Space Politics

Another day, another hearing

By Jeff Foust on 2006 September 29 at 7:45 am ET

The House Science Committee will be holding another hearing at 10 am this morning, this time to take up the GOES-R satellite program, hoping to avoid the problems associated with the NPOESS weather satellite program. A GAO report on GOES-R will be officially released at the hearing; a GAO official will be one of the witnesses, along with NOAA administrator Conrad C. Lautenbacher.

Not everyone’s happy about Griffin’s China trip

By Jeff Foust on 2006 September 28 at 5:39 am ET

While NASA administrator Mike Griffin’s trip to China has not resulted in any great breakthroughs in Sino-American space cooperation (with pre-trip expectations kept accordingly low), at least one member of Congress isn’t happy Griffin went to China in the first place. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) issued a statement criticizing NASA and the Bush Administration for agreeing to the trip in the first place. “It is unfathomable this Administration has decided to engage China on space policy or any other technological endeavor,” he says in the statement. “China’s commitment to build-up its military to threaten the United States and world peace is clear.”

Rohrabacher also refers to a report published in Defense News this week that China reportedly fired lasers at US reconnaissance satellites as they passed over Chinese territory, perhaps as a test to see what would be required to temporarily blind the spacecraft. “This latest revelation of the Chinese firing ground-based lasers to blind our reconnaissance satellites while high level officials from NASA are participating in an alleged exploratory visit is the highest level of contradiction.” Rohrabacher, as many know, has long been critical of the Chinese government in general, and any interaction with the Chinese in space or other high-tech fields.

Orion hearing this afternoon

By Jeff Foust on 2006 September 28 at 5:32 am ET

A reminder that the House Science Committee will be holding a hearing about Orion (formerly the CEV) this afternoon at 2 pm. The hearing will be in Rayburn 2318 and should be webcast through the committee’s web site. I won’t be able to watch the hearing live so I’ll welcome any comments people who do attend or watch the hearing have about it.

MSL RTG public hearings today

By Jeff Foust on 2006 September 27 at 6:37 am ET

NASA is holding a pair of public hearings today ion Florida’s Space Coast about the planned use of a nuclear-powered RTG on the Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft, planned for launch from Cape Canaveral in 2009. The hearings, this afternoon and this evening, “will give area residents a chance to hear NASA’s explanation of the mission, the dangers and the safety measures being taken by the government,” according to Florida Today. And yes, the anti-nuclear activist community is aware of this and plans to fight this launch, as they have previous launches, according to Bruce Gagnon. However, past efforts have not been successful and were very limited for the last NASA mission to carry an RTG, New Horizons.

Griffin answers astronomers’ concerns

By Jeff Foust on 2006 September 27 at 6:30 am ET

The American Astronomical Society (AAS) issued a press release Tuesday with the contents of a question-and-answer exchange between the AAS’ Committee for Astronomy and Public Policy and NASA administrator Mike Griffin. Among the notable responses from Griffin:

He says that science funding at NASA will increase at 1% per year (somewhat below the current inflation rate) through FY2011, then go to 2.4%/year (the current estimate for the overall growth of the agency’s budget) starting in FY2012.
Griffin doesn’t think that there is a better way to manage science missions to avoid debilitating cost overruns: “I think that the uncertainties in program planning, budgeting, and control that we experience in state-of-the-art, first-of-a-kind missions will always be with us.” His best recommendation: “allocate appropriate reserves on the ‘front end’ of any program, and then leave that reserve in place!
Griffin is also skeptical about claims of a looming workforce crisis at NASA, noting that while 25% of current NASA employees are eligible to retire in the next five years, not all of them will choose to do so. “I regard this as an opportunity to bring in the next generation of scientists and engineers, who will take us to the Moon and Mars.”

Emergency spending and earmarks

By Jeff Foust on 2006 September 27 at 6:09 am ET

The Heritage Foundation, in an online memo criticizing Senate plans to add $32 billion in “emergency” funding to FY2007 budget bills, makes mention of efforts to increase NASA’s budget by $1 billion through such a mechanism. The problem, Heritage’s Brian Riedl believes, is rooted in Congressmen’s tendencies to attach earmarks to NASA budgets. “Had Congress resisted the urge to earmark NASA’s budget in 2005 and 2006, the agency would have enough money to fund” the shuttle return to flight and post-Katrina repairs without such an emergency measure. “Rather than cut back on pork, Senators added $1 billion in ‘emergency funding’ for basic, non-emergency activities” like those.

This analysis misses a couple of nuances, though. Much of the argument for the additional funding has been based on the fact that NASA got no extra money to cover the costs of the return-to-flight efforts in the last few years. Also, paying for Katrina repairs certainly constitutes an emergency, and NASA did get some additional money for FY06 to cover repairs, although not as much as it asked for. While Heritage is right to be concerned about pork and earmarks, Congress has cut back on earmarks so far in this budget cycle, although we’re still far from done (and it won’t be done soon: the Senate version of the FY07 budget is unlikely to be approved before Congress adjourns at the end of this week; it reconvenes after the November general election.)

A couple of polls

By Jeff Foust on 2006 September 26 at 7:02 am ET

Yesterday the Coalition for Space Exploration released the results of a Gallup Poll on public interest in the Vision for Space Exploration. The survey is the third in a series dating back to mid-2005 commission by the organization to gauge public interest in the VSE; the release includes results from all three surveys. The results from the latest poll, performed in August, closely match the previous one in March, but both show slightly weaker support from the first poll in the series, in June 2005. For example, 66% of people in the latest poll support or strongly support the VSE, compared to 64% in March but 77% in June 2005. Also, 63% in the latest poll believe NASA should be funded at its current or increased levels, compared to 60% in March but 73% in 2005. (The margin of error is ±3%.)

The poll also addresses potential competition with China, but the question is a bit misleading:

Both China and the U.S. have announced plans to send astronauts to the moon. China has announced plans go to the moon by 2017
and the U.S. has announced plans to send astronauts to the moon by 2018, a
year later. To what extent, if any, are you concerned that China would
become the new leader in space exploration or take the lead over the U.S.?

To many people, that might appear that China would send people to the Moon ahead of the US, although the question doesn’t explicitly state that. The “China has announced plans go to the moon by 2017″ is misleading since China will go to the Moon—in the form of a lunar orbiter—as early as next year; the 2017 date is the current estimate for a sample return mission. Not that it really matters: only 28% in the August poll said they were somewhat or very concerned (up from 23% in March), while 69% were not concerned or not very concerned (up from 66% in March.)

Another poll, however, finds less support for the VSE among young adults. The Dittmar Associates poll of people aged 18-25 found a fair amount of apathy in a return to the Moon: 45% were “neutral”, compared to 29% interest and 23% opposed; about half were familiar with the VSE in some manner. Also, respondents were opposed by a 3-to-1 margin to sending humans to Mars, although a majority favored continued robotic exploration. There are some more details in a paper on the poll presented at the Space 2006 conference last week.

A generational gap in space?

By Jeff Foust on 2006 September 25 at 6:58 am ET

In a detailed review of a conference on the societal impact of space, Dwayne Day discusses a presentation made by Wendell Mendell of NASA/JSC that brought up an interesting point:

However, Mendell also warned of a potential generational gap in visions of space. Younger people no longer have the shared vision of those raised during the Apollo era. Space is no longer a frontier to be explored and conquered, but instead is a place from which to try and solve Earth’s problems.

A couple of recent essays support this argument. Bill Maxwell, a columnist for the St. Petersburg Times, talks up what he sees as the benefits of space exploration. Maxwell, who saw John Glenn’s historic 1962 flight as a high school junior, notes that “space flight has held a special place in American life since the program’s inception.” Also, “A dreamer, I have been a supporter of space exploration since I was kid, and if I could start life over, I would try to become an astronaut.”

Compare that to an editorial Thursday in The Daily Targum, the student newspaper of Rutgers University. The author is skeptical about both the overall mission of the space agency and its competency to carry out that mission: “While many fondly remember the NASA missions to the moon, the current state of NASA is no longer the image of an organization that is prepared to go to the stars. When the public does not know or care about the missions and the missions themselves are uninteresting, it seems that NASA should re-examine its priorities before it loses the imaginations of a new generation.” This is all just anecdotal evidence, but it does suggest that those who want to give NASA a more exploratory mission, like the Vision for Space Exploration, may face a more difficult battle with the youth of America than with older generations.

Griffin in China

By Jeff Foust on 2006 September 25 at 6:42 am ET

NASA administrator Mike Griffin is in China right now meeting with his counterparts there and getting tours of various facilities. (Apparently not on the list, surprisingly, is the Chinese manned launch center in Jiuquan; a NASA spokesperson told AFP simply that those plans “did not work out”.) As has been the case since the plans for the trip were finalized, NASA has been maintaining low expectations for the trip, saying it was nothing more than “an introductory kind of meeting”.

The Chinese news agency Xinhua reports that Chinese officials have made a four-point proposal for US-China space cooperation, but those points are pretty vague: strengthen communications, help annual meetings, “jointly explore fields” of potential future cooperation, and “eliminate obstacles and boost mutual trust”. The report didn’t give any indication of what response NASA had to the proposal.

However, should NASA even be discussing cooperation with China? That’s the thesis of an op-ed in Sunday’s Houston Chronicle by Mark Whittington, who believes that military, foreign policy, and human rights issues should make the US wary of any partnership with China in space. And Whittington brings up the R-word: race:

Does that policy mean a space race between China and the United States? Probably. But that is not something that should be feared, but rather welcomed. Competition breeds progress and innovation.

As I’ve mentioned a number of times before, there’s little evidence of a space race brewing between the US and China (despite occasional hyperbolic claims to the contrary), nor would a race necessarily be as beneficial as Whittington claims. After all, some might argue that we’re still recovering from the first space race with the Soviet Union.

Another privatization screed

By Jeff Foust on 2006 September 22 at 7:10 am ET

The Salt Lake Tribune carried an op-ed this week by Eric Peters (identified as “an automotive columnist for The Army Times and The Navy Times“) who argues that NASA should be abolished and US space exploration efforts should be privatized. Why? NASA, he believes, is “constantly being outdone by smaller and innovative private space ventures in places like Brazil, Russia, China, and, yes, even the United States.” Huh? China is not known for its private space ventures, and Brazil is not known for space ventures, period. (And one can make the case that, despite making considerable progress in areas like commercial launch and space tourism, Russian “private space ventures” are firmly controlled these days by Roskosmos.) “The American private sector,” he adds, “already has shown it can do a better and more cost-effective job of delivering passengers, cargo, satellites and science labs into space.” Passengers? Not yet, unless you’re counting SpaceShipOne. In addition, US commercial launch efforts have, to date not been cost-effective compared to foreign competitors, although companies like SpaceX may change that equation. (Peters notes that NASA has even acknowledged this, awarding “numerous contracts to private space contractors like SpaceX and Space Exploration Technologies”. That’s right, SpaceX and Space Exploration Technologies.)

Peters’ solution is that “Congress should end this travesty and turn over space to the private sector where success is the key ingredient because there are shareholders who care about the bottom line.” Sounds simple enough, and it does sound attractive. Sadly, Peters offers no details about how this would be done, how it would affect existing programs and agreements with other nations, and why Congress—some of whose members hails from districts and states that benefit from the current system—would agree to such radical change. It’s one thing to run around shouting “NASA delenda est!”, it’s quite another, it seems, to put forward a compelling, practical plan to make it happen.