By Jeff Foust on 2005 May 13 at 7:44 am ET While much of the media coverage surrounding NASA administrator Mike Griffin’s appearance before a Senate Appropriations Committee subcommittee Thursday focused on Griffin’s stated desire to reduce or eliminate the “gap” between the shuttle’s retirement and the CEV’s introduction—something Griffin has stated publicly in the recent past, including his confirmation hearing a month ago—another important aspect of the hearing was an announcement of a new fiscal year 2005 operating plan for NASA. Space News/SPACE.com has some of the details of the operating plan, which Griffin also mentioned in his testimony. They include:
- Possible delay of the Mars Science Laboratory lander mission from 2009 to 2011;
- Additional delays for the Space Interferometry Mission (SIM) and Terrestrial Planet Finder (TPF);
- Restructuring Project Prometheus to meet “our highest priorities for near-term needs”, which would indicate further delaying or canceling JIMO;
- Curtailing research on “efforts to support human space exploration missions farther out into the future” in favor of accelerating the CEV;
- Cuts in biological and physical science research programs on ISS
I have not had the time to review the full operating plan revision, so there may be some additional details I have missed.
There is one portion of Griffin’s prepared testimony that offers a guide to how he plans to approach these and future changes in the agency:
Given a choice, I generally favor eliminating lower-priority programs rather than reducing all programs in the face of budget difficulties, because this allows for the more efficient execution of the programs which remain. Thus, we must set clear priorities to remain within the budget which has been allocated.
By Jeff Foust on 2005 May 12 at 7:19 am ET SPACE.com, in its Astronotes section (scroll down to the May 11 entry), reports that Rep. Cynthia McKinney (D-GA) is expressing “grave concerns” about Project Prometheus, the agency’s nuclear power and propulsion program. In a “Dear Colleague” letter, she apparently is concerned about the potential environmental damage in the event of a “catastrophic nuclear accident” as well as the military applications of the technology. She wants her fellow members to support shifting funding from Prometheus to “solar and other alternative energy systems that can support our space program.” It would be a surprise if her request was taken that seriously, given that McKinney is rather much outside the mainstream compared to even her Democratic colleagues. (As a Slate article put it three years ago, “hardly a year has gone by when she didn’t make news for an outlandish accusation or a wild conspiracy theory.”) Of course, depending on who you talk to, there’s enough concern about the progress of Prometheus as it is that there’s no time to worry about a Congresswoman has to say about it.
By Jeff Foust on 2005 May 11 at 7:15 am ET It hasn’t shown up yet on the committee’s web site, but the Senate Commerce Committee’s science and space subcommittee is apparently planning a hearing for next week on issues associated with the retirement of the shuttle and the introduction of the CEV. Such a hearing has been anticipated for some time: new committee chairwoman Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) said some time ago she planned to hold two hearings, one on ISS and on the shuttle; the ISS hearing took place last month.
By Jeff Foust on 2005 May 10 at 6:11 am ET On Monday NASA announced that it had selected CSC to run a new “Shared Services Center”, which CSC will locate at Stennis Space Center in Mississippi. That means around 500 jobs for Mississippi, which beat out Huntsville and Cleveland for the center. And that’s not sitting well with some folks in Cleveland:
“It’s incredible that the administration, which won the election with the help of Ohio, would kick Ohio to the curb,” [Rep. Dennis] Kucinich said. “It’s hard to understand how it could happen. It shows where the administration’s priorities are. Apparently, they don’t need Ohio anymore.”
The “Ohio card” alone, it would seem, is not enough to make a winning hand.
By Jeff Foust on 2005 May 9 at 7:21 pm ET The Commerce, Justice, and Science subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee will hold a hearing Thursday on the NASA FY06 budget, with administrator Griffin scheduled to testify. Sen. Barbara Mikulski, the ranking Democrat on that subcommittee, offered a hint of what she and her colleagues may be most interested in during a Maryland Space Business Roundtable luncheon Monday, Space News reported (subscription required). She said that she would seek an additional $250 million to cover the cost of shuttle servicing mission to Hubble, as well as increased support for aeronautics programs. Most interesting, though, is her claim that she is forming a bipartisan “coalition” of 16 senators who will seek a “robust allocation” for NASA. That coalition includes both senators from the key states of California, Ohio, and Virginia; no other members were announced in the report.
By Jeff Foust on 2005 May 9 at 7:03 am ET A front-page article in today’s Washington Post examines how House Majority Leader Tom DeLay has begun to suffer from the ethics allegations that have dogged him for months. DeLay has adopted a lower public profile, eschewing the joint news conferences held by the Republican leadership, and has encountered fundraising problems “as businesses fret that DeLay may be radioactive.” The article doesn’t get into details about how these problems may affect his ability to influence legislation, but as this situation wears on supporters of NASA have to be concerned that one of their most powerful patrons may not be able to lend as much support to the agency as in the recent past. (To underscore this point, at the WIA breakfast meeting last week NASA administrator Michael Griffin awarded a NASA Exceptional Service Medal to Juliane Sullivan, who had served as a policy director to DeLay.)
By Jeff Foust on 2005 May 6 at 7:26 am ET The AIAA is sponsoring a Capitol Hill forum on May 10 on “Public-Private Partnerships – The Wave of the Future?” The purpose of the forum, according to the announcement, is “to raise awareness of the potential that public-private partnerships could present for future government programs and examine models from the aerospace industry.” It’s not clear how much of this will touch on space ventures versus aviation, though.
By Jeff Foust on 2005 May 5 at 8:08 am ET The editors of the Hampton Roads Daily Press sound off in support of aeronautics and earth science in a pair of editorials in this morning’s issue. The editors are skeptical that the administration cares for aeronautics research:
It will take considerable will for Congress to reverse the now presidential-fueled juggernaut that threatens to dismantle this nation’s capacity for aeronautical innovation and domination. There is no doubt that to George Bush and his new NASA administrator, aeronautics is not a priority and will be sacrificed to make room in the budget for Bush’s manned space odyssey.
Of course, that new administrator, Mike Griffin, has said that the agency needs a new “national aeronautics policy” that might address those concerns (although what that policy might include, and what power such a policy might really have, is uncertain), but that statement doesn’t make it into the editorial. The editorial also cites a National Institute of Aerospace report that calls for doubling funding for NASA’s aeronautics programs, a conclusion that the paper reported yesterday as unlikely to go over well in Congress.
Earth sciences, the companion editorial notes, is also feeling the squeeze, citing last week’s House hearing and NRC report on NASA’s earth science programs. “The drive to learn what lies beyond Earth is undeniable, and the knowledge gained can be of enormous benefit. But many in the scientific community agree that that knowledge can best be gained with unmanned technology, without the risks, costs and constraints of sending people.”
So, do you think the editors of the Daily Press have something against human space exploration?
By Jeff Foust on 2005 May 4 at 7:54 am ET During his speech yesterday at a Women in Aerospace breakfast in Washington, new NASA administrator Mike Griffin brought up the issue of commercial opportunities in the Vision for Space Exploration. Griffin made it clear that he would like to find ways to bring in entrepreneurial ventures into the exploration initiative, he is wary of crafting the plan so as to rely on them:
I cannot put public money at risk depending on a commercial provider to be in my critical path. He might not decide to show up, for good and valid business reasons. I cannot put return to the Moon and the Crew Exploration Vehicle… at risk, based on whether or not a commercial provider decides that he actually wants to do it that way. But I can provide mechanisms where, if a commercial provider shows up, government will stand down… I don’t want to pick winners, but I do want to be able to reward them.
Griffin offered similar sentiments in an exchange with Space Frontier Foundation co-founder Rick Tumlinson that Tumlinson shared (with permission) during last weekend’s Space Access ’05 conference:
Public money can be used to support more than one objective. In fact, I view my challenge with respect to commercial providers as being succinctly thus: How can I use public money to make a space market available to purely commercial enterprises — pay for performance, period — without having a government program that sits on the sidelines waiting for private industry to deliver? This latter alternative would constitute malfeasance for a public official. I have to execute a government program with public money that does NOT depend for its success on whether industry can do what they promise, or not. Yet, one of the “grades on my report card”, when I am done, should be, “What kind of commercial space industry have you left behind you?” The idea is not to pick winners, but to craft a program which rewards them, while not wasting public money. I have some ideas. Stay tuned.
By Jeff Foust on 2005 May 4 at 7:32 am ET There have been rumors for weeks that former Congressman Nick Lampson, who lost his reelection bid in November after a controversial redistricting, might consider a bid against House Majority Leader Tom DeLay in 2006. The Galveston Daily News reports today that Lampson will make his bid official today, about 18 months before the general election. Prior to that redistricting Lampson, who served as ranking Democrat on the House Science Committee’s space subcommittee in 2004, had NASA JSC in that district; DeLay, who has emerged as a major patron of the space agency, now has JSC in his district. “It’s going to be a long, hard campaign,” Lampson predicted. “You will probably see it will be an ugly one.”
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