parker Griffith (D-AL), the new congressman from northern Alabama, credit for a little humility: “When asked how much his being on the House Science Committee affected a boost in President Obama’s NASA budget outline, Congressman Parker Griffith smiled Friday and admitted, ‘Very little.'” And that’s probably an overestimate.
Also over the weekend, Rep. Pete Olson (R-TX), the new congressman from the Houston-area district that includes the Johnson Space Center, penned an op-ed for the Washington Times about NASA where he have the agency perhaps a little too much credit, writing: “NASA provides the only means our nation currently has to access space with manned and unmanned missions while also performing cutting edge research.” That NASA is the only means for unmanned missions to reach space will be something of a surprise to both the Defense Department and the private sector (the latter, in some cases, hoping to also provide the means for human spaceflight as well.)
By Jeff Foust on 2009 March 4 at 7:17 am ET Today is Florida Space Day, when representatives of the state’s space industry as well as Space Florida meet with state legislators in Tallahassee “to discuss the challenges we face in ensuring Florida remains at the forefront of the nation’s space program.” And that challenge, according to an article in today’s Orlando Sentinel, may be based in a neighboring state: unless “some miracle” revitalizes activity at Cape Canaveral in the near future, aerospace workers will leave the state “in droves” to take jobs with the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) in Huntsville, Alabama.
According to the article, United Space Alliance is in discussions with the Huntsville Chamber of Commerce to help secure positions with the MDA once the shuttle is retired; that effort would provide some guarantee for current shuttle workers so they’ll stay with the shuttle program through its final flights rather than leaving sooner for other work. (Exactly what the local chamber of commerce can do to help guarantee those government jobs isn’t clear.) As the article notes, there’s not much Florida officials can do about this other than root for budget cuts to the MDA by the new president, who “has not been a big fan of the system”.
This issue, though, may be something of a distraction from the internal problems facing Florida, including criticism of Space Florida and its effectiveness (as chronicled in The Space Review and the Sentinel in recent weeks.) As the Sentinel reported last week, industry representatives agreed to participate in Florida Space Day only if Space Florida’s $4-million budget request was removed from the agenda.
By Jeff Foust on 2009 February 27 at 9:00 pm ET You may recall a couple of weeks ago reports that the Obama Administration had narrowed down its list of candidates for NASA administrator to several, perhaps four, names. This afternoon the Orlando Sentinel reported who its sources say are those four. Three of the names have already come up in previous weeks: retired generals Charles Bolden, Scott Gration, and Lester Lyles. The fourth, those, is a new name to this race but a familiar name for many: Steve Isakowitz, the current CFO of the Energy Department and a former NASA and OMB official. (Some will also recognize him as the founding author of the International Reference Guide to Space Launch Systems, a popular reference guide to launch vehicles whose fourth edition was published in 2004 with Isakowitz as one of three co-authors.) The Sentinel adds that Isakowitz is the “frontrunner”, but doesn’t indicate when the race for that job will end: after all, a number of other frontrunners, including the three other names on the list, were all considered frontrunners at some point in the past but haven’t (yet) gotten the job.
By Jeff Foust on 2009 February 27 at 7:17 am ET Granted, there’s not much in that FY10 NASA budget summary released yesterday, but there’s just enough—both the topline budget number and the statements that commit the agency to retiring the shuttle in 2010 and returning humans to the Moon by 2020—to warrant a variety of reactions from the space community. Some highlights:
In a brief statement, acting NASA administrator Chris Scolese calls the proposal “fiscally responsible and reflects the administration’s desire for a robust and innovative agency”. The budget also gets a thumbs-up from the Coalition for Space Exploration, calling it a “vote of confidence for NASA by the President” and hoping that future budget specifics “address some of the fiscal challenges that NASA faces in future years.” Similarly, the Aerospace Industries Association expresses its support for NASA and other aviation and defense budget proposals. “In this remarkably difficult economic atmosphere, we are encouraged to see a budget proposal that recognizes the importance of our national security and invests in space and aviation priorities,” AIA president and CEO Marion Blakey said in the statement.
Not everyone is happy, though. “The budget proposal for NASA represents a disappointingly small step in the right direction,” said Space Foundation CEO Elliot Pulham in a statement. “Combined with the lingering absence of a NASA administrator, we are missing a golden opportunity to lead and inspire at a time when leadership and inspiration are crucial.”
Former NASA official Chris Shank, speaking with Space News [subscription required], is pleased with the near-term budget but has reservations about the future. Buried in a chart in the summary tables section of the budget outline [page 18 of the PDF document] is that the administration is projecting flat budgets for NASA after FY10: $18.6 billion in fiscal years 2011, 2012, and 2013, and $18.9 billion in 2014. “More money sooner is always better for program and project planning, but in 2012 to 2013, the consequence of that flatlined budget translates into $1 billion less than was previously planned.” he said, referring to Bush Administration outyear projections that had NASA’s budget growing at 2.4 percent a year.
In Florida, the apparent decision not to extend the life of the shuttle didn’t go over well with some. “We cannot fly the shuttle forever, but conducting shuttle launches on an arbitrary deadline is unsafe and unnecessary,” Rep. Suzanne Kosmas (D-FL), whose district includes the Kennedy Space Center, told Florida Today. She said that the administration also “must provide additional resources to minimize the gap between the shuttle program and Constellation in order to protect jobs at Kennedy Space Center and throughout Central Florida”. However, in a statement provided to the paper, Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL) was happy to see the administration endorse existing plans to return to the Moon and “to extend the shuttle if needed to complete work on the International Space Station”, a claim not necessarily supported by the language in the budget summary.
The budget proposal also gets words of encouragement from Alabama’s senators: both Richard Shelby and Jeff Sessions said they were “encouraged” by the size of the proposed budget. However, the Huntsville Times article curiously claims that “NASA will receive $1.4 billion extra next fiscal year for a variety of lunar missions”, although there is no breakout yet of how the $18.7 billion would be spent.
And what about the lack of specific references to Ares or Orion in the budget document? John Logsdon tells New Scientist not to read too much into that just yet. “I wouldn’t interpret the absence of the words ‘Constellation’, ‘Ares’, and ‘Orion’ one way or another. That’s really up to the new management team, when it gets there.”
Finally, this dispatch from the Department of Wishful Thinking, not about the FY10 budget but the stimulus bill passed earlier this month: a Deseret News article about whether any of that stimulus money will go to the Ares 1 development. “NASA has received $400 billion specifically earmarked for the space shuttle replacement. But it is not clear yet if any of those funds will be available to ATK for its portion of Ares.” [emphasis added, of course; the actual amount is $400 million]. Presumably for $400 billion you could get one heck of a “shuttle replacement”. Maybe.
By Jeff Foust on 2009 February 26 at 11:46 am ET The Obama Administration released this morning its FY10 budget outline, including a two-page section on NASA’s budget request. The document contains little additional information than what Aviationweek.com reported last night: only a topline figure of $18.7 billion is included in the document. The document emphasizes support for Earth sciences, aeronautics, ISS, and human and robotic exploration, without getting too deep into specifics.
The budget document does stick to the plan to retire the shuttle by the end of 2010, noting that “an additional flight may be conducted if it can safely and affordably be flown by the end of 2010″ as Congress requested in the 2008 NASA authorization bill. Also, the document does not mention Ares or Orion by name, instead stating that by retiring the shuttle, funding will be freed up “to support development of systems to deliver people and cargo to the International Space Station and the Moon”, including “private-sector development and demonstration of vehicles that may support the Agency’s human crew and cargo space flight requirements,” a reference to COTS and ISS commercial resupply.
By Jeff Foust on 2009 February 26 at 7:28 am ET Four out of four experts agree: there need to be reforms to the nation’s export control policies in order keep the US competitive in science and technology, particularly in space. That was the theme of a hearing Wednesday by the House Science and Technology Committee that explored the issue. Based on the statements by the four witnesses, as well as press releases from the full committee and the Republican caucus, most everyone is in agreement that there need to be changes so that regulations balance the need to ensure national security while allowing US companies a greater latitude in selling components overseas and collaborating with foreign companies and organizations. The exact path forward isn’t clear, although committee chairman Rep. Bart Gordon said that he hopes that an OSTP-led study of the effects of export control regulations, which was in the House version of the NASA authorization act of 2008 but dropped from the final version, will be carried out by the office anyway in the near future.
(Favorite quote from the committee press release, by Rep. Gabrielle Giffords: “Export control is not a subject that Americans discuss around the dinner table, but it does affect every one of us.” In the space industry, it seems, export control reform is discussed pretty much everywhere, including around the dinner table. Doing something about it, though, is another matter.)
However, one member of the committee, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, used a Wall Street Journal report [subscription required] about European satellite operator Eutelsat reportedly signing a deal to launch a satellite on a Chinese booster as a warning not to go too far in export control reform. In a statement released by his office, he agreed that ITAR reform is necessary but “we need to remain vigilant that our advanced technology doesn’t end up in the hands of nations who proliferate weapons of mass destruction”—specifically, the Chinese. Noting that Eutelsat sells communications services to the Defense Department, he claimed that “this is the beginning of a game of chicken between Eutelsat and the Obama administration. If the Obama administration does nothing, the message is clear—transferring technology to proliferators of weapons of mass destruction like the Peoples Republic of China is a perfectly acceptable business model.”
The flaw in this argument is that while the satellite Eutelsat plans to launch on a Chinese booster might contain technologies on the US Munitions List had they come from US companies, the satellite in question is most likely a so-called “ITAR-free” satellite built by Thales Alenia Space (such as the W3B satellite Eutelsat ordered from Thales last year) that contains no US-built components that would fall under the jurisdiction of the ITAR. It, in effect, becomes an argument for ITAR reform: since these components are now commercially available outside the US, controlling the ability of US companies to export the same components does little to ensure national security, and can even be counterproductive.
By Jeff Foust on 2009 February 25 at 8:59 pm ET On Thursday the Obama Administration is scheduled to release the “outline” of its FY2010 budget proposal (the complete budget proposal won’t be ready until late March or early April). Aviationweek.com reports that the administration will propose $18.7 billion for NASA for FY10. That would be nearly $1 billion more than what they agency is likely to get in the regular FY09 omnibus appropriations currently being considered by Congress. However, when the $1 billion in stimulus funding is added, it works out to about the same (although the stimulus money will remain available to the agency through the end of FY2010). This issue—how FY10 budgets would stack up to FY09 plus the stimulus package—had caused some concern in the scientific community in general: some worried that a one-time bump from the stimulus would lead to starting programs that could not be sustained over the long haul. At least for NASA this appears to be less of a concern.
The Aviationweek.com article adds that the budget proposal “sticks with the goal of returning humans to the moon by 2020″. This is not necessarily surprising, since that had been part of the campaign’s space policy document, which stated that Obama “endorses the goal of sending human missions to the Moon by 2020.” What the article doesn’t say, though, is whether the administration endorses the current exploration architecture, the multibillion-dollar question occupying much of the civil space community in recent months. Given that the budget document released tomorrow is only an outline of the complete budget—and that the administration has yet to announce a nominee for NASA administrator—such details may not be forthcoming for some time.
By Jeff Foust on 2009 February 24 at 6:58 am ET As John Holdren stated in his nomination hearing this month, the Obama Administration is committed to fulfilling a campaign pledge to re-establish the National Space Council (or National Aeronautics and Space Council). Exactly what form that council will take, and when it will be created, isn’t yet known, but the concept has the support of NASA advocates in Congress like Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL) who believe the agency “becomes the handmaiden” of OMB and thus needs an advocate within the White House.
However, in an article in this week’s issue of The Space Review, Taylor Dinerman is skeptical that a reconstituted space council will do much to help space policy. He fears a return of the clashes between the National Space Council of the George H.W. Bush administration and NASA, particularly during the brief life of the Space Exploration Initiative. “The last thing this new administration needs is a protracted and unnecessary fight over space policy and bureaucratic turf,” he writes. “A strong administrator with clear guidance, and backing from the president, is by far the best outcome.”
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