By Jeff Foust on 2005 August 17 at 12:57 pm ET In an op-ed piece in today’s Atlanta Journal-Constitution, former Congressman Bob Barr sounds off on the current state of NASA. In short, he’s not too happy:
The glorious space dreams of the 1960s have become penny-pinching exercises in bureaucracy in the 21st century. Bureaucracy and budget cuts have held back needed funding for new programs, but something even greater has been hampering the space program – absence of vision. In the 1960s we had a clear vision to accomplish a goal, used the proper resources and did the job right. The program today appears to have become a bureaucratic stepchild on life support.
He goes on about the agency’s perceived reliance on “duct tape, Elmer’s glue and Scotchgard”:
The space program needs to be on the front end of technology as it once was. The benefits to society of an efficient space program are numerous. If the program cannot be the best, with the best technology, the best manpower and the best resources, then perhaps our country should forgo it altogether. [Emphasis added] Why should we subject ourselves to the embarrassment of repairing 35-year-old technology with pliers and a hacksaw?
Barr goes on to say he is generally supportive of the Vision for Space Exploration, but warns that the “‘culture’ of space exploration needs to be changed to prevent future projects from being employed past the point of antiquity.” Not surprisingly, Barr also advocates privatization of “a significant portion” of NASA, although he doesn’t identify which programs should be transferred to the private sector.
By Jeff Foust on 2005 August 15 at 8:08 pm ET One of the biggest complaints in the space business community, particularly among entrepreneurs, is the headaches created by export control regulations, specifically International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR). There is an existence proof now, however, demonstrating that these hurdles can be overcome: SPACE.com reports that the State Department has issued an agreement—presumably a technical assistance agreement (TAA), although the specific term is not used in the article—between US-based Scaled Composites and UK-based Virgin Galactic regarding the development of SpaceShipTwo.
The agreement is not a surprise: Virgin and Scaled had been dealing with the export control paperwork for months, as Virgin Galactic’s Will Whitehorn mentioned in Congressional testimony back in April. What Whitehorn doesn’t reveal in the SPACE.com report, though, is how much effort getting the TAA cost the companies in terms of time and money, other than a passing mention that the work was spread over five months. That’s not necessarily a huge issue for a well-capitalized venture like this; whether this has smoothed the path for future entrepreneurs whose pockets are not nearly as deep as Branson’s, though, remains to be seen.
By Jeff Foust on 2005 August 15 at 8:00 am ET A couple of items from this week’s issue of The Space Review:
- Reporting on the just-completed Mars Society Conference in Colorado, Tom Hill notes that NASA’s Chris Shank had little new to say about the upcoming exploration architecture. The Mars Society is planning to hold next year’s conference in the Washington, DC area featuring a one-day “Congressional Blitz” on Capitol Hill.
- Taylor Dinerman critiques a recent essay in Le Monde that featured an “International Aeronautics and Space Administration” carrying out the first human mission to Mars. He is skeptical that such an international space agency is a good idea. He also touches upon the Iran Nonproliferation Act in his article, wondering if any attempt to amend the legislation to aid NASA will be done in broad public view or tucked away as a provision of a much larger, unrelated bill.
By Jeff Foust on 2005 August 14 at 3:54 pm ET Over the last couple of weeks there have been plenty of newspaper editorials about the space shuttle, ISS, and space policy in general. In some respects watching these editorials has been entertaining, as they shift from congratulating the shuttle one day to criticizing it the next when news of the foam shedding came to light. It’s worth a broader examination, but not here and not today.
What is worth discussing today is an editorial in the Sunday New York Times titled “Is the Space Station Necessary?” It’s worthwhile in part because it appears in the Sunday Times, one of the most widely-read newspapers in the US. Second, the Times doesn’t skimp on the discussion: the editorial is double the size of the typical one found in the pages of the newspaper, and goes into some detail about the rationale for continuing the ISS program.
The editorial concludes that the two primary reasons for continuing the station—commitments to international partners and scientific research—are highly suspect. On the former, the Times editors believe that, contrary to conventional wisdom, the international partners might be looking for a way out of the program: “There are credible reports that even space authorities in some partner countries are appalled that the high cost of operating the station will eat up their own budgets, constraining other space ventures.” On the latter, the Times believes that while good science can be done on the ISS, the “real problem is that the value of the work is not commensurate with the cost of the station-shuttle complex.”
Do these arguments hold water? Regarding the science, it’s a judgment call: what value do you place on ISS research? On the international partners issue, the Times may be overreaching by lumping them all together: does Russia, for example, feel the same as Europe, Canada, or Japan? The Times also seems ignorant of the effects of the Iran Nonproliferation Act when it writes: “If the shuttle fleet remains grounded for a long time, the station will have to stay as is and rely on smaller Russian spacecraft to carry up crew members and cargo. That seems like a sensible approach over all.” Of course, NASA will be denied access to those Russian spacecraft starting next year unless INA is amended. One good piece of advice: “…right now we should at minimum be hearing administrators explain how they will plan for the lowest number of shuttle flights possible, while they work on development of a successor spacecraft and automated vehicles to carry loads into orbit.” We should be hearing more about that in the weeks to come as NASA rolls out its exploration architecture.
By Jeff Foust on 2005 August 14 at 3:15 pm ET You may recall earlier this year the on-again, off-again strategic “roadmaps” review of NASA programs initiated by former administrator Sean O’Keefe, but sharply curtailed by Michael Griffin shortly after taking office. While some of the roadmaps were curtailed or dropped altogether, the science ones (with the exception of lunar exploration) were completed in May and delivered to the National Research Council for review by its Space Studies Board (SSB), under a Congressional mandate. The SSB completed its review and quietly issued a report on its analysis earlier this month. (How quiet? While the National Academies issued a brief notice about the report’s release August 5, only recently had I found evidence on the SSB’s web site that the report was indeed publicly available.)
In general, the SSB panel charged with the review was pleased with the content of the science roadmaps: “It found that the proposed roadmaps have significant scientific merit and that, with a few notable exceptions, their near-term recommendations are generally consistent with the decadal-scale studies produced by the NRC.” Specifically:
Continue reading Roadmaps review
By Jeff Foust on 2005 August 10 at 9:13 pm ET Space News reported this afternoon that the Defense Department has signed off on a NASA proposal to develop shuttle-derived CEV and heavy-lift launch vehicles. In an August 5 letter to White House officials NASA administrator Michael Griffin and Air Force undersecretary Ronald Sega said that they had agreed that NASA will use shuttle-derived technology to develop a CEV launch vehicle by 2010, followed by a shuttle-derived heavy-lift vehicle. The letter was required by the space transportation policy issued at the beginning of this year, which states that NASA and the DoD would submit a joint recommendation on heavy-lift launch options to the White House.
The announcement is not very surprising: all indications over the last several weeks suggested that NASA was leaning very strongly in the direction of shuttle-derived vehicles (versus EELV-derived alternatives) and that the DoD was willing to agree to such a proposal. In a presentation at last month’s Return to the Moon conference in Las Vegas, Chris Shank, special assistant to the NASA administrator, used slides that featured illustrations of shuttle-derived CEV and heavy-lift vehicles, and later said the DoD was amenable to the concept. Griffin himself, of course, has long advocated shuttle-derived solutions.
The letter includes a couple other decisions about launch vehicle usage:
- NASA and the DoD will use EELV-class vehicles “for all intermediate and larger payloads for national security, civil, science, and International Space Station cargo re-supply missions in the 5-20 metric-ton-class to the maximum extent possible.” However, if other competing vehicles become available, they would also be eligible for such launches.
- NASA and the Air Force will perform a study on phasing out the medium-class Delta 2. The Air Force is already phasing out the Delta 2 in favor of EELVs, although NASA still uses the Delta 2 for many science missions.
- The military would consider using the shuttle-derived heavy-lift vehicle for any potential future applications, but has no interest in using the shuttle-derived CEV vehicle as a backup to the EELV (a concept that had been quietly batted around in recent months as a way to provide assured access while allowing the DoD to downselect to a single EELV family.)
None of these developments are terribly surprising, but the letter—assuming the White House does not object for some reason—clears away any remaining uncertainty about NASA’s future plans.
By Jeff Foust on 2005 August 9 at 10:35 am ET The keynote speaker Monday at the AIAA/Utah State Conference on Small Satellites was Orlando Figueroa, the deupty associate administrator for programs in NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. Figueroa told the audience that the role small satellites will play in implementing the Vision for Space Exploration “has not diminished; they still play a big role.” It should be noted, though, that NASA’s definition of “small” is not necessarily shared by the hundreds of people attending the conference, many of whom are from universities and operate smallsat programs on shoestring budgets. Figueroa defines small as those missions who cost anywhere from a few tens of millions to a few hundred million dollars. By this metric, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, a large spacecraft set for launch this week with a price tag of over a half-billion dollars, is merely a medium-class mission, he said.
While Figueroa defended NASA’s cost-based definitions of small satellite missions, he chided scientists for trying to squeeze too much into such missions, running up against cost caps for the various types of small-class science missions. He said that in many cases, particularly in the latest round of proposals for the Discovery class of small planetary missions, scientists got “too cute” and tried to put too much into their proposed missions, losing credibility. Figueroa also faced some sharp criticism from attendees for a lack of launch opportunities for smallsat programs, citing the cancellation of both the Hitchhiker program for small shuttle payloads and the University Explorer (UNEX) program. Figueroa defended those decisions, noting that in the UNEX program there were “more failures than successes”, although there were only a few UNEX missions ever attempted. “I can’t keep throwing money out there with no effect,” he said. He did add, though, that his office is reexaming this to see if there are ways to either revive UNEX or provide other opportunities for university-developed low-cost smallsat missions.
Figueroa was also asked about the overall science budget for the agency. He said that the administrator “has promised to keep the budget stable” although NASA is currently going through a “difficult rebalancing” of the full range of science programs.
By Jeff Foust on 2005 August 7 at 1:10 pm ET As the STS-114 mission winds down, some members of Congress have been talking about the mission, or even talking to members of the crew. SPACE.com reported that Rep. Tom DeLay (R-TX) and Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) visited JSC on Friday and took a few minutes to talk to the crew. DeLay in particular, SPACE.com reported, “noted the flight is the beginning of ‘the fulfillment of the president’s vision’ to return to the Moon by 2020 and travel on to Mars.” He also “made a point of pointing out the mission demonstrated what could be done by United States in space ‘with our international partners.'” The visit also gave Sen. Hutchison a chance to talk about NASA administrator Michael Griffin:
Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison said Griffin’s directness and honesty are what she likes about him — and what she dislikes.
“He is looking at it as a scientist-engineer, so he is telling us every little thing,” the Republican senator from Texas said Friday during a Johnson Space Center tour with the NASA administrator.
The Riverside (Calif.) Press-Enterprise published an interview Saturday with Rep. Ken Calvert (R-CA), chair of the space subcommittee of the House Science Committee. Calvert said that he was “disappointed” about the foam shedding problem and resulting decision to ground the shuttle, but insisted that the shuttle would continue flying:
Let’s not be pessimistic. It’s too early to do that. The shuttle is going to be retired in 2010. We’re trying to get 20 more missions out of them. We have one of the missions dedicated to fixing the Hubble. Without the shuttle, you can’t fix the Hubble. The rest of the missions are to finish the international space station.
By Jeff Foust on 2005 August 6 at 4:27 pm ET Now that the STS-114 mission is nearly complete (and will hopefully conclude with a safe landing Monday) all eyes now turn to the long-awaited (well, a couple-of-months-awaited) new exploration architecture that NASA administrator Michael Griffin and his team have been developing. SpaceRef, citing unnamed “senior NASA sources”, reported Saturday that the agency will start rolling out the plan to White House and Congressional staffers in about a week, with a public announcement planned during the week before Labor Day. New Scientist goes even further and says that the plan will be announced on August 30.
The timing is significant in two ways. One, the week before Labor Day is one of the slowest news weeks in the year (second perhaps only to the week between Christmas and New Years): barring any calamity, natural or man-made, there won’t be much else going on that will compete with the rollout for media exposure. Second, that week is also when AIAA will be holding its three-day Space 2005 conference in Long Beach. Griffin, who was president-elect of AIAA when named NASA administrator, is scheduled to give a luncheon speech at the conference on August 31, which would provide him an opportunity to introduce (or reintroduce) the exploration architecture in front of a large industry audience.
By Jeff Foust on 2005 August 5 at 6:49 am ET During a brief joint press availability featuring President Bush and Colombian president Álvaro Uribe Vélez a reporter asked Bush if he felt that the shuttle’s return to flight was premature. His extended response:
First of all, I had the honor of speaking to the — the folks of — that are on that mission. And it was a great experience to be talking to bold explorers. And, secondly, like a lot of Americans, I was amazed at the procedures that took place to repair the craft. It’s pretty remarkable. I believe that — I believe that the mission is important, and I know that the mission directors will make the right decision about how to proceed.
Ours is a country that values the safety of our citizens, particularly those we ask to take risk in space. And there will be a lot of deliberation, a lot of thought that goes into the decision as to whether or not those brave souls can — should return on that vehicle. And I know that NASA has been very closely in touch with the White House. Andy Card has been in touch with the Administrator on a regular basis. But I’ve got the confidence — all the confidence that they will make the right decision.
Let me also say that it is important for our fellow citizens to understand that we’re going to take the NASA mission beyond the current mission, that we’ll be using — we want — the plan right now is to phase out the shuttle by 2010, and then begin to put a strategy in place that will use the moon as a launching spot for further exploration.
I know the — at least the people I’ve talked to inside NASA are excited about the mission, the reinvigoration of the vision of exploration. And I appreciate the Administrator working on getting that strategy in place, so that when the decision is made to finally get rid of this phase of exploration, we’ll be ready to take on the new phase. And that’s important for the American people to understand, that, one, exploration is important; two, there will be some good coming out of exploration; and, three, that we’ve got a new vision embraced by NASA and its pioneers.
There’s not anything necessarily new in those comments, which summarize what he has said in recent days either in his comments to the shuttle crew or in his interview Monday with Texas newspaper reporters. (I’m sure some will note that he again emphasized the idea of developing a lunar base as “a launching spot for further exploration”; the question, of course, if that is a literal or figurative launching spot.) At this point, it doesn’t seem that asking the President more questions will reveal that many more insights about his space policy philosophy.
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