By Jeff Foust on 2008 November 25 at 7:44 am ET Ministers of the European Space Agency’s member nations are meeting this week to grapple with a number of issues associated with the agency, including funding levels and plans for future programs. An ESA press release last week outlines those issues, ranging from Earth observation programs to proposals to develop a new upper stage for the Ariane 5 and and a version of the ATV cargo spacecraft that would be capable of returning cargo to Earth—a potential precursor to a European crew vehicle. The question will be how much money ESA members, including major players like France, Germany, Italy, and the UK, will be willing to provide, and for what specific efforts.
Meanwhile, last week the European Parliament approved a European Space Policy. The top priorities of the policy are the development of the Galileo navigation system and the Copernicus Earth observing program, but the document also includes provisions ranging from “a study on the impact of space tourism and its necessary relevant safety, security and regulatory framework” to “a large-scale effort of reflection on space exploration, defining a vision of what should be Europe’s position in, and resources for, future worldwide exploration endeavours”.
By Jeff Foust on 2008 November 25 at 7:05 am ET The GAO released a report Monday on “eliciting nominees’ views” on various management challenges facing government agencies, including NASA. The NASA section, which starts on page 96 (p. 101 of the PDF document), features 13 questions divided into five themes the GAO had previously identified facing the agency in the transition: retirement of the shuttle, balancing investments across agency programs, completing and using the ISS, developing next-generation launch vehicles and spacecraft, and improving financial management. That means there are no specific questions about topics like Earth sciences, aeronautics, and space sciences, but some deep questions for anyone interested in running the space agency. Some examples:
- Regarding the shuttle: “Do you have any experience in shutting down a major project or program? What actions or steps are key to implementing a successful exit strategy?”
- About the ISS: “How has your prior work prepared you to manage a multibillion-dollar project with multiple international partners?”
- About cost and schedule issues with Constellation: “What qualifications do you have that would suggest you may be able to help rein in some of this uncertainty and reduce the risk of cost growth and schedule slippage?”
- On developing commercial alternatives to ISS access: “What skills could you bring to encourage greater participation by the aerospace industry in developing private orbital transportation services to send cargo and transport crews to the International Space Station?”
By Jeff Foust on 2008 November 24 at 7:36 am ET Today’s New York Times features an op-ed by former NASA associate administrator Alan Stern on NASA’s cost overrun problems. Using Mars Science Laboratory (at least $2 billion now, triple original cost projections) and the James Webb Space Telescope (about a fivefold increase over original projections of around $1 billion) as examples, Stern argues that NASA and its Congressional overseers need to pay much closer attention to costs, particularly in the early stages of a mission, to prevent continued cost growth from eating away at agency programs. “The new presidential administration could begin by accounting for cost increases more honestly, using the initial basis on which missions are started, rather than today’s practice of neglecting certain kinds of cost escalation,” he writes. “And NASA should be charged to reduce or cancel development projects that are not performing to cost. Of equal importance, Congress should turn from the self-serving protection of local NASA jobs to an ethic of responsible government that delivers results.”
In today’s issue of The Space Review, Stern offers a more general prescription for the space agency: make itself more relevant to the public “by combining NASA’s space exploration portfolio with new and innovative initiatives that address hazards to society, make new applications of space, and foster new industries.” These efforts would include new programs in the Earth sciences and aeronautics as well as stimulating commercial human spaceflight. While vague on the details of how this would be done, he notes that this could be accomplished with current NASA budgets—thanks, not surprisingly, to “an aggressive effort to generate new resources from cost control”.
By Jeff Foust on 2008 November 23 at 11:43 am ET A few notes and updates about the Congressional and Presidential transition processes:
Politico.com reported Sunday morning that Bill Richardson “has passed final vetting” and is expected to be named Commerce Secretary, although no date has been set for the formal announcement. As noted here earlier, Richardson, governor of New Mexico, has been an advocate of commercial space in his home state and promised as recently as last month to be an advocate of commercial space in the Obama Administration.
Earlier in the week President-Elect Obama’s transition office announced additional members of NASA transition team, including Edward Heffernan, Alan Ladwig, and George Whitesides. They join previously-announced team leads Lori Garver and Roderic “Roddy” Olvera Young.
Retiring Congressman Dave Weldon (R-FL) wants to “keep a hand in space policy” in his post-Congressional career. “I’ve invested a lot of time and energy over the years on that issue,” he told the Gannett News Service. “I feel like I can continue to contribute in some capacity.” He said he’s been asked to serve on the boards of the Astronaut Memorial Foundation and the Space Foundation.
Incoming Congresswoman Suzanne Kosmas (D-FL), meanwhile, is still hoping to land a seat on the House Science and Technology Committee’s space subcommittee. She wants the seat, she told the Orlando Sentinel, “for the purposes of protecting and enhancing what’s happening at Kennedy Space Center,” located in her district. Congressman Tom Feeney, whom Kosmas defeated on November 4, also served on that subcommittee. Committee assignments are not to be announced until the new Congress convenes in January, although, as expected, Congressman Bart Gordon (D-TN) will return as chairman of the full committee.
By Jeff Foust on 2008 November 21 at 5:44 pm ET The Washington Post reported today that New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson is a leading candidate to become the Secretary of Commerce in the Obama Administration. This has relevance to space policy given his recent comments on the topic of commercial space. As reported here last month, Richardson vowed to make sure “that the Obama Administration is pro-commercial space” during comments at a press conference in Las Cruces. (At the same press conference he also said he was “very happy” as governor of New Mexico and that his advocacy would be “hopefully here still as governor of New Mexico”, but added, “you never know”.) As Commerce Secretary he would be well-placed to continue his advocacy of commercial space, in large part because the department is home to the Office of Space Commercialization. As secretary, Richardson would be in position to press for more resources for the office (assuming he is sincere about his advocacy), as well as potentially influence policy in other parts of the administration, perhaps through a reconstituted National Aeronautics and Space Council.
By Jeff Foust on 2008 November 18 at 8:52 am ET In an article in this week’s issue of The Space Review, I look at a couple new alternatives to the current exploration plan, both the exploration roadmap by The Planetary Society announced last week as well as a brief paper by Neal Lane and George Abbey released last week by a progressive think tank, the Center for American Progress Action Fund. The latter calls for keeping the shuttle flying until a replacement vehicle is ready as well as boosting investments in aeronautics and earth sciences, although they don’t discuss how much this will cost (at least a few billion a year for the shuttle alone, assuming it’s even feasible at this late stage) or where the money would come from.
Separately, and tangentially related to the new administration’s space policy, Taylor Dinerman advocates for bringing India into the ISS in a small way, starting with giving them control of an experiment rack on the station that might otherwise go unused or underutilized. That approach could inject fresh blood (and new resources) into the ISS program, and also help support US-India relations.
By Jeff Foust on 2008 November 18 at 8:42 am ET Ed Morris, the director of the Office of Space Commercialization within the Commerce Department, will be leaving that post at the end of this month. Morris made the announcement during a speech in an otherwise off-the-record panel session at a space law and policy conference Friday in Washington organized by the University of Nebraska law school (which has a space and telecom law program). The decision is not unexpected since the position is appointed by the president. What will be interesting to watch is how long it takes the new administration to appoint a successor, and what different roles, if any, it will play.
By Jeff Foust on 2008 November 14 at 6:35 am ET At an all-hands meeting at the Kennedy Space Center on Thursday in advance of tonight’s shuttle launch, NASA administrator Mike Griffin said he doesn’t expect to be retained by the next administration. “[I]f the next president wants to ask me to continue, I’d be happy to do it. I doubt that that will happen. It would need to be under the right circumstances,” Griffin said, according to the CBS report. Those circumstances, he indicated, would include preserving the agency’s current direction and keeping funding levels at least where they are now. “We certainly can’t get by on any less than we’re doing and I don’t want to be a figurehead for claiming we can do something we can’t do.”
Griffin went into the job back in 2005 expecting that he would not be retained after the 2008 election, but there are those who’d like President-Elect Obama to keep Griffin at NASA. Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL) reiterated his support for Griffin, at least in the near term, to the Orlando Sentinel. “What I have said to the Obama operation is that I think Michael Griffin has done a good job and until they have a ‘must-have’ person from their standpoint, then Dr. Griffin should stay on,” Sen. Nelson said. And who is a “must-have” person? “Someone they are just dying to have as administrator. And I don’t see that [decision coming] any time soon.”
Griffin also won praise yesterday from Lou Friedman, executive director of The Planetary Society, at the organization’s press conference unveiling their space exploration roadmap. “I’ve complimented Mike Griffin on the job he’s done trying to implement the mandate he was given under the Vision for Space Exploration with resources that were less than he was promised,” he said. He stopped short, though, of endorsing the idea of keeping Griffin at NASA in the next administration: “The political choice for the next administrator is outside the ken of what we’re talking about here.” (Side note: one of the other speakers at yesterday’s press conference was former NASA Ames director Scott Hubbard, whose name has also emerged on some lists of potential replacements for Griffin.)
By Jeff Foust on 2008 November 13 at 1:24 pm ET The Planetary Society, which announced its guiding principles for a “Roadmap to Space” a few weeks ago, followed that this morning with the release of its full-fledged exploration roadmap at a press conference in downtown Washington. The biggest change the society made in NASA’s current exploration plan is to defer the goal of a 2020 human return to the Moon. Instead, they propose human missions beyond the Moon, such as to the Lagrange points and to a near Earth object, before embarking on human lunar landings and a base, and then only if it serves to advance what the society considers the ultimate goal, which is human missions to Mars. Deferring the human lunar missions, they argue, will help reduce the financial burden on NASA and allow it to focus on developing elements on Constellation, including Ares and Orion.
The proposal also calls for increased cooperation with other nations to create a true partnership for space exploration. NASA is already offering to work with other nations in the implementation of the Vision for Space Exploration, but Lou Friedman, executive director of The Planetary Society, said at the press conference that he envisions something more cooperative than the current situation, where NASA decides what is open to international participation and what is not. Greater international participation, they added, would also help decrease the fiscal burden on NASA.
As for Constellation itself, society officials sent some mixed messages. They did endorse development of Ares 1, Ares 5, and Orion (the full report calls for continued development of Ares and Orion and that the shuttle be retired “as soon as possible”). However, at the press conference they were open to reviewing Ares and Orion, and that during the development of the report the study team didn’t delve into the technical issues of Ares versus alternative launch vehicles. When asked, Friedman said it was “not inconsistent” to say they supported Constellation while also endorsing a review of the current approach.
Going forward, Friedman said the society planned to work both the executive and legislative branches, getting the report into the hands of President-Elect Barack Obama’s NASA transition team as well as key members of Congress; in the latter case, he said that he hopes that it leads to Congressional hearings on the subject in the next Congress.
By Jeff Foust on 2008 November 13 at 7:15 am ET Australia is one of the few major industrialized countries without a space agency. And now a report by an Australian Senate committee recommends changing that. The report, “Lost in Space? Setting a new direction for Lost in Space? Setting a new direction for Australia’s space science and industry sector”, was released this week by the Senate’s economic committee, after several months of study, including several hearings. The report reviews various space applications and activities and notes that, in general, Australia’s participation in space activities is not well-coordinated among government agencies and other organizations. Some key recommendations:
The committee notes that Australia is the only OECD country without a national space agency and, as a consequence is missing out on opportunities to engage in this important area of innovation and technology… The committee recommends that immediate steps are taken to coordinate our space activities and reduce our over reliance on other countries in the area of space technology.
and:
The committee notes the various models of space agency within the OECD and emerging economies and supports Australia having a space agency. The committee recommends initially establishing a Space Industry Advisory Council comprising industry representatives, government agencies, defence, and academics. The committee recommends that the advisory Council be chaired by the Minister for Innovation Industry Science and Research or his representative.
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