By Jeff Foust on 2008 January 17 at 6:15 am ET The interest in space in the upcoming CNN/Politico debates does not appear to be a fluke—at least not yet. Among the most popular Republican questions, space policy questions occupy four of the top seven spots, and six of the top 15. On the Democratic side it’s even stronger: nine of the top ten most popular questions are all about space (a question about Darfur is the exception, at #3).
Scanning through the most popular lists for both parties, I also noticed a large number of questions about marriage, divorce, and families; you have to get far down the list before you start encountering more familiar topics like Iraq and immigration (although there are a couple questions about taxes near the top of the Republican list.) What still isn’t stated is exactly how many votes are being cast for these questions, nor how this popularity contest will affect the selection of questions for the debates. I’ve made an inquiry on these subjects to Politico.com, but have not received a response yet.
By Jeff Foust on 2008 January 16 at 1:01 pm ET Tiger Weekly, a publication serving the LSU community, talked with university chancellor and former NASA administrator Sean O’Keefe about the space agency’s exploration plans. There’s not much here (he tells the reporter he likes the Vision for Space exploration, adding, “I’m biased, since I helped to fashion that new direction”), although he seems less concerned about a new space race with China than some others in Washington and elsewhere.
The article leads off by noting, “Although his job as LSU Chancellor keeps him busy, Sean O’Keefe hasn’t stopped keeping track of events at his previous organization, the NASA.” As it turns out, the day the Tiger Weekly article was published, O’Keefe revealed he’ll soon have more time on his hands:
Effective June 1, 2008, I will step down as the 7th chancellor of the Louisiana State University. I will continue as professor of public administration for the balance of this spring semester, but relinquish duties as chancellor at the end of this month. The president has agreed to appoint an acting chancellor who will perform the duties of chancellor effective Feb. 1.
By Jeff Foust on 2008 January 16 at 7:09 am ET Sen. Mel Martinez (R-FL) said Tuesday that he wanted to shorten the gap between the shuttle and Constellation, but not by extending the life of the shuttle. Speaking at a luncheon on the Space Coast on Tuesday, Martinez said he wanted to minimize that gap so the US won’t have to “rely on Vladimir Putin to put a man or woman in space”. However, “at some point I think it becomes very difficult” to keep flying the shuttle. Or, as he put it in a brief video posted by Florida Today, “I would like to see the new vehicle be available earlier rather than I would prefer to extend the life of the shuttle.”
Martinez has previously said that he wants to reduce the gap, although his statements yesterday set him apart from Rep. Dave Weldon (R-FL), who wants to extend the shuttle past 2010 to address the gap. Martinez said Thursday that state officials should work together with officials from other regions with a strong NASA presence to win support. However, he admitted he was stumped on how to raise awareness about space policy among the presidential candidates: “I don’t know exactly how you get the presidential candidates talking about this.”
By Jeff Foust on 2008 January 15 at 7:22 am ET For a pair of late January debates, one Republican and one Democratic, Politico.com is not only soliciting questions, but allowing people to vote on their favorites. Space is doing remarkably well as of early Tuesday morning: for the Democrats a question about the candidates’ support for the Vision for Space Exploration (filed under the category “Education”) was ranked fourth on the “Most Popular” list, with similar questions at #13 and #15; for the Republicans a question about support for the Vision (filed under the category “Energy”) is ranked #15 on the “Most Popular” list, with a similar one at #29. This suggests that space is of surprising interest to the public—or simply that voting on questions has been very light and thus easily skewed. What isn’t mentioned on the site is how these votes will factor into the selection of questions for the two debates.
Meanwhile, MSNBC is soliciting questions for tonight’s Democratic debate in Las Vegas. There’s no voting for questions here, and another caution: when I tried out the form this morning, I got a server error.
By Jeff Foust on 2008 January 14 at 12:37 pm ET Today marks the fourth anniversary of the formal unveiling of the Vision for Space Exploration in a speech by President Bush at NASA Headquarters. In an article in this week’s issue of The Space Review, I discuss that we’re entering a critical year for the Vision, not just because of the uncertainty about who will be president in 2009 and what his/her space policy will be, but also because of financial concerns and other issues. It’s tempting to call every year critical for the future of the exploration program, but the confluence of these factors, any of which could delay or completely derail the program, would seem to make this year particularly important.
A few other articles in this week’s issue also have some policy relevance:
- Sam Dinkin interviews Nobel laureate Steven Weinberg, who has been critical of NASA’s human spaceflight efforts (and human spaceflight in general). Weinberg, unsurprisingly, doesn’t see much use for human spaceflight and would rather the money be spent on robotic exploration and other research, including observations of the Earth and searches for near Earth asteroids.
- Dwayne Day writes about Tsien Hsue-shen, the Chinese rocket engineer named person of the year by Aviation Week magazine last week. The policy tie-in here is how allegations of espionage by Tsien when he lived in the US—of dubious credibility at best—are used to this day in discussions of China’s space program.
- Taylor Dinerman examines the prospects of flying the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) now that recent delays have made it more likely the current shuttle manifest can’t be completed by September 2010. Getting AMS flown, either on the shuttle or via an expendable launch, would require supplemental funding from Congress, he argues, although Mike Griffin hinted in his AMS speech last week that the money to fly AMS could come out of other programs in NASA’s astrophysics budget, like the Beyond Einstein program.
By Jeff Foust on 2008 January 11 at 7:38 am ET SpaceRef has posted “Barack Obama’s Plan For American Leadership in Space”, a document detailing the Democratic presidential candidate’s stand on space policy. (The document does not appear to be posted yet on Obama’s official campaign web site.) The document largely is an elaboration of a previous, brief statement from the campaign. Obama supports development of the Ares 1 and Orion (which are explicitly named here), completion of the ISS, robotic space exploration, and climate change research. On the milspace side, he calls for “a serious dialogue with Russia, China and other nations” to stop space weaponization, as well as continued support for surveillance satellites (which sounds odd; is anyone really thinking of decreasing use of spysats?)
One thing that is missing in this statement: any discussion of human exploration of the Moon, Mars, or other destinations beyond Earth orbit. His previous statement from the campaign said that he would “delay plans to return to moon and push on to mars”, and, of course, his education policy issued back in November called for paying for his initiatives in part by delaying the Constellation program by five years. Is the absence of any evidence of human space exploration language in this new statement evidence of its absence in his policy?
By Jeff Foust on 2008 January 11 at 7:20 am ET In his speech Thursday, Griffin said that with “the budgetary resources currently projected during the critical development years of 2009 and 2010, we can reasonably forecast the Orion and Ares systems coming online by early 2015.” Griffin isn’t happy with that timeline, but said that “it would be far worse if I were to over-promise or fail to provide my most credible, realistic assessment to our stakeholders in the Congress.”
However, the Houston Chronicle reports that agency supporters in Congress will make another effort this year to increase NASA’s budget to speed up the Constellation development schedule. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) and Rep. Nick Lampson (D-TX) plan to work together to add $2 billion to NASA’s budget over the next two years to allow Ares and Orion to enter service in September 2013. Hutchison reiterated past arguments that an extended gap between shuttle and Orion “is a security threat to our country,” adding, “I just hope we don’t have to wait for a crisis.”
Hutchison said that she would again with Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) to get the funding approved in the Senate. However, the bigger challenge would appear to be in the House, which did not approve any extra money in the FY08 budget and failed to accept the Senate’s extra billion in conference. “Lampson said he’s counting on a growing bipartisan sentiment in the House to assist NASA,” the Chronicle reported, without elaborating on extent and growth of that sentiment.
By Jeff Foust on 2008 January 11 at 7:09 am ET In a speech Thursday at the annual conference of the Academy of Medicine, Engineering and Science of Texas, NASA administrator Mike Griffin made a couple of resolutions for 2008. One is to ensure that Constellation remains on track in 2008 as the development of the Ares 1 launch vehicle and Orion spacecraft enter critical phases. “My considered assessment of the Constellation architecture is that we are not facing any technical showstoppers, but we must – of course – make a number of engineering design choices as we reach the preliminary design phase this year,” he said.
In the same speech, Griffin also spoke out strongly in support of the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program, which suffered a budget cut in the FY2008 omnibus appropriations bill and is also facing a GAO protest filed by Rocketplane Kistler as well as a Congressional mandate for a GAO study of the overall program. Griffin said that he views COTS as critical to minimizing the time that the US is dependent on Russia for access to the ISS once the shuttle is retired. “[W]e need to minimize this period of dependency, and that we need to get back into the game as soon as possible. If we cannot do that, we will have failed to lead. I find that an intolerable position for this nation.”
“For this reason,” he said, “my resolution for 2008 is to fight for the COTS program, to spur the development of U.S. commercial space transportation services to and from the International Space Station.” He added that he would seek to make up the cut made in COTS funding in 2009. “While I will of course respect the congressional direction in this year’s appropriation for NASA on COTS, I will be asking the Congress for the funds in 2009 to maintain NASA’s promised $500 million investment in the program. I hope to award contracts to U.S. companies in the coming weeks ahead, once we clear all legal challenges.”
By Jeff Foust on 2008 January 9 at 7:49 pm ET Contrary to some reports, Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani did make it to Florida’s Space Coast on Wednesday. However, a bomb threat at one of Giuliani’s planned stops truncated his schedule, leading to the cancellation of a meeting with the Florida Today editorial board that offered one of the best chances to date for the candidate to tackle a space policy question or two. Giuliani did appear at a press conference, but the Florida Today article linked to above only mentions proposed tax cuts.
By Jeff Foust on 2008 January 9 at 8:07 am ET NASA administrator Mike Griffin and the astronomical community have not had the best of relationships since Griffin became administrator nearly three years ago: astronomers are upset at budget cutbacks in various missions and research programs, while Griffin argues that such programs get plenty of funding and the real problem has been programs with unrealistic budgets (a problem he called “undercosting” two years ago.) The latest volley in this debate took place yesterday when Griffin delivered a speech at the American Astronomical Society conference in Austin, Texas, warning astronomers that there would be more problems ahead for NASA’s astronomy programs.
After some platitudes about all the great things Hubble and other NASA missions have done to advance our knowledge of the universe, Griffin focused on a couple of specific issues, starting with the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS). Griffin noted that the FY08 appropriations bill conference report included a provision directing NASA to study ways of delivering the AMS to the International Space Station. Griffin said that NASA has studied ways other than the shuttle to get the AMS to the station, but those alternatives would cost about $400 million. “NASA lacks the budget allocation for such a mission, so, should it be directed by Congress, it would have to ‘come out of hide’. Astrophysics hide,” he warned. Griffin said he would ask the National Academies to study the scientific priorities of NASA’s Beyond Einstein program of astrophysics missions, such as the Joint Dark Energy Mission, and compare them to the scientific priority of the AMS.
Griffin also addressed the Space Interferometry Mission (SIM), which got a boost in the budget bill with additional direction to NASA to begin the “development phase” of SIM. Griffin was particularly critical of this move, saying that SIM was another flagship-class mission that the agency could not afford on top of its one current flagship mission, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), which takes up 60 percent of the NASA astrophysics budget. “If we initiate SIM now, we will have to delay JWST or GLAST [a gamma-ray telescope scheduled for launch in 2008] or cancel Explorers to fund it,” he said, blaming “external advocacy” for the decision to increase funding for SIM in the appropriations bill. “If it stands, then the mission will be executed, and the remainder of the astrophysics portfolio will suffer. I hope this is what you want, because it appears likely to be what you will get.”
Griffin then stepped back and took on a broader issue: a lack of perceived appreciation among the astronomical community regarding the challenges NASA is facing overall. Griffin said that, while President Bush had promised an additional $1 billion for NASA over the 2005-2009 period when he announced the Vision for Space Exploration, “about two weeks after I was privately informed that I had been selected to be the new Administrator, that increase was rescinded and, further, an additional $2 billion dollar reduction incurred.” In addition, Griffin said he had to work make sure the shuttle and ISS programs were properly funded “rather than allowing a budgetary sham to be continued.” All that resulted in almost $12 billion in budget reductions and unplanned expenses from FY2005 through 2012.
Because of those budget pressures, Griffin is not sympathetic to those who complain about cutbacks in astronomy programs at the agency. “Few scientists seem to know, or care, that the human spaceflight community has lost a third of its planned flights to the ISS, that we are facing a five-year gap with no human space launch capability at all, that aeronautics is today operating at budget levels well below the historical average, or that technology development at NASA has been reduced to minimal levels,” he said. He singled out in particular criticism from the scientific community about the utility of the ISS. “Like it or not, the Space Station is a feature of American space policy. At this point, the failure to recognize that, accept it, and deal with the consequences in a mature fashion consigns one, in my mind, to the ‘kids table’, while the adults converse elsewhere.”
Griffin asked astronomers to put their own self-interest aside in favor of supporting NASA in general, arguing that such an approach would benefit them as well. “Imagine, if you will, the increased support for NASA – all of NASA – that could result if science community leaders utilized their prestige and their talent for advocacy to promote all of NASA, and not just the individual missions and portfolios of greatest interest to them. Imagine if we put aside self-interest, and all hung together.”
It’s not clear that Griffin’s request is going to win over many people in the community, though. Phil Plait of “Bad Astronomy” fame, who was in attendance at Griffin’s talk, complained about Griffin’s tone: “I must admit that his exasperation does seem a little peevish as opposed to being constructive.” Another attendee noted, “I get the strong feeling that he sees us as the enemy, as children, and as people who need to be scolded and put in our place. I can hear astronomers behind me muttering about how they can’t believe the attitude we’re being addressed with.” Universe Today did note that Griffin’s speech was followed by town hall meeting with better news for scientists, as associate administrator Alan Stern explained how the agency had adjusted its mission planning in light of the budget. Stern, though, wasn’t expecting to get more money in the near future: “[H]ope is not a strategy. We can hope that the Science Mission Directorate’s budget will be increased, but that’s not a strategy.”
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