By Jeff Foust on 2004 June 4 at 4:51 pm ET The Houston Chronicle and UPI both report that several members of the House of Representatives, including House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, spoke on the House floor Thursday to support the Vision for Space Exploration. SpaceRef has a transcript of the comments made by DeLay and others, taken from the Congressional Record; you can also get it directly from the Congressional Record, under item 76, “Advancing Frontiers of Science”. (There is also a separate one-minute speech earlier in the day by Rep. Tom Feeney (R-FL), which is item 50 on the list, “Bipartisan American Vision for Leadership in Space”.)
Skimming through the transcript, you’ll see that while a lot of words were spoken, very little was really said. Most of the comments pointed to the benefits (real or perceived) that the space program offers in terms of education, spinoffs, and the like. In fact, the members who spoke spent little time addressing the specifics of the Vision for Space Exploration itself. While members who spoke included both Republicans and Democrats, they were almost entirely from districts in and around KSC, JSC, and MSFC. (Lamar Smith, whose district is in central Texas, and Ken Calvert of southern California were the notable exceptions.) What neither of the press reports state is how many other members of the House were present for the speeches: given that there were no votes scheduled for that time, I suspect many, if not most, other members were in committee hearings or on other business.
By Jeff Foust on 2004 June 4 at 4:10 pm ET The President’s Commission on Moon, Mars, and Beyond (better known as the Aldridge Commission) will release its final report on the implementation of the Vision for Space Exploration on June 10. A press conference is scheduled for 11 am EDT at George Washington University in DC; the release will be published online at the same time. (The press conference will be held in same auditorium at GWU that hosts the CNN talk show Crossfire.) Space News, which first reported the release date late Thursday, suggested in its report that the press conference would be open to the public, but it appears it will be open to accredited media alone. No mention is made in the press release of televising it for those of us who won’t be able (or allowed) to attend, although I imagine NASA TV will carry it.
By Jeff Foust on 2004 June 3 at 1:17 pm ET An article in Thursday’s edition of the newspaper Newsday discusses the slow progress the Vision for Space Exploration has made in Congress since its introduction in mid-January. There’s not much in the article that has not been discussed elsewhere, but it’s a good overview of the status of the vision to date. Both Craig Steidle of NASA and John Marburger, the White House science advisor, express optimism in the article despite rumblings from Congress that NASA will not get the full budget increase it has requested.
By Jeff Foust on 2004 June 3 at 12:57 pm ET UPI reported Wednesday that the Congressional Research Service (CRS) has issued a study on the costs of sending humans back to the Moon under the new Vision for Space Exploration plan. (The article suggests that the report is not widely available and that the wire service somehow managed to obtain a copy, but in fact the Federation of American Scientists has made the report freely available on its web site.) The CRS study, dated May 10 and based solely on budget data provided by NASA, notes that the agency is budgeting $24 billion for the development of the Crew Exploration Vehicle and an additional $40 billion for lunar module spacecraft, new heavy-lift vehicles, and operations. The cost of robotic precursors to the Moon, like the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) scheduled for launch in late 2008, aren’t included in the price tag. They’ll likely cost a few billion more, depending on their number and complexity: O’Keefe said back in February that LRO and a follow-on lander would cost about $600 million.
The UPI article notes that this study refutes previous claims of “hundreds of billions [of dollars] critics of the proposal have suggested it would cost.” However, as both the article and the CRS study note, there are no estimates yet of what a human mission to Mars would cost. What the study has done, though, is distill the estimated cost of returning humans to the Moon to a single price tag, something that NASA has resisted doing since the introduction of the vision back in January. Had NASA been more forthcoming about these figures, rather than falling back on the infamous sand chart, it might have alleviated some of the criticism the plan has faced.
By Jeff Foust on 2004 June 2 at 7:20 pm ET The AIAA’s Public Policy group is planning a forum to discuss commercial space policy issues. The event is scheduled for July 13 in room 2525 of the Rayburn House Office Building; no time is mentioned for the event just yet. The group’s calendar of events lists the forum but offers no other details, but according to an email the AIAA sent out earlier today the forum, organized in cooperation with Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, “will explore how commercial space activities can be utilized to enhance and facilitate the U.S. Exploration Initiative.” The calendar also mentions a “Nuclear Propulsion Roundtable” to be held in DC on August 13.
By Jeff Foust on 2004 June 1 at 1:05 pm ET The folks at NASA have to be relieved that they now have the full support of the Senate… the Ohio Senate, that is. According to a NASA Glenn Research Center press release, the Ohio Senate unanimously approved a resolution “encouraging the United States Congress to support and fully fund NASA’s Vision for Space Exploration Program.” While not specifically identified in the press release, the resolution appears to be SCR 32, introduced on May 18; unfortunately, the Ohio Senate’s web site doesn’t include the full text of the resolution. Given that some people have suggested that NASA use the exploration vision to reorganize and possibly even close some of its field centers, wouldn’t be ironic if Ohio senators showed their support for a plan that could jeopardize the state’s only NASA center?
By Jeff Foust on 2004 May 31 at 10:34 am ET MSNBC published late Friday a detailed article about the obstacles facing HR 3752 in the Senate, notably the definition issues previously noted here. This is the first article (that I have seen) in the mainstream media to talk about the status of this legislation in any detail. There are a number of interesting tidbits in the article, such as identifying the senator who raised concerns about the bill as Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma.
There may be some good news for the legislation, though. I spent the weekend at the International Space Development Conference, the annual National Space Society conference, in Oklahoma City (hence the lack of postings the last few days). According to a couple of sources I talked with there, on different sides of the issue, there appears to be a way to tweak the definitions in a way that will satisfy all involved. There were no details about what that change would be, but it apparently will assuage Rocketplane’s concerns while not creating significant new burdens for passage. The revised bill would have to go back to the House for its approval, but those sources said this should not be a serious issue. According to one source, the hope is to get the bill passed and sent to the President by the end of June—perhaps so that he can sign it into law around the same time that he delivers his next address on space policy, which is rumored to be in the works for some time this summer.
By Jeff Foust on 2004 May 29 at 7:39 pm ET The Houston Chronicle reported Friday that Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) has sent a letter to President Bush asking him to reverse NASA’s decision to cancel the SM4 Hubble servicing mission. The letter was accompanied by a petition signed by 26 former astronauts, including Scott Carpenter, Gene Cernan, and Dick Gordon, asking for the SM4 reinstatement. Both make the arguments that the benefits of a Hubble servicing mission outweigh the risks, and that robotic servicing of Hubble would not be as effective as a shuttle mission. (SpaceRef.com has a copy of the letter and petition.) Interestingly, Hutchison has apparently elected not to cosponsor S.Res 324, the resolution introduced by Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) two months ago that called for an independent study of the SM4 cancellation decision, and to continue preparations for that mission while the study was in progress. To date the only cosponsors for the resolution are Sam Brownback (R-KS) and Paul Sarbanes (D-MD), who signed on earlier this month.
By Jeff Foust on 2004 May 26 at 12:35 pm ET In a UPI article yesterday, Frank Sietzen describes the upcoming political challenges the Vision for Space Exploration faces in Congress. The article has a couple of interesting tidbits, including the possibility that the NASA authorization bill soon to be introduced in Congress will include a provision giving the NASA administrator the “political authority” to close a field center, although not mandate it. While some critics have suggested that NASA needs to realign and possibly close some centers, Sietzen suggests that this provision is primarily designed to give Sean O’Keefe a “budgetary ace-in-the-hole” to get recalcitrant legislators in affected states to support NASA budget increases.
It might be a moot point, though: Sietzen writes that “most” Congressional staffers familiar with the authorization bill plans believe that the bill will get lost in the rush to pass other legislation before Congress adjourns for the fall campaign. That’s in strong contrast to Pete Worden, working in Sen. Brownback’s office, who said at the COMSTAC meeting last week that he believed that that there was a “pretty good shot”, or better than a 50-50 chance, of getting the authorization bill passed. That legislation should be introduced in the Senate in the next couple of weeks, Brownback said at the JPL town hall meeting yesterday.
By Jeff Foust on 2004 May 25 at 7:52 pm ET This week’s issue of Space News has an article (not available online) about the AFL-CIO’s “America’s Priorities” web site that was previously discussed here. A spokesman from the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM)—a union that is a member of the AFL-CIO—said in the article that his union supported space exploration. Indeed, the IAM spokesman said the union didn’t think the Vision for Space Exploration went far enough, and that more funding is required. Bruce Mahone of the Aerospace Industries Association (AIA), a member of the Space Exploration Alliance, said that he understood that the AFL-CIO would back away from their opposition because of the opinions of the IAM. However, as of this evening the America’s Priorities web site is still up, although with a few cosmetic tweaks that don’t alter the overall message.
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