By Jeff Foust on 2005 March 16 at 7:47 am ET The strategic forces subcommittee of the Senate Armed Services Committee is scheduled to hold a hearing this afternoon on national security space policy and programs in the FY2006 budget proposal. Several witnesses, including acting Air Force Secretary Peter Teets as well as the commanders of the US Strategic Command and Air Force Space Command, are scheduled to testify. Unfortunately, there is no webcast of the hearing available. (Side note: if rumors are true, this could be one of the last appearances of the Hill for Teets, who is expected to announce his retirement within the next several weeks.)
One of the topics that may come up during the hearing, the Washington Post reports today, is the development of the Common Aero Vehicle (CAV), a suborbital vehicle that could carry half a ton of payload—sensors or munitions—thousands of kilometers. The CAV is part of DARPA’s Falcon program (which was formerly FALCON, or Force Application and Launch from CONUS, although the agency appears to no longer use the acronym); most space advocates know Falcon for its other major component, the development of a responsive small launch vehicle (SLV) that could carry the CAV, as well as launch small satellites into orbit. Four companies, including SpaceX and its own Falcon launch vehicle, have Phase 2 SLV study contracts.
By Jeff Foust on 2005 March 15 at 5:58 am ET The House Science Committee’s space and aeronautics subcommittee will hold a hearing Wednesday at 10 am on “The Future of Aeronautics at NASA”. The NASA associate administrator for aeronautics, J. Victor Lebacqz, is scheduled to testify, along with several other people from universities and organizations. Given the controversy that has surrounded proposed budget cuts to NASA’s aeronautics efforts, and proposed job reductions at NASA centers that focus on aeronautics, this could prove to be an interesting hearing.
By Jeff Foust on 2005 March 14 at 9:19 pm ET For the longest time (like, about 72 hours) it seemed like no one would speak ill of the Bush Administration’s choice of Mike Griffin as NASA’s next administrator. But this is Washington, so you knew the lovefest couldn’t last forever. In his “ArmsControlWonk” weblog, Jeffrey Lewis, a research fellow at the University of Maryland’s Center for International and Security Studies and an opponent of missile defense and space weaponization, takes aim at Griffin. Most of Dr. Lewis’s criticism stems from Griffin’s role as a member of Heritage Foundation study group that issued a 1996 report arguing in favor of a missile defense system, including space-based systems, for the US. (Interestingly, Dr. Lewis does not mention the year of the Heritage report in his blog entry, perhaps giving the reader the misconception that the report is more contemporaneous than it actually is.)
I will not attempt to debate Dr. Lewis’s critique on missile defense: after all, this is not “Missile Defense Politics” and Dr. Griffin has been nominated to head NASA, not the MDA. However, Lewis does stretch his logic a little too far on China: he argues that since the Heritage report included a passage from an article critical of Chinese arms proliferation, this “likely signals the termination of tentative steps toward Sino-US space cooperation” started by former administrator O’Keefe. Dr. Lewis doesn’t point out, though, that while last year’s Planetary Society assessment of space exploration options, co-chaired by Griffin, was somewhat dismissive of Chinese space capabilities, it does suggest a possible role for Sino-US cooperation:
China is, after the United States and Russia, the third country to have developed an indigenous human space flight capability. At present, the Chinese capability is limited both by lift capacity and by the relative immaturity of their technology, which has so far achieved only one human space flight. The Chinese have, however, indicated that they hope to develop a Mir-like space station by 2010 and plan to launch robotic lunar probes in the same time frame; this latter endeavor is potentially cooperative with U.S. goals.
Perhaps someone will think to bring up this topic during Griffin’s Senate confirmation hearings and enlighten us all.
Dr. Lewis concludes that Griffin’s support of missile defense and alleged opposition to Chinese cooperation “should raise alarm”. Lewis goes further and concludes that this is evidence of “an uncurious mind motivated more by ideology than evidence or reason.” However, given Lewis’s rather poor argument on Chinese relations—not to mention his decision to caption a photo of Griffin with the phrase “He’s nuts, too.”—some might argue that the same conclusion could be applied to Lewis.
By Jeff Foust on 2005 March 14 at 12:50 pm ET That’s the assessment of a front page article in Monday’s Washington Post, which notes that some Republicans are starting to become at least mildly concerned about alleged improprieties (or at least the appearance of impropriety, which can be just as damning) by the House majority leader. One Republican political consultant said the situation was “negatively fluid” for DeLay; a Brookings Institution fellow warned that DeLay could be in “serious political peril” down the road.
This is, of course, a concern for NASA supporters because it was DeLay’s staunch support for the agency—including holding up an omnibus appropriations bill at the last minute—that ensured that NASA got its full funding for FY05, at the expense of other agencies. If DeLay does not emerge from this web of intrigue unscathed, it could make it harder for him to make a similar stand in this or future years; it could also encourage appropriators already scrounging for funding in a tight budget to raid NASA. While DeLay’s support proved invaluable for NASA last year, this is all the more reason the agency and its backers need to expand its base of Congressional support now and for the future if the exploration program is to remain on track. After all, even if DeLay ends up fully vindicated, at some point in the future he won’t be House majority leader, and his replacement may not be so fond of NASA.
By Jeff Foust on 2005 March 14 at 7:49 am ET Those of you in Florida’s Space Coast (from which I just returned after a brief but enjoyable trip) may be interested in a public forum scheduled for Wednesday night on “Return to Flight: A Bridge to the Future”. The forum, hosted by the newspaper Florida Today and cosponsored by the Space Foundation, will feature KSC director Jim Kennedy, Space Foundation president Elliot Pulham, and Florida Space Research Institute executive director (and former astronaut) Sam Durrance.
By Jeff Foust on 2005 March 14 at 7:45 am ET There has been a lot of coverage about Friday’s announcement that the President will nominate Michael Griffin as the next NASA administrator. NASA Watch has a good collection of press releases from organizations and members of Congress that pretty much all say the same thing: they like him, they really, really like him.
Over the weekend I looked through some of Griffin’s recent public comments, primarily in Congressional testimony, and summarized them in this article for The Space Review. Briefly, Griffin is a big supporter of space exploration who, if anything, would like to speed up the pace of the current Vision for Space Exploration. He’s also not exactly the biggest fan of the shuttle or ISS. He strongly supports the development of a heavy-lift vehicle, preferably shuttle-derived, but also wants to see development of smaller vehicles, and thinks crewed spacecraft can be launched on EELVs without the need to “man rate” those launchers. Just don’t confuse Griffin with the escape artist with bad spelling skills.
By Jeff Foust on 2005 March 11 at 5:13 pm ET As you probably have already heard, the White House announced Friday afternoon that the Bush Administration will nominate Michael Griffin as the next NASA Administrator. I’ll have more to say later (I’m writing this right now at Cape Canaveral, having just watched an Atlas 5 launch!) but in the meantime you can review his bio. From what I understand he’s expected to be well received by the Senate, which may confirm him in a a matter of a few weeks.
By Jeff Foust on 2005 March 11 at 8:34 am ET The Space Frontier Foundation issued a press release Thursday about Centennial Challenges, NASA’s prize program. The Foundation would like to see NASA and Congress increase the program’s FY06 funding from the current proposal of $34 million to $200 million, although they don’t specify what types of prizes they would like to see the additional funding spent on. The group also wants to see Centennial Challenges managed by an outside organization. Interestingly, the Foundation doesn’t call on Congress to authorize NASA to award prizes larger than $250,000, the current limit: without that, increasing the overall size of the program is not very useful.
By Jeff Foust on 2005 March 10 at 4:57 am ET Posting will be light here through the weekend, as I’m going out of town on a short “vacation”.
By Jeff Foust on 2005 March 9 at 7:45 am ET It’s 12 meters across, encased in a protective dome, and located in the heart of a North Carolina forest. It’s a radio telescope at the Pisgah Astronomical Research Institute that was formerly part of a satellite tracking network but is now being converted into an educational facility. It’s also the recipient of a $1 million “grant” from NASA, the Asheville (N.C.) Citizen-Times reported Tuesday.
What the article doesn’t say, at least explicitly, is that the money is from one of hundreds of earmarks attached to NASA’s FY2005 budget. (You can see it in NASA’s FY05 operating plan, on page 12 of the PDF document, under the “Space Science” section.) The newspaper article does note that Rep. Charles Taylor (R-NC) “was able to secure the federal funding” for the observatory, but doesn’t elaborate. Taylor and the observatory held a ceremony Monday to formally award the money, complete with a giant mock check “signed by the U.S. Taxpayer.”
As anyone who follows NASA’s budget over the years knows, “earmark” has become something of a dirty word within the agency, as members of Congress attach their pet projects to the consternation of agency officials struggling to get larger core projects funded. But to the staff and students at PARI and western North Carolina, this line in a budget document is a major project they have struggled for years to fund. (One wonders, though, that if this project is as useful scientifically and educationally as its backers claim, why they couldn’t win a grant through a peer-review process from NASA or NSF.) There’s no sign that Congress plans to let up on earmarks in this or future budgets; PARI’s backers must be particularly pleased that Rep. Taylor will serve on the new House Appropriations Committee subcommittee with jurisdiction over NASA.
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