By Jeff Foust on 2007 May 9 at 7:15 am ET Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani is scheduled to visit the US Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville and meet with reporters there today. The forum would suggest that he might say something about space policy, unless he pulls a John Kerry (who went to KSC and talked about health care; fortunately, bunnysuits should not be required to see the exhibits at the center.) Giuliani, like most other 2008 presidential candidates of either major party, has said little about space exploration other than that he wants to “aggressively pursue space exploration”. Perhaps not that aggressively, though: he told a Heritage Foundation audience earlier this week that he supports an “outright cut” in non-defense spending and also wants to cut the civilian federal work force by a fifth, primarily through attrition.
By Jeff Foust on 2007 May 7 at 7:00 am ET In an article in this week’s issue of The Space Review, I report on a recent event where experts discussed the reasons why China conducted its ASAT test, or, more accurately, why we don’t know why China carried out the January 11th test. There are a couple of schools of thought behind the confused Chinese response when word of the test became public: either the Foreign Ministry wasn’t aware of the test itself, or didn’t anticipate the strong negative reaction and needed time to figure out a response. However, a lack of transparency into the Chinese decision-making process means that, nearly four months later, we don’t understand why China carried out the test in the first place. And as Dean Cheng put it at an event last week, “For a nuclear superpower, for a nation that we do negotiate with, and have ties to, both economic and strategic, that should be very, very worrisome.”
By Jeff Foust on 2007 May 6 at 4:21 pm ET Last month I noted a recent poll that showed how willing the public would be to cut NASA funding versus other federal programs, which appeared to be more evidence of just how low a priority the space program is in the eyes of the general public. However, a new Zogby survey, conducted in mid-March and released late last week, offers a different opinion. According to that poll, 71 percent oppose “any cut” in the NASA budget, with one in three advocating an increase in the budget. The Zogby release also notes that 49 percent of respondents give NASA a positive “job approval” rating, and 80 percent see having a space program as critical to national prestige.
The May issue of Real America, Zogby’s monthly newsletter, has more details about the poll. (The eight-page newsletter, published as a series of low-resolution graphics files rather than as an HTML or PDF document, costs $5.95 an issue.) The survey found that 64 percent were concerned that other nations might “place military weapons in orbit”, and that 55 percent would support “U.S. action to stop other nations from militarizing space”. (Not specifying what sort of “action” respondents had in mind, nor that space has been militarized by the US and others for decades, just not weaponized.) The poll adds that 36 percent of Americas favor “a consortium of spacefaring nations governing space”, compared to the 5 percent who said the US alone should “govern” space.
So what to make of these figures? While space advocates might be heartened to see considerable public interest in space, without seeing the survey instrument—the specific questions and answer choices given to respondents—it’s difficult to gauge their significance. Certainly, the choice of some of the questions, such as those about the space weaponization (the newsletter makes reference to concerns about space becoming “a 100-mile high platform for dropping bombs”, not the usual concern regarding weaponization) and governance suggest a lack of sophistication. (I noted on Personal Spaceflight something similar about aspects of the poll dealing with space tourism.) Elsewhere, 54 percent of respondents said that NASA’s plans to return to the Moon should be a “high” priority (and 63 percent believed NASA would achieve that goal), but only 13 percent believed that establishing a lunar base should be NASA’s “top” priority.
But there’s that bigger contradiction: why do nearly half of respondents in one poll select the “space program” as the one that should be among the first to see its budget cut, while in another a third state that NASA’s budget should be increased? Both the Zogby poll and the earlier Harris poll were conducted at around the same time, and both done online with relatively large sample sizes: over 2,200 in the Harris poll and over 4,800 in the Zogby poll. What it does suggest is that the responses may be very strongly dependent on how the survey instrument is worded, which in turn argues that what opinions Americans hold about NASA and space exploration aren’t held very strongly.
By Jeff Foust on 2007 May 3 at 7:12 am ET A couple weeks ago we heard that we have to go back to the Moon or else the Chinese will turn it into a military base. Now we hear that Democrats want to “cripple” the nation’s human spaceflight program. At least, that’s the claim of Rep. Dave Weldon (R-FL), after the House rejected an amendment he proposed to an NSF authorization bill that would require that any increase to NSF’s budget—the House bill authorizes a 40-percent increase—not be done at NASA’s expense. The Rules Committee had rejected a vote on the amendment, and a point of order against the amendment (because its provisions “are not germane to the bill”) was raised and sustained on the House floor last night.
Weldon argues that the rejection of the amendment makes it “increasingly clear that Democratic leaders have our manned space program in their crosshairs.” Weldon claimed in his press release that the increase in the NSF budget “was made possible earlier this year when Democrats cut a half-a-billion dollars from NASA funding.” The problem with this is that the NSF bill is an authorization bill for FY2008; the “cut” was in an appropriations bill (continuing resolution) for the remainder of FY2007. Just because the House authorized a 40-percent increase in NSF’s budget is no guarantee that the NSF will be appropriated that much (recall that NASA is authorized at a higher level than its current appropriation), nor that any increase in NSF appropriations would necessarily come at the expense of NASA, although the two are both funded out of the same part of the budget, as Weldon notes.
Another diagnosis from Rep. Weldon (an MD), from an earlier press release about his proposed amendment: “Our strategic competitors, like China, are putting their manned space program in strategic overdrive, while the Democratic majority is in the process of prescribing Ambien to our program.”
Given the House’s rejection of his amendment and his concerns about its effect on NASA, you might think that Weldon would have voted against the measure, as a matter of principle if nothing else. Nope. Late last night Weldon joined 398 other House members in voting for the bill.
By Jeff Foust on 2007 May 2 at 7:55 am ET This morning the House Science Committee’s space and aeronautics subcommittee will be holding a hearing on NASA’s space science programs in the FY2008 budget proposal, featuring the agency’s new associate administrator for science, Alan Stern, as well as several outside experts. The hearing will be at 10 am in Rayburn 2318 and will be webcast.
Also today, Senators Barbara Mikulski and Richard Shelby will host a “roundtable discussion” with five Nobel laureates, including John Mather of NASA Goddard. The roundtable, Mikulski’s spokesperson said, is designed “to look at promising new areas of research that will keep America competitive and look at why it is important to continue funding our nation’s research programs.”
By Jeff Foust on 2007 May 1 at 8:02 pm ET Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL) has been one of the members of Congress calling on NASA and the White House to fire NASA inspector general Robert Cobb. Today Nelson released a letter to Mike Griffin calling not only for Cobb’s dismissal, but also NASA general counsel Mike Wholley. Wholley raised the ire of Nelson and some other members of Congress when they learned that he made the determination that a video recording of a meeting that features Griffin, Cobb, and a number of other NASA employees. “Counsel Wholley’s actions are troubling,” Nelson writes, although admitting that what Wholley did wasn’t necessarily wrong. “Even if Wholley’s motives were innocuous, his actions create serious appearance problems for the agency and distract from our common goal of building support for NASA’s mission.”
Nelson also complains that Wholley had a “close working relationship” with Cobb, undermining the independence that the inspector general’s office is supposed to have from the rest of NASA. Also, Nelson complained that Wholley conducted his own “evaluation of the allegations and evidence” against Cobb after the Integrity Committee of the President’s Council on Integrity and Efficiency completed its own work. Those factors were enough for Nelson to “recommend that you [Griffin] require Counsel Wholley’s resignation as well.”
Regardless of what you think of the Cobb affair, there’s one point in Nelson’s letter that’s hard to disagree with: “I am increasingly convinced that this situation is an unnecessary distraction from NASA’s real challenges.” The only problem is that Griffin is unlikely to agree to Nelson’s solution to end this distraction.
Update: Florida Today reports that Griffin admits that destroying the recording was “a mistake”, although that admission alone seems unlikely to mollify Nelson.
By Jeff Foust on 2007 May 1 at 7:18 am ET The wires were buzzing yesterday with a report that NASA has rejected Russian cooperation in lunar exploration. Or, at least, that’s what Anatoly Perminov, the head of Roskosmos, claimed in an Interfax article, which was picked up uncritically by AFP and AP. “We were ready to cooperate but for unknown reasons, the United States have said they will undertake this program themselves,” Perminov was quoted as saying. Problem is, there was apparently no formal Russian proposal for cooperation according to NASA, which only New Scientist bothered to get a response from. “Nothing was offered and nothing was declined,” a NASA spokesman said, adding that the space agency was still interested in international cooperation, although apparently still sticking to plans to keep the transportation infrastructure all-American.
By Jeff Foust on 2007 April 30 at 8:05 pm ET The Houston Chronicle reported this morning that Congressman Nick Lampson (D-TX) is considering a run for the US Senate in 2008 against incumbent Republican John Cornyn. Lampson, who won the seat previously held by former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (and which includes NASA JSC) is said to be considering the Senate run despite low name recognition statewide because he expects tough competition for reelection to the House in 2008: “Lampson faces a battle to hold on to his House seat, and, since he’ll have to raise millions of dollars anyway, he might as well go for the brass ring,” the Chronicle article notes.
How tough a reelection race? According an AP article this afternoon, Lampson is number one on a list of top 20 “targets” compiled by Karl Rove and presented to officials at federal agencies. The rest of the article is a little confusing, though: the article claims that the presentation was made to officials at “about 20″ federal agencies, including NASA, citing a Washington Post article published last week. However, that article suggests that the NASA briefing, as well as those for many other federal agencies, was made prior to the 2006 midterm elections; Lampson was not in the House at that time. Further complicating the article are comments by a Lampson spokesman, Kier Murray: “We’ve seen a tendency to overpoliticize things at the White House often at the expense of the public good. We hope nothing like trying to move part of JSC to another part of NASA, or nothing like that would happen (as a result).”
By Jeff Foust on 2007 April 30 at 7:21 am ET That’s the proposal of Congressman Ken Calvert (R-CA), who is drafting legislation that would name the NASA research center at Edwards Air Force Base in California after Neil Armstrong, the Los Angeles Daily News reported Sunday. The name is fitting, since Armstrong worked there for several years in the 1950s and 1960s, flying the X-15 and other research aircraft. The Dryden name would be retained for Western Aeronautical Test Range.
Why the name change? Supporters argue that the name change will help tie the center more closely to space exploration work in the eyes of the public. Also, backers claim that the name change “will inspire young people to get them interested in math and science.” How a name change will do that isn’t elaborated upon in the article.
By Jeff Foust on 2007 April 30 at 7:12 am ET In this week’s issue of The Space Review, Eric Hedman argues that the best solution to NASA’s current problems implementing the Vision for Space Exploration is to increase its budget so that it accounts for a full one percent of the federal budget, compared to its current level of about 0.6 percent. The idea isn’t new: a number of groups, like the NSS, have previously called for raising NASA’s share of the budget to one percent. As Hedman states, “Going out and backing space exploration by saying it is only one percent of our federal budget sounds to the average taxpayer not much different than six tenths of one percent.” That doesn’t sound like much of a change, but when put in absolute dollars—an increase of on the order of $10 billion to NASA’s annual budget—it makes it much harder for Congress to swallow, giving all the competing demands on the budget and the relatively low priority given to space.
That article reminds me that I forgot to discuss here an article I wrote last week for The Space Review about the new approach NASA has been taking in recent months to sell the Vision and the agency in general. This approach leans heavily on “soft power” logic: if the US returns to the Moon and makes other advances in space exploration, it will give the US geopolitical prestige. Yet, as I note, the same argument can be used for spending in other areas, such as dealing with climate change, with potentially greater effectiveness than in space. Such arguments are, on their own, not compelling enough to support government spending on civil space, particularly in a time when people are more willing to cut space spending than any other major federal program.
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