By Jeff Foust on 2006 October 12 at 6:56 am ET Gérard Brachet, the new chairman of the UN’s Committee for the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS), will speak about the organization and its aims to support international cooperation in space, this Monday at CSIS headquarters in Washington. COPUOS has kept a fairly low profile in recent years, although there are signs Brachet would like to have the organization do more, although exactly what it can, or should, do remains to be seen. That challenge can be seen in a speech given by NASA administrator Michael Griffin at the IAF Congress in Spain last week, where he made it clear that national security and technology transfer concerns have a higher priority over international cooperation in space:
The United States is firmly committed to ensuring that certain key technologies, which we possess and some others do not, not be used against us or our allies. That priority is higher for us than partnership in various space endeavors, and this fact must be understood and carefully considered by the parties involved in any putative collaboration. I recognize the bluntness of this assertion, but I believe that each of us, as spacefaring nations, must respect each other’s national priorities, and must speak openly and honestly with each other if there are differences which hamper our ability to collaborate.
By Jeff Foust on 2006 October 12 at 6:47 am ET Looking for some insightful commentary and analysis regarding the national space policy released late last week by the Bush Administration? Well, keep looking. There hasn’t been a lot of commentary in general about the document, and what little has been published has focused, not surprisingly, on the portions of the document dealing with security and freedom-of-access sections of the policy:
In a piece in the self-contradictory OpEdNews.com (is it an op-ed, or is it news?) Maryland activist Ron Fullwood fulminates against the new policy. “In an amazing coincidence to the N. Korean nuke test, the Bush administration has sneaked and released a major new space policy which just happens to mesh with the missile threat the rouge nation is so intent on proving it possesses.” (“rouge nation”? Well, North Korea is a communist regime…) “Bush and his chickenhawk cabal,” he continues, “in their best Orwellian dictum, are laying the groundwork to have the world recognize their ambition to litter the upper atmosphere with space weaponry to defend their satellites and shoot down others, as ‘peaceful’ and ‘for the benefit of all humanity.'” If you say so.
Also speaking out against the policy, but without quite the same purple prose, is RJ Eskow, a “writer, business person, and songwriter/musician”, in The Huffington Post. Eskow claims that the policy’s “militaristic statements have the effect of declaring a ‘New Space Order.'” He goes so far as to claim that since Russia is the “likeliest” country to develop a “space-based defense capability”, “represents, in effect, a re-establishment of the Cold War and a declaration of his unilateral right to move beyond the spirit of those treaties that helped end it.” (Huh?) He’s also critical of provisions of the policy designed to promote commercial space interests. “In other words, the U.S. space program must now use the same procurement policies that brought you Halliburton, Blackwater, lost billions in Iraq, and faulty body armor.” Oh dear… (Also, the article is illustrated with what the author claims to be a Northrop Grumman design for a common aero vehicle for the FALCON program, but what’s shown looks more like a 80’s-era SDI relic than a hypersonic suborbital vehicle.)
Steven Aftergood, writing on the FAS’ Secrecy News blog, avoids the hyperbole and tortured language of the previous essays to examine some other details of the policy, including its support for space nuclear power. One odd statement: Aftergood writes that “in a rhetorical flight of fancy, the new Bush policy purports to adopt a new national ‘objective of extending human presence across the solar system,’ no less.” This, of course, is simply restating the goals of the Vision for Space Exploration, announced in January 2004, which include “Extend human presence across the solar system”.
By Jeff Foust on 2006 October 10 at 6:45 am ET Earlier this year Boeing agreed to pay $615 million to the federal government to settle claims that Boeing used proprietary Lockheed Martin documents during the initial EELv competition in the 1990s. Now the government is figuring out where that money will go, the Wall Street Journal reports. (Subscription required; a free AP article is also available.) The Air Force had hoped to use most of the money for “specific Air Force rocket acquisition costs”, but various legal and accounting details will prevent that. Instead, the Air Force plans to get at least $129.3 million for “high-priority space portfolio bills”, while NASA will get $106.7 million. The rest will go directly to the Treasury, although about a quarter of the settlement money is still under review to see how much of that the Air Force will get.
By Jeff Foust on 2006 October 9 at 6:55 am ET Flight International has a brief article about an otherwise-overlooked speech given by NASA administrator Mike Griffin at the Society of Experimental Test Pilots annual symposium in Anaheim late last month. (So overlooked, it seems, that NASA hasn’t added it to the list of speeches given by Griffin; evidently he gave it immediately after returning from China.) Much of the speech focuses on aeronautics—unsurprising, given the audience—although he does note that prior to the introduction of the Vision for Space Exploration “I believe we’d lost our way. To restrict ourselves to orbit is the wrong choice in my view.” As for continuing the shuttle and station programs, he says that “If we’d fully had our wits about us it is fair to say we’d probably not have been spending the huge amount of money on it that we’re doing. But it is important to keep to those commitments.”
By Jeff Foust on 2006 October 6 at 8:48 pm ET The White House released late Friday afternoon the new US National Space Policy, a document that completes the years-long review of overall space policy by the Bush Administration. (Interesting, the document states that this policy was formally authorized by President Bush on August 31; there’s no reason why the administration took over a month to release the report, but give that they did so late on a Friday before a three-day weekend, with no fanfare, suggests they weren’t terribly concerned about giving this document much publicity.)
A quick skim of the ten-page report doesn’t turn up much in the way of new major policy statements: it appears to largely restate policies previously made by this administration, as well as older policies. There is a particular emphasis on ensuring access to and control of space, as the background puts it:
In this new century, those who effectively utilize space will enjoy added prosperity and will hold a substantial advantage over those who do not. Freedom of action in space is as important to the United States as air power and sea power. In order to increase knowledge, discovery, economic prosperity, and to enhance the national security, the United States must have robust, effective, and efficient space capabilities.
Elsewhere, the document notes that the US must not only have the ability to freely access space and stop those who would deny the US that right, the US must be able to “deny, if necessary, adversaries the use of space capabilities hostile to U.S. national interests”—an opening for the development and use of weapons in space, although that’s not explicitly stated in the document. I suspect that this passage will raise the hackles of anti-space-weaponization community.
By Jeff Foust on 2006 October 5 at 7:44 am ET A New York Times editorial today congratulates NASA for the COBE mission, which netted a Nobel Prize in Physics earlier this week for John Mather of NASA Goddard and George Smoot of UC Berkeley. The editorial notes, though, that COBE was a relatively small Explorer-class spacecraft, the type of mission getting squeezed out in the NASA budget. “Too bad the program that yielded these pioneering discoveries was reined in not long ago so that NASA could pour billions of dollars into resuming shuttle flights, finishing the international space station, and developing spacecraft to pursue the Bush administration’s ambitious space exploration program,” the Times writes. It’s interesting that the editorial doesn’t mention the cost overruns (or is it “undercosting”?) on the James Webb Space Telescope, which is certainly not helping the cause of small science missions.
By Jeff Foust on 2006 October 5 at 7:33 am ET CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric discussed NASA yesterday (on the 49th anniversary of Sputnik) in her one-minute “Katie Couric’s Notebook” that airs on some TV and radio stations. (I heard it in the car on the way home last night.) Couric talks up the achievements of the Space Age, including that we have “orbited the Earth dozens of times” (true, for very large quantities of “dozens”). But she’s skeptical about the cost/benefit equation, noting that NASA’s proposed 2007 budget is nearly $17 billion. “There are some who argue that money would be better spent on solid ground, for medical research, social programs, or in finding solutions to poverty, hunger, and homelessness,” she says. Couric might well be one of those “some”: while she says she believes space exploration has value and “admires” those who involved in it, “I can’t help but wonder what all that money could do for people right here on planet Earth.” (Note that the Couric segment is preceded by a 15-second Pfizer ad talking about erectile dysfunction: draw parallels between that subject and NASA at your own peril.)
By Jeff Foust on 2006 October 4 at 7:30 am ET The FTC’s decision yesterday to permit the formation of the United Launch
Alliance (ULA) has, unsurprisingly, been widely hailed by members of Alabama’s Congressional delegation. Manufacturing of both Atlas and Delta vehicles will be consolidated in Boeing’s Decatur, Alabama factory, adding perhaps several hundred employees. Congressmen Bud Cramer (D) and Robert Aderholt (R) both congratulated the decision. Sen. Richard Shelby (R) also issued a statement (not yet available on his web site) approving of this latest development, according to the Huntsville Times.
Member of Congress aren’t the only ones heaping praise on the ULA. In an article in the Decatur (Ala.) Daily, Loren Thompson of the Lexington Institute goes a bit over the top lauding the joint venture. “Decatur is now going to be the center of space-launch capability in the Western world,” he’s quoted as saying. “…Decatur is now going to be the center of the universe when it comes to large-rocket launch capability. It’s going to be where the technology is concentrated.” And those, like SpaceX, who have complained about the anticompetitive aspects of the ULA? “That’s like a condo complaining this will make it harder for them to become a superpower.” Condo? Um, whatever.
By Jeff Foust on 2006 October 3 at 7:40 pm ET That would finally seem to be the case, 17 months and one day after the joint venture was first announced. The FTC announced today that it would “intervene” in the formation of the ULA, meaning it has created a consent decree that will allow the ULA to come into being under some conditions. Those requirements include:
- The ULA must cooperate “on equivalent terms” with all government satellite manufacturers (so that Boeing- and Lockeed-built satellites don’t get an unfair advantage);
- Boeing and Lockheed must “provide equal consideration and support to all launch services providers” seeking government “delivery-in-orbit” contracts; and
- The ULA must safeguard all “competitively sensitive information” provided by other satellite and launch vehicle manufacturers.
The second condition is interesting: it’s not clear to me what sort of “equal consideration and support” Boeing and Lockheed could give to other launch providers. Can anyone better explain that one?
Although the FTC did draft and approve unanimously the consent order, it’s clear from the press release that regulators aren’t too fond of the ULA. “The consolidation of the nation’s only two suppliers of government MTH [medium-to-heavy] launch services is likely to cause significant anticompetitive harm,” the FTC notes in its press release. However, the FTC was won over by Defense Department arguments that the national security benefits outweigh the anticompetitive issues. Therefore, the FTS notes, “the order is designed to address the ancillary competitive harms that DoD has identified without interfering with the national security benefits of ULA.”
Both Lockheed Martin and Boeing issues press releases congratulating the decision, which removes the last legal roadblock to the ULA’s formation. Neither company, though, set a date for when the ULA would actually come into being.
By Jeff Foust on 2006 October 2 at 7:19 am ET That’s Gov. Jeb Bush, mind you, who paid a visit to Cape Canaveral last Thursday, Florida Today reports, talking up the economic development potential of Orion at KSC. That’s a topic of much concern in the area, as the shuttle program—which employs thousands—winds down, and Orion to date is only providing KSC with a few hundred jobs. Bush was optimistic about the future, although his comments didn’t indicate much to support that assessment, “If we sat and did nothing, we could be guaranteed tremendous economic losses,” he told reporters. “(Brevard) is the center of the new means by which to access space. Our expectation is it’ll be a growing industry.” But by how much can it grow?
|
|
