By Jeff Foust on 2008 June 23 at 7:59 am ET The space subcommittee of the Senate Commerce Committee is holding a field hearing today in Florida on the future of the shuttle workforce at the Kennedy Space Center. Actually, though, only one member of the committee is expected to be in attendance: subcommittee chairman Bill Nelson (D-FL), although Sen. Mel Martinez (R-FL), who is not a member of the commerce committee, will also be in attendance. The hearing it split into two panels, one featuring top NASA officials, including administrator Mike Griffin, and one with state and local officials.
There is, of course, a lot of concern in Florida’s Space Coast region about their future with the retirement of the space shuttle and estimates that over 6,000 jobs could be lost during the transition to Constellation. “Sen. Nelson wants to hear from NASA whether they have any plans in place to help mitigate the (job) losses,” a Nelson spokesman told Florida Today. “He wants to know (if they are) planning on transferring any work to Kennedy Space Center to help minimize those losses.” (Such transfers would seemingly result in job losses at other centers, raising the ire of other members of Congress, but this side effect isn’t explored in the article.)
In addition to the hearing, an organization called Link to Launch is planning a rally this morning outside the hearing site to “provide a visual, high-profile opportunity for people to unite and show lawmakers the importance of space to our community.” Rally organizers told Florida Today that they’re hoping for 6,400 attendees, one for each job projected to be lost. The timing makes that estimate perhaps a bit optimistic: given that the rally takes place during normal working hours, it will be a challenge to get that core audience—people who have shuttle-related jobs and are worried about losing them—to attend. (One solution: bring the whole family, according to the Link to Launch web site. “We HIGHLY encourage you to bring family, friends, church members or anyone else interested. Children are very important to this event as they represent our future of the Space Program.” [capitalization in original])
By Jeff Foust on 2008 June 19 at 10:12 pm ET In a press release Thursday, Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), chair of the appropriations subcommittee whose jurisdiction includes NASA, confirms that she would again seek a billion-dollar increase in NASA’s budget above the $17.8-billion budget her subcommittee approved on Wednesday (and which the full appropriations committee also apparently approved Thursday, although there’s no announcement about it on the committee web site.) Mikulski made a similar statement earlier this year, when her subcommittee first held hearings on NASA appropriations. “I am committed to restoring NASA’s budget to ensure the continued safety of our astronauts, and to supporting the critical programs that are the hallmarks of their success,” she said in her statement.
This will be the third time she has sought to bypass the regular appropriations process by offering an amendment for additional funding to be considered by the full Senate, an effort known as the “Mikulski Miracle”. Two years ago the Senate never took up the appropriations bill, and NASA and other agencies ended up with a year-long continuing resolution. Last year the Senate did approve the amendment, but the extra billion was lost in conference committee. Will the third time be the charm?
As for the regular appropriations bill itself, the details have not been released yet. Mikulski’s statement did include a few top-level details:
The bill fully funds the President’s budget request for Space Shuttle operations ($3 billion) and Space Station operations ($2 billion). The bill also provides $2.9 billion for development of the next generation Crew Launch Vehicle and Crew Exploration Vehicle. The bill provides $4.5 billion for NASA’s science programs and $500 million for aeronautics research.
By Jeff Foust on 2008 June 19 at 9:05 am ET New Mexico governor Bill Richardson’s presidential campaign sputtered out earlier this year, but the campaign found at least one alternative use for the money it raised. The Las Cruces Sun-News reported Thursday that the campaign donated $10,000 to efforts to get a spaceport sales tax approved in Sierra County, New Mexico, in April. That donation was the single largest contribution to “People for Aerospace”, the group that spearheaded the pro-spaceport tax effort; the group raised about $105,000 overall. “He was a supporter,” Gary Whitehead, chairman of People for Aerospace, told the Sun-News. “It’s been kind of his project and he certainly wanted it to be successful and he was willing to invest in the success of the election.” Voters in Sierra County approved the tax by a two-to-one margin in April.
By Jeff Foust on 2008 June 18 at 8:26 pm ET The House of Representatives finally formally voted on HR 6063, the NASA Authorization Act of 2008, late Wednesday afternoon. After carrying out some roll call votes on a couple of non-controversial amendments and beating back a motion, along party lines, to recommit the bill to the science committee because it didn’t contain language on use of alternative fuels (an amendment that was proposed but rejected by the full committee earlier this month), the full bill was passed by the House on a 409-15 vote. All 15 nays came from Republicans, including former presidential candidates Ron Paul and Tom Tancredo, as well as former House Science Committee chairman James Sensenbrenner.
Both the Democrats and Republicans on the science committee congratulated the House on the wide margin of approval. The Senate has yet to introduce its own version of the bill, although Sen. Bill Nelson, who chairs the space subcommittee of the Senate Commerce Committee, said last month that the Senate’s version would be “as similar as possible” to HR 6063.
By Jeff Foust on 2008 June 18 at 1:09 pm ET The Commerce, Justice, and Science subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee approved an appropriations bill Wednesday that includes $17.8 billion for NASA, Space News reports [subscription required]. The details of the bill haven’t been disclosed yet, although the topline figure is similar to what the subcommittee’s counterpart in the House approved last week. Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), chair of the subcommittee, issued a brief statement about the bill, mentioning only NASA’s total, and that full details about the bill and its provisions will be released when the full committee takes up the bill tomorrow.
By Jeff Foust on 2008 June 18 at 6:42 am ET The Coalition for Space Exploration released a new Gallup Poll on space policy issues on Tuesday, playing up what they deem to be strong support for space exploration among the general public. “These latest results -as well as poll data from the last several years – reveal that even in the midst of varying world and national circumstances, Americans still strongly support space exploration, and are willing to support its funding at current levels or even slightly increased levels,” Mary Engola, chairwoman of the Coalition for Space Exploration’s Public Affairs Team, said in a coalition press release.
At first glance, that assessment appears to be correct. The poll finds that 71 percent of the public thinks NASA is doing a good or very good job in “maintaining its leadership in space exploration”. Also, 52 percent support or strongly support increasing NASA’s budget to increasing NASA’s budget to one percent of the overall federal budget.
However, there are also some concerns. While 71 percent believe that the US is doing a good or very good job in space exploration, there has been a shift from “very good” to simply “good” in the latest poll, compared to the previous one performed by Gallup in August 2006: the number of people in the “very good” category dropped from 17 to 11 percent, while the “good” category rose from 52 to 60 percent. Does that indicate that public support for space is getting a little weaker? Also, while 52 percent supported a budget increase for NASA, 45 percent opposed or strongly opposed such an increase: not a lot of neutral ground. (In addition, the text of that question claimed that since 2004, “the budget for NASA has been held at one-sixth of one percent of the total federal budget, lower than the 1% NASA originally requested in 2006.” I can’t recall NASA requesting one percent of the federal budget, which would amount to a substantial increase, in 2006 or any other recent year.)
The poll also shows that two of the key issues that space advocates have tried to use to win increased funding for NASA—the rise of China’s space program and the impending Shuttle-Constellation gap—are having a mixed effect, at best. The poll found that only 32 percent where very or somewhat concerned that “China would become the new leader in space exploration or take the lead over the U.S.”, compared to 28 percent in August 2006 and 33 percent in March 2006.
The poll also found that 47 percent were very or somewhat concerned about the gap, compared to 52 percent who are not very or not at all concerned. Not surprisingly, then, 43 percent would be willing to some degree to raise taxes to try and close the gap, compared to 57 percent who were not. There’s also interesting age differences here: 58 percent of those aged 65 or older where concerned about the gap, compared to just 35 percent of those aged 18-34; yet only 41 percent of the 65+ crowd was willing to support a tax increase to help close the gap, compared to 44 percent of those 18-34.
By Jeff Foust on 2008 June 16 at 1:20 pm ET That’s the theme of the long-awaited part 3 of the essay on the future of the Vision for Space Exploration that Charles Miller and I published in this week’s issue of The Space Review. We noted back in part 1 that the Vision, as currently laid out, is threatened by a looming budget crunch as the Baby Boomer generation is retired; in part 2 we noted that one solution to this impending crisis is the development of cheap and reliable access to space (CRATS). Most everyone agrees that CRATS is vital, regardless of the future budget situation, but the past has been littered with a number of programs that tried and failed to achieve low-cost space access: the shuttle, NASP, X-33, and the National Aerospace Initiative. So how do avoid repeating those mistakes?
Our argument is that past efforts have focused on finding the solution to the problem: a single right answer that could be developed with the smartest people we know. It’s not a new problem: Samuel Langley had effectively the national aircraft program at the turn of the 20th century, but also failed; fortunately there were a couple of bicycle repairmen who had their own ideas of how to approach powered flight. So instead of going down the road of yet another national program to develop a low-cost space transportation system, we argue that what the country should be doing instead is funding a larger number of smaller research efforts, guided by a NACA-like organization:
If we adopt an NACA mindset for the critical national goal of CRATS, no one program will become “The Solutionâ€, and there will be no “National†program or initiative. The programs will be smaller, more numerous, and more frequent. They will be small enough that any one program can fail without risking the entire initiative because of negative media attention. They will be numerous enough that the risk of failure is diversified. They will be frequent enough that we will make steady progress even in the face of failure by individual programs. This approach, if adopted, will eliminate the starts and stops we have experienced over the last 40 years by using the big program mindset to achieving CRATS.
By Jeff Foust on 2008 June 14 at 3:06 pm ET Earlier this week I had the opportunity to participate in a “bloggers’ roundtable” organized by the Discovery Channel with Apollo astronaut Gene Cernan. the event was intended to promote their current documentary series about the space program, “When We Left Earth”, but the door was open to other questions about Cernan and the past and future of the space program. So, I asked him his thoughts on how the key players—NASA, the White House, and Congress—were doing on the Vision for Space Exploration to date, nearly four and a half years since its announcement, and any concerns he might have about the upcoming change in administrations.
Cernan, while disappointed with the slow pace of activity, was generally pleased with what the agency and key political actors have been doing. NASA, he said, “has done what they could right with the funding they have available.” As for Congress, “There’s a lot of support in Congress, on both sides of the aisle” for continuing to spend money on space, he added. In response to an earlier question, though, he said that the Shuttle-Constellation gap bothered him “quite a bit” but that he wasn’t sure what could be done about it.
Turning to the presidential campaign, Cernan became more critical. “Right now you haven’t heard one word in either primary, or probably won’t in the general election, about space,” he said. (One can argue that, while space hasn’t gotten the attention of big issues like Iraq or the economy, it has been mentioned more than one might have anticipated going into the campaign.) You do hear a lot of talk about education, he said, but education requires activities that will stimulate people to want to learn, such as space.
Cernan was particularly concerned with Barack Obama, saying that he would “basically… slow down the space program”, an apparent reference to the statement in the campaign’s education policy about delaying Constellation for five years. “I think it would go further than that, I think it would be slowed down for a decade or so,” he said. “For a number of reasons, quite frankly, I’m just not, for lots of reasons, politically and ideologically, as well as the space program, I’m not too excited about the potential of him being the President of the United States.”
Cernan was more optimistic about McCain, noting their shared background as naval aviators. “I think he’s got a better appreciation for the significance of technology” because of that experience, Cernan said.
Politicians in general, though, he said, don’t appreciate the impact Apollo had on the American people forth years ago. “The politicians of today, particularly the candidates for the presidency, have got to realize what that [Apollo] did to the American people at a time when we were down on ourselves.” Later, he said, “quite frankly, I’m not so sure we’re not in the same place today as we were then” and thus in the need of a morale boost like that provided by Apollo.
“Going back to the Moon and going on to Mars is going to be an international program, but we need to be the guy out front,” he said. “And if the presidential candidates don’t realize that, it’s going to be a long, hard summer.”
By Jeff Foust on 2008 June 12 at 11:16 pm ET The House did not complete its work on HR 6063 earlier today, which means that final passage of the bill will have to wait until early next week. During about two hours of debate, though, members did get through a number of proposed amendments, most of them minor. The first of those amendments, as listed in a report accompanying the bill, makes a number of modest additions, including one that prevents NASA from carrying out any layoffs before the end of 2010. Another part of that same amendment adds additional language to a “Sense of Congress” section about commercial activity that should be music to entrepreneurs’ ears:
It is further the sense of Congress that United States entrepreneurial space companies have the potential to develop and deliver innovative technology solutions at affordable costs. NASA is encouraged to use United States entrepreneurial space companies to conduct appropriate research and development activities. NASA is further encouraged to seek ways to ensure that firms that rely on fixed-price proposals are not disadvantaged when NASA seeks to procure technology development.
Earlier Thursday, the Commerce, Justice, and Science subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee marked up its proposed appropriations bill, which includes NASA. According to a statement from subcommittee chairman Alan Mollohan, the bill includes $17.8 billion for NASA, over $150 million above the president’s request. The increased funds “are spread nearly evenly between science and aeronautics,” according to the release.
The release doesn’t contain any more information about the bill, which is not yet available online. However, according to Space News, the bill does cut $20 million from the $173 million requested for COTS. The reason for the cut isn’t mentioned. More details may come next week, as the full committee is scheduled to take up the bill on June 19.
So there you have it: while part of Congress is praising the capabilities of commercial space ventures and entrepreneurs, another part of Congress is cutting money from a program designed specifically for those same groups.
By Jeff Foust on 2008 June 12 at 7:09 am ET Regular readers might recall that Marc Garneau, Canada’s first astronaut and former president of the Canadian Space Agency, left the CSA in 2005 to run for the House of Commons in a riding in Quebec west of Montreal. That run for office didn’t work out well, as he failed to unseat the incumbent there. Garneau, though, is planning another shot for office, and is upbeat about his prospects. Garneau is the Liberal Party candidate for the open seat in Westmount-Ville Marie, a riding in Montreal where a by-election will be announced by late July. While the campaign has not formally started, Garneau is already on the trail, making a number of public appearances. Unlike his last campaign, Garneau enjoys a high degree of support in the riding, according to an article in a local paper; he also has the advantage of succeeding another Liberal MP, Lucienne Robillard, whose retirement in January created the vacancy Garneau is trying to fill.
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