By Jeff Foust on 2006 April 26 at 6:06 am ET Yesterday’s relatively brief, congenial hearing of the Senate Commerce Committee’s space subcommittee on NASA covered the usual topics: the transition from the shuttle to the CEV and concerns about the length of the gap between the two programs, aeronautics funding, and miscellaneous issues. (For some general coverage, check out SPACE.com, Florida Today, and the New York Times.) Unlike their colleagues in the House, the committee brought up China only briefly, near the end of the hearing, without the doom-and-gloom of the House appropriations subcommittee hearing last month.
The Washington Post, however, focuses on what wasn’t discussed at the hearing: the agency’s concern about the effect of Congressional earmarks on its budget. On the penultimate page of his full opening remarks, Griffin says that the growing size of earmarks—$568.5 million in FY06, compared to $74 million in FY97—is hurting the agency. “The growth of these Congressional directions is eroding NASA’s ability to carry out its mission of space exploration and peer-reviewed scientific discovery.” In his statement, he says that “NASA seeks the assistance of this Committee and Congress in reducing earmarks in the FY 2007 budget process.” However, Griffin did not read that section of his remarks at the hearing, and members of the committee did not bring it up. Griffin told the Post that he wasn’t trying to avoid a confrontation: “I feel about these earmarks the same way I always feel about earmarks.”
By Jeff Foust on 2006 April 25 at 7:05 am ET Florida Today reports that the state’s House of Representatives have final approval Monday to legislation that would provide $50 million incentives for the state’s space industry, as well as consolidate the state’s numerous space-related agencies into a single organization. However, the House rejected several amendments by one Space Coast-area legislator, Bob Allen, who tried to increase the size of the incentives (he has offered a proposal for $500 million in incentives, with half the money coming from labor unions), and address some issues associated with the merger of the agencies. While the House rejected the amendments, they’re expected to come up again in the state Senate.
By Jeff Foust on 2006 April 25 at 6:58 am ET Some deals in Washington seem to take forever to close. A case in point is the sale of the Washington Nationals, the city’s professional baseball franchise that is currently owned by the league. Major League Baseball officials originally planned to sell the team to local owners within a few months of the September 2004 announcement that the franchise would be moving to the city from Montreal. The Nats are still owned by MLB, after the league blew past deadline after self-imposed deadline, although a deal could be done soon.
The same can be said for the United Launch Alliance, the Boeing-Lockheed Martin EELV joint venture. Next week will mark the first anniversary of the announcement of the ULA, but the deal has yet to close because of an ongoing government review. However, Reuters reported late Monday that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is expected to approve the venture, with conditions, “within the next few weeks.” The terms of the conditions weren’t disclosed in the article, although the biggest concern appears to be safeguards to keep Boeing and Lockheed’s satellite manufacturing divisions from gaining an unfair advantage over other companies, notably Northrop Grumman. Keep in mind, though, that this deal has dragged on far longer than expected, so a “few weeks” could turn out to be much longer. After all, MLB president Bob DuPuy told Congress that the league would choose a new owner for the Nationals in the next two weeks—two and a half weeks ago.
By Jeff Foust on 2006 April 24 at 7:34 am ET It’s no secret that the space industry in general is unhappy with the effect that export controls are having on their ability to sell their products and services to, or even hold discussions with, foreign parties. At the Space Access ’06 conference in Phoenix a few days ago, several people were sporting buttons with the slogan “ITAR delenda est”: ITAR must be destroyed.
However, as I pointed out in my summary of the conference for The Space Review, at least one person believes that a less confrontational approach is needed. In a presentation, Berin Szoka of the Institute for Space Law & Policy said that rhetoric like the above “will undermine efforts for reform.” Instead, what’s needed is to quantify the “perverse national security effects” ITAR is having on the industry by inhibiting innovation and encouraging foreign competitors to develop their own products. and then develop detailed reform alternatives: a process that will take three to five years, he believes. What sort of button would Szoka wear? “An ITAR that works for America.”
By Jeff Foust on 2006 April 24 at 7:26 am ET While most of the hearing activity in Congress this year about NASA has been on the House side, the Senate will be paying attention to the space agency this week. The science and space subcommittee of the Senate Commerce Committee is scheduled to hold a hearing Tuesday afternoon on “National Aeronautic and Space Administration Issues and Challenges”. The hearing, according to the committee announcement, “will review NASA progress in implementing provisions of the NASA Authorization Act of 2005 (P.L. 109-155) in the context of the Fiscal Year 2007 budget request. The hearing will also focus on ISS Research, the transition from the Space Shuttle to the CEV, NASA activities in science and engineering education, and contributions to U.S. technological competitiveness.” NASA administrator Michael Griffin is the sole witness listed.
Update: In addition to the Commerce subcommittee hearing, the Senate Appropriations Committee subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, and Science will hold a hearing on NASA’s budget Wednesday the 26th at 2 pm. Again, Griffin will be the sole witness.
By Jeff Foust on 2006 April 21 at 10:01 am ET During a briefing after President Bush’s meeting with Chinese President Hu, Dennis Wilder, Acting Senior Director for Asian Affairs at the National Security Council, threw in a few words at the end of his opening statement about US-China space cooperation:
The President, in the area of trying to deepen the relationship between our two societies and our two cultures, offered to send the NASA Administrator to China to begin to talk about lunar exploration with the Chinese, to talk about some of the things we need to do in space — for example, debris avoidance and other subjects. There are some things that the Chinese also have in terms of sensor technologies and information that we are interested in, in terms of global climate and other issues. So the NASA Administrator will probably go to China later on this year to begin to consult on the subject of space exploration and where we might have common interests and where we might begin to work together as the two nations on the Earth with the most ambitious space programs in the 21st century at this point.
This statement got a little bit of media coverage, including Reuters, SPACE.com, and the Houston Chronicle, which is probably about all that it deserved. China had already offered to host a visit by Griffin, and reportedly the US has already provided orbital debris tracking support for China for its manned Shenzhou missions. The lunar exploration cooperation is a little more interesting, but it remains to be seen how that will play out, particularly given the limited flight opportunities in the near term: it may be too late to fly US instruments on Chang’e 1 (China’s lunar orbiter) or Chinese instruments on LRO, even if both sides agreed to it today.
By Jeff Foust on 2006 April 20 at 4:55 am ET Yes, China continues to be a hot space policy topic. A few items of note:
- Bloomberg News has an article summarizing the perceived threat China’s space program poses to the US. The usual suspects on both sides of the issue are quoted. There are no real new insights here, but it does offer a review of the various claims on this topic.
- The Washington Times had an editorial in yesterday’s edition that sees China as an obvious competitor to the US in space supremacy “if not now, then in the near future.” That, the editorial believes, should keep the US focused on its own space exploration efforts. “If China wants to plant its flag on the moon, then the United States should plant its on Mars,” the editorial concludes.
- A reader pointed out the WSI/China Program/China-US Dialogue on Space, a project of the World Security Institute. The web site includes an extended report on “China’s Space Ambitions”, with contributions from US and Chinese authors. [Note that, as of very early Thursday morning, the web site was not functioning properly; hopefully it will be by the time you read this.]
By Jeff Foust on 2006 April 20 at 4:37 am ET The editors of Florida Today have made it clear on a number of occasions that they believe the state government should do more to support the state’s space industry. They are at it again in Thursday’s edition with an editorial once again calling on the legislature to approve a $500-million investment fund for the space industry:
They’ll either show vision and move ahead with an innovative $500 million investment fund that would help bring 21st century space business to the state.
Or they’ll dump the plan and repeat their failed policies of the past that are making Florida a loser in this rapidly-changing arena.
By Jeff Foust on 2006 April 20 at 4:32 am ET The web site California Chronicle reports that not one but two space-related pieces of legislation made it out of committee in the California State Senate this week. (The article looks suspiciously like a press release from the office of Sen. Roy Ashburn, the sponsor of the bills, although it does not (yet) appear on his official web site.) One, as reported earlier, is SB 1671, the Mojave spaceport loan bill. The other, SB 1698, would provide $2 million for the California Space Enterprise Competitive Grant Program, an effort started in 1997 to “develop space enterprise in California”.
By Jeff Foust on 2006 April 19 at 12:48 pm ET Yesterday President Bush paid a visit to the Parkland Magnet Middle School for Aerospace Technology in Rockville, Maryland (just a few miles from where I live, as it turns out). While at the school, he gave a speech on the American Competitiveness Initiative. He even mentioned to drop NASA’s name twice, although not in any meaningful way:
We saw two scientists who are here from NASA. These are good, hard-working folks who said, I kind of want to lend my expertise to try to convince a child that science is cool.
Later:
As I told you earlier, it’s really important for students to see firsthand what it’s like to be a scientist. [Secretary of Education] Margaret [Spellings] and I didn’t do a very good job of teaching what it’s like to be a scientist. The two guys from NASA did an excellent job of teaching them what it is like to be a scientist.
It’s doubtful this will placate those critics who believe that the President hasn’t paid NASA enough public attention in the two-plus years since the unveiling of the Vision for Space Exploration.
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