Space Politics

The President’s Commission on Moon, Mars, and Beyond has released the agenda for its final public hearing, scheduled for Monday and Tuesday in New York. The hearing will feature two sessions on international issues, two on science (lunar “and other space science” and astrophysics), as well as sessions on sustainability, media, business, and space advocacy organizations (called “Space to the People!”). Sean O’Keefe is scheduled to speak Tuesday afternoon, just before audience comments, a press conference, and “deliberations of commissioners”.

In an essay published Thursday, SPACE.com science writer Robert Roy Britt comments on the lack of support for the new space initiative within Congress, bringing up a number of points discussed here and elsewhere recently. He also notes recent reports that the bulk of the budget increase NASA has asked for will go to support the shuttle and station programs, rather than the initiative. Britt wonders if that money is well-spent:

While the body tasked with overseeing NASA’s internal overhaul in the wake of the Columbia disaster investigation, the Stafford-Covey Task Group, says the agency is completing the steps needed to launch the orbiters, engineers dealing with the day-to-day work of retrofitting and repairing the aging fleet have a dimmer view. The longer they work to fix the flawed spacecraft, the more problems they find. They may be safeguarding the fleet straight into the Smithsonian.

Meanwhile, Frank Sietzen, writing for UPI, also argues that “interest by the public and politicians has failed to ignite.” He notes that there appears to have been a lack of a strategy to promote the plan once it was announced in January, an assessment others—myself included—concur with. (Quote: “‘They thought that we would just stand up and salute,’ one congressional staffer lamented.”) One professor quoted in the article argues that the cost and “grimness” of the Iraq war has made many wary of supporting something as “frivolous” as space exploration. John Pike is quoted in the article arguing that the plan is a scheme by the Bush Administration to abandon manned spaceflight, a claim that seems difficult to support.

The New York Times published an article Tuesday about concerns some scientists have about the new exploration initiative. While a lot of attention has been given to NASA’s decision to cancel the final shuttle Hubble servicing mission—not directly related to the initiative—the plan also calls for cutting some space and earth science budgets, including deferring some missions in the Beyond Einstein program that was unveiled just last year. That program includes an effort to look for evidence of dark matter, a goal that a panel that included representatives from NASA concluded was of the highest priority. One thing the article doesn’t point out, though, is that all the attention given to Hubble may be hurting these programs: with everyone focused on trying to either restore the servicing mission or find other alternatives, the hurdles these other programs face have been largely ignored. Indeed, one can imagine that if NASA does find a way to robotically service Hubble, some of the money to pay for that effort could come out of the space science program, further hurting some of these missions.