By Jeff Foust on 2006 July 4 at 2:01 pm ET An article in this week’s Space News (freely accessible online) provides an update on efforts to win “emergency” funding for NASA to overcome some of fiscal constraints the agency has been experiencing. As previously noted, Sens. Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) and Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) have advocated an emergency spending measure that would give NASA up to $2 billion extra in 2006, in part to compensate the agency for shuttle return-to-flight costs it absorbed internally. According to the Space News article, the two senators plan to introduce the supplemental funding when the Senate Appropriations Committee takes up NASA’s budget on July 13. The actual amount will be somewhere between $1.5 and $2 billion, with the money to be split roughly evenly between shuttle, station, and exploration on one side, and science, aeronautics, and education on the other, although NASA will have some flexibility on how to spend the extra funds.
While there appears to be enough support for the funding measure to make it out of committee, “what happens next is less certain,” the article notes. Getting it through the Senate is one challenge, and if survives that senators will have to convince their House colleagues to go along with the increase; the House has already passed its FY2007 NASA budget without that supplemental increase. That would explain why many people, like Taylor Dinerman in his The Space Review essay Monday, are skeptical about the odds NASA can get any extra money.
By Jeff Foust on 2006 July 3 at 9:27 am ET bridges, a quarterly publication of the Office of Science & Technology at the Embassy of Austria in Washington, has several articles in its new issue on space policy. A couple of them deal with European and transatlantic policy issues, such as a discussion of Europe’s Galileo and GMES programs and a review of US-European space cooperation.
There are also a couple of essays in the issue dealing with US space policy, with similar themes. Johannes Loschnigg, a member of the House Science Committee staff, reviews the current state of the NASA budget, noting the hard choices NASA has had to make given that the FY07 budget request for the agency fell short of the authorized amount by over $1 billion. It’s a theme of trying to do too much with too little money, he notes, that has plagued the space agency for a long time.
In a related essay, Roger A. Pielke, Jr. suggests that it’s time to reconsider the overall structure of NASA itself and divest it of some programs. “NASA has far more on its plate than it can handle under any realistic budget projection. And even under unlimited budgets, it may be that NASA simply needs institutional reform,” he writes. He makes some proposals familiar to many readers: give space science to NSF, earth science to NOAA, and aeronautics to NIST. Unfortunately, the essay doesn’t address whether those agencies would be able to take over, or even be interested in taking over, those programs. I suspect that, in at least some cases, the answer would be no.
Pielke does make one excellent point in his piece about the political forces that have been created by the space agency to support its existing programs:
NASA’s success in creating a structure of political support by spreading contracts around the nation in key congressional districts has made change difficult. Any alteration to the course that NASA is on will necessarily face opposition, if the changes result in termination of contracts and the loss of high-paying jobs in important congressional districts.
In an essay that should appear in an upcoming issue of the magazine Seed, I make a similar argument about the overextension of NASA, but argue that the political constituency Pielke describes above is a major reason for evolutionary, rather than revolutionary, change at NASA. (I don’t want to say more and scoop myself; I’ll let you know when the issue’s out.)
By Jeff Foust on 2006 July 3 at 8:28 am ET In an essay in this week’s issue of The Space Review, Taylor Dinerman argues that the exploration program budget should not be raided to pay for science programs. He is concerned that steps like this in the early stages in the development of the CEV and the newly-named Ares launch vehicles could jeopardize their long-term success, drawing comparisons to the early development of the shuttle in the 1970s:
The budgets for early work on the shuttle and for missions such as the Mariner-Jupiter-Saturn, which became the two Voyager spacecraft, were cut to the bone. For the science community this was frustrating, but for fourteen astronauts it was deadly. There is no doubt that the lack of enough early funding for shuttle development in the 1970s has lead to a vehicle whose problems are all too well known. Flaws that should have been recognized and dealt with in those years made the shuttle into a far more fragile and cantankerous system than the safe and reliable “DC-3 of Space” that had been promised.
Right now the situation doesn’t seem to be nearly as dire as Dinerman states, since the cuts in the FY07 exploration budget are associated with longer-term technology development, and not the CEV or the Ares launchers. Also, the diverted funding is going to programs particularly hard hit by the original budget proposal, in particular research and analysis grants and aeronautics. The best solution might be an addition billion or two dollars for NASA in FY07, as Sens. Mikulski and Hutchison have proposed through an emergency funding measure, but, as Dinerman writes, “it seems unlikely that in the current tight budget environment NASA could in fact get that much.”
By Jeff Foust on 2006 July 1 at 2:43 pm ET Rep. Ken Calvert (R-CA), chairman of the space subcommittee of the House Science Committee, has announced his public support for NASA’s decision to proceed with the launch of the space shuttle, speaking out in opposition to a Los Angeles Times editorial Thursday which argued that NASA should ground the shuttle:
Human space flight is an inherently risky business. Administrator Griffin, the crew of Discovery, and the men and women of NASA understand that fact. If Discovery’s test flight fails to safely complete its mission, the Shuttle era will be over. If it succeeds, America’s manned space program will be able to conduct a rational transition to the next generation space vehicle. Let’s give NASA the chance to succeed.
Calvert acknowledged that some NASA officials recommended against proceeding with the launch, but said that “Unlike with Columbia’s mission, the process was transparent and consultative throughout.” (Some in the media might challenge the “transparent” part of that assessment, given NASA’s decision to reject a FOIA request for Flight Readiness Review documents.)
By Jeff Foust on 2006 July 1 at 2:34 pm ET With the shuttle set to launch this afternoon (or Sunday afternoon, or later, depending on technical issues and the weather), NASA administrator Mike Griffin will make some appearances on Sunday morning TV news shows. Griffin will be on Fox News Sunday to specifically talk about the shuttle launch and then on CNN Late Edition, presumably on the same topic. Interestingly, another guest on the CNN show is Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA), who authored the failed amendment to prohibit NASA from spending money on a “manned mission to Mars”. Perhaps Frank and Griffin can chat about the topic in the green room…
By Jeff Foust on 2006 June 30 at 7:49 am ET One bit of conventional wisdom about public support for NASA is that the agency has broad bipartisan support. A USA Today/Gallup Poll released today confirms that notion to first order, although does show some slight differences. Respondents were asked to rate how well NASA was performing (excellent, good, “only fair”, poor, no opinion), what should be done with NASA’s budget (increased, kept at present levels, reduced, ended altogether, no opinion), and whether the shuttle program was worth the money spent on it.
On the job performance question the split between people who identified themselves as Republicans and those who identified themselves as Democrats was virtually identical: 58% of both Republicans and Democrats said NASA was doing an excellent or good job; 37% of Republicans and 36% of Democrats thought NASA was doing a fair or poor job. (There’s no breakout, unfortunately, for those who didn’t associate themselves with either party.)
A difference does emerge, however, on NASA spending: while 22% of Republicans thought that NASA’s budget should be reduced, 32% of Democrats were in the same camp, a difference that exceeds the three-percent margin of error of the poll. However, the overall distribution of opinion is similar between Republicans and Democrats, with 50% of Republicans and 46% of Democrats saying NASA’s budget should be kept at the same level, and only 18% of Republicans and 16% of Democrats in favor of a budget increase.
There’s also a visible difference between Republicans and Democrats on their opinion of the worth of spending money on the shuttle. Among Republicans, 40% thought the money would better spent in some other way (the question doesn’t specify if that means within or outside of NASA), while 55% think the shuttle is worth the money; the figures are almost reversed for Democrats: 53% think the money would be better spent elsewhere while 43% think the shuttle is worth it. Over all party affiliations, there’s a 48%-48% split on the question.
By Jeff Foust on 2006 June 29 at 6:56 am ET NASA’s budget easily survived three attempts to either transfer funds from it or prevent it from being spent on its intended projects during floor debate on the HR 5672 appropriations bill Wednesday:
- Rep. Wayne Gilchrest (R-MD), introduced an amendment that would transfer $783M from “various accounts” within NASA to NOAA. Gilchrest brought forward the amendment primarily, it seems, to draw attention to his concern that NOAA is not getting enough money, and withdrew the amendment after a brief floor debate. (He would go on to vote against two later amendments that sought to transfer or restrict NASA funding.)
- A widely-anticipated amendment was introduced by Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) to “prohibit funds from being used for a manned space mission to Mars.” Most of the debate that followed focused on the vague nature of the resolution: what exactly did the amendment cover? NASA isn’t actively working on a manned Mars mission, but since that is a distant goal of the overall exploration program, at least one member argued that it could prohibit NASA from supporting the entire exploration program. The amendment failed on a voice vote and a later roll call vote, 145-274.
- Wednesday evening Reps. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) and Jim Ramstad (R-MN) introduced a resolution that would transfer $476 million from NASA’s Mars exploration program and use it to fund the Community Oriented Policing Services program, the AP reported. I missed the debate on this amendment, but it was defeated on a voice vote and on a roll call vote, 185-236.
One amendment that did pass was one proposed by Rep. Chris Chocola (R-IN) that would prohibit NASA from spending money on “travel policies and practices in contravention of Office of Management and Budget Circular No. A-126.” This was associated with NASA’s use of its aircraft to transport staff, a policy that was sharply criticized in a GAO report last year; NASA officials had said the agency was changing its policy on this. The amendment passed on a voice vote. Debate on the overall appropriations bill wasn’t completed last night, so it will continue, and likely conclude, today.
Update 1pm: The House did approve the spending bill, without (to the best of my knowledge) any additional changes that affected NASA.
By Jeff Foust on 2006 June 29 at 6:35 am ET The Los Angeles Daily News reported that an effort to win a tax credit for companies that perform Crew Exploration Vehicle work in California failed to make it through the state legislature. The bill, AB 2033, would extend an existing tax credit for Joint Strike Fighter work in the state and expand it to include CEV work. However, the bill failed to make it out of committee in the Assembly and was not included in the overall state budget. One of the co-sponsors of the legislation, Assemblywoman Sharon Runner (R-Lancaster), said she would work with the governor’s office to find a way to get the tax credit approved, perhaps as part of an omnibus tax credit bill later this year.
(The article has one laugher: “The CEV program is expected to cost more than $104 billion over the next 15 years.” Gosh, I hope not.)
Speaking of California space legislation, another bill introduced by Assemblywoman Runner is gradually making progress. AJR 52 is a resolution that would ask NASA to loan the shuttle Atlantis, which will likely be the first of the three remaining orbiters to be retired, to its Palmdale assembly site. (Read some earlier coverage of this bill.) The bill was unanimously approved by an Assembly committee last week, with minor amendments, such as formally identifying the “Palmdale facility” as “Air Force Plant 42″ and including the NASA administrator on the distribution list for the resolution if it is eventually approved.
By Jeff Foust on 2006 June 28 at 7:28 am ET The full House is currently debating HR 5672, the Science, State, Justice, and Commerce appropriations bill, although they have not yet debated any of the NASA provisions of the bill. However, the AP reports this morning that some members will attempt as early as today to cut exploration program funding from NASA and distribute it elsewhere within—or outside—NASA:
Democrats plan to try to cut spending for the moon-Mars initiative, which would return U.S. astronauts to the moon by 2020 and to Mars after that, and spend the money instead on other NASA programs or grants to local police at a time when violent crime rates are rising.
Opponents of the Mars mission says it’s too expensive and that unmanned space travel produces better science per dollar spent. Others say there are more pressing needs here on Earth.
“It’s a complete and total waste of money,” said Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass. “The manned shot to Mars is a pure boondoggle.”
The article notes that opponents of the program are emboldened because Tom DeLay, the most powerful supporter of the space agency, has retired from the House. However, even if this vote went on straight party lines (which seems unlikely since a number of Democrats support the program), it would still fail provided Republicans closed ranks in support of the space agency.
By Jeff Foust on 2006 June 28 at 6:15 am ET Aviation Week reports in its latest issue that earlier this month the Treasury Department moved to freeze the assets under US jurisdiction of four Chinese companies, including China Great Wall Industry Corporation (CGWIC), the principal Chinese commercial space company, and its US subsidiary, G.W. Aerospace, Inc. The companies allegedly provided support to Iran for the development of medium-range ballistic missiles. The orders “prohibit all transactions between the designees and any U.S. person and freeze any assets the designees may have under U.S. jurisdiction,” according to a Treasury Department press release.
The Aviation Week article notes that this could have an adverse effect on potential US-Chinese space cooperation, to be discussed during NASA administrator Mike Griffin’s trip to China later this year:
The U.S. deals with China across a wide range of commercial and scientific topics. If the U.S. views this as a Chinese-company problem, the cooperation will not be directly impacted. But if the Bush administration views it as more of a government problem, then it could cool the administration’s recent cooperative tone.
It should be noted that CGWIC, which primarily sells Long March launches to foreign customers, is owned by the Chinese government.
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