By Jeff Foust on 2007 June 26 at 12:54 pm ET To follow up on Sen. Mel Martinez’s visit to KSC, Florida Today reports today that the senator will work to “minimize” the gap between the shuttle and Orion. It’s a little unclear at first whether this means he’ll try to shorten the existing period between the two programs (currently projected to run from late 2010 to early 2015) or just try to keep it from getting any longer; his comments as quoted in the article suggest the latter. “[W]hat we need to do is make sure that we continue to be there and fight for the program… to ensure that the worst-case scenario doesn’t happen. We don’t want to get there.” That sounds more like playing defense than offense.
Sen. Martinez added that he’ll work with other members of Congress to build “coalitions with other states” that have a stake in NASA’s exploration program to help secure funding. “We’re returning to the Moon. America doesn’t quite know that that’s happening, and we need to make sure the story gets out,” he said. “That’s my job — to get the story out of NASA and to make sure that the members of Congress are informed and interested in what it can do for our country to continue a viable space program.”
By Jeff Foust on 2007 June 26 at 7:04 am ET Today NASA plans to officially release a long-awaited new strategic communications plan. I was able yesterday to preview a copy of the plan, which goes over the market research NASA performed to see how the agency is perceived by the general public, how the agency plans to tailor its message to address weaknesses uncovered in that research, and strategies for implementation.
The market research (which Robert Hopkins, chief of strategic communications at NASA, discussed in some detail in a presentation last month at the ISDC in Dallas) found that, not surprisingly, NASA has broad public support, but a smaller fraction of the public believes that NASA is relevant to their lives. However, a far larger percentage of respondents believed the agency was relevant after being told about technologies (from smoke detectors to weather satellites) that the agency had a hand in developing. Poll results also showed limited excitement about, or even awareness of, NASA’s Moon and Mars exploration plans. Men and younger audiences tend to be more interested in such exploration, although the plan identifies its base audience as the “Apollo Generation”, those 45-64 years old.
Using those survey results, NASA has crafted a new “core message” that emphasizes not exploration or missions in and of themselves, but on the benefits accrued from them: “NASA explores for answers that power our future.” In the document, “future” is defined as the sum of three things: inspiration, innovation, and discovery. “Why explore?” the plan asks. “Because exploration powers inspiration, innovation, and discovery.”
The plan also introduces a more specific message for highly-targeted audiences called “The Space Economy”, which the document defines as “the full range of activities and the use of resources that create and provide value and benefits to human beings in the course of exploring, understand and utilizing space.” The plan calls for NASA to establish “thought leadership” around this concept that further enhances the agency’s relevance in specific audiences.
The implementation of the plan will primarily be structured around the year-long 50th anniversary celebration for NASA that will begin this October (NASA was formally established on October 1, 1958.) Many different events and other work are planned, from “Future Forums” around the country to new public service announcements to a “Web 2.0″ redesign of the NASA web site that will incorporate social bookmarking, tagging, user-generated content, and even a “NASATube” and “NASApedia”.
It’s far too early, of course, to tell how effective this is going to be. Even if NASA convinces the public that the agency is more relevant to them, will the public respond in turn by demanding more money for NASA from the White House and Congress? Or will the public simply be more satisfied that they’re getting their money’s worth at current spending levels?
By Jeff Foust on 2007 June 26 at 6:02 am ET A few events this week related to space policy:
The Marshall Institute is hosting a “Forum on National Security Space: Examining Codes and Rules for Space” this Wednesday on Capitol Hill. The all-morning event features three panels of speakers discussing “ongoing efforts, established rules, and options for the future with respect to collision avoidance, debris mitigation, and harmful interference resolution” in space. The event is free, but if you haven’t yet registered, good luck: I tried to RSVP for this last week and was told I’m on a waiting list.
Thursday morning the House Science and Technology Committee’s space subcommittee will host a hearing on NASA’s 2008 budget request for earth sciences programs. Scheduled to testify will be officials from NASA, academia, and other organizations.
On Friday morning CSIS will host a presentation by Jean-Jacques Tortora, space attache to the French Embassy in Washington and US representative for the French space agency CNES, on “The Future of French Space Policy”. (I did not find details about the event on the CSIS web site, but the event is scheduled from 9-10:30 am at the CSIS offices at 1800 K St NW).
By Jeff Foust on 2007 June 25 at 7:57 am ET Despite representing Florida, Sen. Mel Martinez (R) has been far less vocal on space policy issues than his fellow Floridian, Sen. Bill Nelson (D), who chairs the space subcommittee of the Senate Commerce Committee. However, Central Florida News 13 reports that Sen. Martinez will visit the Kennedy Space Center on Monday, meeting with NASA officials there “about funding for the space agency”. The article is short on specifics other than that he apparently wants to avoid further delays in the development of Orion and Ares 1.
By Jeff Foust on 2007 June 21 at 10:04 pm ET They’re manning the battlestations at the Mars Society, which issued a statement with that title to protest the inclusion of language in the House appropriations bill that would prohibit any spending on human exploration of Mars. “THIS ANTI-MARS LANGUAGE MUST BE REMOVED!” the society argues (emphasis in original.) “Otherwise, the program may turn into [a] MOON ONLY program. We can’t let that happen.” The society is calling on its members to contact their representatives and ask them to remove the offending language from the bill.
By Jeff Foust on 2007 June 21 at 9:59 pm ET Key leaders of the House Science and Technology Committee issued a press release criticizing the White House for its lack of interest in Sen. Barbara Mikulski’s “space summit” proposal. The statement, by full committee chairman Bart Gordon and subcommittee chairmen Mark Udall and Nick Lampson, said they were “deeply disappointed” in the response by the White House to Mikulski’s summit idea. “We intend to work with NASA supporters on both sides of the aisle in Congress to try to give NASA the resources it will need to carry out the tasks that the nation has asked it to undertake,” they add. “However, the President’s disengagement will make that effort immeasurably more difficult.” The choice of “immeasurably” is interesting: one assumes they used that word in the sense of “extremely”. However, one might argue that the president’s “disengagement” will have an immeasurable—as in negligible—effect on the overall budgetary process.
By Jeff Foust on 2007 June 21 at 9:51 pm ET Given the chatter associated with the most recent post, it appears it’s time for your regular admonishment about appropriate comments. Rather than repeat myself, I’ll just point to some previous posts on proper decorum. All I’ll add is that I am taking additional steps to improve the signal-to-noise ratio in the comments. Thanks for your patience and cooperation.
By Jeff Foust on 2007 June 21 at 7:12 am ET As you may recall, earlier this year that Sen. Barbara Mikulski called for a “space summit” with the President regarding NASA’s programs and funding. That proposal picked up bipartisan support in Congress, but no response from the White House—until now. Yesterday Sen. Mikulski announced that she had received a response, from outgoing OMB director Rob Portman and science advisor John Marburger rather that the president himself. In the letter, Marburger and Portman offer to meet with Mikulski and NASA administrator Mike Griffin “to discuss civil space and other important topics in the coming weeks”, but reiterated the administration’s belief that “the President’s budget requests since the 2004 announcement [of the Vision] would have provided sufficient resources to implement this program and to support other NASA activities, such as science and aeronautics.”
Mikulski was not mollified by the response, saying in a statement, “I regret the President did not address this invitation himself.” She is not, though, giving up on her efforts for a space summit: “However, I will continue to seek a new dialogue with the President. Only through the active cooperation of the White House and the Congress, can we have a healthy, robust and balanced space program.”
By Jeff Foust on 2007 June 18 at 6:55 am ET During a recent trip to a bookstore I checked out Al Gore’s latest book, The Assault on Reason. Was there anything in this wide-ranging book about space policy, perchance? There’s no entry in the index for NASA, but there is one for “Space, militarization of” (wedged in alphabetical order between Socrates and Stalin, Joseph). Gore devotes nearly two full pages in the 320-page book to his opposition to the national space policy released last year by the Bush Administration, covering much of the same ground that he did in a speech in New Mexico last October. “[The] international community is strongly inclined to view the administration’s policy as the foundation for an American effort to unilaterally and permanently dominate space as a medium for combat,” he writes. “No other major state is likely to accept the Bush space policy as permanently acceptable.” He factors in the Chinese ASAT test this January into his analysis, as well: “The administration’s shocked response to China’s recent test of an antisatellite ASAT system in an example of America’s attitude that its predilections are substitutes for international law.”
While in the bookstore I also noticed that another maybe-he’ll-run-maybe-he-won’t presidential hopeful, Newt Gingrich, has a new book out as well. Although I didn’t read it I assumed that there are no new space policy insights in Pearl Harbor: A Novel of December 8th. Just a guess.
By Jeff Foust on 2007 June 18 at 6:38 am ET Late this afternoon the full House Appropriations Committee is scheduled to meet to take up the Commerce, Justice, Science appropriations bill, the one that includes funding for NASA. [update: as noted in the comments the hearing has been postponed until further notice.] The subcommittee added about $300 million to the agency’s overall total in its markup hearing last week, although it transferred some money from space operations (shuttle and station) to aeronautics, science, and education programs.
One challenge the agency will face both in today’s hearing and later floor debate on the bill in the full House is how much issues like the NASA IG investigation and the controversial destruction of recordings of a meeting between administrator Mike Griffin and the IG staff will serve as a negative distraction. That is, will members be willing to approve a budget increase above and beyond what the president requested (albeit one smaller than what many agency supporters wanted) given the negative publicity surrounding the agency in general? Late last week the chairman and ranking member of the investigations subcommittee of the House Science and Technology Committee requested a criminal investigation of the video destruction in a letter to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. Also last week came editorials calling for the dismissal of NASA IG Robert Cobb from both newspapers that closely follow the space agency (Florida Today) and papers with much larger circulations (Miami Herald). I asked Congressman Nick Lampson about that last month and he was convinced it wasn’t a major concern, but one can imagine how members who would like to transfer money from NASA to other agencies could use these controversies to their advantage. We’ll see how that works out late today.
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