By Jeff Foust on 2008 August 3 at 7:59 pm ET A lot has been said about Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama’s speech Saturday in Florida where reversed plans originally published in an education policy white paper last November to delay Constellation by five years. “I told my staff we’re going to find an entirely different offset, because we’ve got to make sure that the money going into NASA for basic research and development continues to go there. That has been a top priority for us,” he said in response to a question, and indeed that statement has been removed from the white paper.
While this has been billed as a major reversal in direction, is it really? Instead, this appears to be more of a reconciliation of contradictions between that statement in the original white paper and comments made by the candidate and the campaign since then. There are some more specific statements in the speech, like planning to “close the gap” and flying at least one shuttle mission after 2010; however, Obama previous stated that he supported continued development of Orion and his quasi-official policy from January called for continued development of Ares 1 and Orion so that “the United States’ reliance on foreign space capabilities is limited to the minimum possible time period.” And he spoke about making NASA inspirational, a theme that stretches back to early this year.
Less talked about are some of the other items in Obama’s speech. Obama said that he would make sure “that all those who work in the space industry in Florida do not lose their jobs when the Shuttle is retired”, although again without explaining how. Keep several thousand people whose jobs are currently slated for elimination with the shuttle’s retirement employed is not an inexpensive proposition. If the shuttle is still flying after 2010 most or all of those jobs would be retained, but that would be even more expensive.
There’s also a call in his speech to reestablish the “National Aeronautics and Space Council” to provide policy guidance for the space program (a 2004 article from The Space Reviews covers the long, often rocky history of what is more commonly known as the National Space Council). This idea has an interesting recent history. At the International Space Development Conference in late May in Washington, a group of a couple dozen people met one evening to discuss Obama’s space policy and what could be done to improve it. One of the main conclusions from that meeting, as noted here, was a recommendation to reestablish the National Space Council. Whether this discussion actually led to that statement in Obama’s speech isn’t certain—there were no formal Obama campaign representatives at the meeting, although several of the attendees had contacts within the campaign—but at the very least it indicates people within the campaign and some of its supporters are thinking on the same wavelength.
There were also some interesting comments made by Obama in conversations with the media. According to Florida Today, Obama would not commit to supporting a $2-billion increase in NASA’s budget, saying that he first wants to have “a thorough evaluation of a combination of manned and unmanned missions, what kind of exploration would be the most appropriate.” (The article is unclear whether they were asking for a $2B/year increase, or a one-time $2B increase to cover the costs of the Columbia accident and aftermath, as has been attempted through the so-called “Mikulski Miracle”.)
Obama also said that he had yet to decide whether to continue with the Vision for Space Exploration’s long-term goals of returning humans to the Moon and eventual human missions to Mars. Telling, though, is the claim in the paper that Obama would rely on former senator John Glenn for advice. Glenn was critical of the implementation of the Vision in House testimony last week, calling it an “unfunded mandate” (Obama made similar statements in an interview with the Orlando Sentinel on Friday, saying “the funding has never even come close to approaching what was promised, and so NASA’s ended up cannibalizing other programs.”) Glenn argued in his testimony that the agency’s budget should be increased by about $3 billion a year to allow the shuttle to continue operating beyond 2010.
So while it’s tempting to say that Obama has radically changed course (or that “his words really don’t matter”, as a John McCain campaign statement put it), Saturday’s speech was more of a formal opportunity to reconcile the conflicting comments the campaign and candidate have said since last November. In terms of policy detail, though, many space activists will find the level of detail lacking.
By Jeff Foust on 2008 August 1 at 8:33 am ET Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama will be speaking Saturday in Titusville, Florida, near the Kennedy Space Center. In a location like that, one would expect the candidate to mention space policy to some degree. If he doesn’t, he’ll likely be asked about it since this will be a “town meeting” with Q&A. The question, though, will be whether he’ll go into any more specifics than he did during a previous stop in Brevard County in May.
Obama, by the way, was in Houston last night, but did not mention space in two fundraising appearances, instead focusing on energy.
By Jeff Foust on 2008 July 30 at 6:49 am ET It’s debatable whether Tuesday marked the 50th anniversary of NASA: it was actually the anniversary of the signing of the National Aeronautics and Space Act by President Eisenhower, and NASA didn’t formally enter into existence until October 1. Nonetheless, the anniversary offered a hook for both major presidential campaigns to talk about space policy, if only at a high level.
The campaign of presumptive Democratic nominee Barack Obama issued a statement about the anniversary. The statement reiterated some of the themes that Obama previously discussed, including his belief that “Americans are no longer inspired as they once were” by the agency and its activities. “In recent years, Washington has failed to give NASA a robust, balanced and adequately funded mission… That’s a failure of leadership,” he said in the statement. “I believe we need to revitalize NASA’s mission to maintain America’s leadership, and recommit our nation to the space program, and as President I intend to do just that,” he said, but didn’t discuss what he would do to carry out the revitalization.
Obama’s opponent, presumptive Republican nominee John McCain, also issued a statement in conjunction with the anniversary. McCain offered slightly more specifics, as well as a shot at Obama. “While my opponent seems content to retreat from American exploration of Space for a decade, I am not,” he said. “As President, I will act to make ensure our astronauts will continue to explore space, and not just by hitching a ride with someone else. I intend to make sure that the NASA constellation program has the resources it needs so that we can begin a new era of human space exploration.”
As noted above, the Obama statement doesn’t really say anything new. The anniversary would have been a good opportunity to formally issue a space policy statement, even the quasi-official policy released in January but still not posted on the Obama campaign web site, but apparently not. The McCain statement only adds a little to the campaign’s brief policy statement issued during the primary season. The shot at Obama appears to reference the five-year delay in Constellation proposed in an education policy paper last November, but doesn’t note more recent statements, including both in that quasi-official policy statement and a Florida speech from May where he supports continued development of Ares 1 and Orion. It’s also unclear how McCain plans to reconcile his statement of providing Constellation with “the resources it needs” with plans for a one-year freeze in non-defense discretionary spending as well as a BRAC-like review of all federal programs.
By Jeff Foust on 2008 July 30 at 6:25 am ET In this week’s issue of The Space Review, I write about concerns by many about the direction of COTS, specifically its current emphasis exclusively on cargo missions rather than cargo and crew. That concern is rooted in the belief that cargo-only solutions would have only a single customer—NASA resupply of ISS—while a crewed vehicle could serve not just ISS but also other markets, ranging from Bigelow Aerospace’s planned orbital facilities to standalone orbital tourism. Some of those additional markets could also spur demand for cargo services, but only if there’s a way to get people up there as well.
There is some congressional support for getting NASA to press ahead with “Capability D”, as the crew transportation option of COTS is formally known. Both the House and Senate versions of the NASA authorization bill include language that directs NASA to select teams for funded Space Act agreements for Capability D work. While that directive may make it into law, a bigger challenge will be finding the money needed to carry out those efforts, particularly if NASA does not get a formal appropriations bill for FY2009.
By Jeff Foust on 2008 July 25 at 7:26 am ET Next week marks the 50th anniversary of the enactment of the National Aeronautics and Space Act, the legislation that created NASA (which itself was formally established on October 1, 1958). To mark that anniversary the House Science and Technology Committee is holding a hearing: “NASA at 50: Past Accomplishments and Future Opportunities and Challenges” on Wednesday, July 30. There is a diverse witness list: former astronaut and senator John Glenn, former Lockheed Martin CEO Norm Augustine, and MIT professor Maria Zuber. a member of the Aldridge Commission in 2004 that studied how to implement the Vision for Space Exploration.
By Jeff Foust on 2008 July 25 at 7:13 am ET Sunday’s Orlando Sentinel published an editorial about a NASA/KSC proposal to develop a new commercial launch site on space center property and the outcry it created. Early this year KSC held some public hearings about the proposal as part of an environmental study, and got nearly unanimous criticism from everyone from environmentalists concerned about placing a facility on property that is also part of a wildlife refuge to fishermen concerned that the facility would restrict their access to the coast. Members of Congress even got involved, reportedly pressuring NASA to instead work with the Air Force on obtaining access to unused launch sites at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station instead. Sunday’s editorial (with the snark turned up to 11) thanked NASA for opening a dialog with the Air Force on this.
With conflicting news about the status of the proposal (including a recent report that NASA was still considering the controversial sites for new launch facilities), I asked KSC director Bill Parsons about it after a luncheon address he gave yesterday on Capitol Hill, organized by the Space Transportation Association. It turns out there’s less to the whole proposal than has been reported. KSC started the environmental studies when Rocketplane Kistler (RpK) had a funded COTS agreement; their proposal included recovering their stages at the launch site. After RpK lost their COTS award last fall, KSC decided to keep the study going, but instead take on a broader scope. “Are there some sites we might use for commercial launch facilities at the Kennedy Space Center, and just identify them early to see if anything would be available,” Parsons said. “I think it got a lot of press, but in actuality it was really just a study, trying to understand where some good sites would be if, in fact, we ever got around to someone coming and asking us” about building a new launch site there.
By Jeff Foust on 2008 July 25 at 6:43 am ET Yet another critic of NASA’s exploration architecture has emerged: Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin. The Orlando Sentinel reports today that Aldrin wants to convene a “panel of experts” to study whether Constellation is the right approach to implementing the Vision for Space Exploration. “We need to stick with the mission but rethink some of the ways we implement it,” he told the paper. “It doesn’t pay to stick with a bad idea.”
Aldrin has won over some prominent individuals and organizations, including former senator Jake Garn and the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Aldrin may also have the ear of the campaign of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama: a campaign spokesman told the Sentinel that there have been discussions between the campaign and the former astronaut, and that “we are expecting a more detailed proposal from him soon”.
This is not the only effort that is reexamining either the Vision or its implementation. The article also notes that National Academy of Sciences is putting together its own panel to study “the goals and rationale” of the space program. In addition, The Planetary Society is apparently drafting its own recommendations, including the possibility of bypassing a human return to the Moon in favor of exploration of near Earth asteroids.
It would seem that, while the major presidential candidates may be vague about the directions they would pursue in space policy, the winner will have no shortage of suggestions.
By Jeff Foust on 2008 July 23 at 7:26 am ET It’s rare to see a major newspaper devote editorial space to, well, space. However, on Wednesday two of the nation’s largest newspapers (as well as one smaller paper that more frequently covers space issues) took on the topic in editorials and op-eds:
Leading off, the Los Angeles Times examines the proposed space policies of presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama in an editorial. The editors note that McCain “supports the vision for space exploration that President Bush articulated in 2004″ while Obama has proposed delaying Constellation by five years. (The editorial doesn’t note that, more recently, Obama has proclaimed his support for Ares 1 and Orion, the two major early components of Constellation.)
“Who’s right? There’s something to be said for pulling the plug on Constellation,” the editorial continues, suggesting that NASA rely on commercial services or international partners for human spaceflight, allowing it to spend more money on robotic missions. But then the editors worry that, since many robotic missions could be perceived “as the necessary prep work for human exploration”, this could boomerang against those missions—and the paper’s parochial interests at JPL.
The editorial concludes that the Bush-McCain approach “nicely balances realism and ambition”, but that Obama “is sounding like the more realistic, market-oriented candidate” because he wants to enhance NASA’s role in earth sciences research in addition to promoting more international and private-sector cooperation.
Meanwhile, a New York Times op-ed makes an argument for space solar power (SSP). O. Glenn Smith, a former manager of ISS experiments at JSC, reviews the arguments for SSP, including the use of the ISS as a testbed for SSP experiments. (He glosses over one of the major issues, the cost of launching a SSP system, saying that launch services being developed by SpaceX and Orbital under the COTS program “could be adapted to sending up a solar power satellite system”. However, even the NSSO report about SSP released last year admitted that “The vehicle fleet necessary to place a SBSP system into orbit does not exist today” and that a new generation of RLVs are required.) Smith’s closing argument: “[I]n a time of some skepticism about the utility of our space program, NASA should realize that the American public would be inspired by our astronauts working in space to meet critical energy needs here on Earth.” (See recent discussions about the potential conflict between alternative energy research and space exploration.)
Finally, Florida Today argues for “spreading the NASA gospel” to local businesses, so that they, in turn, will support the space agency. The editorial was spurred by a recent meeting at KSC that attracted about 100 chamber of commerce officials from across the state, most of whom hasn’t been there before. “Converting business leaders to the cause is important for building the kind of broad backing necessary to convince the state’s elected officials in the Legislature and Congress that NASA’s future is critical to all Floridians, not just Brevard County residents,” the editorial argues. However, business leaders are often less swayed by rhetoric like “the NASA gospel” and “the cause” then by hard economic data; there’s little of that in the editorial other than the claim that the retirement of the shuttle “could result in the loss of 6,400 jobs”, even though NASA cut that estimate to as little as 3,000 jobs last month.
By Jeff Foust on 2008 July 23 at 6:47 am ET Remember the minor kerfuffle that Congressman John Culberson set off last week when he said that “NASA wastes a vast amount of money”? Last night Culberson apologized for those comments, the Houston Chronicle reported. Culberson, speaking in the latest in his series of online video town hall meetings, said “I let my temper get a little bit away with me and I said something I shouldn’t have” when he made that statement. “Every agency wastes money but NASA itself is not a waste,” he said. “These fine people, the scientists and engineers there at NASA, I certainly owe these folks an apology because that is not what I meant to say.”
Lost in the discussion, though, was a proposal by Culberson to restructure NASA into a more NSF-like organization, “driven by the scientists and the engineers” and free of politics “as much as possible”. The Chronicle article simply noted that Culberson did not mention his proposal during the online town hall meeting.
By Jeff Foust on 2008 July 22 at 7:39 am ET On a panel about COTS at the NewSpace 2008 conference last Friday, Jeff Bingham, a staffer on the space subcommittee of the Senate Commerce Committee, said that the House and Senate had recently completed “pre-conferencing” of the NASA authorization legislation to speed its passage. “We had to do what is a six-week process in four days, and we did it,” he said, which resulted in some compromises, particularly in bill language regarding the Shuttle-Constellation gap. “We had some language [in the Senate version] that was a little bit more aggressive, shall we say, on dealing with the gap issues, and that’s had to be modified,” he said. Exactly when the Senate will take up the bill is uncertain. Bingham said earlier plans to bundle the bill with some other unrelated legislation to expedite its passage in the Senate fell through, so it may be taken up on its own as early as this week.
The Senate version of the authorization bill, S. 3270, was formally introduced last week; it’s not clear if this reflects the results of the pre-conferencing. The Senate version does include language calling for an acceleration of COTS, including development of a crew capability. The bill also calls for a report on what would be needed to recertify the shuttle for flights after 2010 as well as a provision that requires NASA to “terminate or suspend any activity of the Agency that, if continued, would preclude the continued safe and effective flight of the Space Shuttle Orbiter after fiscal year 2010.”
The pre-conferenced version of the bill, Bingham said, does include language calling for an additional shuttle mission to fly the AMS instrument to ISS. While the administration strongly opposes that provision, he said he didn’t think the administration would veto it if was included. “In some ways I welcome a veto on that, because I’d love to write the speeches to override that veto, which I think we could do handily,” he said. “But I don’t think it will get vetoed.”
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