By Jeff Foust on 2006 July 25 at 10:30 am ET It’s common knowledge in the space community that a significant fraction of the general public overestimates—often wildly—the amount of money NASA gets. A particularly egregious example of this is a letter to the editor that appeared in Monday’s issue of the Courier-Post newspaper, which serves the New Jersey suburbs of Philadelphia:
I shudder when I think of how much money has been invested — wasted, in my opinion — over the years. And for what? There is so much to be done here on Earth, how about spending some of that money here?
I would like to see the government place a 10-year moratorium on NASA missions and anything space related. We could pay off the national debt, finally come up with a health program that could benefit all Americans, perhaps find cures for dreaded diseases, house the homeless, feed the hungry, educate the illiterate . . . who knows how much more. And we still would have spare change.
Reality check: the national debt right now is roughly $8.4 trillion. The NASA budget over the next ten years: no more than about $200 billion.
By Jeff Foust on 2006 July 21 at 9:23 am ET On Thursday the House of Representatives passed a resolution commending NASA for the successful completion of the STS-121 shuttle mission this month. The resolution, H.Con.Res.448, was approved by the House 415-0. The resolution is pretty standard stuff, praising the shuttle crew and the space agency for “its pioneering work in space exploration which is strengthening the Nation and benefitting all Americans.”
A couple of minor, but interesting, notes about this resolution. the member who introduced this measure was not one of the usual suspects, like a member of the House Science Committee or someone from the Cape or Houston areas, but instead Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX). Paul, nominally a Republican, is really more of a libertarian and often casts contrary no votes on bills that otherwise have broad support if he feels they overstep what the government should be doing. (The resolution’s cosponsors are some more familiar names, including Sherwood Boehlert, Ken Calvert, and Dana Rohrabacher.) The other interesting item: Paul introduced the resolution, which congratulates NASA for “the successful completion of the Space Shuttle Discovery’s STS-121 mission” on July 13, several days before the mission actually ended.
By Jeff Foust on 2006 July 20 at 12:55 am ET Just a brief note that I’m in Las Vegas for the next several days for the NewSpace 2006 conference, which will be taking up all of my time throught the weekend. As a result, don’t expect much activity here (unless there are some good policy-related sessions or related developments during the conference) until early next week.
By Jeff Foust on 2006 July 18 at 7:04 am ET A reader sent me a notice about a new web site, Spacedebate.org, which describes itself as “an effort to expand the debate on the weaponization of space through a collaborative wiki-like tool for structured debate on a topic.” The site is devoted to collecting arguments and evidence on both sides of the issue. Spacedebate.org is not associated with a particular organization but instead a single individual, Greg Schnippel, who was inspired by the massive filed of evidence competitive debaters in high school and college collect to prepare for their competitions.
By Jeff Foust on 2006 July 18 at 6:56 am ET It’s not quite space, but it may be of interest to readers: the House Science Committee’s space and aeronautics subcommittee will be holding a hearing on NASA’s aeronautics program. The hearing will review two recent reports on civil aeronautics research and “will also help set the stage for the development of an overarching national aeronautics policy, due to be released at the end of this year”, a policy that Congress specifically directed NASA to develop in last year’s authorization bill.
By Jeff Foust on 2006 July 18 at 6:53 am ET Yesterday’s landing of the shuttle Discovery, which brought the STS-121 mission to a successful end, prompted some reactions from the President and several members of Congress:
The White House issued a short, succinct statement welcoming home the shuttle crew. “The men and women of NASA have dedicated themselves to putting our space program back on track and implementing our Nation’s vision for human and robotic space exploration. America’s space program is a source of great national pride, and this mission has been another important accomplishment in advancing space science, human space flight, and space exploration.”
House Science Committee chairman Sherwood Boehlert issued a similar statement congratulating NASA on a successful mission. “While NASA must continue to be vigilant, the Shuttle is now poised to proceed with completing construction of the International Space Station, servicing the Hubble Space Telescope – should such a mission be deemed safe by Administrator Griffin – and moving forward with the implementation of the Agency’s multiple missions.”
The landing even warranted congratulations from House Speaker Dennis Hastert, who noted that “The American entrepreneurial spirit of innovation is alive and well.” This might be the first time “entrepreneurial” and “innovation” have been used with respect to the shuttle for quite some time.
Congressman Tom Feeney (R-FL), in a statement released to the Orlando Sentinel, also praised the mission, but raised the specter of falling behind Russia and China in space if the nation doesn’t continue manned spaceflight after the shuttle is retired. Referring to his trip to China early this year, he said, “I saw their modern facilities, a young, educated, and inspired workforce, and a dedicated effort to land Chinese on the moon in less than 20 years. Unless America stays the course, the Chinese flag will greet our astronauts when they return to the moon in the next decade.” I have a bit of a problem parsing this statement, since “staying the course” would have astronauts returning to the moon in the next decade (late next decade, to be exact), while China itself is extremely unlikely to send humans to the Moon before this date. (Feeney himself, talking about his trip to China earlier this year, said he didn’t expect a space race to develop between the US China.)
By Jeff Foust on 2006 July 17 at 6:29 am ET In this week’s issue of The Space Review I have an article about the CSIS forum on US-China space cooperation last week that I briefly summarized here. There’s some more details on how Congress views China and its space program, but also on cooperation in general. One interesting insight from the forum is that while there has been considerable discussion on the fact that other countries have been cooperating with China on space issues, there’s less discussion about what each side really has to gain from such cooperation. “What struck me the most is that there is a lot of talk about it would be in the US interest to cooperate with China, but that’s kind of where it ends,” Rep. Rick Larsen said. “To have our potential competitor or potential partner say it’s in our interest doesn’t mean it’s in our interest, and we need to do a better job of defining our own interests.” That would seem to be a major hurdle for any long-term significant cooperation between the two countries.
By Jeff Foust on 2006 July 13 at 6:54 pm ET The Senate Appropriations Committee voted Thursday to approve an emergency funding amendment that would give NASA an additional $1 billion in FY 2007. The best coverage of the bill comes from Space News (subscription required), Florida Today, and ScienceNow, there are also some more general wire stories by AP and Reuters. Space News notes in particular that the amendment was approved over the objections of two Republicans on the committee, Sens. Pete Domenici of New Mexico and Larry Craig of Idaho; Domenici in particular was quoted as calling the amendment “wasteful” and “a very big stretch of the word” emergency. While the amendment’s passage is a big victory, the amended appropriations bill still has to make it through the full Senate and an eventual conference with the House version of the budget, which offered no supplemental money for NASA.
One other item from the Space News article that should warm the hearts of supporters of the entrepreneurial space industry: the Senate legislation includes the full $121 million requested for COTS.
By Jeff Foust on 2006 July 13 at 12:34 pm ET The American Astronomical Society is the latest organization to issue a statement in favor of the Mikulski emergency funding amendment, which will be debated by the full Senate Appropriations Committee in a hearing starting at 2 pm this afternoon (which you should be able to hear via CapitolHearings.org). The text of the AAS statement follows:
Continue reading And yet more lobbying
By Jeff Foust on 2006 July 12 at 8:47 pm ET In addition to the lobbying efforts noted earlier today to try and get Sen. Mikulski’s emergency NASA funding amendment passed, a couple of other organizations are making a push to win support for it. The SETI Institute sent out a special message to the subscribers of its electronic newsletter, asking them to send messages in support of the amendment (already helpfully filled out) to key senators on the appropriations committee, including committee chairman Thad Cochran and ranking Democrat Robert Byrd. In addition, the Space Exploration Alliance released a letter today to those same senators asking for their support. The text of the letter is provided below:
Continue reading More lobbying for NASA funding
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