By Jeff Foust on 2006 February 17 at 7:15 am ET
Prior to yesterday’s House Science Committee hearing, Rep. Tom Feeney (R-FL) spoke at a Space Transportation Association breakfast about his recent trip to China, including a rare visit to the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, the Chinese manned spaceflight center that is typically off limits to Western visitors. (He noted in his talk that while he and two fellow Congressmen were allowed to visit the center, a US Embassy staffer who planned to accompany them was forced to stay at a hotel.) A few notes from his talk:
- He said that, as previously reported, there is some interest among Chinese officials about developing a common docking adapter that would allow Shenzhou spacecraft to dock with ISS or US spacecraft to dock with a future Chinese space station. However, he added that his Chinese hosts said this was a “decision for a higher pay grade”, and noted there would be concerns here about technology transfer.
- There is “enormous” pride in China for their manned space program, which is played up by the Chinese government in order to keep the Chinese public happy. The number one worry of the Chinese government, Feeney claimed, is that “there’s going to be some sort of massive uprising or rebellion within China itself.”
- That pride, though, dissipates whenever the Chinese space program is compared with US efforts. “At that point they get very humble, I think partly because they do not want to be a threat and partly because they do not want to overly excite expectations that they cannot live up to.”
- In a similar vein, he did not see a race developing between the US and China. “I think it’s a mistake to look at China as an extension of the Cold War. This is not the Soviet Union… They have not been an aggressive country since Genghis Khan was running things.” Still, he thinks there would be a competitive reaction in the US if China ramped up its lunar exploration program, for example. “I think some members would be motivated by that, let’s put it that way, but I think more likely the motivation would come from the people of the United States.”
- Listening to the talk, I noticed that the congressman was sometimes a little off with his facts. Comparing the Chinese facilities with what’s at the Kennedy Space Center, he called KSC’s Vehicle Assembly Building “a 60-year-old huge warehouse”, about 20 years older than its actual age. Elsewhere he described the US and Russian manned space programs as having histories of “30 and 40 years, respectively”. His pronunciation of Chinese names was also different from what I have commonly heard elsewhere, but then, he’s been to China and I haven’t.
By Jeff Foust on 2006 February 17 at 6:29 am ET After reading the opening statements from yesterday’s hearing mentioned in a previous post, you’d think that science committee members were very upset about the planned cutbacks in NASA science programs. And indeed, some members expressed their concern about cuts, either in general or in specific programs of interest (aeronautics, SOFIA, etc.) Yet, later in the hearing, after Griffin said that “we’re not slashing science to the bone”, chairman Sherwood Boehlert said:
We’re conditioned as people to accept the argument that we’re slashing away at some program when in fact we’re slowing the rate of growth… Washington is the only town in the world where if you ask for a $73 raise and you get a $70 raise, you say, “You’ve slashed away at my potential income.”
However, one thing to keep in mind is that the overall increase in science programs, about one percent, is not enough to keep up with inflation, so that one can argue that NASA is “slashing” (or, yes, “eviscerating”) science, even if in aggregate it’s just a scratch.
Also, some of the news accounts, such as the New York Times and the Washington Post, focused more on the still-brewing public affairs controversy than the specifics of the budget. On the other hand, Florida Today, the Houston Chronicle, and SPACE.com did put more of an emphasis on the budget, the primary purpose of the hearing.
By Jeff Foust on 2006 February 16 at 7:18 pm ET In the final hours of its regular 2006 session, the New Mexico state legislature approved a spending bill that includes $100 million over three years for a new commercial spaceport in the southern part of the state. The legislature also approved a separate measure that allows cities and counties to impose gross receipts taxes on businesses to raise additional money for the spaceport.
By Jeff Foust on 2006 February 16 at 7:01 pm ET I haven’t had time yet to digest today’s hearing of the House Science Committee featuring NASA administrator Mike Griffin; that will have to wait until later tonight. In the meantime here are a few resources:
Discuss.
By Jeff Foust on 2006 February 16 at 5:58 am ET I stumbled across yesterday an interview with Clint Curtis, a Republican-turned-Democrat who is considering running against Rep. Tom Feeney (R-FL), whose district includes KSC. It’s a wide-ranging, and somewhat odd, interview, although when asked what his top issues would be, Curtis mentioned several, including “Stop the gutting of NASA.” (Oh dear, there’s that evisceration theme again.)
Mr. Curtis does have a campaign web site, and devotes several paragraphs on his issues page to NASA. That’s where things get a little odder. Curtis’ primary concern is that the US is losing ground to China in space, and that Rep. Feeney is only making matters worse: “Mr. Feeney takes trips to China, who knows who actually paid for this trip, and touts how advanced they are. He promotes that we should share our technology with them in the spirit of cooperation. Sounds very much like a prelude to outsourcing more American jobs.” Curtis proposes restarting a space race with China: “What Russia lacked in manpower and economic might, the Chinese already possess. While Mr. Feeney is bragging on how impressive the facilities are in China and suggests that we should cooperate in the development of their space program, our own space program has been under-funded for the entire duration of his time as this districts [sic] representative.”
Incidentally, Rep. Feeney is scheduled to speak about China’s space program, and the results of a recent trip to China he took that featured a visit to Chinese space facilities, at a Space Transportation Association breakfast in Washington this morning.
By Jeff Foust on 2006 February 16 at 5:39 am ET One of the most popular punching bags in the space industry, both among established and emerging companies, is export control. Everyone, it seems, has a story of woe to tell about the difficulty and delays involved in complying with export control regulations for space products, and how such obstacles threaten the American space industry. There have been some efforts to get Congress to change those policies, although nothing of consequence has emerged to date.
To get a different perspective on export control, The Space Show interviewed Ann Ganzer, director of the State Department’s Office of Defense Trade Controls Policy, which handles export licensing. The interview took place Sunday, although you can listen to a recording of the show, which runs about 90 minutes. You won’t necessarily come away with a different opinion about export control, but perhaps gain a little better appreciation of the process. However, it is still up to Congress to provide any substantive reforms to streamline the process, particularly when dealing with friendly nations.
By Jeff Foust on 2006 February 15 at 7:12 pm ET This week’s print issue of Space News includes a short article about a speech last Thursday by Rep. Mark Udall (D-CO) at the U.S. Commercial Remote Sensing Industry Conference in Washington (one floor up and around the corner from the FAA Commercial Space Transportation Conference, taking place at the same time.) Udall has long advocated increased use of remote sensing for various applications, including sponsoring legislation that was later incorporated into the NASA authorization bill last year that sets up a pilot program of grants for state and local use of such data. The article includes this interesting passage:
Udall said there needs to be as much of an emphasis on funding Earth science projects as there is on funding the rest of NASA’s research.
“There are a lot more humans living on this Earth right now than there are on Mars,” he said.
I checked to see if the text of his speech was available on his web site, but no luck: he posted a speech he made Monday night, but the one before that dates back to February 2003.
By Jeff Foust on 2006 February 15 at 7:01 am ET CQPolitics.com notes that Rep. Tom DeLay is facing some competition in the Republican primary for the 22nd Congressional District, scheduled for March 7. Three candidates are running against him, one of whom, Tom Campbell, is running TV ads that indirectly attack DeLay. No one expects Campbell to upset DeLay, but it could pose another challenge for the staunch NASA supporter. Some comments at the end of the article point out that a former Republican Congressman, Steve Stockman, is contemplating filing to run as an independent for the general election in that district against DeLay and Democrat Nick Lampson. Would Stockman’s entry end up splitting the Republican vote or the DeLay protest vote?
By Jeff Foust on 2006 February 15 at 6:51 am ET While the space advocacy community is talking to Congress about the FY07 NASA budget proposal, the tone of their messages is very different. The Planetary Society issued a “Take Action Alert” Tuesday, calling on its members and other interested people to contact the House Science Committee to express their opposition to cuts in science programs, claiming such efforts are “eviscerated” in the budget. (They seem to be particularly fond of the term “eviscerated”; one assumes they’re thinking of the definition “to deprive of vital content or force” and not “to take out the entrails of”, although the latter does conjure up more memorable mental images.) The society is concerned not just with the FY07 budget but also with changes in the NASA operating plan for FY06: “NASA has already begun canceling 2006 research projects and mission studies, including the mission to Europa. Even programs Congress has voted into law are being ‘delayed indefinitely’.” Their near-term goal is to raise awareness of the issue for the House Science Committee’s hearing tomorrow, although I suspect committee members are already planning to bring it up.
The Space Exploration Alliance, via the NSS, takes a more optimistic tone in their press release about last week’s Space Budget Blitz. Participants met with 23 Congressional offices and delivered petitions to “more than 25″ Senate offices. Participants are clearly pressing for more money for NASA (although not specifying in the release what program(s) should get any additional funds), but without the same dire mood as The Planetary Society. “Although the country is in a constrained financial situation, Blitz participants were encouraged to hear that NASA and the Vision for Space Exploration remain strong priorities on Capitol Hill,” the release notes.
By Jeff Foust on 2006 February 14 at 7:04 am ET A scandal appears to be brewing within the Canadian Space Agency that could cost the new head of the agency his job. The Canadian Press reported over the weekend that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) plans to start an investigation into reports that C$7.3 million in CSA contracts have never been accounted for. The contracts date back to 2000, and came to light in a 2004 lawsuit against the agency by a former CSA scientist, Samir Elomari, who argued that the agency was trying to take the rights to one of his inventions. Elomari claimed that Virendra Jha, CSA vice president for science and technology at the time of the suit, used “threats and reprisals” against Elomari. Elomari won the suit and last month filed a complaint with the RCMP that triggered the new investigation. Jha became president of the CSA late last year when Marc Garneau resigned to run for Parliament; Elomari told The Globe and Mail that Jha should step down. “He is under police investigation. It would be foolish for him to stay as president.”
|
|
