By Jeff Foust on 2005 February 28 at 7:31 am ET The Washington Post’s “Federal Diary” column looks at the resistance potential NASA job cuts is facing from one union. Gregory Junemann, president of the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers, wrote a letter to the House Science Committee on Friday asking for “increased oversight” of the agency in light of reports that over 2,000 civil service jobs may be cut from the agency in 2007. Layoffs are possible, but only as a last resort if voluntary methods, most notably buyouts, don’t meet targets. It should be little surprise that most of the cuts are targeted at a handful of centers, including Ames, Glenn, Langley, and Marshall.
By Jeff Foust on 2005 February 27 at 11:12 am ET In a column in Sunday’s Naples (Fla.) Daily News (free registration required), Ben Bova covers familiar ground regarding the Hubble Space Telescope. However, he adds that Kepler, a Discovery-class mission to search for extrasolar planets, may also be endangered. He notes that between $35 and $50 million will be cut from the program in NASA’s proposed FY2006 budget. This cut “effectively guts the program” and raises fears that the mission could be cancelled. Even if it isn’t cancelled, Bova concludes, the cut could stretch out the program and result in layoffs, increasing its overall costs.
What isn’t clear from the report is the source of the size of the Kepler budget cut. NASA’s FY2006 budget proposal (p. 341) calls for $111.5 million for Kepler in FY2006. In comparison, NASA’s FY2005 budget request projected $114.4 million in 2006. It is true, though, the Kepler’s launch has slipped from October 2007 to “TBD” because of “schedule concerns”, upon which the budget document doesn’t elaborate. However, Kepler has passed its critical design review and was approved to enter Phase C/D a month ago.
By Jeff Foust on 2005 February 24 at 6:34 pm ET The “U.S.-Russia Joint Fact Sheet: Bratislava Initiatives” released by the White House today after the meeting between President Bush and President Putin includes a single sentence about space cooperation:
In the area of space cooperation, the Presidents called for enhanced cooperation, focusing on the International Space Station and other projects, including those related to possible lunar exploration.
The White House didn’t release any additional details about such cooperation, although one might imagine that, if anything, they discussed future US access to the ISS using Soyuz spacecraft.
By Jeff Foust on 2005 February 24 at 12:51 pm ET The minority leadership of the House Appropriations Committee has announced its assignments of Democratic members to the new subcommittee structure. (This assignment took place last week; I had missed it before now.) The Democratic members of the Science, State, Justice, and Commerce subcommittee, the new subcommittee whose jurisdiction includes NASA, are:
Mollohan, previously the ranking Democrat on the VA-HUD subcommittee, will be the ranking member of this new subcommittee as well. Cramer, who had previously announced his assignment to this subcommittee, represents NASA MSFC, while Mollohan’s district includes NASA’s little-known Independent Verification and Validation Facility.
By Jeff Foust on 2005 February 23 at 12:32 pm ET The Christian Science Monitor has an article today about Newt Gingrich, former House speaker and potential 2008 Presidential candidate (although Gingrich plays down the latter in the article.) When asked what government programs he would like to see cut, Gingrich responded:
Why is NASA running the space shuttle? Just ask yourself, why would you have thousands of people sitting around Cape Kennedy [sic], waiting for the shuttle to be relaunched? And to what degree does the scale of government bureaucracy tell you a lot about why NASA has not been more effective in moving America into space? I’m very much for a space program but you know, we built the transcontinental railroad with government incentives but without a government bureaucracy of railroad builders.
No surprise for those who have followed Gingrich over the years, including his new book, which devotes a page and half to his space policy vision.
By Jeff Foust on 2005 February 23 at 7:54 am ET A session of the recent AAAS conference in Washington dealt with scientists’ reactions to the Bush Administration’s science policy and budget. The end of an AP article about the session discusses what two of the panelists, Rosina Bierbaum, dean of the University of Michigan School of Natural Resources and Environment; and Neal Lane of Rice University, former NSF director, had to say about NASA:
NASA has gotten a budget boost, but most of the new money will be going to the space shuttle, space station and Bush’s plan to explore the moon and Mars. What is suffering is the space agency’s scientific research efforts, [Bierbaum] said.
“Moon and Mars is basically going to eat everybody’s lunch,” she said.
Lane said Bush’s moon and Mars exploration effort has not excited the public and has no clear goals or plans.
He said Bush’s moon-Mars initiative “was poorly carried out and the budget is not there to do the job so science (at NASA) will really get hurt.”
Interestingly, Lane was advising Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) last year on space issues.
Meanwhile, a small California newspaper, the Paradise Post, reports on what a local astronomy professor, Jim Regas of Cal State Chico, has to say on the subject. Regas said that NASA doesn’t have “any business attempting an expensive project like putting a man on Mars” because of a cost he estimates (without explanation) of being around $400 billion. He would rather see $1-2 billion spent repairing Hubble.
Regas clearly favors machines to men: “If we’re taking men out of planes on Earth, why in the world would anybody want to put people in these rockets and go to Mars? It’s a million times more dangerous and more expensive… Given the advancement in robots and technology, sending people anywhere is a colossal waste of money. The only caveat in this whole thing is that I bet you the Chinese are going to send men to the moon, and it’s going to become political.”
By Jeff Foust on 2005 February 21 at 7:46 am ET The AP reports that another candidate has emerged for the NASA administrator position: Edward Markle, a Loyola Law School graduate and commercial pilot. Markle has the backing of three Louisiana Congressmen; one of them, Richard Baker (R-LA), said that Markle’s “litigation strategies and leadership skills” qualified him to lead the space agency. Yes, folks, that’s exactly what NASA needs to be able to carry out the Vision for Space Exploration: litigation strategies.
By Jeff Foust on 2005 February 21 at 7:38 am ET In this week’s issue of The Space Review, Taylor Dinerman looks at the recent House Science Committee hearing on the NASA FY2006 budget proposal. There weren’t too many revelations from that hearing, but Dinerman points out the elephant in the room nearly everyone seems to be ignoring: the need to come up with a way to procure Soyuz spacecraft for the ISS once the existing agreement with Russia expires next year.
Also, I have a lengthy article about the state of commercial suborbital spaceflight regulation in the wake of the passage of HR 5382 last fall. A lot of topics in the article have been covered here previously, notably Rep. Oberstar’s introduction of HR 656, but the article ties this together with FAA/AST’s new draft guidelines and the formation of an industry group to develop safety standards. (Standard disclaimers apply.)
By Jeff Foust on 2005 February 20 at 1:03 pm ET NPR carried a story last week about NASA’s space nuclear power efforts. The article included an interesting vignette about President Clinton’s interest in the Cassini mission and the protests of some who opposed the use of RTGs on that spacecraft:
Opponents countered with a video called “Nukes in Space”. NASA manager Reed Wilcox said that someone gave a copy to then-President Clinton while he was on vacation. It got passed down to NASA scientists with a Presidential post-it note attached saying, “Are you sure this is safe?”
By Jeff Foust on 2005 February 20 at 12:54 pm ET According to a Congressional source, NASA is planning to transfer $150 million in FY05 funding out of Project Prometheus to other, unidentified programs. This decision is apparently linked to NASA’s decision to indefinitely defer (or, effectively, cancel) the Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter (JIMO) mission. NASA hasn’t yet determined what the pilot mission of its nuclear power and propulsion initiative will be, as agency officials testified before the House Science Committee last week, taking some of the pressure (and, hence, need for funding) off of the program. However, some in Congress reportedly plan to press NASA to maintain its commitment to Prometheus, including perhaps restoring JIMO in the FY06 budget proposal.
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