By Jeff Foust on 2006 January 16 at 7:33 am ET No, there’s no connection between the two (at least for the purposes of this post), but they are both policy-related subjects of articles in this week’s issue of The Space Review. Ryan Zelnio examines the effect stringent satellite export controls have had on US manufacturers; by his estimates these companies have lost several billion dollars in sales. In some cases US companies have simply declined to bid on proposals from foreign companies out of concerns of export control hassles. His analysis is limited to only a relatively mature part of the space industry—the manufacture of commercial GEO communications satellites—but the same concerns apply to other facets of the industry as well.
Dwayne Day digs into the historical archives to look at the decision the Nixon Administration made in the summer of 1971 to fund the final two Apollo missions (16 and 17; 18 through 20 had been previously cancelled). A major part of the decision weighed on what Dr. Day calls “negative symbolism”: ending the human spaceflight program would have a far higher political cost for the country than the money spent to maintain it. He argues that the same argument holds true today, even long after the end of the Cold War, because now both Russia and China have their own human spaceflight efforts. This is particularly timely because there has been concern among some space activists about the entry into the race for House Majority Leader by Rep. John Shadegg (R-AZ). Until he threw his hat into the ring late last week Shadegg led the Republican Study Committee, which last year proposed cutting NASA’s exploration program as part of its “Operation Offset” proposal to pay for hurricane relief. Shadegg’s ascendency to the majority leadership post, these activists worry, could spell doom (or at least trouble) for the Vision. For the reasons above, though (not to mention continued support from other members of Congress and the Bush Administration) Shadegg himself would not necessarily be able to do much even if elected Majority Leader.
By Jeff Foust on 2006 January 14 at 11:21 am ET Today marks the second anniversary of President Bush’s speech at NASA Headquarters, where he formally unveiled the Vision for Space Exploration. This anniversary is a pretty quiet one: NASA administrator Mike Griffin issued a one-paragraph statement Thursday that praised the vision, but only in the most glittering of generalities. The Coalition for Space Exploration also issued a press release offering general praise and support for the vision. Beyond that, though, the anniversary has largely escaped media attention: the closest thing I could find today is an Orlando Sentinel editorial calling on the state of Florida to step up its efforts to attract the manufacturing and servicing work for the CEV. (Saturday is, however, typically the slowest news day of the week, particularly for newspapers; there might be more attention focused on the VSE tomorrow.)
On one hand, the lack of media attention might be construed as evidence that the Vision is not controversial enough to warrant attention. After all, it survived early struggles in Congress before eventually winning an endorsement in the form of full funding for the agency in FY05 and 06, as well as explicit backing in the recent NASA authorization bill. The Vision also survived a change in NASA leadership last year; albeit in a slightly different, more refined form.
On the other hand, one might argue that the lack of attention is a sign there’s not much to talk about regarding the VSE. The near-term centerpiece of the Vision, the CEV, is still in a nebulous state, with NASA months away from picking a final design and contractor. Many other elements of the Vision are still years down the road. Ironically, most of the media attention NASA will receive over the next few days will likely be from missions that are unrelated to, and predate, the VSE: the return of Stardust on Sunday and the launch of New Horizons on Tuesday. Remember that Stardust was developed and launched when Dan Goldin was NASA administrator!
Conventional wisdom among many observers had been that if the Vision survived the first year or two, it would be in good shape—it would have built up momentum and support that would carry it through. However, 2006 will still be an important year for the VSE: it appears that NASA may not get the healthy budget increases it received the last two years, based on reports about the administration’s FY07 proposal and the (at least partial) loss of influence once wielded by Rep. Tom DeLay, one of NASA’s most powerful benefactors on Capitol Hill. If there are more delays or other problems with the shuttle, it will doubtless feed the debate on how many more flights it should be performed, and if the shuttle should continue flying after 2010. It may be a stretch to conclude that 2006 will be the critical year that makes the difference in the long-term success (or failure) for the VSE, but it’s still far too soon to declare victory for the Vision just yet.
By Jeff Foust on 2006 January 13 at 6:46 am ET I noted here last month that there has been very little controversy surrounding the pending launch of NASA’s New Horizons mission, a spacecraft powered by an RTG. That has changed a little bit, but not significantly, in the last couple of weeks. The most notable development was a protest outside the gates of Cape Canaveral last weekend. The protest drew “about 30″ protestors, according to the Orlando Sentinel, but the report notes that a similar demonstration before the launch of Cassini in 1997 attracted 800 people. Florida Today counted “about three dozen” protestors, but a photo shows that at least one of those three dozen didn’t look that enthused to be there.
Anti-nuclear protestors have also been a little more active online, but not by much. Bruce Gagnon, one of the leaders of the protests against the Cassini mission, did take time on his blog to discuss last weekend’s protest, but most of his blog is still devoted to other issues. (Gagnon is still the go-to person for sound bites, though, including quotes in a Houston Chronicle article about the mission.) Karl Grossman, a long-time activist, is distributing an essay critical of the mission through a service called MintemanMedia.org; it has been picked up by a few publications, like the Topeka Capital-Journal [registration required].
Another veteran of the Cassini Wars, Russell Hoffman, recently penned a similar piece for a left-wing online publication, CounterPunch. Hoffman lays the rhetoric on thick:
The name similarity between the destination and the power source is unlikely to have been a coincidence: NASA probably chose this particular mission because they were sure no “anti-nuclear activist” could legitimately claim you could run experiments once you got to Pluto with solar power — you needed (so NASA claimed) plutonium for THIS mission, and that’s why THIS mission was chosen.
Riiiiggghhhhttt. Not that any of these efforts are having any effect: Florida Today reported this morning that both President George Bush and Florida Governor Jeb Bush have signed off on the launch, which passed its launch readiness review Thursday.
By Jeff Foust on 2006 January 12 at 6:46 am ET A group of Congressmen visiting China report that China has raised the possibility of cooperating with the US in space. According to the AP and Reuters, Chinese officials meeting with the Congressional delegation discussed a proposal to re-engineer the docking system on China’s Shenzhou spacecraft so it is compatible with the ISS and other US and Russian manned spacecraft. The reports don’t make it clear who brought up the proposal, although Rep. Mark Kirk (R-IL), co-chair of the delegation, told the AP that the Chinese officials were more enthusiastic about that proposal than some other military cooperation options. Such cooperation could improve relations between the two countries on space issues and defuse any notions of a race between the US and China, as noted at a symposium on China’s space program last fall.
By Jeff Foust on 2006 January 12 at 6:33 am ET Try campaigning for Parliament in Canada! That’s what Marc Garneau, the first Canadian in space, is discovering as, among other things, he spends cold mornings greeting train riders (en français) at a station in his riding west of Montreal, the Montreal Gazette reports. The campaign has been a little rough for the first-time candidate (and apparently for the Liberal party in general) leading up to the January 23 election. Garneau ran into problems when he discussed his opposition to Quebec separatists, saying he would leave the province should it ever declare independence from Canada, and exacerbated the controversy by likening it to the US invasion of Iraq: “it happened very quickly, but what about after that?” He does have some star power, though: “He’s attractive,” said one train rider. “And my son loves the fact he was an astronaut.”
By Jeff Foust on 2006 January 11 at 6:44 am ET A few other items from Mike Griffin’s speech at the AAS yesterday:
- The biggest applause generator was a comment made by Griffin early in his address that his love of astronomy and his appreciation of the work done by Hubble and other space telescopes “prompted my decision that NASA will, if at all possible, use one of the remaining flights of the space shuttle for Hubble servicing.” After the ten-second round of applause died down, he added, “Thanks, but we still need to figure out if that’s possible.”
- Later, Griffin was asked if he thought that a robotic servicing mission was still possible should a shuttle mission fall through. He noted that he had chaired a committee that was looking into that last year when he was nominated to become NASA administrator. Both he and the rest of the committee, though, felt that in the time and cost constraints facing Hubble, there was no robotic option that would be feasible other than a strict deorbiting-only mission. “So I am sorry to tell you that it is either a shuttle mission to repair Hubble or it will not be repaired.”
- He said that NASA is facing “daunting fiscal realities” shared by other discretionary programs, adding that “NASA simply cannot do everything that was on our plate when I took office last April.” Later, he said that science programs in the agency have enjoyed budget growth of “in the five to seven percent range annualized over the last decade or so”; current circumstances mean that “that level of growth cannot be maintained” although science programs would still see smaller increases.
- Griffin said that NASA would learn from the past, specifically the ISS, in how it sells the Vision for Space Exploration to the scientific community. “I want to be very clear: I will not with the scientific community do another space station, meaning I will not say, ‘Hey, we’re doing this for you, and here’s all the great things that can occur.’ I well recognize that no one would go to the Moon to site astronomical platforms. No one would do that. But, if we’re going to the Moon anyway for other and larger purposes, then science, I believe, can benefit by rethinking some of the engineering trades which are involved.”
By Jeff Foust on 2006 January 11 at 5:53 am ET NASA administrator Mike Griffin introduced a new term to the budgetary lexicon yesterday: “undercosting”. Speaking at the American Astronomical Society (AAS) conference in Washington DC yesterday, Griffin responded to a question about the cost overruns on the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) by saying that “I have characterized it as an undercosting.” The remark generated laughter in the audience that packed the ballroom of the Wardman Park Marriott, but Griffin was serious, noting that two independent committees found that previous cost estimates for the space telescope were about $1.5 billion too low. “So if two independent committees look at it and say that they really haven’t screwed up but that the amount of money allocated to the mission was a billion and a half low, then I would refer to that as an undercosting, not an overrun.” Griffin said he was now more confident in the cost of the JWST, but added, “I would never characterize any large aerospace project as being immune from overruns.”
By Jeff Foust on 2006 January 11 at 5:38 am ET Bloomberg News reported late yesterday that the Bush Administration’s proposed FY2007 budget “would carve savings from programs such as Medicare, NASA and agriculture.” The article quotes Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH), chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, who believes that any budget increases are “going to be below the rate of inflation” for everything other than defense and homeland security.
For NASA in particular, the Bloomberg article says that the administration “aims to reduce spending on the Space Shuttle program, slicing as much as $6 billion from the projected cost of almost $70 billion in the next four years.” That $6-billion figure is about the same as the high-end estimates on the projected gap in shuttle costs that emerged late last year, so this “cut” may be a decision not to provide the shuttle program with any additional funding. Shuttle advocates have warned that not increasing the shuttle budget could result in reducing the number of projected flights through 2010 and possibly even mothballing an orbiter. Suffice it to say, it appears that NASA’s earlier requests to OMB for a budget increase of as much as nine percent in 2007 won’t be fulfilled.
By Jeff Foust on 2006 January 10 at 5:52 am ET A couple articles of note from Monday’s issue of The Space Review: Grant Bonin completes his examination of the use of medium-lift vehicles instead of a heavy-lift launcher to carry out the Vision for Space Exploration. Part two looks at cost and reliability issues associated with large versus smaller vehicles. Also, Ryan Zelnio offers a short history of export control policy for the commercial space (primarily satellite manufacturing) industry. While the focus here is on large comsat manufacturers, export control is an issue throughout the US space industry, affecting both large and emergent companies. A follow-up essay by Zelnio will examine the effect of export control policy on the industry over the last several years.
By Jeff Foust on 2006 January 9 at 6:28 am ET ProSpace has opened registration for March Storm 2006, its annual Congressional lobbying blitz. This year’s event is scheduled for February 27 through March 1 (Monday through Wednesday), with training on Sunday the 26th. The agenda for this year’s March Storm has yet to be announced, although it will likely bear some similarities to last year’s agenda.
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