By Jeff Foust on 2013 January 31 at 7:18 am ET The Planetary Society released this week a statement prepared “in collaboration” with the planetary sciences divisions of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) and American Geophysical Union (AGU) about the current state of NASA’s planetary sciences program. The organizations support NASA’s decision announced nearly two months ago to develop a Mars rover based on Curiosity for launch in 2020, with the caveat that the rover should be used to cache samples for later return to Earth as recommended by the 2011 planetary sciences decadal survey. “It is of the utmost importance” that the 2020 rover be a sample cacher, the statement reads, “in order to maximize science return and support a balanced and affordable approach to the exploration of our solar system.”
The organizations, though, are still seeking to reverse the $300 million cut in NASA’s planetary sciences budget proposed for FY2013, given that Congress has yet to approve a 2013 budget. (NASA, like other federal agencies, is operating under a continuing resolution that funds programs at 2012 levels, although NASA officials have indicated they are spending on planetary programs at the proposed 2013 level of $1.2 billion instead of the $1.5 billion/year rate in 2012.) Giving the NASA planetary program a flat budget of $1.5 billion a year for 2013 and beyond would, the organizations argue, allow NASA to perform both the 2020 Mars rover mission as well as a Europa orbiter mission (the second-ranked large-scale mission in the decadal report), and would allow NASA to increase the tempo of smaller Discovery and New Frontiers missions to levels recommended in the report.
There is, though, a subtle difference between the versions of the statement released by The Planetary Society and the AAS’s Division for Planetary Sciences (DPS). The Planetary Society’s version emphasizes first that the increased funding would allow for the the Mars 2020 rover and Europa mission, then notes that the funding would also increase the rate of Discovery and New Frontiers missions. The DPS statement, though, addresses these in reverse order, first mentioning the increased rate of Discovery and New Frontier missions and then stating it also would fund the Mars and Europa missions.
The Planetary Society’s version also includes a little additional rhetoric about the importance of planetary sciences funding. “We find the shift in budgetary priority deeply troubling,” its version states, after rueing the implications of the proposed cuts. “Namely, it represents a step backwards from our nation’s long commitment to exploration and the pursuit of answers to the big questions of ‘where do we come from?’ and ‘are we alone?'”
By Jeff Foust on 2013 January 30 at 7:57 am ET Responding to what is at least a somewhat manufactured controversy, a key senator said Tuesday that he will continue to support NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) heavy-lift launch vehicle. Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) told the Huntsville Times that he will “continue to fight hard to ensure that taxpayer dollars are invested wisely in SLS so that we maintain our nation’s leadership role in human spaceflight,” according to a statement furnished to the newspaper. Shelby’s statement was apparently prompted by a Wall Street Journal op-ed Monday that called on canceling the SLS and turning over all space transportation systems to the private sector. Shelby noted that “the so-called commercial space industry is funded in large measure by taxpayers through NASA.”
In addition to covering Shelby’s comments, the Times also reported on the “public debate over killing” the SLS, including debate here (even if, in his haste, the reporter misidentified one of the people participating in the comments.) Yet, there’s little, if any, evidence that the Obama Administration is willing to act on the proposal in the original WSJ op-ed to cancel the SLS and expend the necessary political capital to get past SLS supporters like Shelby (who, in addition to being the ranking member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said he plans to serve as ranking member of that committee’s Commerce, Justice, and Science subcommittee, with oversight of NASA’s budget.) However, even without an explicit administration effort to kill SLS this year or later in the president’s second term, pressure from sequestration or other budget-cutting initiatives could put the SLS on a collision course with commercial crew or other NASA programs.
By Jeff Foust on 2013 January 29 at 5:47 am ET The Senate passed on Monday HR 152, a $50.5 billion appropriations bill to cover damage caused by Hurricane Sandy last October. The House passed the bill earlier this month after a previous disaster relief bill died in the previous Congress. Included in the bill is $15 million for NASA’s “Construction and Environmental Compliance and Restoration” account, to cover damage to NASA facilities caused by the hurricane. The bulk of that money is expected to go to the Wallops Flight Facility on the Virginia coast, which experienced heavy rains and storm surges as the hurricane moved up the coast (some will go to the Kennedy Space Center.) Space News reported that Wallops officials have estimated repair costs at $26 million from the storm.
By Jeff Foust on 2013 January 28 at 6:33 am ET In an essay in Monday’s issue of the Wall Street Journal, Robert Walker and Charles Miller make a pitch to President Obama: complete the job he started in his first term in handing over space transportation entirely in the private sector. “Just as the government does not design or build automobiles, ships, trains or airplanes, NASA should not be designing, building or launching rockets to go to low Earth orbit,” they argue.
Specifically, they want the President to kill the Space Launch System, the heavy-lift rocket that emerged from the 2010 compromise about the administration’s policy, saying that those launches should be turned over to the private sector. “The U.S. private space industry has now succeeded beyond the imagination of most politicians,” they argue, citing successes with the commercial cargo and the fact that private industry actually has more experience in developing new rockets (Atlas 5, Delta 4, Falcon 9) than NASA. A “full privatization” of space transportation would make American industry more competitive, reduce costs for the DOD and NASA, and allow the space agency to focus more on cutting-edge technologies, they claim.
“Why spend approximately $20 billion to build an unneeded SLS super-heavy-lift rocket, for instance, when existing commercial rockets can carry payloads more often, efficiently and cheaply?” they ask near the end of the op-ed. One issue, of course, is that the SLS will launch payloads heavier than any existing commercial rocket. (That could be mitigated though multiple-launch architectures and the development of propellant depots, although Walker and Miller don’t go into that level of detail in the piece.) The other, bigger issue, is the political fight that would ensue if President Obama decided to cancel the SLS, upending the existing compromise reached in 2010 that includes support for SLS as well as commercial crew. Would the White House, dealing with bigger issues from the “fiscal cliff” to gun control, be willing to spend the political capital needed to push through Congress what Walker and Miller propose?
By Jeff Foust on 2013 January 27 at 11:33 am ET Thursday evening the Baker Institute for Public Policy at Rice University hosted a panel titled “Lost in Space: The Need for a Definitive U.S. Space Policy.” (The event was webcast, and the video of the event is on the institute’s website.) The panel was predicated on the belief that the US doesn’t currently have a clear national space policy, particularly when it comes to guiding NASA’s activities, and sought to “discuss the need for and the elements of a definitive national civil space policy.” At the end of the over 90-minute event, though, the panel came away with no clear answers of what that “definitive” space policy should be.
While the title of the panel appeared to address national space policy in general, it was clear that the emphasis of the discussion would be not just on civil space policy, but specifically on civil human spaceflight. “For an American astronaut, the road to space is really through Star City and Baikonur and Kazakhstan,” lamented George Abbey, former director of the Johnson Space Center and moderator of the panel, in his opening remarks. “It will be that way for a long time to come.” (Abbey also claimed in his remarks that this July “it’ll be two years since an American spacecraft has been up to visit that station.” In fact, last year two American spacecraft—SpaceX Dragon cargo vehicles—visited the station, and by July at least one more Dragon, plus likely the first Cygnus cargo vehicle from Orbital Sciences, will have visited the ISS. None of them, of course, carry crews.)
As to how to change the current situation and create a more definitive national space policy, particularly for human spaceflight, the panelists offered a range of options, but also little optimism that things would change in the near term. “I’m not very optimistic, at least in the short run,” said John Logsdon, who described the current situation as “an uneasy and unsatisfactory compromise.” “The perception of the need is there, but it’s not a widely shared perception. And it’s hard hard to change things in our system of government.”
Neal Lane, who was director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy during the latter years of the Clinton Administration, said he recalled complaints from the space community during his time there asking why the president didn’t make space a higher priority. “I think you could argue that no president except Kennedy has really placed the space program high enough on the list of priorities to be sustainable,” he said. “I still hold out the hope that, someday, our space program will excite the public to the degree that presidents and members of Congress will place it higher on the list of priorities. But it’s not happened yet, and it can’t happen in my view very quickly.”
To Rice University professor Eugene Levy, that long-running challenge to come up with a more definitive policy for human spaceflight in particular is not surprising. “The failure to articulate and mount a program of human piloted missions to deep space, rather than being a crisis, rather than being a bungle of leadership and political process, represents a triumph of rationality and success in the political process,” he argued. “No convincing case has been made for mounting a program of deep space piloted missions.” He added he’s not opposed per se to human space exploration, only that the reasons given don’t justify the expenditure in an era where NASA “is getting about as much of the national resource as it is likely to get on any time horizon worth planning for.”
One way to achieve a broader consensus for space policy is geostrategic considerations, offered Joan Johnson-Freese, a professor of national security affairs at the Naval War College. She said while there was no space race between the US and China, there is the “perception of leadership” that is at stake if there is no continued clear direction for national space policy. “The connotation of space is regarding the future. Leaders go into the future. And if we are seen as ceding that leadership to other countries, it will have larger geostrategic implications,” she said.
She and another panelist, former astronaut Leroy Chiao, advocated for more cooperation, rather than competition, with China. “For the United States to maintain its leadership position in human spaceflight,” he said, “that’s where we need to focus our efforts and get over the xenophobia and take the lead position in making it happen.” Johnson-Freese noted that if the US doesn’t increase cooperation with China, it risks being left out of future partnerships. “The danger of not working with China is that everybody else is,” she said. “I’m afraid we’re going to be standing there with our football and everybody else is going to be playing a different game.”
Of all the panelists, Mark Albrecht, the former executive secretary of the National Space Council in the George H.W. Bush Administration, took the broadest view, expanding his scope beyond human spaceflight and NASA in general to look at the broader national space enterprise. “We have a weak national policy” for space in general, he said, with no “overarching theme”; instead, he considers it more of a “guidance document.” He saw a number of problems with national space efforts today, from the military’s return to the “Milstar era” of very big, expensive satellite programs to diminished market shares for commercial satellites and launches by US companies.
Space policy excels, he argued, when it’s part of a broader national strategy, such as defeating the Soviet Union in the Cold War. “But right now, we don’t have a national strategy,” he argued. The only way to change space policy, he said, “is to have an overriding national policy for the United States for which a different kind of space policy would fit in.”
The panel ended with no clear view about how to change national space policy (let alone broader national policy) or what to change it to, and no optimism that we’ll see any significant changes of any kind in the near future. “With economics and the fiscal cliff looming in the future, one of the options for policymaking is called ‘muddling through,'” said Johnson-Freese after making the case for a renewed geostrategic emphasis on national space policy. “And that’s where we are and that’s where we’re going to stay.”
By Jeff Foust on 2013 January 24 at 8:18 am ET The House Science Committee held a brief organizational meeting Wednesday to formally confirm its membership, rules, and subcommittee assignments. The Subcommittee on Space (as it is now simply known; all the committee’s subcommittees now have one-word names) is the committee’s largest subcommittee, with 12 Republican and 9 Democrats:
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Democrats |
Chairman Steven Palazzo (Mississippi)
Ralph Hall (Texas)
Dana Rohrabacher (California)
Frank D. Lucas (Oklahoma)
Michael McCaul (Texas)
Mo Brooks (Alabama)
Larry Bucshon (Indiana)
Steve Stockman (Texas)
Bill Posey (Florida)
David Schweikert (Arizona)
Jim Bridenstine (Oklahoma)
Chris Stewart (Utah)
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Donna Edwards (Maryland) (Ranking Member)
Frederica Wilson (Florida)
Suzanne Bonamici (Oregon)
Dan Maffei (New York)
Joe Kennedy (Massachusetts)
Derek Kilmer (Washington)
Ami Bera (California)
Marc Veasey (Texas)
Julia Brownley (California)
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Several NASA centers are represented in the subcommittee roster. Stephen Palazzo, returning as committee chairman, has Stennis Space Center in his district. Bill Posey comes to the committee after redistricting put Kennedy Space Center in his district (he previously represented Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, but not KSC itself), while Mo Brooks’s district includes Marshall Space Flight Center. Steve Stockman, returning to Congress after serving a term in the House in the mid-1990s, has the Johnson Space Center just inside his new district; it previously had been in Rep. Pete Olson’s (R-TX) district. Ranking member Donna Edwards’s district surrounds the Goddard Space Flight Center on three sides.
Edwards, the new ranking member of the subcommittee, welcomed her appointment to the position in a statement yesterday. “Having worked years ago on NASA’s Spacelab project, I look forward to the opportunity to develop a pioneering space policy that will uphold our international competitiveness, spur innovation in the United States, and build the jobs and workforce that have contributed so greatly to our economy, including in Maryland’s 4th Congressional District,” Edwards, representing Maryland’s 4th district, said.
In his opening statement, full committee chairman Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) included an new NASA authorization bill as a committee priority. “From reauthorizing NASA to advocating for robust research and development,” he said, “we have much to do.” The committee’s oversight plan goes into more details, including NASA’s human spaceflight program “it undergoes a period of uncertainty and transition following various Administration proposals.” In space science, the plan calls out for special attention unspecified “programs that exceed cost estimates to ensure they do not adversely impact the development and launch of other missions,” a possible reference to the James Webb Space Telescope. Other efforts “warranting further review” at NASA, in the eyes of the committee, “include costs associated with cancellation of the Constellation program, NASA’s approach to develop and fund a successor to the Space Shuttle, and investment in NASA launch infrastructure.”
By Jeff Foust on 2013 January 23 at 7:16 am ET That didn’t take long. Last week the New Mexico Legislature began its 2013 session, with a revision to the state’s existing commercial spaceflight liability indemnification legislation a top priority. Backers of the state’s $209-million commercial spaceport, Spaceport America, were concerned that without a revision of the law, expanding it to include suppliers and other companies involved in spaceflight operations, the spaceport’s primary tenant, Virgin Galactic, might pull up stakes.
It looks like, though, that a deal has been reached. State legislators said that a compromise has been worked out between Virgin Galactic and the state trial lawyers association, which had opposed previous efforts to amend the law. A revised bill will be introduced in the legislature as soon as today. The specifics of the revised bill haven’t been formally released, but it appears that it will extend indemnification to suppliers, although add a requirement that all companies carry at least $1 million in liability insurance in order to be protected. Virgin Galactic president and CEO George Whitesides told the Santa Fe New Mexico that he supported the compromise, which he said would give companies similar protections as those that already exist in other states.
By Jeff Foust on 2013 January 18 at 6:45 am ET On Tuesday, the New Mexico Legislature convened for its 2013 session, and one of the key issues it will be dealing with, albeit indirectly, is the future of Spaceport America, the commercial spaceport in the southern part of the state. The $209-million facility’s major elements are nearly complete and its anchor tenant, suborbital spaceflight company Virgin Galactic, will start paying rent on them this month. Whether they’ll stick around, though, may depend on whether the legislature passes a key bill.
At issue is the state’s existing informed consent regime for commercial human spaceflight. Current law protects a “space flight entity” from liability for injury to or the death of a spaceflight participant “resulting from the inherent risks of space flight activities.” (That indemnification is not valid in cases of “gross negligence” or intentional injury.) That language is similar to laws in several other states that also protect spaceflight operators from lawsuits in the event of an accident.
The problem in New Mexico is that the current law defines a “space flight entity” is the operator of the vehicle itself (specifically, the entity that holds the FAA launch licence), meaning that the liability protections do not cover other people involved in the manufacture of the vehicle. That leaves suppliers and others open to suits in the event of an accident. That has made it more difficult for the state to encourage other companies to set up operations at Spaceport America, and, in turn, making Virgin Galactic feel like they have to shoulder the burden of the spaceport’s operations alone.
The state attempted to amend the law last year, expanding the liability protection to include suppliers, but the law failed to pass after opposition from trial lawyers, who believe it unfairly restricts the ability of people to sue in the event of an accident. The legislature is making another attempt this year, with bills introduced in the state House and Senate to revise current law. The bills would expand the definition of “space flight entity” to include manufacturers and suppliers of components, vehicles and other services, as well as the people who work for or own those companies. As was the case last year, the legislation has the support of New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez.
At the same time, Virgin Galactic officials have suggested that the company would reconsider its plans to operate from Spaceport America should the liability protection not be expanded. “The state has said it doesn’t want to keep putting money into the spaceport over time, so that sort of leaves us, which isn’t really the vision that we signed up for,” Virgin Galactic president and CEO George Whitesides told Albuquerque TV station KRQE on Thursday. Virgin has stopped short of a direct ultimatum regarding its future at the spaceport, but has made it clear it wants the bill to pass so that the state can lure other companies to the facility and thus not put the full burden of spaceport operations on it.
Still, some people in New Mexico do feel like they’re faced with the choice of passing the bill or losing Virgin Galactic. “Granted if (they’re) holding us hostage, that’s unfortunate,” Rep. Antonio “Moe” Maestas told KRQE, “but sometimes you have to pay the ransom.”
By Jeff Foust on 2013 January 17 at 6:25 am ET Late last week NASA released the annual report by the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel (ASAP), highlighting the key safety-related issues the independent panel sees with the space agency’s programs. This year’s report highlights in particular NASA’s commercial crew efforts, worrying that a lack of funding and non-traditional contracting mechanisms could increase risks to crews that will fly on these vehicles.
“Of all of the topics reviewed by the ASAP this year, the one receiving the most time and attention was unquestionably the Commercial Crew Program (CCP),” ASAP noted in its report, calling attention to it also in cover letters that accompanied the report to the NASA Administrator, the Speaker of the House, and the President of the Senate. ASAP expressed concern about the use of Space Act Agreements, as it has in the past, although the panel agreed with NASA’s use of fixed-price contracts for the first phase of the certification process. However, ASAP argued that the second, and much larger, phase of the certification process should be done with more conventional cost-plus contracts than fixed-price ones, as “we believe both schedule and safety would be at risk in a fixed-price environment because of the relative inability to defer or apply resources to problem areas that will inevitably develop.”
A larger issue than contracting vehicles, though, was funding uncertainty for the commercial crew effort. The ASAP report noted that funding levels for the program in fiscal years 2011 and 2012 were approximately half of the administration’s original request, with an anticipation of a similar shortfall from the requested $850 million in FY2013. “Given NASA’s budget history, it is unlikely there will be additional funding,” the report stated. Instead, ASAP believes that the program will “make tradeoffs and changes to performance measures that would include accepting additional safety risk” with limited NASA insight that “could lead to unknowingly accepting substantial increases in risk to the safety of crews.” (The report acknowledged another option, simply stretching out schedules, but apparently didn’t consider it likely and didn’t explain why.)
ASAP seemed more sanguine about the larger Exploration Systems Development (ESD) effort, which includes the Space Launch System (SLS) launcher and Orion spacecraft. “ESD is a program with wide support,” the report stated. “Unlike CCP, ESD funding levels have remained relatively constant,” although acknowledging that flat budgets create challenges for development programs that typically have a “classic skewed bell curve” spending profile.
The report doesn’t note, though, that Orion and SLS funding are considerably below levels authorized in the agency’s 2010 authorization act: in FY2012, for example, NASA received approximately $1.2 billion for Orion and $1.5 billion for SLS, but was authorized to spend $1.4 billion for Orion and $2.65 billion for SLS. Unless one believes the authorization bill figures overestimate the costs of these systems, there’s potential schedule or other risks with their development, particularly with the SLS.
By Jeff Foust on 2013 January 16 at 6:57 am ET In a move that took many by surprise, Steve MacLean, the president of the Canadian Space Agency, announced Tuesday he would resign at the end of the month to take a position at a new research institute. MacLean is leaving the CSA to take a position in a new venture in Waterloo, Ontatrio, created by Mike Lazaridis, the co-founder of RIM, a company best known for its BlackBerry line of smartphones. In this position, MacLean “will be leading a team pursuing breakthrough scientific Research and Development in the highly specialized field of Quantum Physics,” according to the CSA statement; quantum physics research is an area of particular interest to Lazaridis. MacLean’s departure apparently took many by surprise, with little advance notice or other hints that he planned to leave the space agency. MacLean, who has led the CSA since 2008, was one of Canada’s six original astronauts, and flew on two Space Shuttle missions in 1992 and 2006.
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