Space Politics

Another development that provides ammunition for the continuing debate on space weaponization: Aerospace Daily reports that the Senate version of the defense appropriations bill, approved by the Senate Appropriations Committee last week, would instruct the DoD to restore a “kill vehicle” to the Near Field Infrared Experiment (NFIRE) satellite scheduled for launch next year. The kill vehicle is a deployable payload on the main NFIRE satellite that would be fired towards—although not directly at—a ballistic missile during a test to examine the missile’s infrared plume. The Missile Defense Agency (MDA) removed the kill vehicle from NFIRE last year after Congressional criticism, but, assuming the House agrees to the provision in conference, the appropriations bill would instruct MDA to restore the kill vehicle. That would, in turn, bump off a European laser communications experiment that was added to NFIRE after the kill vehicle was removed, and could delay its mid-2006 launch.

The AP reports that the Government Accountability Office will release a report today finding that NASA often flew its personnel on its own aircraft instead of utilizing commercial flights, spending an extra $20 million in the process in fiscal years 2003 and 2004. Current NASA administrator Mike Griffin has promised to reform NASA’s travel policies to limit the use of its own aircraft. While $20 million is not much in the larger scheme of things, like a $16-billion annual budget, it is a bit embarrassing at a time when NASA is tying to convince Congress and the public that it can be fiscally prudent as it plans a human return to the Moon. (As you may recall, this issue was supposed to be the topic of a Congressional hearing that has been delayed twice, once because of the August recess and once because of hurricane-related hearings; it has not been rescheduled.)

The AP is reporting that a Texas grand jury has indicted House Majority Leader Tom DeLay on a criminal conspiracy charge. While it’s a long way from an indictment to a conviction, this will at the very least prove to be a major distraction for DeLay, arguably the biggest supporter of NASA in Congress; he will have to step down at least temporarily from his leadership post just as a new battle for NASA’s exploration plan and budget gears up.

Congressman Ken Calvert (R-CA), chair of the space subcommittee of the House Science Committee, is unsatisfied with one component of the new NASA lunar exploration plan: he thinks a manned landing on 2018 will be too late. Too late for what? He tells Aerospace Daily that he believes that China will land humans on the Moon before then: “I’ve been talking to a number of people that are much more knowledgeable about that than I am, [about] some things that maybe are still classified, but they believe that the Chinese are probably on the mark to get there sooner,” he told the publication.

Obviously, we’re not privy to the possibly-classified information that Calvert has apparently seen, but what is known suggests that while China may be interested in manned lunar missions, their schedule is not that aggressive. After all, next month’s Shenzhou 6 mission—a five-day, two-man flight—comes two years, almost to the day, after Shenzhou 5: hardly the sign of a program racing to the Moon. At last week’s International Lunar Conference in Toronto, Chinese representatives said their unmanned Chang’e lunar exploration program remained on its relatively slow schedule: a lunar orbiter to launch in 2007, a lander around 2012, and a sample return mission by around the end of the next decade. Calvert’s comments sound something like what former Congressman Robert Walker said a couple years ago, when a Japanese parliamentarian—a European in another version of the story—claimed that China would land men on the Moon in “three to four years”. Ooops. Moreover, as I have argued in the past, a space race between the US and China (or anyone else, for that matter), is hardly a recipe for an affordable, sustainable space exploration effort.

There are a couple of other interesting notes in the Aerospace Daily article. Both Calvert and Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) support the NASA lunar exploration plan in general, although Rohrabacher said that “some tough ‘prioritizing’ will have to take place” in the overall NASA budget to pay for the plan. Rohrabacher, who previously led the space subcommittee, said he interested in becoming chairman of the full House Science Committee once the current chairman, Rep. Sherwood Boehlert (R-NY), wraps up his final term as committee chair.

There have been reports in recent days that the Office of Management and Budget has been studying the possibility of retiring the shuttle before 2010, in an apparent bid to save money for other agency programs, or to quiet fiscal conservatives. Florida Today reports that such a plan is—surprise!—unlikely to win support from some key members of Congress. “I wouldn’t let ‘em,” Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL), a staunch supporter of the shuttle, told the paper. “There would be plenty of other senators up here who wouldn’t let them.” (Presumably Nelson’s colleague on the Senate Commerce Committee’s space subcommittee, Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX), would be among them.) Of course, Nelson goes on to say that, come 2010, “I don’t think there is any choice but to increase the budget to continue launching the shuttle.”