By Jeff Foust on 2005 July 14 at 7:45 am ET [A bit long, but worth reading.] You might remember that, about a month ago, Citizens Against Government Waster (CAGW) issued a press release decrying the Vision for Space Exploration because of “an impending record deficit, chronic management problems at NASA, and unresolved questions about the missions’ cost and feasibility.” (That first point now seems contradicted by news that the budget deficit for FY05, while still high, will be lower than previously predicted.) The press release included a quote from CAGW president Tom Schatz: “A manned mission to Mars is of questionable scientific value and could cost up to $1 trillion.”
Continue reading On the trail of a trillion
By Jeff Foust on 2005 July 13 at 7:44 am ET A husband-and-wife pair of politicians are asking California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to find ways to lure development of the CEV to the state. State Senator George Runner and his wife, Assemblywoman Sharon Runner, both represent the Antelope Valley region of southern California in the California Legislature. They believe the governor should create a “high-level team” to figure out how to get NASA and its contractors to base CEV development in California, according to the Los Angeles Daily News. The Runners have the ideal location in mind: Plant 42 (conveniently located in the Antelope Valley), the Palmdale facility where the shuttles were built. Schwarzenegger’s office would only say that the “letter had been received and was being reviewed.”
By Jeff Foust on 2005 July 13 at 7:35 am ET Several members of Congress will be in Florida today to witness the launch of Discovery on the first shuttle mission since the Columbia accident. The Elmira (NY) Star-Gazette reports that Rep. Sherwood Boehlert (R-NY), chairman of the House Science Committee, will lead a Congressional delegation that will include House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX) and House chaplain the Rev. Daniel Coughlin. The group will be travelling to Florida later this morning. On the Senate side, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) announced plans to attend the launch late last month.
By Jeff Foust on 2005 July 12 at 7:49 am ET While NASA appears to have shifted the direction of Project Prometheus from nuclear propulsion to nuclear power systems, there are still some, particularly in Congress, who are fighting to maintain the original orientation of the program. In a guest editorial in the July issue of the AIAA magazine Aerospace America, Rep. John Culberson (R-TX) compared the development of nuclear propulsion to the development of steam-powered warships in the 19th century: “What would have happened to our Navy in 1898 if we had still been using sailboats?” Culberson does seem to recognize, though, that nuclear propulsion will not be available for a mission to Jupiter’s moon Europa, as was once planned for the Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter: “For now, Project Prometheus supporters need to strongly urge NASA and Congress to focus on the decade-long task of designing, building, and launching a non-fission-powered orbiter and landers for Europa and to continue research on nuclear-powered rocket engines.”
This is not the first time that Culberson, who serves on the House appropriations subcommittee whose jurisdiction includes NASA, has spoken out in favor of Prometheus and JIMO. Back in February he attended a session on Cassini/Huygens during the AAAS conference in Washington (at 8 am on a Saturday, no less) and during the Q&A session launched into a brief but impassioned defense of JIMO. Given that Culberson’s Houston-area district has little to directly gain from Prometheus and JIMO (little, if any, of the work will be done at JSC), his strong support is all the more unusual.
By Jeff Foust on 2005 July 12 at 7:34 am ET I couldn’t help but think of that famous phrase (which, ah, knowledgeable readers will recognize as the words of Emil Faber, founder of Faber College of “Animal House” fame) when reading the American Astronomical Society’s policy statement about the Vision for Space Exploration. The statement can be distilled to its first sentence: “The American Astronomical Society urges that a vigorous, focused program of scientific research form the core of the implementation of the Vision for Space Exploration.” The statement doesn’t go into many specifics about how science should shape the overall Vision, or how scientific goals should be balanced with other goals (political, technological, commercial, etc.) Nor does the document attempt to prioritize scientific goals itself, in terms of lunar and Martian science, other planetary science, astronomy, and so on. Just remember, the statement notes, “Exploration without science is tourism.”
By Jeff Foust on 2005 July 11 at 7:59 am ET Last month the American Academy of Arts and Sciences issued a report titled “United States Space Policy: Challenges and Opportunities”, written by George Abbey and Neal Lane. The report got a brief mention in the media, and some online debate, but hasn’t yet had any visible effect on overall space policy debates. I did not get a chance to read the report until last week, and when I did I found a number of issues with the report, which I describe in an article in The Space Review. The “Abbey-Lane” report has some flaws, including overstating the effect of export controls on the commercial satellite industry (while missing an opportunity to explore the deleterious effects of those controls in other areas), and repeats the poorly-supported claim of an impending “shortage” of scientists and engineers. The report also clearly leans towards continued operation of the shuttle and more research on ISS, something that closely aligns with provisions of the Senate version of the NASA authorization bill, and may be the subject of future debate in Congress and the scientific community.
By Jeff Foust on 2005 July 11 at 7:48 am ET One of the more popular parlor games in Washington these days (well, just about any day) is “Who’s running for President?” Sure, the general election is nearly three and a half years away, but potential candidates are already starting to jockey for position and finding reasons to pay visits to Iowa and New Hampshire. The natural question that follows is, “Where do they stand on space policy?” Chris Carberry takes a crack at this in an article in this week’s issue of The Space Review. Nor surprisingly, there aren’t too many details to go on at this point, but he does a good job laying out some of the broader political issues required for the Vision for Space Exploration to survive a change in administrations.
By Jeff Foust on 2005 July 7 at 6:54 pm ET To most, it seemed like the long-running debate of human versus robotic space exploration had been settled some time ago in favor of a mix of both, attempting to take advantage of the benefits of both where reasonable. Yet, there are some people who are trying to rekindle the debate. Thursday’s Christian Science Monitor includes an article titled “Why man instead of machine?”. The article claims that “[s]paceflight analysts are debating the value of manned missions” and that “even space enthusiasts are asking anew why the US should pursue manned spaceflight when machines can so far do more for far fewer dollars.” I am hard pressed to think of many “enthusiasts” engaged in such a debate, other than those handful of hard-core manned or robotic spaceflight advocates. The article includes quotes from the usual litany of experts, real or self-proclaimed, from John Logsdon and Roger Launius to Alex Roland. (Somehow John Pike didn’t get quoted here; maybe he was on vacation.)
USA Today follows up on this thought in an editorial in Thursday’s issue. The editors proclaim robotic missions like Deep Impact, “once the domain of pointy-headed academics, have become NASA’s new stars.” (One could argue that robotic missions have been “stars” for the agency going as far back as Viking and Voyager, over 25 years ago.) The Internet allows for “virtual” visits to Mars by people to the point such that “[w]hen and if astronauts arrive there, the product they provide the Internet consumer will be, in many respects, inferior.” The editorial also dismissed the Vision for Space Exploration, saying that it has been met with “public apathy and unfavorable polls” and is nothing more than a way “to channel money to aerospace companies and bureaucracies.” (This, after the editorial says that the Bush Administration has no way to pay for it.) Its conclusion: “What does appear certain is that lawmakers will pump vast amounts of money into a directionless human space program just as the public’s attention has shifted away.”
The most curious statement in the USA Today editorial: “NASA is embarking on a costly shuttle replacement program, when far cheaper options exist.” However, the editorial never specifies what those “far cheaper options” for the CEV would be (assuming they consider the CEV a “shuttle replacement”) Perhaps they are thinking of t/Space’s CXV concept, but that is intended to be complimentary to, not a complete replacement for, the CEV.
The paper does include a rebuttal from NASA Administrator Michael Griffin, who seems far more confident in the American public’s interest in human space exploration than the paper’s editors:
It is inconceivable to me that this nation will ever abandon space exploration, either human or robotic. If this is so, then the proper debate in a world of limited resources is over which goals to pursue. I have little doubt that the huge majority of Americans would prefer to invest their 15 cents per day in the exciting, outward-focused, destination-oriented program we are pursuing.
By Jeff Foust on 2005 July 6 at 12:57 pm ET The editorial pages of many newspapers have congratulated NASA on the success of the Deep Impact mission. However, they are using the mission in different ways to support their own viewpoints on space policy issues:
- The Salem (Mass.) News sees Deep Impact as evidence that America “still reigns supreme when it comes to space exploration”. It lumps Deep Impact in with the upcoming launch of STS-114, which the paper also staunchly supports, noting that while shuttle flights are not without risk, “fortunately the United States has always been a nation of risk-takers and innovators.”
- The Scranton (Penn.) Times-Tribune sees the success of Deep Impact as a sign that human spaceflight is passé. “It is a further reminder that in the modern era, NASA’s and America’s greatest achievements in space are in the realm of science rather than manned exploration.” The paper, though, seems hopeful that NASA administrator Michael Griffin, despite his support for manned space exploration, “seems to have a strong sense of the value, rather than the cost alone, of productive science missions” and will restore a Hubble servicing mission.
- The Baltimore Sun concludes that Deep Impact “is another example of the wisdom of NASA’s Discovery Program” of relatively low-cost science missions. The editorial quizzically adds that “the agency is readjusting its long-term focus – though not as far as the far-out ‘man on Mars’ talk of last year, we expect.”
By Jeff Foust on 2005 July 5 at 8:45 am ET There has been a flurry of email activity over the holiday weekend about the long-moribund Office of Space Commercialization (OSC) within the Commerce Department. In the past OSC has been charged with promoting the space industry in the US, and to those ends has published a number of studies, such as one of the earliest studies on potential markets for commercial suborbital vehicles. However, the office suffered from neglect in recent years and most of its staff left for other government or private sector offices, leaving just one person behind.
Now, it seems, there’s a push afoot to at least install someone in the vacant director’s office. There are at least three candidates for the job, but a decision, which had been planned for before the July 4 holiday, may now not be made for weeks. [Note: a previous version of this entry mentioned a specific individual candidate, who has since asked not to be mentioned by name because of the sensitive nature of the hiring process.]
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