By Jeff Foust on 2008 April 16 at 8:18 am ET That’s the argument made in an article yesterday in the Orlando Sentinel, which makes the case that Lampson’s fight to raise NASA’s budget will help keep jobs at KSC. Lampson, the article notes, wants an extra $3 billion for NASA’s budget to reduce the Shuttle-Constellation gap. To aid those efforts, he organized a meeting between NASA administrator Mike Griffin and a group of fiscally conservative “Blue Dog” Democrats, and also organized a Congressional trip to last month’s shuttle launch.
However, those efforts hold a slim chance of success. The article hints that House Democratic leaders might be willing to increase NASA’s budget to help Lampson in a tough reelection battle in his Texas district (which includes JSC); the question is, is his seat worth $3 billion—or $1 billion or less—to party leaders? Recall last fall that there was a push to get the House to sign onto the $1-billion “Mikulski Miracle” as a way to help Lampson, but that effort failed. And, as the article notes, there may be other ways to help Lampson without spending billions, such as simply asking fellow Democrats who are critics of the agency or human spaceflight to keep quiet this year. One fellow Democrat who was on the shuttle launch junket last month was unconvinced of the need to spend billions to close the gap. “Of course they [NASA] told us that they weren’t getting enough money,” Rep. Mazie Hirono (D-HI) told the Sentinel, saying that NASA should focus instead on “efforts that could bear the most fruit”, like robotic spaceflight.
One additional tidbit at the end of the article: Lampson said that if he does win reelection this fall, he hopes to become chair of the space subcommittee of the House Science and Technology Committee. That position is currently held by Rep. Mark Udall (D-CO), who is running for the Senate seat being vacated by Wayne Allard.
By Jeff Foust on 2008 April 14 at 8:01 am ET In response to the avalanche of comments to an earlier post about a presentation Charles Miller gave at the Space Access conference last month about the budgetary pressures NASA is facing and one potential solution, Charles approached me about fleshing out that talk into a more detailed essay. Part one of that essay appears in Monday’s issue of The Space Review and goes into detail about the budget crunch NASA and other discretionary spending programs will be facing in the near future as the Baby Boomers retire. That wave of retirements will cause mandatory spending (Social Security, Medicare, etc.) to increase, putting pressure on other programs. While NASA has done reasonably well in the current administration, when there has been little pressure to balance budgets, it did suffer a cut of nearly 20 percent during the Clinton Administration when there was a bipartisan push to balance the budget—a portent of what may come when there are similar pressures to cut spending.
A key paragraph from the article:
These fiscal pressures will force the next president—regardless of whoever is elected in November—to make some hard decisions in the years to come about discretionary spending. It is unrealistic to expect that NASA will somehow be immune to pressures to cut spending. A budget cut in the next Administration that is equivalent to last decade’s cut would result in reduction of NASA’s budget of over $3 billion per year. If that happens, it will be difficult, if not impossible, for the current exploration architecture to continue in anything resembling its current form and schedule. It will be significantly delayed, radically altered, or even cancelled.
The next part will focus on what Charles proposed in his Space Access talk on how to preserve the Vision in such an austere budgetary environment.
By Jeff Foust on 2008 April 14 at 7:52 am ET At a town hall meeting in Columbus, Indiana, on Friday, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama was asked again about NASA. Specifically, a “young man” asked him, “What do you plan to do with the space agency?” Obama’s answer was pretty much the same as what he has said recently: that it was time to revisit what NASA should be doing and how. “I think it needs to be redefined, though,” he said. “We’ve kind of lost a sense of mission in terms of what it is that NASA should be trying to achieve and I think that we’ve gotta make some big decisions about whether or not, are we going to try to send manned, you know, space launches, or are we better off in terms of what we’re learning sending unmanned probes which oftentimes are cheaper and less dangerous, but yield more information.”
If there was one relatively new thing in his comments, it was that it appears that he would defer any decisions on exactly how NASA’s mission should be redefined until after he becomes president (assuming, of course, he’s elected.) “[T]hat’s a major debate I’m going to want to convene when I’m president of the United States,” he said. “What direction do we take the space program in? Once we have a sense of what’s going to be most valuable for us in terms of gaining knowledge, then I think we’ll able to adjust the budget so that we’re going all out on what it is that we’ve decided to do.”
Such language is unlikely to mollify space advocates concerned about the potential changes a President Obama might make to NASA. Then again, there hasn’t been nearly the outcry against Obama’s proposals, including a proposed five-year delay for Constellation, as some might expect. In an article last week in The Space Review, Greg Zsidisin describes Obama’s proposed changes and the response he got from Obama when he asked the candidate a question during a Wyoming town hall meeting last month. Zsidisin followed that article up this week with a review of the positions, or the lack thereof, space industry organizations and advocacy groups have taken in response to Obama’s proposals, or those of the other candidates, for that matter.
Zsidisin blames a lot of the relative silence on the issue on the fact that many of these groups are 501(c)(3)’s, organizations with tax-exempt status from the IRS that strictly limits what they can do in terms of political lobbying. (A contributing factor, he adds, is the degree of conservatism—in the sense of cautiousness, not as a region of the political spectrum—in space advocacy, which Zsidisin blames on the fact that so many members of advocacy groups are also employed in the space industry.) What’s needed, he argues, are more 501(c)(4) lobbying groups like ProSpace, which do not have the same restrictions on lobbying as their 501(c)(3) cousins.
And, as it turns out, one such lobbying group is now forming. In another essay in today’s issue of The Space Review, Jeff Brooks describes the formation of such a group, called the Committee for the Advocacy of Space Exploration. Brooks describes the group as “the country’s only fully-empowered Political Action Committee (PAC) designed to support pro-space candidates in federal elections.” In the essay, he argues, “Politicians must be made to know that they will gain by supporting space exploration and will suffer if they don’t. Until the space advocacy movement learns to play political hardball, its efforts will continue to be largely ineffectual.”
By Jeff Foust on 2008 April 10 at 10:14 am ET The planned sale of the space division of MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates (MDA) to Alliant Techsystems (ATK) has hit a roadblock that is unprecedented but not necessarily surprising. The deal required the approval of the Canadian government since MDA is a Canadian company and ATK is an American one, but this week Industry Minister Jim Prentice issued a letter blocking the sale, telling ATK that “based on the information received at this time” the deal is not “likely to be of net benefit to Canada.” It’s the first time since the current Canadian law that governs sales of companies to foreign entities was enacted in 1989 that such a deal was blocked.
However, there had been strong opposition to the sale among some groups in Canada, with particular concern regarding the control of MDA’s RADARSAT-2 radar imaging satellite. That satellite was funded by the Canadian government, but would be owned by ATK if the deal went through; this led to concerns that ATK or the US government could block access to radar imagery to Canada. ATK now has 30 days to provide additional information to Industry Canada to make their case for the deal, and/or try to restructure the deal to address Canadian concerns.
By Jeff Foust on 2008 April 9 at 9:22 am ET A runoff in Texas District 22 on Tuesday has determined who will oppose Congressman Nick Lampson this fall. Former Senate aide Pete Olson defeated Shelley Sekula Gibbs by a 2-to-1 margin in the Republican runoff, after neither candidate captured a majority in the primary last month. Sekula Gibbs ran against Lampson in 2006 and lost, although she won a separate special election that allowed here to serve out the final weeks of Tom DeLay’s term during the 2006 lame duck session. That district includes NASA JSC, and, according to the AP report, Lampson’s campaign is already using that to take aim at Olson. “Congressman (Nick) Lampson has promoted NASA while his opponent didn’t know the name of the Johnson Space Center in a recent debate,” Anthony Gutierrez, Lampson’s campaign manager, said.
By Jeff Foust on 2008 April 7 at 3:36 pm ET Mike Griffin has made it clear on a number of occasions that, while he is open to international collaboration in the exploration vision, he is not happy with the current state of affairs regarding US dependence on Russians for ISS access and resupply once the shuttle is retired.
“Do not confuse my desire for international collaboration for a willingness to rely on others for strategic capability,” he said in open remarks at a subcommittee hearing of the Senate Appropriations Committee last week. Dependence on Soyuz “is not an option we would choose, but it is where we are today. In fact, we must seek an exception to the Iran Syria North Korea Nonproliferation Act because we have no immediate replacement for the shuttle and no other recourse if we wish to sustain the ISS.”
Given that statement, you would think that Griffin would be interested in accelerating domestic commercial options like COTS that would lessen or eliminate an reliance on the Russians. Yet, in his comments later in the hearing, he was not that interested in pursuing a crew option for COTS (also known as Capability D) on an accelerated schedule.
“Is COTS an answer in terms of beefing up COTS to take people up there, where we’d have our own kind of version of a Soyuz?” Sen. Barbara Mikulski, chair of the subcommittee, asked Griffin. “There’s a lot floating around that COTS could be the answer to the gap.”
After providing an overview of COTS, he said, “we are focusing initially on cargo because, I just want to be clear with everybody, we already have a mechanism for getting crews to the station with the Soyuz system, but unless we can bring some new commercial capabilities online, we really have no cargo resupply. So, actually, of the two, the most important COTS capability to me right now is cargo, and I must be honest about that.”
He added that he would “very much like to see” a COTS crew capability developed, but that he doubted that “even with their [the COTS companies’] best efforts, even if more money were provided, that COTS crew transportation capability will arrive in time to be available after the shuttle retires or even by the end of the current contract with Russia in 2012.
Mikulski then summarized that there was no “silver bullet” for solving the US government human space access gap once the shuttle is retired. “At the same time, sure, COTS has promise, but you [Griffin] want to make sure what is firmly in place is the cargo capability, but while they’re developing their technologies, of course, we would look forward to possibilities of adding a human element. But that’s an add-on to the mission. Do I have that right?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Griffin managed to get in before Mikulski started talking again.
“So the only prudent fiscal way to go,” she concluded, “is to accelerate Ares and Orion by two years and, at the same time, keep COTS on track so we have the cargo capability.”
“Ma’am, I think you have it perfectly,” Griffin said.
Mikulski then apologized for spending such a long time on the topic (which also included discussions of Soyuz purchases and accelerating Constellation), saying, “there are a lot of ideas in the ethers out here.”
Meanwhile, in another twist, at the same time that Griffin was testifying on the Senate side of Capitol Hill, Richard Gilbrech, NASA’s associate administrator for exploration, was telling a hearing of the space subcommittee of the House Science and Technology Committee that NASA was finishing up a study on accelerating the COTS crew capability, and would share the results with members of Congress once it is completed.
By Jeff Foust on 2008 April 7 at 12:02 pm ET [Catching up on some older material while stuck at the airport]
Last week a committee of the Florida Senate unanimously approved four bills designed to provide various incentives for the space industry in the state. SB 2526 supports the development of an initiative to diversify the state’s space industry. SB 2458 would create a “Space and Aerospace Development Infrastructure Enhancement Fund”. SB 2666 would include “space flight contractors” into an existing tax refund program for defense contractors.
The fourth bill, SB 2426, is described in the Florida Today article above as providing $15 million to “refurbish a launch complex at Kennedy Space Center”. The text of the legislation is more vague, though: it makes available $15 million “to respond to extraordinary economic opportunities in the space and aerospace business sectors, to address the need for space and aerospace business facilities and infrastructure, and to compete for key space and aerospace businesses interested in entering into partnerships with the state.” The bill provides a mechanism for Space Florida to submit such projects for consideration, but doesn’t specify any one particular project.
That is interesting, because for the last couple of months KSC has been pushing a proposal to develop a new commercial launch facility on property it has. One proposed location is on KSC land that is also part of the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge. That met with sharp opposition from environmentalists and others, including fishermen who were concerned that their access to a local beach would be restricted, particularly during launch operations. An Orlando Sentinel editorial last month was sharply critical of the proposed launch complex, arguing that NASA should instead work with the Air Force to gain access to abandoned launch facilities at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station (ignoring an alternative site proposal on KSC property but in not nearly as sensitive a location.) Of course, that editorial was published before the news that thousands of KSC jobs would be lost when the shuttle is retired; one wonders if that assessment changed a few minds about the proposed KSC launch complex.
By Jeff Foust on 2008 April 5 at 4:47 pm ET In her opening statement at a hearing of the Commerce, Justice, and Science subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee on Thursday, Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), chair of the subcommittee, mentioned the she would again push to add $1 billion to NASA’s budget. “We’re worried about lost opportunities,” she said, evaluating the administration’s 2009 budget proposal, “and we want to restore those opportunities and keep America’s space program number one.” Therefore, she said, “I will continue in my fight, joining with Senators [Richard] Shelby and [Kay Bailey] Hutchison, to fight again this year to add the $1 billion to deal with the cost that was incurred in returning to flight after the Columbia accident. It should not be a question of whether we should or should not, it’s just a question of doing it.” And to make sure no one missed it, she issued a press release stating her intent to do so.
This will be the third time Mikulski and colleagues tried to get the $1 billion through Congress. The bid to add the money in FY2007 failed when the Senate failed to pass many of its appropriations bills, leading to the year-long continuing resolution. Last year, the Senate approved the additional funding, but the money was lost in conference committee. Will the third time be the charm for Mikulski and supporters? They have already proven they can win support in the Senate, but have yet to demonstrate similar support in the House, which is critical if this miracle has any chance of coming true.
By Jeff Foust on 2008 April 3 at 6:40 am ET While Rep. Dave Weldon is using this week’s release of a report predicting thousands of job losses at the Kennedy Space Center when the shuttle is retired as another reason to extend the shuttle’s life, a couple of major newspapers in the region have called for a different type of legislative relief. In editorials published Thursday, both Florida Today and the Orlando Sentinel are calling on state legislators to pass a package of legislation that would provide incentives for commercial space and other businesses to move to the area.
The editorials also ask Washington for help, not to extend the shuttle but to accelerate Constellation. “The next president should reverse the Bush administration’s negligence, properly fund NASA and close the five-year gap between the shuttle fleet’s retirement and the lunar program’s scheduled kick-off in 2015,” Florida Today requests. Also: “Bipartisan members of the Democratically controlled Congress should recognize the space program’s vital role in America’s technological preeminence and support increased NASA funding – not continuing cuts that are knee-capping the agency.”
By Jeff Foust on 2008 April 2 at 8:54 pm ET That’s the thrust of the headline on Wired News late today: “House Democrats Plan Attack on NASA’s Mars Mission”. According to the report (once you scroll past an oversized illustration of an Ares 1 launch), “the House Committee on Science and Technology will challenge NASA’s vision for space exploration” during a hearing tomorrow morning. The proof of this impending attack appears to be in the questions included in the hearing charter like these:
- Does the exploration architecture, as laid out by NASA, present a technically and programmatically viable approach for executing exploration beyond low Earth orbit under a pay-as-you-go strategy?
- Is the United States on the right track to reach the Moon by 2020, establish an outpost there, and eventually send humans to Mars, or do any changes need to be made to the architecture or implementation plan?
- How will progress in implementing the architecture be measured?
- How sustainable will NASA’s planned exploration initiative be, given the assumed constrained budgetary outlook as well as the cutbacks in funding for long-lead exploration technology development?
Of course, the hearing charter includes questions like these:
- Is it technically and programmatically possible to accelerate the Orion CEV’s Initial Operating Capability (IOC) to a date earlier than March 2015 and still maintain a confidence level of 65%? What funding beyond the President’s request would be needed in FY09, FY10 and the out years to enable such acceleration? Would currently planned reviews and testing be retained during the acceleration?
- What are the most important objectives to be accomplished in returning humans to the Moon?
- How should Congress ensure that the establishment of a lunar outpost does not divert attention and resources from exploration beyond the Moon, as articulated in the Vision for Space Exploration and the NASA Authorization Act of 2005?
All of these questions look less like an “attack” or a “challenge” that a critical examination of what NASA is doing and what resources it needs to carry them out. Perhaps the reporter has some inside intelligence that indicates a more hostile reception than what’s indicated in the charter. Then again, the headline reference to “NASA’s Mars Mission” suggests a lack of sophistication.
Update: Thursday’s Orlando Sentinel reports that Constellation “faces critical problems and might never work as intended”, according to a GAO report that will be released at the hearing. The report deals with a number of issues that are not unfamiliar to those following the development of Ares 1 and Orion, including the Ares 1 thrust oscillation issue and mass margins. “In fact, according to GAO, the whole project is dogged by such ‘considerable unknowns’ that it is doubtful whether NASA’s request for an additional $2 billion during the next two years will be enough to overcome design flaws and speed its development for a first liftoff before 2015.”
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