By Jeff Foust on 2007 February 15 at 5:56 am ET Yesterday the House Science and Technology Committee held a hearing on the proposed overall FY2008 R&D budget, with OSTP director John Marburger as the sole witness. Neither the official committee press release about the hearing, nor the release by the committee’s Republican office, made any mention of NASA funding, but a GovExec.com article noted that NASA funding was a topic of the hearing. Members of both parties expressed concern that NASA funding is not sufficient to support all of its priorities, both science and exploration. Committee chairman Bart Gordon also complained about NASA’s exclusion from the American Competitiveness Initiative unveiled by the Bush Administration a year ago, questioning “whether that means the administration does not view aeronautics, earth and space sciences as ‘world-class’ sciences,” according to the article.
Marburger responded that while the administration supports NASA, “frankly it’s funded better than the physical sciences in these other agencies that have been under-funded for a long time — and we need to catch up.” As for strains on the NASA budget, Marburger reminded members that Congress passed the joint funding resolution that funds NASA at its FY06 levels for FY07, and that without an increase it would “jeopardize the vision for space exploration plus priority earth and space science missions.”
By Jeff Foust on 2007 February 15 at 5:41 am ET The Senate yesterday passed the joint funding resolution that funds NASA and many other federal agencies through the rest of the 2007 fiscal year. Since the Senate made no changes to the House version, that means that NASA will get just over $16.2 billion for the full fiscal year, compared to the nearly $16.8 billion the agency was expecting in the original FY07 budget, with essentially all of that cut on NASA’s exploration programs (with some reshuffling of money among other agency programs). How that cut with affect specific programs hasn’t been announced.
Florida Today reports this morning that Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL) will seek supplemental funding for NASA, either in a standalone bill or with an increase in the 2008 budget (presumably on top of the increase already proposed by the Bush Administration). “We’re committed to seeing NASA made whole by restoring funding through a supplemental (spending bill) or in the 2008 budget,” a Nelson spokesman said. Nelson, the new chairman of the space subcommittee of the Senate Commerce Committee, has scheduled a subcommittee hearing on “NASA Budget for the afternoon of February 28th.
Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), however, was more resigned to the lower funding level. “While I would have liked to have increased funding for NASA, there was simply not enough extra funding available for us to do so,” she said in a statement. “With only seven months left in this fiscal year, I believe NASA will be able to manage their programs in exploration with minimal impact to the overall schedule.”
By Jeff Foust on 2007 February 14 at 7:09 am ET China’s ASAT test last month was supposed to shake up how the US and other countries perceived the threat posed by such weapons and their reaction to them. So far, though, government officials from China and the US are sticking to the same positions they espoused prior to the January 11 event. A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman said that the country would continue to press for a treaty banning such weapons and that the test last month was a “scientific and technical experiment” not targeted at any specific country, and with no plans to repeat it.
The US, meanwhile, is sticking to the position that such a treaty is unnecessary because there is no arms race in space. “Despite the ASAT test, we continue to believe that there is no arms race in space and therefore no problem for arms control to solve,” Christina Rocca, US ambassador to the Conference on Disarmament, said in Geneva. Ironically, if you believe the Chinese that this was a one-time test, then the US statement is correct: there is no arms race in space. But do you believe the Chinese?
By Jeff Foust on 2007 February 14 at 6:54 am ET The Senate yesterday ended debate, as expected, on the joint funding resolution that would fund many federal agencies, including NASA, through the end of FY07. There was no mention of any amendments to the bill, including any additional money for NASA; any efforts to add money to NASA will have to rely on a supplemental funding bill or another similar maneuver. (Even if it had, it would presumably have to be reconciled with the House version of the measure.) The Senate is expected to vote on the resolution Wednesday and send it on to the President. The current continuing resolution funding much of the government runs out on Thursday.
By Jeff Foust on 2007 February 13 at 6:20 am ET The House Science and Technology Committee is holding a hearing later this morning on National Imperatives for Earth and Climate Science. The hearing will be based on the Earth sciences decadal survey released last month that warned of a potential future gap in space-based Earth sciences data because of funding cuts (cuts that, as previously noted here, are often blamed on the Vision for Space Exploration even though said cuts started before the Vision’s announcement three years ago.) The two co-chairs of the decadal survey, Richard Anthes and Berrien Moore, will be witnesses at the hearing, as well as former Wyoming governor James Geringer, who will talk about the importance of space-based remote sensing
By Jeff Foust on 2007 February 13 at 6:20 am ET Looks like it’s time for the occasional call for decorum regarding comments. A few simple guidelines:
- The focus of the discussion here is space policy. If there’s a relevant discussion about presidential candidates’ opinions on space policy, great. If it’s about politics and politicians in general, take if some place else.
- I have a personal preference that people sign their names to their comments, but have a stronger preference for thoughtful comments and discussion. That is, an on-topic, insightful comment from someone using a pseudonym is preferable to a signed comment that is an off-topic rant or a potshot at another participant in the discussion.
- Spellcheck is one of the late 20th century’s greatest inventions. Use it.
If this is too much to ask, I suggest taking your comments somewhere else. Thanks for your cooperation.
By Jeff Foust on 2007 February 12 at 7:12 am ET Lost in the discussion last week about NASA’s FY08 budget proposal (which itself was quickly overshadowed by more sordid matters) was the space portion of the Defense Department’s FY08 budget proposal. The budget includes $11 billion for Air Force space programs in 2008, up from $9.5 billion in 2007, as Aerospace Daily and Space News [subscription required] reported last week. The budget includes more money for Transformation Satellite Communications (TSat) program compared to 2007, although less than what the Air Force had previously planned, given new plans to slip the launch of the first TSat spacecraft from 2014 to 2016. There’s also more money for SBIRS, Alternate Infrared Satellite System, EELV, and GPS 3, but less for the Wideband Global (née Gapfiller) Satellite system, as it moves towards its first launch this year.
One of the smaller, but highly visible, gains in the budget is for Operationally Responsive Space (ORS), penciled in for $87 million in 2008 compared to $35 million in 2007. One reason for the increase, according to Space News, is because the Air Force plans to order as many as ten launches for future small satellite payloads. Given that there was some concern as recently as this fall about the future of ORS, this is a big win for responsive space proponents.
The Wall Street Journal [subscription required] highlighted one policy issue of note in the budget proposal: greater cooperation between the Air Force and NRO on radar imaging programs, while the Air Force slows down its ambitious (read: expensive) Space Radar effort.
By Jeff Foust on 2007 February 9 at 8:18 pm ET By coincidence, around the same time the Senate is completing debate on the joint funding resolution, the National Space Society will be conducting its Space Budget Blitz 2007 citizens lobbying effort on Capitol Hill. The event was planned months in advance to take place about a week after the FY08 budget proposal was released, but with the funding resolution still in play, one imagines there will be a late push to try and win support for any bid to increase NASA’s budget. Participants are planning to visit over 60 Congressional offices and deliver petitions signed by over 7,000 people supporting “a robust program of human space exploration”.
It’s also worth noting that ProSpace will be holding its March Storm 2007 lobbying effort in early March. The basic agenda of that event, though, is a little different than the NSS event:
- Prizes to stimulate space development
- A redirection of the Ares and Orion exploration programs
- Incentives to promote the development of a commercial space infrastructure
Item #2 will doubtless be of particular interest…
By Jeff Foust on 2007 February 9 at 8:02 pm ET The Senate is poised to vote on the FY2007 joint funding resolution as early as Tuesday, after a cloture vote to end debate on the bill. According to reports it doesn’t seem like any effort to raise NASA’s share of the funding is getting much attention: the AP report and others have focused primarily on cuts in BRAC funding. The current continuing resolution runs out on Thursday the 15th.
The Office of Management and Budget did issue a statement of administration policy about the funding resolution on Thursday. The document does make note of the administration’s concerns about the half-billion shortfall for NASA in FY07, in particular the fact that the cut is focused principally on the exploration program. “This unbalanced allocation could jeopardize NASA’s ability to develop new exploration capabilities in a timely manner,” the document states. “The Administration strongly urges the Senate to provide NASA with the flexibility it needs to achieve the goals and timeline of the Vision for Space Exploration, while maintaining balanced programs in space science, Earth science, and aeronautics.”
By Jeff Foust on 2007 February 7 at 10:49 pm ET Yesterday’s Space Transportation Association breakfast, held immediately prior to the beginning of the FAA Commercial Space Transportation Conference, featured Leslee Gilbert, the minority staff director for the House Science and Technology Committee. Obviously there was a lot of interest in NASA’s FY07 and FY08 budget situations, although given that the FY08 budget had come out less than 24 hours before, she couldn’t offer that many details. A few notes of interest:
- When the joint funding resolution and its half-billion cut in NASA’s budget came before the House last week, her boss, committee ranking member Ralph Hall, “was so concerned about these cuts that he went to the Rules Committee with an amendment to restore the funding.” However, she said, the House was considering the resolution under a closed rule, with no amendments allowed.
- When asked if this cut was a sign of how the new leadership of the appropriations committee viewed NASA, she said that this resolution was “a little unusual” but said that there’s a need to reach out to appropriators about NASA priorities. She added that her concern was not with just the top-line NASA budget figure but thew shifting of money between accounts within NASA. “I think a lot of the Democratic members are more interested in putting some money in different areas of NASA, so keeping the Vision strong is going to be a challenge.”
- She anticipates a continuation of the tradition of bipartisan cooperation in the committee, saying that Hall believes that the new chairman, Bart Gordon, shares many of the same priorities and goals as Hall.
- One of the priorities down the road in this Congress will be a new NASA authorization bill in 2008. That will most likely be a two-year authorization.
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