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The President’s Commission on Moon, Mars, and Beyond (aka the Aldridge Commission) has issued a press release about, and schedule for, its next public hearing later this week in San Francisco. The hearing features a hodgepodge of topics, from entertainment and education to propulsion and “space prosperity”. The schedule doesn’t appear to be quite complete yet: there is a slot Friday afternoon from 2:15-3:00 pm with nothing announced. This is the title of an essay by Dwayne Day published in this week’s issue of The Space Review. In the article he notes that space policy, like much of the rest of American politics, has seen a shift from “masculine” language like leadership to “feminine” language, where, as he puts it, “virtually all policies are justified in terms of their impact on children.” This transition had already been noted by others observing mainstream politics; Day applies it to space policy, noting that Bush’s January speech unveiling the new space initiative makes no mention of American leadership in space, unlike the space race rhetoric of the 1960s. I must admit that I didn’t think of policy in terms of masculine or feminine language before, but he makes a compelling case in his essay. The question remains, though, whether this shift in language will prove beneficial to the new initiative. Earlier this week the Senate Commerce Committee’s space subcommittee held a hearing on the potential dangers posed by near Earth objects (NEOs). I wasn’t able to attend the hearing, but I did listen to (most of) the audio-only webcast of the hearing. It seemed like a very straightforward discussion of NEOs, including search efforts and potential schemes for studying and even diverting them (the latter courtesy of Ed Lu and Rusty Schweickart of the B612 Foundation.) From what I could tell from the webcast it appeared that Brownback was the only senator present during the hearing, or at least the only one asking any questions. However, this Lawrence (Kansas) Journal-World article makes it clear that Brownback does not necessarily put concern about NEOs above other issues:
The article also has a link to some feedback from some of Brownback’s constituents regarding whether his attention to this issue is misplaced… On Tuesday the GAO published a report (primarily a set of briefing slides) on problems it has had trying to audit NASA’s spending on the ISS and shuttle programs. The report included a cover letter that the GAO addressed to the leadership of the relevant House and Senate committees, and included these lines: The Honorable Sherwood L. Boehlert The GAO may want to audit its database of members of Congress, since Ralph Hall switched parties three months ago and is no longer the ranking minority member of the House Science Committee. That position now belongs to Rep. Bart Gordon (D-TN). A UPI article by Frank Sietzen reports that there is modest but growing support for the new space initiative in Congress. The article says that Sean O’Keefe met recently with a group of conservative “Blue Dog” Democrats in the House and managed to win them over to the plan, at least to the point where the agreed to sponsor an amendment to the House budget resolution that would give NASA its full request in 2005. NASA has also won support from the fiscally-conservative Republican Study Committee. The article also notes the lack of public comment about the plan by the President. O’Keefe told the Democratic Congressmen that Bush was “trying to avoid further politicization.” Another source told Sietzen that “Bush would ‘keep his powder dry until the myths, legends, and political barbs on this strategy subside,’ and the president probably would speak again about his space plan sometime late in his re-election campaign.” This aligns with a discussion I had earlier today with someone, who noted that Bush was in a bit of a quandary: by saying nothing about the plan his silence is criticized, but if he spoke out more about the plan he ran the risk of further politicizing it. Tuesday morning I attended a breakfast meeting of the Space Transportation Association with Craig Steidle, the NASA associate administrator for exploration systems, as the featured speaker. Steidle’s presentation was very similar to past ones he has given (he has used essentially the same set of slides a number of times, like these released in associated with the Code T industry day last month), but he did offer a few interesting notes:
In addition, in his opening remarks Rich Coleman, president of the STA, mentioned that the Coalition for Space Exploration now has its own web site, www.space-exploration.us. You will notice that it looks very similar to the STA’s own web site… Those are topics you normally don’t associate with one another, but a front-page article in Monday’s Washington Post has found a common thread: all are subjects of highly-publicized Bush Administration initiatives (in favor of or against) that have since languished in Congress because of a perceived lack of a concerted follow-through by the White House:
The end of the article addresses the space initiative in particular:
Well, at least space exploration advocates have some company… The Senate Commerce Committee’s space subcommittee has scheduled a hearing for Wednesday afternoon at 2:30pm about near Earth objects (NEOs). This may be one of the most detailed examinations of the topic by Congress in quite some time: the hearing will feature six witnesses split into two panels. The first will include Wayne Van Citters, director of the astronomical sciences division at the NSF; and Lindley Johnson, NEO program manager at NASA Headquarters. The second includes Grant Stokes, who runs the LINEAR asteroid search program at MIT Lincoln Labs; Michael Griffin of APL; and former astronaut Rusty Schweickart and current astronaut Ed Lu, who serve as chairman of the board and president, respectively, of the B612 Foundation, an organization that advocates “significantly alter the orbit of an asteroid in a controlled manner by 2015.” It looks like this hearing has Pete Worden’s fingerprints all over it: he has long advocated increased efforts to detect NEOs, and he is currently working for Sen. Sam Brownback, who chairs the subcommittee holding this hearing. Interesting, the same day Worden is participating in a roundtable on “Private Sector Opportunities in President Bush’s New Space Vision”, organized by the Marshall Institute. The discussion, scheduled for noon, was moved last week to a room in the Russell Senate Office Building because interest in the topic forced organizers to find a larger venue. The meeting announcement doesn’t specify an ending time but you can bet it will be done well before 2:30… A follow up to yesterday’s note about new asteroid search legislation: A bit of searching turned up this New York Daily News article from last Friday, the day after Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) announced he plans to introduce legislation to provide funding for asteroid searches. The article has a few new details, such as the name of the proposed bill: the “Studying and Prevention Asteroid Collisions with Earth (SPACE) Act”. The article also cites a press release issued by Weiner’s office titled “New Legislation to stop Armageddon!!! (Well it’s a start anyway…)”. The article also notes that Weiner is a potential candidate in next year’s New York City mayoral election, and that the proposed bill was met with a bit of ridicule by the office of current mayor Michael Bloomberg, and a “less amused” reaction from a fellow Democratic candidate. Given that the bill hasn’t yet shown up on Thomas, and that the press release mentioned in the article hasn’t appeared on the congressman’s web site, perhaps Weiner is having second thoughts because the bill didn’t “pass the communications straight-face test”? Yes, that’s a phrase you don’t hear every day. The Associated Press reports that top officials of the Brazilian Space Agency (AEB) are asking the government to either fund the agency to the tune of $200 million over the next two years or abandon a program to develop an indigenous launch vehicle. That vehicle, the VLS-1, exploded on the pad in August while being prepared for launch, killing 21; a report last month blamed the accident on underfunding and poor management. The AEB currently receives about $30 million a year. This press release provides more details about the AEB’s proposed plans: the press release is in Portuguese, however… |
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