By Jeff Foust on 2004 October 19 at 9:04 pm ET Since there’s a not a lot of space policy news of late, here’s a recap of a few articles written recently about the Garver-Sietzen debate and related topics.
- Offering some straightforward reporting about the debate are articles in Aerospace Daily, SPACE.com/Space News, and my own article for The Space Review. (I will note for the purposes of full disclosure that I’ve known both Garver and Sietzen for several years.)
- The Houston Chronicle had an article Monday with a combination of notes from the debate as well as the standard discussion of why space doesn’t get any attention from the candidates.
- Much of the discussion about the debate has centered on Keith Cowing’s article, the first full-length article to be published after the debate. What’s most interesting about it is not the bias towards Bush some see in the article (as well as the disclaimers about his association with Sietzen), but that, in the end, after strongly criticizing Garver and Kerry, he says that he’s voting for Kerry because of his positions on other (presumably more important) issues. If anyone’s ever doubted the role of space policy in Presidential campaigns, that should clear things up…
By Jeff Foust on 2004 October 14 at 12:59 pm ET I attended the debate between the representatives of the Bush and Kerry campaigns this morning on the aerospace platforms of the two candidates. There were no major revelations from the event, as you might expect, but a few interesting items, which I’ll try to summarize below (while finishing my lunch.)
- Lori Garver, representing the Kerry campaign, said she had been volunteering for Kerry for about eight months. Frank Sietzen, representing the Bush campaign, said he had recently decided to stop writing about the exploration plan and start defending it, clearing up any potential conflicts with his journalism work.
- Sietzen’s main argument was that people had griped for years, particularly after the Columbia accident, that NASA lacked an overarching vision. Now that President Bush provided one, it’s time to support it, and him, and not risk handing that over to someone (Kerry) whose views are less clear.
- Garver argued that while exploration is important, it should not be the only thing NASA is working on; it must be done in balance with aeronautics, earth sciences, and space sciences.
- Both said that their candidates would keep open the option of restoring a shuttle servicing mission to Hubble.
- Sietzen described the current relations between the White House and NASA as the closest since James Webb was NASA administrator during the Kennedy and Johnson administration, adding that O’Keefe talks with the president almost every other day.
- Garver said that both Kerry and John Edwards were inspired by space during the Kennedy days, but didn’t go into specifics.
- One of the interesting claims made in the debate, particularly by Garver, is that NASA has become too politicized and partisan; she noted that a Kerry administration would work to depoliticize the agency. While O’Keefe has been more involved in party politics than previous administrators, Sietzen noted that Goldin made at least one campaign appearance during him time at NASA. Support—and oppostion— of NASA programs still crosses party lines: Democrats worked with Republicans in the Senate last month to add money to NASA’s FY05 budget, and Republicans have been as critical of aspects of the exploration plan as Democrats (recall Trent Lott’s comments last month.)
I’m sure other readers attended the debate, so feel free to add or correct the points made above. Standard disclosures and disclaimers apply; I’ll also note I’m registered to vote in Maryland with no party affiliation.
By Jeff Foust on 2004 October 13 at 12:51 pm ET The Citizen, a newspaper that serves the Houston suburbs around the Johnson Space Center, has an article Wednesday about Richard Morrison, the Democrat running against Rep. Tom DeLay in Texas’s 22nd Congressional District. Morrison, speaking to a gathering of aerospace workers, is critical of the lack of funding for the Vision for Space Exploration the House Appropriations Committee approved in July:
“What are the actions? The actions speak differently,” said Morrison. “Can we trust this man to fund this program? Can we trust this man who says he’s behind the moon and Mars mission?”
The article doesn’t point out that DeLay was one of the strongest critics of the NASA appropriations bill and vowed to increase the FY05 budget, although he was not able to take action on the bill before Congress recessed until after the election. Morrison is also critical of plans to retire the shuttle by 2010, saying that a flight rate of six missions a year is “impossible”. “We must put the scientists and engineers back in control,” he said.
By Jeff Foust on 2004 October 13 at 7:57 am ET An article in Sunday’s Orlando Sentinel, a standard description why space has received so little attention in the Presidential campaign to date, does have one interesting tidbit. Jason Furman, Kerry’s economic policy director, suggests that a President Kerry would back some kind of Hubble repair mission:
Kerry is supportive of extending the life of the Hubble Space Telescope… Furman said Kerry definitely would be in favor of servicing the Hubble. Without servicing, the groundbreaking telescope will die in orbit, sometime in late 2007 or 2008.
Of course, NASA is already pursuing a robotic Hubble repair mission, so it’s not clear from the article whether Furman means to say such an effort would continue, or if a President Kerry would restore a shuttle servicing mission.
By Jeff Foust on 2004 October 12 at 9:27 pm ET The debate between representatives of the Bush and Kerry campaigns on aerospace issue is still scheduled for Thursday morning; as of late Tuesday space was still available to attend but reservations are required by 11 am Wednesday. Since my original post the debate participants have been announced: Frank Sietzen for the Bush campaign and Lori Garver for the Kerry campaign. This selection is disappointing but not necessarily surprising: while both are knowledgeable on space topics neither is intimately involved with their respective campaigns, another sign of how important space policy is to both campaigns.
By Jeff Foust on 2004 October 12 at 1:27 pm ET One of the concerns about the difficulties recently encountered with HR 3752 (see the previous post as well as an article I wrote for The Space Review for more details) is that the legislation also includes an extension of the current launch indemnification regime that is of great interest to existing launch providers. This system requires launch operators to purchase insurance up to a government-determined maximum probable loss to third parties; the government then provides coverage for catastrophic losses up to $1.5 billion for launch. That indemnification regime is scheduled to expire at the end of this calendar year, and the launch industry has been lobbying for an extension.
To make sure indemnification does get extended, Rep. Sherwood Boehlert (R-NY) introduced late Thursday HR 5245, whose sole purpose is to approve an extension. The bill is something of a compromise between the language in HR 3752 and S 1260, the former Senate companion to HR 3752. HR 5245 would extend indemnification by five years, the same as S 1260 (HR 3752 offered only a three-year extension), but the bill does include a provision from HR 3752 calling for a study to see if the indemnification system could be phased out. (HR 3752 identified a specific organization, the National Academy of Public Administration, to carry out the study, while 5245 only mentions “a nonprofit entity”.) HR 5245 passed in the House by unanimous consent late Friday night and awaits action by the Senate when it reconvenes in mid-November.
By Jeff Foust on 2004 October 8 at 2:32 pm ET That’s the summary of Jim Muncy’s presentation Friday morning at the Space Frontier Conference about the status of HR 3752. According to Muncy, a couple of weeks ago Senate staffers sent proposed changes to the House for HR 3752 and those changes “were an abomination”. The Senate, he felt, had the best of intentions by ensuring the safety of passengers, but by incorporating the safety of passengers into the AST charter at the same level as the safety of the uninvolved public (currently the FAA’s mandate) the bill would have the effect of “strangling” the new commercial spaceflight industry.
It is, though, too soon to write off the bill. According to Muncy, several Senators have stepped forward to keep the bill from passing in the Senate on Friday by unanimous consent. Between now and the lame duck session in November, there are plans to bring together everyone involved with the bill—staffers, FAA officials, industry representatives—to try to work out a compromise that will protect the industry from overregulation. There’s no guarantee that something can be worked out, but in the view of Muncy and much of the industry, no legislation is better than the current bad state of the legislation.
For those interested in salvaging this bill, there is something you can do. Muncy asked everyone at the conference to contact their Senators and ask them to tell the Senate Commerce Committee to compromise with industry on the bill and avoid overregulating the industry before it is born.
By Jeff Foust on 2004 October 7 at 3:41 pm ET Over at Transterrestrial Musings Rand Simberg has posted a copy of an email going around about a significant—and potentially very detrimental—change to HR 3752 being contemplated by staffers in the Senate. I don’t have any time to comment on this now (I have to catch a flight), but I will note that even if the Senate manages to pass this (certainly not a given), it would still have to be reconciled with the House version, which does not contain the damaging language.
By Jeff Foust on 2004 October 7 at 1:50 pm ET The House of Representatives approved by voice vote Wednesday night a resolution congratulating Mojave Aerospace Ventures for winning the Ansari X Prize. (The text of the resolution, H. Res. 820, was not yet available online as of Thursday afternoon.) The House Science Committee press release (via SpaceRef.com) includes comments from several people, including Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA):
There are two kinds of frontiers. There are physical frontiers: uncharted land, unseen depths of oceans, unexplored space. And then there are frontiers of imagination: frontiers that require us to think in a new way, to have vision beyond what others see, to question assumptions about what is technologically possible. Today, we honor Mojave Aerospace Ventures’ SpaceShipOne, the winner of the X Prize, for traversing this second kind of frontier.
Sometimes, though, they still get no respect: Rep. Gil Gutknecht (R-MN) thanked several people, including “Mike Melville” and “Brian Binney”. (That should be, of course, Mike Melvill and Brian Binnie.)
By Jeff Foust on 2004 October 6 at 1:02 pm ET The AIAA issued a legislative alert to its members on Tuesday, asking them to contact their senators to ask them to support HR 3752. The alert ties the legislation to SpaceShipOne and its claim to the Ansari X Prize: “If passed, this legislation will allow entrepreneurs to take advantage of this tremendous accomplishment.”
However, time is running out for the bill. Congress is set to adjourn by the end of the week so its members can go home for the elections, and it seems highly unlikely, even in the best possible case, that the bill will be considered before then. Congress is likely to have to come back in mid-November for a lame duck session since then continuing resolution for fiscal year 2005 they approved last week runs only through November 20. Whether they can take up the bill during that short session is uncertain.
|
|
