By Jeff Foust on 2004 April 22 at 4:34 am ET At the AIAA International Policy Seminar on Capitol Hill Wednesday, Rep. Sherwood Boehlert (R-NY), chairman of the House Science Committee, made it clear that he felt NASA would not get the full budget increase the President requested. The full text of the speech is on the House Science Committee site, and I have a condensed but detailed summary in Spaceflight Now (complete with action photo!). For more impatient folks, here are a few key points:
- Noting the tight budget environment, where most programs are getting little or no increases, Boehlert asked, “In such a budget, should NASA receive almost a 6 percent increase? Is it the highest domestic spending priority? I don’t think so, and I doubt my colleagues will either.”
- Boehlert approves of the “broad outlines” of the exploration plan, including completing the station and retiring the shuttle. His concerns are with the cost and schedule of the plan; he noted, for example, that he thought it was unrealistic to complete the station by 2010 because it would involve flying the shuttle five times a year, while the CAIB recommended a flight rate of four a year.
- He is also concerned with cuts in other NASA programs, including earth and space sciences. Quote: “Do I think that it’s more important to know more about the Earth than it is to know more about Mars? I do, and I don’t think it’s a close question.”
- The House Science Committee staff is working on an alternative budget that would restore some of those cuts while allowing exploration programs to get started, he said.
- A NASA authorization bill will be introduced in the House around July 4th, and will move through the House in September. A Senate version of the legislation will be introduced “pretty soon”.
- Don’t expect Congress to approve a NASA budget until after Election Day, forcing NASA to operate on continuing resolutions for over a month, and perhaps several months.
On Thursday Bill Adkins, staff director for the House Science Committee’s space subcommittee, will likely touch on these topics during a luncheon meeting of the local AIAA chapter in downtown Washington.
By Jeff Foust on 2004 April 21 at 11:52 pm ET The reelection web site for President Bush has introduced a new feature, “Journeys with John”, that attempts to show on a state-by-state basis why John Kerry is wrong on some of the issues. For Florida (one of only two states included to date) one of the topics is titled “Cutting NASA Funding”:
In 1995, Kerry Introduced A Bill That Included Termination Of International Space Station Program. Kerry’s budget bill, which included defense and intelligence cuts, sought to cut $11 billion from the International Space Station Program, thus terminating it. The bill had no co-sponsors and never made it to the floor for a vote.
The section refers to S.1290, a bill introduced by Kerry in September 1995 that called for a wide range of defense and other discretionary program cuts to reduce the deficit, including “Terminate the International Space Station Program”. The bill was referred to committee, where it died. As noted previously, Kerry had been an opponent of the space station program through the mid-1990s. However, not surprisingly, the snippet on the Bush site doesn’t point out that more recently (after about 1996), Kerry has supported the ISS program.
By Jeff Foust on 2004 April 20 at 10:30 pm ET A few notes related to the Aldridge Commission:
- The best coverage of the commission’s public hearing in San Francisco last week comes, not surprisingly, from the San Francisco Chronicle, which published an article on Monday about the full-day session on Friday. The article touches on most of the topics raised during the hearing, including some of the public comments.
- An AP article about the half-day session on Thursday contained an interesting observation: “fewer than three dozen people showed up to hear testimony, including commission staff members and reporters.” Neither the Chronicle article about Friday’s hearing, nor other articles, give a head count.
- The location of the final public hearing in New York, scheduled for May 3-4, has been moved. It was to take place at the Hayden Planetarium (whose director, Neil DeGrasse Tyson, is on the commission), but will now take place at The Asia Society on Park Avenue and 70th Street. No reason was given for the change but the most logical reason would be to accommodate a larger audience: the planetarium could handle only a couple hundred of people in a single place, according to sources, while the Asia Society boasts about its new museum that includes an auditorium and conference facilities, including videoconferencing equipment.
- Congratulations are in order for commission member Maria Zuber, who has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences this week.
By Jeff Foust on 2004 April 20 at 12:25 pm ET The newspaper Florida Today ran an editorial cartoon over the weekend that portrays a man, labeled “Florida Space Authority” (FSA), playing an arcade game called “Space Investors”, desperately seeking quarters from two onlookers (representing the state legislature and taxpayers) to keep playing the game. A lot of quarters: $94 million worth. An earlier editorial from that newspaper has more details about what the authority is seeking the money for: educational programs, infrastructure improvement at Cape Canaveral, and incentives to lure whatever company wins the Crew Exploration Vehicle contract to build it in the state. (Despite the tone of the cartoon, the newspaper’s editors are supportive of the proposal.) One thing springs to mind, though: why doesn’t the FSA person in the cartoon look anything like FSA Executive Director Winston Scott?
By Jeff Foust on 2004 April 20 at 11:52 am ET The VA-HUD-Independent agencies subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee is scheduled to hold a hearing Wednesday on the NASA budget in Rayburn 2359. (According to the committee’s web site the hearing is scheduled at 10 am; SpaceRef.com reports that it is scheduled for 1 pm, although that may be based on older information.) NASA Administrator Sean O’Keefe is scheduled to testify. Interestingly, this is scheduled at the same time, and just down the hall (and around a corner or two), from the AIAA’s International Policy Seminar in Rayburn 2318.
Update: It appears that both times are correct: the subcommittee is holding sessions from 10-12 and from 1-3 on Wednesday. Should be a busy day…
By Jeff Foust on 2004 April 17 at 1:15 pm ET The Associated Press reports that Florida Governor Jeb Bush made some comments about John Kerry and space policy during a speech he gave in Miami Beach claiming that Kerry has been on both sides of a number of issues:
Bush said Kerry also has been against space exploration and voted against an overseas citrus marketing, but predicted that Kerry would come out in support of NASA and orange growers during a three-day swing through Florida beginning Sunday.
The record, however, doesn’t really support Gov. Bush’s claims on space policy. Like most politicians, Kerry supports space, but in a very bland fashion: he is not an outspoken advocate of space, but at the same time he not a vocal opponent of NASA and space policy in general. (See a section of an article for The Space Review I wrote back in January for more details; to his credit his campaign was one of the few to respond at that time, although with few specifics.)
Some have pointed to this posting about cuts in the defense and NASA budgets that Kerry proposed back in 1994, including termination of Space Station Freedom and cuts in the Titan 4 launch vehicle program. It would be dangerous to conclude from that single event ten years ago, though, that Kerry is opposed to space exploration. (Some would doubtless argue that being anti-space station was actually a good sign…) Instead, his position on the space station has shifted over time. He voted in favor of an amendment to the VA-HUD appropriations bill in 1995 (introduced by long-time space station opponent Sen. Dale Bumpers of Arkansas) to terminate the ISS, and voted against a bid to table a similar amendment in 1996. However, in 1997 he voted to table a similar amendment, and in 1998 he voted against an appropriations bill amendment to terminate the ISS.
It’s also worth noting that Sen. Kerry is also a cosponsor of S.1821, a bill introduced last fall by Sen. Ernest Hollings (D-SC) to create a “National Space Commission” to study the future of American space exploration. That bill has since been overtaken by events, notably the President’s creation of a commission to study the implementation of the new national space policy.
This suggests that, rather than flip-flopping for political expediency, Kerry’s position has evolved over time from modest opposition to some aspects of space exploration (primarily the space station) to one of modest support. What would be more interesting to know is what happened in the 1996-1997 period that caused him to make that shift.
By Jeff Foust on 2004 April 17 at 12:31 pm ET I’ve heard from a well-placed source that there is an effort underway to craft a new coalition of organizations that will support the new space exploration plan. Unlike the Coalition for Space Exploration, whose membership is composed primarily of aerospace companies, this loose association will be mostly made up of advocacy organizations. (Getting these groups to work together was likely no easy task, given the, ah, strong personalities of some of their leaders.) Their primary near-term focus will be to get full funding for NASA’s 2005 budget proposal in Congress. Look for an announcement about this new effort in the coming weeks.
By Jeff Foust on 2004 April 16 at 11:31 pm ET The AIAA has updated its schedule for the International Policy Seminar, a free forum on primarily space issues this Wednesday, April 21. The one significant change is that the event will now be held in Rayburn 2318, the House Science Committee hearing room; the shift was warranted by the “high number of responses” for this seminar. This looks like it will be a fairly interesting event.
By Jeff Foust on 2004 April 15 at 11:43 pm ET It’s been a relatively quiet period for space policy issues recently, so now’s a good chance to catch up on some legislation and resolutions that have been discussed here in the past:
- H.Res. 550, the House resolution calling for an independent evaluation of NASA’s decision to cancel the last shuttle servicing mission to Hubble, now has 47 cosponsors. The resolution itself has made no visible progress within the House towards passage, but given that NASA has already agreed to have the National Academy of Sciences review the decision, one can argue it’s a moot point.
- HR 3813, the George R. Brown Near-Earth Object Survey Act, was introduced in February by Rep. Dana Rohrabacher. The bill was referred to the House Science Committee’s space subcommittee, which Rohrabacher chairs. One expects that Rohrabacher will hold a hearing on the bill at some point, although nothing has been announced to the best of my knowledge.
- As we noted earlier this month, Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) recently announced plans to introduce the “Studying and Prevention Asteroid Collisions with Earth (SPACE) Act” that would be a scaled-down version of HR 3813. At that time there was no sign that Rep. Weiner had introduced the bill and, as of Thursday night, there was still no sign of the bill. Moreover, although one newspaper report claimed that he issued a press release about the bill, the release hasn’t appeared yet on his web site.
By Jeff Foust on 2004 April 13 at 7:41 pm ET Rand Simberg at Transterrestrial Musings has noted the creation of a new space policy weblog: Democrats for Mars. The purpose of the site is “to convince space supporters that this year’s Republican candidate is not their friend. And to convince the Democrats to set their sites [sic] on the starts [sic].” There’s not much else there yet, although the site is only a few days old. It will be curious to see what rationale Democratic space advocates can develop to demonstrate that Kerry would be better than Bush on space issues, particularly given Kerry’s relative silence on space issues in general.
|
|
