By Jeff Foust on 2006 September 15 at 8:14 pm ET A couple of minor issues have developed in recent weeks regarding the, ah, discussions that take place in the comments of the posts here:
- Please be civil in your disagreements. No profanity, please.
- Do not post copyrighted material in your comments (a link and a very brief excerpt are fine, but reposting entire articles are not.)
These are simple guidelines that most everyone, by and large, follows as commonsense good manners. If you’re unable to comply, please take your comments elsewhere. Thanks!
By Jeff Foust on 2006 September 14 at 6:39 am ET Later this month NASA Administrator Mike Griffin will travel to China later this month, spending several days there in meetings with his Chinese counterparts. SPACE.com surveys a number of policy experts on the upcoming visit, with the consensus being that this should be an opportunity for each country to get know the other, but is unlikely to create any significant agreements in cooperation, which would require approvals at higher levels in both governments.
By Jeff Foust on 2006 September 12 at 8:44 pm ET House Science Committee chairman Sherwood Boehlert told the AP Tuesday that he believes that NASA will be able to speed up development of Orion and thus reduce the gap in US government manned spaceflight capability when the shuttle is retired in 2010. Boehlert said he believed Michael Griffin will make a “determined effort” to speed up Orion, which is currently scheduled to entered no later than 2014.
But is it too late? That’s the suggestion of Flight International, which reports in its current issue that Orion has already run into problems that will prevent NASA from accelerating its development schedule. The evidence for that is a little thin: a systems requirements review has been pushed back from the fourth quarter of this year to the first quarter of 2007, and the Ares 1 rocket that will launch Orion will not be ready to perform an orbital (unmanned) test flight of the spacecraft until 2012. However, reporter Rob Coppinger argues in a blog entry, development delays have affected earlier manned spacecraft programs, so there’s no reason to think Orion will be immune to them.
By Jeff Foust on 2006 September 12 at 8:35 pm ET Presidential candidates, as a rule, don’t say much, if anything, about space and other issues on the fringe of a campaign—unless, of course, they’re on the fringe themselves. Case in point: Daniel Imperato, an independent candidate for president, issued a press release decrying plans by China and Russia to cooperate on a robotic Mars mission. So what’s the problem?
This is another sad situation for America because of our lack of dedication to the sciences and space exploration along with political bickering in Washington, D.C. over NASA and budgets. We have allowed ourselves to fall technologically behind other nations, but most importantly, we have turned the collaborative process of space exploration and scientific development into a race of nations. This situation is similar to the space race during the Cold War.
NASA might be surprised to learn that it has fallen victim to “political bickering”, since it’s enjoyed bipartisan support and increasing budgets in a time when many non-defense discretionary agencies have had flat or decreased budgets.
By Jeff Foust on 2006 September 8 at 7:13 am ET The Democratic Party primary in Florida’s 15th Congressional District (which includes Cape Canaveral and much of Florida’s “Space Coast”) earlier this week pitted two political neophytes: Robert Bowman and John Kennedy. Bowman won the primary by a final count of about 55-45%, and will now face incumbent Republican Rep. Dave Weldon in the November general election.
Bowman, it turns out, is an interesting candidate. The article in the Lakeland Ledger identifies him as a “retired rocket scientist with a doctorate in aeronautics” but also notes that Bowman “did run for president of the United States in 2000 as an independent.” His home page still has “Bowman for President” in the title bar, although it now reads “Bowman2006″ in extremely large type on the screen. The site is also home to the Space & Security News Home Page (last updated January 10, 2006), which is a publication of the Institute for Space and Security Studies; both seem to focus more on security than space.
Bowman has a separate, more conventional Congressional campaign web site where he takes stands on various issues, including space. “As a rocket scientist, I’m a big supporter of the space program,” he writes. Like some people in Congress, he expresses concern about the “gap” between the 2010 retirement of the shuttle and the introduction of Orion by 2014. “If we save money by laying off shuttle workers and lose their talents and their corporate memory, we may have a very hard time reconstructing a team for the next generation of space exploration.” He calls for a more gradual workforce reduction at KSC, through “natural attrition and retirement”.
By Jeff Foust on 2006 September 8 at 6:57 am ET Earlier this week in The Space Review, I reviewed a book on the study of space weather, Sentinels of the Sun. There wouldn’t seem to be much of an intersection with politics here, but as I note in the review one of the most interesting chapters deals with the budgetary difficulties of the small Space Environment Center (SEC), the office within NOAA that monitors space weather, has faced:
On several occasions funding for the office was in jeopardy because of Congressional budget cuts or simple oversights. The SEC also had a long battle with local officials in Boulder, Colorado to get a new headquarters building constructed in the 1990s, after it had outgrown an aging building next door; the city forced a number of design concessions on the building to ensure that it fit into the landscape and did not block the view of the mountains from a nearby street. Ironically, the authors note, “The beauty of the new building perhaps caused a congressional staffer who visited it in 2002 to resent NOAA… Presumably too much money had been spent on this excessively nice facility.” This has led to an odd battle over the last several years to win full funding for the SEC, an office that, fully funded, requires approximately $7 million a year: the final fiscal year 2006 appropriations bill included only about $4 million for the SEC, even though the House and Senate had previously approved larger amounts, for reasons that even many in Congress don’t understand. How much money the SEC will get in the upcoming fiscal year remains to be determined.
It’s a small line item in the budget—little more than a rounding error for some large programs—but something worth keeping an eye on as the FY07 budget process gets into high gear.
By Jeff Foust on 2006 September 8 at 6:51 am ET Today is the last day on the Hill for Bill Adkins, the staff director of the space and aeronautics subcommittee of the House Science Committee. Adkins is leaving to set up his own space and defense consulting business. We wish him the best of luck in his new venture.
By Jeff Foust on 2006 September 6 at 7:47 am ET With Congress just now returning from its summer recess, it’s been a relatively quiet time (at least in public) on domestic space policy issues, outside of the COTS and Orion contract awards, so it’s a good time to see what sort of debates and developments are taking place outside the US on space issues:
In an op-ed published over the weekend in the Edmonton Journal, Marc Garneau, the first Canadian in space and the former president of the Canadian Space Agency, said it’s time for Canada to decide whether it wants to maintain its small astronaut corps, given the scarcity of flight opportunities once the ISS is completed and the shuttle retired in 2010. “Unless Canada decides to participate in a major new venture such as the U.S. ‘Moon, Mars and Beyond’ initiative, its astronaut program will come to an end,” he writes. To do that, though, “the federal government will have to make an important decision. That decision will require a significant new infusion of funds.” Garneau added that “I believe the cost is worth it.”
Unlike Canada, the UK doesn’t have its own astronaut corps, and has tended to turn its back on manned spaceflight in general. Some Britons, though, hope that the Vision for Space Exploration will give the UK a new opportunity to send its citizens to the Moon and elsewhere. The Daily Telegraph surveyed a number of British space scientists and found “an undercurrent of enthusiasm for getting Britain to the moon or Mars, but many remain unconvinced about the benefits of sending humans.” (Unfortunately, the newspaper limited its survey only to space scientists; would they have gotten different responses from engineers or other experts?) The article does note “strong support among the polled scientists for the creation of a dedicated space agency”, apparently with a little more money and activity than the BNSC.
Russian president Vladimir Putin, on a state visit to South Africa, pledged increased cooperation between the two countries on space issues. Nothing specific appears to be in the works immediately; a RIA Novosti article notes that “Cooperation could cover areas like space research, probes and monitoring of Earth from outer space, relevant information technology and services, materials sciences, space medicine and biology, communications and related technology and service.” Just about anything, really.
By Jeff Foust on 2006 September 3 at 12:54 pm ET The Salt Lake Tribune, with its tongue at least touching its cheek, if not firmly planted in it, polled Utah’s congressional delegation to see if anyone would be willing to take action in Congress in defense of ex-planet Pluto. “Alas,” the paper reported Sunday, “none of our delegation bit on our suggestion for the Pluto Restoration Act of 2006 or the Resolution to Re-Designate Pluto as a Planet.” The best response, though, came from Scott Parker, chief of staff for Rep. Rob Parker: “Since most members of Congress believe the universe revolves around them individually, I doubt most of them would be too concerned about losing a competing planet.”
By Jeff Foust on 2006 September 1 at 6:54 pm ET The reaction to yesterday’s announcement that Lockheed Martin will build the Orion (née CEV) spacecraft for NASA was fairly muted and broadly supportive of the selection. Some highlights:
- Sen Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) issued a press release congratulating Lockheed Martin for winning Orion. Not surprisingly, she brought up the issue of the “gap” between the 2010 retirement of the shuttle and the introduction of Orion (currently slated for 2014, although NASA officials said at the press conference yesterday that both competitors has offered unspecified proposals to move up that date.) “I look forward to the timely completion of the CEV which will hopefully reduce or even eliminate any gap between the retirement of the space shuttle and the start of operations for these new systems.”
- Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL) pointed out the benefits the Lockheed win will provide to Florida in a speech at the Gainesville, Florida airport. (The article in the Gainesville Sun doesn’t mention when on Thursday he gave the speech; presumably it was after 4 pm or else the people there got a minor scoop.) “This is the right decision for America,” Nelson said. “It is certainly a big boost for Florida. It is a big boost for all the universities, including the University of Florida, that participate in the space program.”
- Rep. Ken Calvert (R-CA) also issued his congratulations, even though his home state will likely miss out on the bulk of the work to be doled out for the project. He also called for additional funding for NASA, saying, “I am hopeful that NASA funding will be restored to the level I included in our NASA authorization last year, $17.9 billion.”
- Rep. Mark Udall (D-CO) pointed out in a statement that the selection of Lockheed Martin means “at least 300 high-paying engineering jobs in the Denver area”. adding that the Lockheed win also “will be a boon to Colorado’s aerospace industry.”
- The AP tracked down a famous former member of Congress, Tom DeLay, who also lauded the award. “I had no dog in this fight, but Lockheed Martin has a long history here at Johnson Space Center and the thing that excites me about it is they will do most of the work in Houston because it is Lockheed Martin.”
At the state level, the award is a big loss for California, which had been hoping to win some part of the work if Northrop/Boeing won; prior to the announcement Lockheed had already announced that much of the Orion work would be split among Colorado, Texas, and Florida, but not California. It will also make it harder for proponents of tax credit legislation for CEV work to get the bill passed in the state legislature. That bill, AB 2033, had stalled out in the Assembly.
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