By Jeff Foust on 2004 March 6 at 5:08 pm ET An article in Thursday’s issue of the Capitol Hill newspaper The Hill mentions the existence of a new organization, the Coalition for Space Exploration, whose intent is to promote the new space initiative. Several major aerospace companies, including Boeing and Lockheed Martin, are members of this group, as well as organizations like the Aerospace Industries Association. The March issue of SpaceWatch, the newsletter of the Space Foundation, mentions that the coalition actually predates the new initiative, having been in the planning stages since last May. Curiously, the coalition has been very quiet, although Space Foundation president Elliot Pulham writes that “You’ve probably seen the group’s advertising and editorial messages in USA Today and other newspapers across the country.” I can’t recall seeing any, but then, I don’t read USA Today other than through its web site.
The Hill articles does make a couple significant errors: it identifies Brian Chase as executive director of the National Space Society, a position he ceded in January to become vice president for Washington operations of the Space Foundation. The article also claims that the NSS established a Washington office this year in addition to its Colorado Springs headquarters; it is the Space Foundation that has a Colorado headquarters and Washington office.
By Jeff Foust on 2004 March 6 at 4:53 pm ET Part of the AIAA Air and Space Symposium 2004 next month in Washington is a one-day event on April 21 titled the AIAA International Policy Seminar. While the name makes it sound fairly generic, the emphasis of the event will be on space policy, according to the online agenda: Congressman Sherwood Boehlert, chairman of the House Science Committee, is the keynote speaker, and most of the sessions will explictly focus on space policy, both US and European. While the overall three-day symposium has a $299 registration fee, you can register for just the International Policy Seminar at no charge.
By Jeff Foust on 2004 March 5 at 8:02 am ET The Senate Budget Committee announced its FY2005 budget resolution on Thursday, an initial step in the budget process. The budget, Reuters reports, cuts $7 billion from President Bush’s FY05 budget proposal for defense and has more cuts for other discretionary spending programs. For NASA, according to the Chairman’s Mark (see page 26), the committee budgets only $15.6 billion in FY05, $600 million below what Bush requested and only 1.4 percent higher than the current budget. “While the Mark supports the President’s vision for exploration and discovery, the current budget situation necessitates slower implementation,” the document notes. “The resolution assumes fully funding the President’s request for NASA in 2006 and beyond.” There’s no reason to panic just yet: this is only an early step in the process, and the appropriations committees in the House and Senate have yet to do much significant work on the budget. It does suggest, though, that pushing through the proposed budget increase will be difficult, particularly when other agencies and departments are getting much smaller increases.
On the same topic, the subcommittee of the Senate Approprations Committee that deals with NASA (along with VA, HUD, and other independent agencies) will hold a hearing on the FY05 NASA budget proposal Thursday, March 11, at 10am. NASA’s Sean O’Keefe is scheduled to appear.
By Jeff Foust on 2004 March 5 at 7:34 am ET The House of Representatives passed on Thursday HR 3752, the Commercial Space Launch Amendments Act of 2004. The bill puts into law definitions for suborbital vehicles and trajectories, and specifies that suborbital vehicles will be regulated as launch vehicles and licensed, and not treated as aircraft and thus be certified. The bill also extends the government indemnification of launches (to cover catastrophic third-party damages) through 2008 but requires a study be performed to determine if indemnification is appropriate. HR 3752 passed 402-1; as with HR 912 on Wednesday, Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) was the only dissenting Congressman.
The House Science Committee press release announcing the passage of the bill includes the floor statement of committee chairman Rep. Sherwood Boehlert. The statement makes reference to an amendment by Rep. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) that Boehlert agreed to because “this regulation can be provided without any increase in the budget of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).” The amendment introduced by Rep. Flake would authorize $11.8 million to the Federal Aviation Administration’s Office of Associate Administrator for Commercial Space Transportation (AST) for fiscal years 2005 through 2007, the same amount currently appropriated to the office.
The House now has to wait for the Senate to take action on a similar bill, S.1260, before the two bills can be reconciled into the final legislation. There’s no indication when the Senate will take up the bill.
By Jeff Foust on 2004 March 4 at 9:34 am ET Several members of Congress, led by Rep. Mark Udall (D-CO), introduced a resolution in the House on Wednesday calling on NASA to establish an independent panel to review its decision cancelling the SM4 Hubble servicing mission. The resolution also asks NASA to continue preparations for that mission until the independent panel completes its review. The resolution (H.Res. 550) is just that: a request, with no force of law, using language like “strongly recommends” and “expresses its strong sentiment”.
The resolution was introduced with seven cosponsors, including two Republicans. While the ranking Democrats for both the full science committee (Bart Gordon) and the space subcommittee (Nick Lampson) have signed onto the resolution, their Republican counterparts (Boehlert and Rohrabacher) have not. It’s also noteworthy that three of the cosponsors (Bartlett, Hoyer, and Ruppersberger) are from Maryland, home to NASA Goddard and the Space Telescope Science Institute, while Udall’s district includes Ball Aerospace in Boulder, which built the instruments that would have been installed on Hubble on SM4.
By Jeff Foust on 2004 March 3 at 11:29 pm ET The House of Representatives approved by a nearly unanimous vote a bill that would provide awards to amateur astronomers who discover near Earth asteroids (NEAs). The Charles “Pete” Conrad Astronomy Awards Act (HR 912) would give the NASA administrator the authority to provide small ($3,000) cash awards to amateur astronomers (who must be US citizens or permanent residents) for either discovering the brightest (and thus most likely largest) NEA in the past year or making the greatest contribution in the NEA search, according to the Minor Planet Center.
The bill passed the House by a roll call vote of 404-1. The only person voting against was Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX); I haven’t heard why he opposed the legislation. An AP article has a few more details about the bill.
By Jeff Foust on 2004 March 3 at 8:19 am ET Dana Rohrabacher has apparently won a very easy victory in his California Republican Party primary Tuesday over former Congressman Bob Dornan. According to an L.A. Times article, Rohrabacher, chairman of the House Science Committee’s space subcommittee, held an 8-1 lead over Dornan, who earned the nickname “B-1 Bob” during his tenure in Congress. (More updated official results give Rohrabacher 83.5% of the vote to Dornan’s 16.5%.) “The voters have told him exactly where to go; not Washington, but back home, where he can crawl under a rock,” Rohrabacher said of Dornan, according to the Times.
By Jeff Foust on 2004 March 2 at 8:44 pm ET I noted earlier today that although a NASA press release claimed that the list of speakers for the Aldridge Commission’s publish hearing in Dayton this week would be on the commission’s web site, it was not available as of midday today. I checked this evening and noticed that the list is now on their news page, along with a link to a PDF version of the news release. (A link to the PDF version of the list of speakers was not working.) Oddly, the press release is dated February 27—Friday—although I did not notice it on the site until now: I’m not sure if it’s a web site glitch or if I somehow overlooked it earlier.
By Jeff Foust on 2004 March 2 at 7:53 pm ET On Monday the British think tank Demos issued a press release about a new poll it conducted with polling firm MORI regarding British public perceptions on some space policy issues. The good news is that Britons, particularly younger ones, which the poll dubs the “Beagle generation”, have a strong interest in space: 55% believe the UK should be involved in manned spaceflight—something it is not today—and 65 percent were in favor of robotic exploration. Despite the failure of Beagle 2 two-thirds of those polled think Britain should try again.
The bad news, at least for Americans, is that the British public has a skeptical view of US space policy. According to the poll, 68% thought that the US is more interested in the military potential of space versus human exploration of Mars; 66% thought space should remain “a neutral zone”, although the press release doesn’t define the term. (Does neutral mean no weapons, or no military spacceraft of any kind?)
The poll is linked to a new book that Demos has published, called “Masters of the Universe: Science, politics and the new space race”. I haven’t read the book yet, but based on the essay in Monday’s issue of the Guardian by one of the book’s authors, James Wilsdon, I will not be impressed. In the article he claims that the Outer Space Treaty of 1967 outlaws weapons in space (it only prohibits WMDs), that China plans to send an astronaut to the Moon by 2010 (wrong), and that the new space initiative will accelerate a claimed convergence of NASA and the Defense Department (unsupported). I’m told Demos is considered a fairly liberal organization; it appears that the the authors of this study may have been a little too liberal with the facts.
By Jeff Foust on 2004 March 2 at 11:28 am ET As a NASA press release issued Tuesday morning reminds us, the next hearing of the Aldridge Commission is scheduled to begin Wednesday afternoon in Dayton, with the hearing continuing all day Thursday. (Hopefully no one uses the NASA release to find the site of the hearing, the Air Force Museum: the press release lists the museum’s address as “11200 Spaatz St”, while in fact its street address is merely 1100 Spaatz St.)
Although the NASA press release says a list of witnesses for the hearing is on the commission’s web site, there was no sign of such a list by late Tuesday morning. However, articles published by the Dayton Daily News on Saturday and Sunday have identified some of the up to 24 witnesses who will appear before the commission, including primarily local officials. John Glenn has also been invited to appear.
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