By Jeff Foust on 2007 September 4 at 8:06 am ET An editorial in today’s Florida Today offers a familiar complaint: presidential candidates don’t seem to care about space policy. The current crop of candidates, both Democratic and Republican, haven’t yet articulated policy positions on space (yes, it is traditionally early in the election cycle, but not in this distended campaign); the editorial cites as an example some glittering generalities recently spoken by Mitt Romney during an area campaign stop. “It’s time for the White House wannabes to recognize the program’s importance for vital domestic and national security reasons,” the paper argues, citing in part perceived competitive pressures from Russia and China. The paper doesn’t consider, though, that the campaigns may have already done their calculations on this topic and found that importance lacking.
If you think getting attention for NASA’s current plans isn’t difficult enough, Mike Snead has a bigger challenge for you in this week’s issue of The Space Review: getting the pro-space community to press the next president to support revamping our space infrastructure, which would consist of, in his words, “two-stage fully-reusable space access systems for passenger and cargo transport with ‘aircraft-like’ safety and operability, permanent space logistics facilities in low Earth orbit to establish a base of operations for government and commercial space operators, and fully-reusable space transportation capabilities and logistics support services throughout the Earth-Moon system”. That’s a big challenge, but he outlines a proposal to carry out such an effort, focusing on the policy aspects rather than the technology. “This must become the priority of the American pro-space community,” he concludes, although it’s not at all clear that, even if the “pro-space community” supported such a proposal, it would have the influence to get the attention of the next president or even the leading presidential candidates.
By Jeff Foust on 2007 August 30 at 7:19 am ET Congressman Dave Weldon (R-FL) held a series of town-hall-style meetings Wednesday for workers at the Kennedy Space Center. While the meetings themselves were closed to all but space center employees, Weldon did speak with reporters between the meetings and, according to accounts by Florida Today and the Orlando Sentinel, reiterated his desire to reduce the gap between the end of the shuttle program and the introduction of the Orion crew exploration vehicle. Weldon played up the foreign policy implications of the gap, from relying on Russia for access to the ISS (which, of course, we already did after the Columbia accident) to the specter of having the Chinese beat the US to the Moon: “Are we going to get there and be greeted by somebody holding out for us a nice warm bowl of chop suey and chopsticks?” (At the very least, hold out for some General Tso’s Chicken.)
Weldon wants additional money for NASA to accelerate development of Orion: “hundreds of millions of dollars in 2009 and 2010, and then an extra billion dollars in both 2011 and 2012″, according to Florida Today. While Weldon put some blame on Congress for the current level of funding, he also criticized the Bush administration for not proposing adequate funding: the Vision, he said, “had the appearance to me of a plan that was hatched in the Office of Management and Budget.”
By Jeff Foust on 2007 August 29 at 6:53 am ET The House Science and Technology Committee has firmed up plans for a hearing on “NASA’s Astronaut Health Care System-Results of an Independent Review”. The hearing is scheduled for Thursday, September 6th at 10 am. The first panel will feature NASA officials (Bryan O’Connor, Ellen Ochoa, and Richard Williams, the agency’s chief health and medical officer) as well as Richard Bachmann, who chaired the independent committee that released its report last month. NASA administrator Mike Griffin will appear alone on a separate panel. The hearing is shaping up to be particularly interesting, particularly if NASA’s internal investigation, to be released later today, turns up no evidence of the allegations of intoxicated astronauts that made the independent committee’s report so infamous.
By Jeff Foust on 2007 August 26 at 10:36 am ET An editorial in the Houston Chronicle itemizes the list of problems that NASA has suffered so far this year. And while NASA might not be having an annus horribilis this year, it has suffered its share of setbacks, embarrassments, and tragedies, from allegations of intoxicated astronauts to sabotaged computers. The Chronicle, though, casts its net a little too far by including this odd item: “An explosion at a rocket motor test sight [sic] near Edwards Air Force Base in California killed two persons and critically injured four others.” Besides misspelling “site”, the editorial appears to be referring to the Scaled Composites explosion last month at Mojave Airport (which actually killed three and injured three); NASA was not involved in that project at all, of course. The editorial also notes the murder-suicide at JSC earlier this year, and tacks on this blow: “How many other NASA employees are armed and dangerous in the workplace?” Ick.
The Chronicle solicits comment from Rep. Nick Lampson (D-TX), whose district includes JSC and who serves on the House Science and Technology Committee. Lampson is supportive of the agency, but notes: “When NASA does face any internal issues, Congress expects a full, thorough review and accounting of any possible errors and mistakes.” Hopefully any such accounting will be a bit more thorough than that performed by the Chronicle’s editorial writers and copy editors.
By Jeff Foust on 2007 August 22 at 10:52 pm ET Wednesday’s Los Angeles Times featured an op-ed by Paul Thornton, a researcher for the paper’s editorial page, decrying the state of NASA’s Earth sciences program. Thornton finds a topical hook for his piece: the return of the space shuttle Endeavour one day early because of Hurricane Dean, which was monitored by, among other satellites, the aging QuikSCAT spacecraft. The essay follows a well-worn path: the “moon-crazed Bush administration” is not spending enough money on Earth science. Indeed, without the current events reference, this argument follows the same lines as similar editorials on NASA’s Earth sciences program discussed here back in January.
Thornton operates under the assumption that Earth sciences should be something NASA does, just that it should do more of it (how much more is apparently beyond the scope of this particular essay.) After all, NASA has done Earth sciences work for decades, and “The expansion of human knowledge of the Earth” is one of the objectives of the nation’s “aeronautical and space activities”, as defined in the National Aeronautics and Space Act. But there have been rumblings from time to time about whether NASA is the best home for Earth sciences research. During a panel session at the NewSpace 2007 conference last month, for example, there was some discussion of the formation of a “Department of the Environment” in a future (probably Democratic) administration that could absorb NASA’s Earth sciences programs. Also noteworthy is that legislation introduced earlier in the year in the House and Senate to authorize a replacement for QuikSCAT would give responsibility for the program to NOAA (“in consultation” with NASA and any other relevant federal agencies). NOAA and NASA, of course, already work together closely on some Earth sciences programs, and plan to strengthen that relationship, Aerospace Daily reported this week.
So, perhaps the question to ask is not how to get NASA to pay more attention to Earth sciences, but whether NASA should be in that line of work at all. Not that any shift like that would be easy to do, of course.
By Jeff Foust on 2007 August 22 at 9:25 pm ET The Aerospace Industries Association (AIA) announced yesterday that outgoing FAA administrator Marion Blakey will become the president and CEO of the AIA in November, two months after Blakey leaves the FAA. The AIA announced earlier this year that its current president and CEO, John W. Douglass, would retire at the end of the year; he will remain at the AIA through the end of the year to help ensure a smooth transition. Her role at the FAA didn’t give her an opportunity to talk much on military and civil space issues, although presumably her views are in accordance with the AIA’s board); she did frequent attend and speak at FAA Commercial Space Transportation Advisory Committee (COMSTAC) meetings and attended one of the SpaceShipOne X Prize flights in Mojave in 2004, speaking of her interest in and support of the commercial space transportation industry.
(The Washington Post article about her hiring takes a bit of an unfair swipe at her with this passage: “Blakey is the latest of several top administration officials to depart as President Bush’s term winds to a close. Last week, Deputy White House Chief of Staff Karl Rove announced that he would leave at the end of the month.” Unlike Rove, Blakey is not resigning; her five-year term as administrator expires next month.)
Speaking of AIA, an AP article this week noted that the organization disclosed it had spent $280,000 on lobbying in the first half of this year. That information comes from a lobbying report the AIA filed earlier this month. Among the items the AIA disclosed it was lobbying for on the civil side were “NASA Subcontractor/Fund” (?), “Funding for NASA”, “Sustainability of the Vision for Space Exploration”, “US/China Space Exploration”, and “Shuttle Launch”. On the military space side, topics included “National Security Space Issues”, “Space Acquisitions”, “Operationally Responsive Space”, and “Military Space Budget”.
[Full disclosure: my employer does work for the FAA Office of Commercial Space Transportation, but doesn’t work with the office of the FAA administrator.]
By Jeff Foust on 2007 August 13 at 11:04 am ET In this week’s issue of The Space Review, Frank Sietzen examines the lack of presidential attention to the Vision and what’s needed to build bipartisan support for the effort. On the former, Sietzen is blunt:
The Vision for Space Exploration was established at a time of record deficits, when America was conducting one war against terror in Afghanistan and another in Iraq. The war in Iraq is costing Americans two billion dollars a week. This president has shown no interest in either science or space, and is the head of a political party many of whose members doubt the veracity of evolution and climate change. Given these political realities it is surprising not that the Vision has its flaws, but that Bush set forth a space vision at all.
On the latter issue, he brings up some recent research (incorporated into NASA’s new strategic communications plan) regarding how people become more supportive of NASA once they realize the effect the agency’s work has had on society. “If we wish to craft any enduring political consensus that lasts, one strong enough to form the basis of any future president’s space policy, then it is clear that a lot of educating of the average citizen must be done,” he writes. “The broadest such consensus can most likely be built around a civil space program that neither shortchanges Earth or space science or long-term human exploration.”
Also of interest in this week’s issue is an essay by Taylor Dinerman reviewing a 1958 document on why the US should go into space. The reasons provided in that paper are largely the same ones at the center of national space policy today: exploration, science, defense, and national prestige. “It may be that since the nature of the rockets used to get into space have not changed all that much since the days of Sputnik, a policy designed when America’s first ICBM, the Atlas, had not yet entered service may still provide useful guidance in the absence of a cheaper way to get into orbit,” he writes. “However, the unchanging nature of outer space itself—and the unchanging nature of human beings—may be what make this basic statement so valuable.”
One final note: posting here will be light this week, since not only is it the summer doldrums in political circles, I’m on travel all week.
By Jeff Foust on 2007 August 9 at 1:13 pm ET A couple of anecdotes, courtesy of the wild, wacky blogosphere, that suggest that, more than three and a half years after President Bush formally announced the Vision for Space Exploration, a lot of Americans know little, if anything, about it:
The first case is a post by Patrick Joubert Conlon, a gentleman in Oregon who says, “I never get tired of watching the Shuttle taking off.” Later, though, he adds that he “just found out today that the Shuttle program will end in five years time” (less than three and a half, really), and that “the next space-travel project will only take place in 2015″ with a return to the Moon. “I was stunned to say the least,” he writes (a feeling perhaps shared by some readers who are surprised he’s just learning about the Vision.) Although it does appear Mr. Conlon needs to learn a bit more about what the plan is: “I can’t believe that we are going to be relying on MIR as a space station.” His conclusion: “What happened? Who gutted our space exploration program?”
The second case is a post by Townhall.com blogger Matt Lewis, who was surprised when the shuttle launch took place while at a restaurant having drinks. In a reflective mood, he writes, “In the past, Presidents took the time to challenge Americans to go into space… So how come nobody today is going on TV and explaining why we are doing all of this?” (Emphasis in original.) Citing the recent problems that have put NASA in the headlines, he concludes, “[A] lot of it have to do with the fact that our leaders have failed to push this program into the future, and have also failed to explain why this program is important. Is this another missed opportunity for Bush?” He makes no mention of the Vision for Space Exploration in his post, although some commenters try to rectify that oversight.
Of course, one should always be cautious about taking anecdotal evidence too far, but these posts do suggest that a non-zero, and perhaps significant, fraction of the American public, even among those who profess to care at least a little about space, knows little or nothing about the Vision. That may take more than a Message Construct and graphic element to solve.
By Jeff Foust on 2007 August 8 at 7:33 am ET This week’s issue of Space News features an op-ed (not available online) by Rep. Ken Calvert (R-CA) where he provides an update on his plans to give NASA a new funding mechanism. At the National Space Symposium in Colorado in April, Calvert said he was planning legislation to allow NASA to, in effect, sell advertising or sponsorships on its missions. The money raised through those deals would go to support prize competitions run by the agency through the Centennial Challenges program.
In his Space News essay, Calvert said he planned to introduce the NASA Innovation Fund and Sponsorship Act in September, when Congress reconvenes after the summer recess. The general intent of the bill remains the same: NASA would solicit, review, and select sponsorship proposals from the private sector. The money from those deals would go into an Innovation Fund that would be used to support prize competitions. Calvert said he modeled this approach after the National Park Foundation, a private organization chartered by Congress to support the national park system “by raising private funds, making strategic grants, creating innovative partnerships and increasing public awareness.”
Calvert emphasized in his essay that the legislation would “explicitly prohibit product placement on NASA assets that the public would find objectionable or inappropriate”, citing examples like “decals on the space shuttles” and “blinking neon lights” on the ISS. (I wonder what he would think of Bigelow Aerospace’s projection system.) How is “objectionable or inappropriate” defined? Calvert said the bill would create a seven-person Sponsorship Board that would review proposals; its membership would include the NASA administrator, NASA strategic communications chief, and “five private citizens who have a stake in NASA’s reputation and future”. Sponsorship proposals would also have to have some kind of educational component as well. What’s not clear from the essay, though, is whether the legislation will address concerns from the private sector about competing with NASA for sponsorship dollars.
By Jeff Foust on 2007 August 7 at 7:11 am ET This week’s shuttle launch comes at a time when NASA is suffering from a raft of bad press, from allegations of intoxicated astronauts to reports of sabotaged computers, an article in today’s Palm Beach Post reminds us. And that means people of widely (and we do mean widely) varying ideologies are looking at NASA and sharpening their knives, either to whittle the agency down or to gut it.
The Post article quotes a statement by Bruce Gagnon’s Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space critical of NASA in light of recent events. “Should we continue to pour our precious tax dollars down the dysfunctional NASA rat hole?” Gagnon asks. The article, though, also quotes Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), who is critical of the agency, although not as hyperbolic as Gagnon. “What we are seeing in NASA is the cumulative effect of about two decades of drifting,” Rohrabacher told the Post. “NASA needs to be reduced in focus so it becomes lean and mean rather than bureaucratic and complacent.”
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