By Jeff Foust on 2005 December 13 at 6:24 am ET There was an interesting article last week in the San Antonio Express-News about the Large Millimeter Telescope (LMT), a joint US-Mexico project currently under construction atop a mountain in central Mexico. The LMT is a large radio telescope that astronomers hope to use to probe the early history of the universe and study clouds of gas and dust from which stars form, among other planned research projects.
Apparently, it has come as something of a revelation in Mexico that most of the $40-million US share of the project has been funded by DARPA. One Mexican congresswoman “said the Pentagon funding tie was news to her”, according to the Express-News article, even though (at least in the English-language version of the project web site) DARPA is listed as one of the sources of US funding. (Although they do use the wrong URL for the DARPA web site.) Although it’s not clear if DARPA has any plans to use the telescope itself for military projects once finished (as opposed to using the technology developed for the project for other applications), there is a concern among some that DARPA’s ties might generate a backlash against the project in Mexico. A US-based “Mexico expert” told the newspaper that “If there is any link between the telescope and U.S. military power, then it will spark a nationalist outcry in Mexico” and allow “nationalist politicians to raise pluperfect hell.”
By Jeff Foust on 2005 December 12 at 6:20 am ET The last time NASA launched a spacecraft that used radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs), the Cassini mission in October 1997, there was a modest amount of controversy surrounding the launch. The fear of radioactive contamination in the event of a launch accident, and ill-defined concerns by anti-nuclear activists that this was the spearhead for the “nuclearization” and weaponization of space generated its fair share of heated rhetoric, protests, and even legal efforts to block the launch. The Massachusetts House of Representatives even passed a resolution asking the President to stop the launch. (The last was particularly galling to me personally, being a Massachusetts resident at the time; I contacted the sponsors of the resolution but got little more than cursory responses.)
None of those efforts, of course, blocked the launch, and in retrospect those efforts were minor league. According to one nth-hand account, those protesting the mission outside the White House several weeks before the launch were outnumbered by counterprotestors, organized by the NSS, supporting the launch; both were outnumbered, though, by people spending a Sunday afternoon rollerblading on Pennsylvania Avenue. Even the Massachusetts resolution, as I learned from a staffer in the office of my representative, was a perfunctory measure, passed by the house with no debate and little thought.
Now, NASA is gearing up to launch its first RTG-powered spacecraft since Cassini, the New Horizons mission to Pluto. Yet, unlike Cassini, there is remarkably little controversy surrounding the launch, even when considering the relatively limited opposition to Cassini. With the launch just under a month away, there has been little discussion about the spacecraft’s use of RTGs, and few reports of any organized opposition beyond the usual suspects (like Bruce Gagnon and Karl Grossman). Most of the attention has been by local newspapers, whose readers would obviously be most interested—and concerned—in any threat to their safety. And two newspapers in the area, the Daytona Beach News-Journal last week and Florida Today on Sunday, both published editorials strongly supporting the mission. “This is not a mission to be feared,” the Florida Today editorial concludes. “Rather, it’s a mission that holds significant potential to advance knowledge about the mechanics of the universe.” (The Daytona Beach editorial does not even bring up the RTG issue; it rather addresses the costs and risks of human versus robotic exploration: “…no one will die if the piano-size New Horizons spacecraft smashes into Charon.”)
So what’s the difference between 1997 and 2005? It’s certainly not a case of familiarity, given the lack of RTG-powered missions between Cassini and New Horizons. Perhaps given the issues of today, like terrorism, the Iraq war, hurricane relief, and the avian flu—issues that did not exist or were not pressing concerns eight years ago—people don’t have the time or inclination to think about, let alone worry about, the relatively tiny risk posed by the launch of a small spacecraft carrying an RTG.
By Jeff Foust on 2005 December 12 at 5:38 am ET In an article in this week’s issue of The Space Review, Wayne Eleazer looks at the history of how the US government has approached launch vehicle procurement. One might imagine that the government would want to encourage competition, in order to reduce the government’s launch costs, but Eleazer finds just the opposite: the government has sought to eliminate competition, being satisfied with a single launch provider and often rejecting efforts to stimulate competition from commercial entities. In that respect, the EELV program, with its two companies, Boeing and Lockheed Martin, is something of an anomaly, a result of overoptimistic projections of commercial launch demand that, as Eleazer puts it, “enabled the EELV program office to stop envisioning lynch mobs assaulting their offices” had they been forced to continue with the original plans to downselect to a single provider. In that respect, he argues, SpaceX is fighting an uphill battle in its attempt to block the formation of the United Launch Alliance, the Boeing-Lockheed EELV joint venture. The one thing missing from Eleazer’s analysis is the reason why the government has been so determined to eliminate launch competition for its payloads.
In a separate article in the same issue, Taylor Dinerman reviews a book about the history of NASA’s mission: how the goals of the agency have changed over time. There are no real surprises here, and the review of the book only goes through the 1980s.
By Jeff Foust on 2005 December 9 at 6:54 am ET The Wall Street Journal [subscription required] reports Friday that the troubled SBIRS missile-warning satellite program will survive a Nunn-McCurdy review with no major changes. The Pentagon has apparently rejected proposals to cancel the program or transfer it to another contractor; instead, the Air Force will “restructure the project and impose tighter Pentagon oversight”. The restructuring will apparently make some of the project funding for later phases of the program contingent on the performance of the first two SBIRS satellites to be built. Space News had reported in this week’s print edition that the Pentagon had been considering trimming the program and perhaps developing a gapfiller satellite should SBIRS continue to be delayed; that less-expensive gapfiller might use infrared sensors developed for NASA programs rather than defense satellites.
By Jeff Foust on 2005 December 8 at 6:19 am ET The Los Angeles Daily News reports that Congress “is expected to reach agreement this month” on a NASA authorization bill. House and Senate staff have been working to reconcile differences between their two versions of the legislation, S. 1281 and HR 3070, and conferees will meet this month to finish the work. The article doesn’t have any specifics about the status of the negotiations, and looks only at the high-level issues handled by the bill, including the formal Congressional endorsement of the Vision for Space Exploration and the expansion of the Centennial Challenges prize program.
By Jeff Foust on 2005 December 8 at 6:11 am ET It’s no surprise that Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) is a big supporter of the International Space Station. Using her position as chair of the space subcommittee of the Senate Commerce Committee, for example, she has held hearings on the benefits of ISS research and has proposed designating the ISS as a “national laboratory”, a provision that may make its way into the final NASA authorization legislation. However, Hutchison revealed yesterday she is such a strong ISS supporter she is willing to consider bringing into China into the venture. The Houston Chronicle reported that Hutchison “outlined a strategy to include China in the space station” during a visit to JSC yesterday. “America needs to bring all of the countries of the world together, be the leader,” she said. The article doesn’t offer any details about that strategy, although it notes that Hutchison also wants to encourage the use of the station by federal agencies, private companies, and nonprofit organizations.
Adding China to the ISS partnership would no doubt cause some complications among some members of Congress, and introduce any number of technology transfer issues. However, as an overview of a recent conference on China’s space program noted, “Fly a single taikonaut aboard a space shuttle to the ISS, one [of the speakers] suggested, and instantly the United States is back in a clear leadership position regarding China.”
By Jeff Foust on 2005 December 8 at 5:52 am ET A reader emailed me yesterday and asked, in essence, “When are you going to talk about Spaceport Sheboygan?” Yes, I have been remiss in reviewing the latest in Wisconsin space policy developments (a phrase rarely uttered in the annals of history, I’m certain.) Last week a committee of the Wisconsin State Senate held a hearing on a measure that would create a “Wisconsin Aerospace Authority” intended to promote the development of a spaceport on the shore of Lake Michigan in Sheboygan, about 80 kilometers north of Milwaukee. There is already a “spaceport” there, used exclusively for amateur rocketry and educational projects, but some in the state want to develop a full-fledged spaceport to serve government and commercial launches. The legislation (SB 352), according to the article, would “allow the authority to design and develop spaceports and spacecraft, and would require the state to establish a spaceport in Sheboygan.”
Testifying at the hearing, George French, president of Oklahoma-based Rocketplane Ltd., said that “Kennedy Space Center representatives have inspected the site and deemed it appropriate” and “[t]he spaceport would likely be able to get money from sources such as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the military and venture capitalists,” according to the article. It’s not clear what the basis of some of those claims, are, though, particularly since NASA has shown no public interest in developing new spaceports.
As a columnist for the University of Wisconsin newspaper The Daily Cardinal put it: “I would never have expected to hear the words ‘Sheboygan’ and ‘space travel’ so closely linked in my lifetime. Sheboygan conjures to mind images of brats, beer, fishing and golfing, not rocketry.”
Meanwhile, the Florida Space Authority held a hearing yesterday on the possibility of establishing a new commercial spaceport outside of Cape Canaveral to serve suborbital space tourism and other suborbital and orbital markets. There has been discussion in the state for months on how to best serve some of these up-and-coming markets, given the barriers to operating at the Cape and the aggressive efforts of states like New Mexico and Oklahoma to serve those markets. At Wednesday’s hearing there appeared to be some concern by state officials about the state backing away from the Cape entirely, but a willingness to support any efforts by other sites, notably existing airports, to obtain FAA spaceport licenses.
[Disclosure: my employer performed a study for the FSA about the potential for a new commercial spaceport in the state; this report was discussed at the Wednesday meeting. It is my understanding that FSA will make this report available to the public through its web site in the near future.]
By Jeff Foust on 2005 December 7 at 7:08 am ET The European Space Agency completed a major ministerial meeting yesterday in Berlin and, in general, the agency did pretty well. The ministers, representing the agency’s 17 member states plus Canada, approved a number of major projects, including the Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES) Earth science/reconnaissance satellite system and the ExoMars rover mission (which the UK in particular enthusiastically supported), as well as continued funding for ISS research.
The one major program that lost out at the meeting was a proposal to work with Russia on the Kliper manned spacecraft program. ESA had hoped to get €50 million (US$59 million) over two years to fund preliminary design studies of the vehicle. However, New Scientist reported that some major ESA members, including France, Germany, and Italy, failed to back the proposal. According to SPACE.com, member nations were concerned that ESA would be little more than a “small industrial contributor” with little say over project management. It’s not clear how much of a setback this is to Russia’s Kliper plans in general.
ESA also approved a “Buy European” launcher policy that requires that ESA member states use European vehicles—Ariane 5, Vega, and Soyuz once it begins operations from Kourou—for their spacecraft. However, ESA apparently adopted a broad definition of “European”: Reuters reports that the policy includes the Rockot, a converted Russian ICBM operated by Eurockot, a German-Russian joint venture 51% owned by EADS.
Update 12/7 12:45 pm: A Space News article [subscription required] indicates that the “Buy European” provision described above is actually a watered-down version of what was originally planned: the requirement applies only to ESA, not to individual nations or other European organizations. Also, the policy obligates ESA to arrange backup launch services for any satellites intended for launch on the Ariane 5, to avoid delays should the Ariane 5 experience problems down the road. Arianespace already provides such backup arrangements to commercial customers under the “Launch Services Alliance” that includes the Zenit 3SL and Japanese H-2A. So, ironically, ESA satellites could end up flying on non-European vehicles in some circumstances!
By Jeff Foust on 2005 December 7 at 6:42 am ET The Wall Street Journal [subscription required] reports today that it appears highly unlikely that Boeing and Lockheed Martin will get all the regulatory approvals it needs to move ahead with the formation of the United Launch Alliance by the end of the year. When the ULA was announced in May, Boeing and Lockheed believed that they would get all the clearances needed to move ahead with the joint venture by late this year, but have been stymied by regulatory delays. The FTC isn’t expected to make a formal recommendation on the joint venture until the middle of this month, and the Pentagon is still performing its own review. Concerns about the joint venture have been raised by Northrop Grumman, which is concerned that the ULA might give Boeing and Lockheed an advantage when competing for satellite contracts; and SpaceX (curiously spelled “SpaceEx” in the article), which believes the ULA is anti-competitive.
By Jeff Foust on 2005 December 6 at 1:30 pm ET Those who have TimesSelect subscriptions may want to read John Tierney’s column in Tuesday’s issue. (Or, if you’re cheap like me, buy the dead tree edition for a buck and turn to page A31.) Tierney starts off with a discussion of Virgin Galactic and space tourism, and then segues into a discussion of prizes as part of NASA’s exploration plan. He’s not thinking of Centennial Challenges (I did not even notice a reference to that program in his essay) but larger prizes. To start: “a prize, to be awarded by the National Academy of Engineering or the National Research Council, for the best plan on paper for a manned mission to Mars.” (Some might argue we have plenty of plans on paper for Mars missions; would a prize really stimulate any genuinely new thinking on the topic?) Tierney said that Richard Branson told him he would enter such a contest for a prize of $10 million, which seems a bit steep for a paper study.
Tierney goes on to back an old Robert Zubrin idea of offering a series of prizes for steps leading to a manned Mars expedition, culminating with a $30-billion Mars Prize for the first such mission. Tierney doesn’t mention that this idea isn’t new, and that none other than then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich endorsed the idea back in the mid-90s, but did little (visibly, at least) to push it forward. Prizes, Tierney adds, would save money, at least in the near term: politicians “would get the immediately glory of inaugurating an interplanetary quest, and someone else would get the bill.”
For those who have followed the subject, there’s not much new here, other than the fact that a columnist for the New York Times has endorsed the idea.
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