By Jeff Foust on 2007 June 15 at 1:28 pm ET Last week the campaign of Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Hillary Clinton held a fundraiser/issues forum in Washington, which, as noted at the time, included a breakout session on “commercial and civil aerospace”. An article in this week’s print edition of Space News (not available online) has a few more details about what took place at the event. About 20 people attended the session, led by Lori Garver; Clinton herself did not attend but one of her domestic policy advisors, Jake Sullivan, was there. Garver and others expressed support for the general concept of the Vision for Space Exploration, but thought there should be more balance with other NASA programs, including earth science and aeronautics. Sullivan reportedly was particularly interested in emerging commercial space companies, asking how the government “could incentivize” companies like Virgin Galactic and Bigelow Aerospace.
By Jeff Foust on 2007 June 15 at 1:28 pm ET Earlier this week the Space Exploration Alliance (SEA) ran another Moon-Mars Blitz to win additional funding for NASA. The SEA released a report on the event late yesterday; since it doesn’t seem to be available on the NSS or SEA web sites, I’ve included the text of the release below:
Space Exploration Alliance Completes Successful 2007 Moon-Mars Blitz on Capitol Hill
Participants meet with almost 100 members of Congress and staff
WASHINGTON, DC: June 14, 2007 The Space Exploration Alliance (SEA) launched the 2007 Moon-Mars Blitz this week in Washington, DC, meeting with almost 100 members of Congress and their staff members to support the American space program. In addition to numerous face-to-face meetings with members of Congress, SEA spoke with the offices of Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senator Hillary Clinton, and also dropped off petitions for Senator Harry Reid and House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey.
Moon-Mars Blitz participants were quite pleased with the reception they received at most meetings. According to Blitz Co-Chair Rick Zucker, “We discussed with Congress the many reasons why space is so important to the future of our nation, and we did so at a critical time in the budgetary process. I was pleased not only by the positive response that we received from those offices that are traditionally strong supporters of NASA, but also by the strong interest that was expressed in many other congressional offices which represent districts in which NASA does not have a strong presence or a natural constituency.”
The SEA’s Moon-Mars Blitz was timed perfectly to speak with the United States Congress. The House of Representatives was in the middle of the appropriations mark-up and after the first day of Congressional meetings, the House appropriations subcommittee for Commerce, Justice, and Science recommended a $286 million increase over the requested level for NASA.
According to SEA Steering Committee member Tim Bailey, “It was amazing to get such immediate feedback from the Congressional offices. We could see from the mark-up that the Representatives and staffers really understood the importance of space exploration and its impact on the nation as a whole.”
Blitz participants advocated:
- Funding NASA in 2008 at the level authorized by the 2005 NASA Authorization Act, an increase of $1.4 billion over the requested level
- Support for Moon, Mars and Beyond
- Reduction in the looming human spaceflight “gap”
- Support for programs like Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) and Centennial Challenges that promote private sector engagement in the space program
- Investment in key science missions
- Funding for the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC)
Congressional outreach events not only have significant political impact potential, but can also serve as a tremendous inspiration to participants. Moon-Mars Blitz participants came away with a tremendous feeling of achievement and an increased understanding of the United States Government. “I never thought that I would be so close to Congress and the people who represent the voter’s interests,” said Luisa Fernanda Zambrano-Marin, a Candidate for Masters in Space Studies at the International Space University.
Now more than ever, Blitz organizers are convinced that these types of joint efforts among space advocacy organizations are vital to the space cause. “I think that we will always have more impact when we work together to support a bold human space program,” commented Blitz Chairman and SEA Steering Committee member Chris Carberry. “SEA plans to start running some more ambitious programs over the upcoming year and we hope to start fully exploiting the large talent pool of SEA member organizations. One theme we really want to emphasize is that one person really can have an impact on space policy – and have a LOT of fun doing it.”
The Space Exploration Alliance is planning to run another Blitz in February 2008.
By Jeff Foust on 2007 June 13 at 7:59 am ET Space News (subscription required) reported online late yesterday that the commerce, justice and science subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee approved a $17.6-billion FY08 budget for NASA during a markup hearing on Monday. That top-line figure is about $300 million more than the president’s request (although less than what many people have been hoping and asking for), but the additional funding is allocated not to exploration or space operations (shuttle and station) but instead to science, aeronautics, and educational programs; according to the article, space operations took a minor cut to help pay for the increases in other programs. There aren’t many details about what programs exactly are getting additional (or reduced) funding since the bill itself hasn’t been released, but, according to a committee press release (one that is not yet available on the committee’s web site), the bill includes “a moratorium prohibiting NASA from implementing a reduction in force and from funding any research, development or demonstration activity related exclusively to Human Exploration of Mars.”
Update: SPACE.com has a free version of the article if you don’t have a Space News subscription. Also, the committee’s web site now has the press release about the funding bill, and the schedule of hearings has been updated to include the full committee markup of the bill on June 18th.
By Jeff Foust on 2007 June 12 at 6:53 am ET A couple of events this week on international space policy issues:
The Denver Museum of Nature and Science is hosting tonight “A New Space Race? Chinese and American Plans for War and Peace in Orbit and Beyond”. If you’re not in Denver, you can watch a free live webcast of the event starting at 7 pm MDT.
On Friday CSIS is hosting a panel on The New European Space Policy here in Washington, featuring speakers from ESA and the European Commission, along with John Logsdon of GWU’s Space Policy Institute. This won’t be webcast live, although CSIS frequently provides transcripts and/or audio and video of their events afterwards.
By Jeff Foust on 2007 June 9 at 10:10 am ET Most readers here know that Newt Gingrich has long advocated the uses of prizes for space exploration, seeing them as more efficient than current NASA-led efforts. (Nevermind that Gingrich, when he did have considerable power as Speaker of the House in the 1990s, did little openly to promote such prizes.) Gingrich, who may or may not run for president in 2008, is still in favor of them, and talked about them briefly during a speech Friday, according to the AP:
In a glimpse of what his candidacy might look like, he said he would shut down public schools that aren’t performing and offer a $20 billion reward for the first private company that successfully completes a Mars mission.
“Somebody would be there and back about 40 percent of the way into the NASA process,” he said.
One assumes here that the “Mars mission” mentioned above is a human landing on Mars.
By Jeff Foust on 2007 June 8 at 7:29 am ET If you were expecting surprises or a gotcha moment at yesterday’s joint hearing about NASA inspector general Robert Cobb, you were probably very disappointed when the three-and-a-half-hour hearing finally ended. Everyone stuck to their scripts: former OIG employees described their encounters with Cobb when they worked for him, key members of the House and Senate reiterated their demands that Cobb resign, while Cobb himself, other than admitting to the use of some strong language, professed his innocence to the other claims about his actions. The whole affair seems no closer to an end now than it was before the hearing: Cobb shows no signs of stepping down, while his Congressional critics made vague statements about taking further action. As Congressional Quarterly notes, “Though Congress has no formal role in determining Cobb’s employment status, lawmakers can exert pressure on the Bush administration to remove him.”
By Jeff Foust on 2007 June 7 at 8:03 am ET A couple of relevant hearings today:
The energy and environment subcommittee of the House Science and Technology committee will hold a NPOESS status report hearing at 1 pm this afternoon (note that the hearing is starting an hour earlier than previously announced.) Witnesses include David Powner of the GAO; Brig. Gen. Sue Mashiko, NPOESS program executive officer; and OSTP director John Marburger.
Despite the hopeful wishes of some commenters, the hearing likely to get more attention is the joint House-Senate hearing “Oversight Review of the Investigation of the NASA Inspector General”, hosted by the space subcommittee of the Senate Commerce Committee at 2 pm. The hearing will feature two panels: one consisting of a number of officials from other government IG offices and outside experts, and a second with NASA IG Robert Cobb. In advance of the hearing, Cobb has released his prepared statement and supporting exhibits, where he defends his conduct against “unjustified allegations”. This hearing promises to be interesting political theater; whether it’s anything more constructive than that remains to be seen.
By Jeff Foust on 2007 June 6 at 8:16 am ET Today’s USA Today features an op-ed by John Lehman, former Secretary of the Navy, expressing concern that other countries “are starting to leave us in the dust” in space exploration “while U.S. special interest groups quibble over NASA’s faults.” His argument is that several countries, including China, India, Japan, and Russia, are accelerating their efforts to explore space, putting us at a strategic disadvantage. “With capable challengers multiplying, continued leadership in space is a bellwether of America’s determination to remain a great power of the future,” he concludes.
Reading through his essay, though, is appears that Lehman may have overplayed his hand. Some examples:
- Regarding China, he writes that China’s robotic lunar exploration plans “should keep Beijing on course to land men on the moon in this century’s second decade,” even though there have been very mixed messages, at best, about if and when China will mount a manned lunar landing mission; even the most ambitious Chinese statements don’t suggest such a mission before 2020. And while Lehman writes that “a third manned mission that includes the first spacewalk is being planned,” recent reports suggest that there may not be a spacewalk on that mission in 2008.
- Lehman said that India “is in the contest to land men on the moon again.” However, G. Madhvan Nair, chairman of the Indian space agency ISRO, said just a few days ago that India has “no plan to send man to moon at present” and is only now starting to consider developing a human spaceflight program.
- Japan, writes Lehman, “is well-suited for the financial and technological requirements of space exploration.” That may be, but their performance to date has been less than impressive. For example, an article this week in the Yomiuri Shimbun noted that an experimental communications satellite launched late year “as run into so many problems since its launch that it cannot perform planned experiments”.
- As for Russia, Lehman says that Russia is planning five robotic lunar missions in three years and a “base” by 2012. Of course, it’s difficult to figure out in Russia which programs are real and which are simply desired. For what it’s worth, the same Newsweek International article that Lehman cites for that claim also states that China’s first lunar mission will launch on April 17; Chang’e-1 is still on the ground and won’t be launched until later this year.
Lehman’s recommendations for the US aren’t terribly controversial: he advocates “ambitious manned exploration” as well as a strengthening of the industrial base “by drawing in the more entrepreneurial firms, instead of only the two or three biggest”. Those seem like measures that can be advocated without resorting to overstating the abilities and ambitions of other countries.
By Jeff Foust on 2007 June 5 at 6:51 am ET An AP article yesterday cites a confidential report sent to the White House last December by scientists concerned that changes in the NPOESS satellite program will limit their ability to monitor climate change. A reduction in the number of satellites, as well as elimination of instruments designed primarily to collect climate data, “places the overall climate program in serious jeopardy”, the AP reported. The report comes just as the energy and environment subcommittee of the House Science and Technology Committee is planning a hearing on NPOESS this Thursday. Since the hearing is taking place at the same time as the joint Senate-House hearing on the NASA inspector general, though, one wonders how much attention NPOESS will get.
By Jeff Foust on 2007 June 4 at 7:51 am ET Not surprisingly, space policy wasn’t one of the subjects of the Democratic Party presidential debate last night on CNN. However, a little-noticed article in last week’s print edition of Space News sheds a little light on the space policy of New Mexico governor Bill Richardson. According to the article, Richardson met with a group of space professionals at a fundraiser in the Washington area on May 16, spending an hour there talking with the over 50 people in attendance on space issues. Richardson is best known in space circles for his support of Spaceport America, a commercial spaceport in his home state, but didn’t shed much light on his thoughts about the Vision for Space Exploration and NASA’s implementation of it. He did say that he sees space as “a bona fide area of economic growth and opportunity”, as the article put it, and said he would use Spaceport America as a model of the national-level projects he would enact as president. Of course, that may be of only academic interest, since Richardson is barely registering at the national level in recent polls (although he is running fourth in Iowa), although many have considered Richardson a likely running mate for whomever wins the presidential nomination, and in past administrations the vice president’s portfolio has included space.
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