By Jeff Foust on 2013 January 1 at 10:02 am ET The fiscal cliff wasn’t the only thing the Senate was dealing with in the early morning hours of New Year’s Day. The Senate passed by unanimous consent HR 6586, legislation the House passed in November to extend commercial launch indemnification by two years.
While that initially sounds like good news for the industry, there’s a catch: the Senate passed not the original House bill, but instead an amended version proposed by Sens. Bill Nelson (D-FL) and Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX). The amendment replaces the text with a scaled-down version of S.3661, the Space Exploration Sustainability Act, that the two senators introduced last month after they failed to get amendments into the defense authorization bill. The amended bill extends NASA’s existing waiver to provisions of the Iran North Korea Syria Nonproliferation Act (INKSNA) from mid-2016 to the end of 2020, and includes a “Sense of Congress” clause that NASA should develop both SLS/Orion and commercial crew systems in a balanced manner. The amendment also extends commercial launch indemnification by only one year; both the original House bill and the standalone Nelson-Hutchison bill extended indemnification for two years.
The amendment means that the House will have to pass the amended version, and do so before the new Congress convenes Thursday. The House will be in session on Tuesday to take up the fiscal cliff bill the Senate approved last night, but the amended HR 6586 is not on the schedule of bills to be considered today.
By Jeff Foust on 2012 December 30 at 11:46 am ET The federal commercial launch indemnification regime—which protects commercial launch operators against third-party losses that exceed levels they must insure against—expires tomorrow, with no sign that an extension will make it through Congress in time. In November, the House passed legislation that extended the indemnification regime by two years, to December 31, 2014. However, the Senate has not yet acted on that bill, and other efforts, including proposed amendments to the Senate’s version of the defense authorization bill, also failed. The Senate will be in session again this afternoon, but the current schedule only mentions a couple of nominations, although with time likely reserved to address any effort to avert the “fiscal cliff.”
So what happens if launch indemnification isn’t extended? There are commercially licensed launches coming up in early 2013, including the first test launch of Orbital Sciences Corporation’s Antares rocket in February and the next SpaceX Falcon 9 cargo mission to the ISS in late February or early March. During a commercial space panel at a space law colloquium this fall in Washington, I asked Mat Dunn, director of legislative affairs for SpaceX, what a failure to extend indemnification would mean for the company. “I think the immediate effect would be that insurance rates would probably go up, and that would be negative for the industry from a cost perspective,” he said, adding it may deter some other companies interested in performing launches. SpaceX, though, would perform its launches regardless of the status of the indemnification extension, he said. “We’re prepared to execute our launches for our customers if the provision is extended or not.”
By Jeff Foust on 2012 December 28 at 12:00 pm ET The so-called “fiscal cliff” and its across-the-board spending cuts are set to take effect on Wednesday, and the last week has seen little progress to a resolution to at least delay those cuts. Even if there is a breakthrough in the next few days, we’re likely heading into an era of constrained budgets. Is the space community, in particular grassroots space advocates, prepared to effectively lobby for their interests? Recent efforts suggest they’re not.
One popular tool in the last year or so has been to petition the White House through the “We the People” web site. Collect 25,000 signatures in a month, and the White House promises to respond to the issue raised in that petition. And, sure enough, there’s an open petition regarding NASA. “Instead of cutting NASA’s budget, we should be growing it. Not doubling or tripling, but at least keeping its funding at the levels it has been or greater,” the petition states, making its case in two brief paragraphs. As of Friday morning, the petition was closing in on 15,000 signatures, with a week left to reach the 25,000-signature threshold for a response.
If this approach sounds familiar, it should: it’s one of several petitions filed since 2011 to in increased support for NASA, several of which reached the threshold for a response. One in September 2011 sought to reallocate defense funding to NASA, while another earlier this year wanted to “at least double” NASA’s budget. There have also been petitions on narrower space issues, like the allocation of Space Shuttle orbiters and the search for extraterrestrial life. None, it appears, has made any difference in space budgets or policy, so there’s little reason this current one, even if it makes it to the threshold for a response, will be any different.
Moreover, the petition process has arguably been abused by people seeking to air various grievances or just have a little fun. A petition calling for the government to begin work on a Death Star by 2016 received 32,788 signatures, enough to warrant an official response. (One imagines the Pentagon and OSTP arguing over who gets to take on that issue.) And, sure enough, now there’s one demanding NASA to fund a feasibility study for the USS Enteprise. Clearly, some science fiction fans want the government to resolve, once and for all, who would win a battle between the Death Star and the Enterprise.
In short, it’s very difficult to consider a petition a serious space advocacy tool. It hasn’t resulted in any change in policy to date. Moreover, wouldn’t it be embarrassing if such an effort failed to attract as many signatures as, say, one to build a Death Star?
There are, of course, other tools: a group called “Penny4NASA” seeks to roughly double NASA’s budget to one percent of the overal federal budget (i.e., one penny of each federal dollar). They’re encouraging people to contact their congressional representatives asking them to double the space agency’s budget, including offering a form on their web site to do so. Among those who have done so is one member of the new National Research Council study of NASA’s human spaceflight program, Ariel Waldman, who tweeted her support of that effort last night.
Contacting members of Congress is not a bad idea, although doing through an online form may not be the best approach, particularly in the numbers this effort has garnered to date: fewer than 7,300 people over several months. (That number includes a handful of people who used the online tool to express their opposition to such a budget increase.) Such low numbers mean that these responses are likely lost in the noise of other issues.
Worse, arguably, is the goal of a one-percent target for NASA’s budget. It’s largely an arbitrary figure, not based on the funding needs of specific programs but a general desire that the space agency is somehow entitled to a larger slice of the federal pie. Moreover, that figure is based on two variables, NASA’s budget and the overall federal budget, thus making NASA’s budget dependent on the level of spending overall instead of its specific needs and requirements. In an era where a recent report found a lack of “national consensus” on the overall goals and strategy of the space agency, asking Congress for a multi-billion-dollar blank check doesn’t sound particularly effective.
There have been more focused efforts as individuals and groups have lobbied for specific NASA programs, such as planetary science and commercial crew, that may have been more effective (until there’s a final fiscal year 2013 appropriations bill, we won’t know for certain.) Those seeking more general support for NASA, though, may want to rethink both their overall strategy and outreach tactics in a time when funding in general will be difficult to come by in the federal budget.
By Jeff Foust on 2012 December 24 at 1:44 pm ET A few items of interest related to space policy over the last few days, to tide you over the holiday celebrations:
The passing last week of Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-HI), who chaired the Senate Appropriations Committee, set off a chain reaction of events that led to Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) being selected to replace Inouye as committee chairman. Mikulski has been chairing the committee’s Commerce, Justice, and Science (CJS) subcommittee, whose oversight includes NASA, and has been influential in space policy, influence that may increase by running the full appropriations committee. A Mikulski spokesperson tells Space News that the senator plans to retain chairmanship of the CJS subcommittee in addition to chairing the full committee; Inouye chaired the defense subcommittee in addition to the full committee.
There remains no signs of progress in averting the “fiscal cliff,” including the automatic across-the-board budget cuts (aka “sequestration”) that would take effect on January 2. Last week NASA administrator Charles Bolden sent a memo to agency employees about what would happen if those cuts take effect. “I do not expect our day-to-day operations to change dramatically” immediately after the cuts take effect, he wrote, including any furloughs of employees. However, he added, “Should we have to operate under reduced funding levels for an extended period of time, we may have to consider furloughs or other actions in the future.”
An effort to rename NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center after the late Neil Armstrong appears to have stalled out in Congress. Last month, Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), the House Majority Whip, introduced HR 6612, a bill that would rename Dryden as the “Neil A. Armstrong Flight Research Center” and the Western Aeronautical Test Range as the “Hugh L. Dryden Aeronautical Test Range.” “This bill recognizes the achievements of Neil Armstrong in aerospace travel and space exploration, and highlights his important connection to Kern County,” McCarthy said in a statement when he and several colleagues introduced the bill, referring to Armstrong’s time as a test pilot there before being selected as a NASA astronaut. The bill was scheduled to be considered under suspension of the rules on Tuesday and then Wednesday of last week, but has yet to be taken up by the House.
By Jeff Foust on 2012 December 21 at 12:19 pm ET The text of the National Defense Authorization Act conference report is available online; the export control reform provisions are contained in sections 1261 through 1267, starting on page 986 of the document. The language here is different from what was included in the House version, but with the same aim: restoring to the president the authority to remove satellites and related components from the US Munitions List (USML) and thus no longer subject to the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR).
The conference report language does include a number of provisions beyond simply repealing the section of the 1999 defense authorization act that put those items on the USML. The bill bans the export of such items to China, North Korea, and “any country that is a state sponsor of terrorism,” as expected. The bill also requires the administration, at the time it submits its first so-called “38(f) request” to Congress seeking to move such an item from the USML to the Commerce Control List, to also provide a report listing any changes between its plan for moving items off the USML to its earlier “Section 1248 report” addressing the national security implications of such moves. The bill also requires that any review of Category 15 of the USML, which includes satellites and related components, include representatives of various agencies, including the Secretaries of Commerce, Defense, and State, and the Director of National Intelligence.
The inclusion of the reform language, even with those conditions and provisos, has been welcomed by export control advocates in both industry and Congress. “For too long, the makers of American satellites and their parts have gotten weaker as their foreign competitors get stronger. Today we say, ‘not anymore,’” said Rep. C.A. “Dutch” Ruppersberger (D-MD), ranking member of the House intelligence committee and someone who had been seeking satellite export control reform for several years, in a statement.
Sen. Michael Bennet (D-CO), who earlier this year introduced a standalone export control reform bill and later sought to include language in an amendment in the Senate version of the NDAA, also praised the language in the conference report. “These reforms will give our businesses a chance to compete globally while still protecting our national security interests,” he said in a statement that also included comments from Colorado space industry representatives.
Industry groups also weighed in. “By rationalizing export controls, Congress has simultaneously improved our national security and created an environment that will keep high-tech jobs here in America,” said Michael Lopez-Alegria, president of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation (CSF), in a statement. Stu Witt, chairman of the CSF, added that he hoped the provision will allow the removal of crewed suborbital vehicles, like Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo and XCOR Aerospace’s Lynx, from the USML. “These vehicles have innumerable civilian uses, and should be on the Commerce Control List, where many dual-use technologies with predominantly civilian uses are already regulated.
“For years, we have watched the U.S. lose ground against global competitors because of the largely unintentional consequences of onerous regulations on space technology for export,” said Space Foundation CEO Elliot Pulham, thanking in particular both Bennet and Sen. Mark Udall (D-CO) for their support of the reforms. “We look forward to working with the administration in 2013 to ensure American Space competitiveness is maximized while keeping sensitive tecnologies out of the wrong hands.”
“Ending this self-imposed burden on U.S. competitiveness in the global commercial satellite marketplace is critical to our national security and to ensuring the U.S. space industrial base stays second to none,” said Aerospace Industries Association president and CEO Marion Blakey.
Update 5:50 pm: More reaction to the export control reform language from the Satellite Industry Association (SIA), an organization that has also advocated for reform, now that the final version of the NDAA has been passed by the House and Senate. “By repealing an outmoded law from more than a dozen years ago, Congress has significantly aided the competitiveness of the U.S. satellite industry, a crucial driver for the success of the U.S. space and technology sectors,” said SIA president Patricia Cooper in the statement.
By Jeff Foust on 2012 December 18 at 9:19 pm ET After fighting for over a decade to reform an export control regime that they felt was hurting the ability of American companies to compete in an increasingly global market, the space industry got a major victory today as reform language was included in the final version of the defense authorization bill by House and Senate conferees. From the summary of the conference report by the Democratic caucus of the House Armed Services Committee:
Reforms satellite export control by repealing Section 1513(a) of the Strom Thurmond NDAA for FY99, which essentially restores the authority of the President to move satellites and related items from the United States Munitions List to the Commerce Control List. The provisions would prohibit the export, re-export of such items to certain countries and provides for interagency reviews and reporting requirements in order to ensure accountability with respect to the export of satellites and related items. The provisions would maintain the existing security and monitoring provisions of the Strom Thurmond Act.
Note that this doesn’t mean that satellites and related components will immediately come off the US Munitions List (USML), and thus be outside the jurisdiction of the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR). Instead, there will be a review process by the administration, which will determine what items it will seek to move off the USML, and then go through a Congressional notification process. (There may be other steps required as well, depending on the specific language of the conference report.) However, simply restoring to the president the ability to make those determinations, which had been removed by the 1999 defense authorization act, is a significant victory for advocates of export control reform and the broader domestic space industry.
By Jeff Foust on 2012 December 18 at 7:06 am ET There are signs that the White House and Congress are approaching a deal to fend off the so-called “fiscal cliff”, including the automatic across-the-board spending cuts known as sequestration. The two sides have exchanged proposals for a combination of tax increases and spending cuts to both discretionary programs and entitlements. According to the New York Times, the latest proposal by the administration would include $100 billion in cuts to non-defense discretionary programs over 10 years, and an equal amount from defense spending. That would, presumably, provide a much softer blow to NASA and other programs than the more severe cuts that sequestration would impose.
That budget debate has had an impact on planning for the administration’s 2014 budget proposal. POLITICO reports that the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has slowed work on the 2014 proposal, awaiting what happens with the 2013 budget given the ongoing fiscal cliff negotiations. In particular, federal agencies have yet to receive the “passbacks” from OMB regarding the agencies’ 2014 budget requests; those passbacks are traditionally issued around Thanksgiving. The release of the 2014 budget proposal will also likely be delayed, from early February perhaps into March.
While the fiscal cliff negotiations continue, House and Senate conferees are expected to complete work this week on a final version of a defense authorization bill, reconciling differences between the versions passed by each chamber. One item to keep an eye on is the inclusion of any export control reform language: the House included a provision in its version returning to the president the ability to take commercial satellites and related components off the US Munitions List, but the Senate did not consider an amendment to add similar language to its version.
On Monday, Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-HI) passed away at the age of 88. Inouye chaired the Senate Appropriations Committee and also its defense subcommittee. AOL Defense speculates on the reshuffling in the committee that will result, including the possibility that one senator will take over the chairmanship of the whole committee and another of the defense subcommittee. One scenario mooted by the article could have an effect on NASA: Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) could take over the defense subcommittee given that she has been active on it, even charing one hearing earlier this year in Inouye’s absence. That would mean, though, that she would have to relinquish the chair of the Commerce, Justice, and Science appropriations subcommittee, whose jurisdiction includes NASA.
By Jeff Foust on 2012 December 16 at 12:17 pm ET The last few weeks have seen a variety of views about the future of NASA, in particular its human spaceflight programs. There is little consensus in these opinions, beyond a belief that the agency’s current direction, in particular the goal laid out by President Obama of a human mission to a near Earth asteroid by 2025, is somehow unsatisfactory. That was a particular point of emphasis in the National Research Council’s recent report on NASA’s strategic direction. “Despite isolated pockets of support for a human asteroid mission, the committee did not detect broad support for an asteroid mission inside NASA, in the nation as a whole, or from the international community,†the report stated.
Another voice joining this chorus also sees issues with NASA’s asteroid mission plans, but has a different alternative in mind. “I’m excited about that because I’m a planetary scientist who loves asteroids,” said former astronaut Tom Jones of those current plans during a talk on Monday at the National Air and Space Museum, part of an ongoing series called the Space Policy and History Forum. He said, though, that those current plans appeared to be just a “default” position by the administration when it rejected previous plans for a human return to the Moon. “Today, in 2012, we’re not making very rapid progress to get people to an asteroid. The Space Launch System and Orion are not maturing rapidly enough to start missions to asteroids in 2025. So, maybe, five years after that we’ll do the first one.”
A key issue he identified for any human missions beyond Earth, be it Moon, Mars, or asteroids, is funding. “With a flat budget I don’t see how NASA pulls together even these scrabbled-together resources to do this over the next ten years,” he said, referring to proposals to develop an outpost at the Earth-Moon L2 point, perhaps using repurposed space station components. “There’s going to have to be some kind of promise of a return on investment, some kind of cash to be made for the country, increasing national wealth, from operating from beyond low Earth orbit.”
Jones, who emphasized that he was speaking only for himself, offered his own “modest proposal” for an alternative approach that combined elements of lunar and asteroid mission. “I think what we ought to do is to take these next ten years and reorient NASA to early access to space resources, with NASA as the instrument that then demonstrates commercial potential via lunar robotic and near Earth asteroid sampling,” he said.
A key difference between his proposal and the current NASA mission is that rather than send humans out to a near Earth asteroid, NASA would instead send the asteroid to astronauts in cislunar space. He cited a study by the Keck Institute of Space Studies on the feasibility of an “asteroid retrieval” mission that showed how a robotic mission could capture a 500-ton asteroid and move it into high lunar orbit. Once in lunar orbit, astronauts could then easily visit it to both study it and perhaps even work to extract resources, notably water ice and other volatiles, that would have value for other space activities.
“Why would we want to bring a rock back towards our planet?” he asked. “It’s a great destination for humans to use their talents and skills.” Such a mission would have a variety of roles, from offering a stepping stone for later human exploration missions to testing techniques for planetary defense. “It’s the only way humans are going to get to an asteroid by the mid-2020s.”
That mission would be part of a broader architecture that includes demonstrations of deep space exploration systems and material processing technologies on the ISS, robotic landers and rovers on the Moon (including commercial efforts being developed as part of the Google Lunar X PRIZE competition), and possibly lunar sample return missions, where robotic landers place samples in orbit for return to Earth on crewed Orion missions.
A key element of this approach, he said, would be the commercial exploitation of lunar and asteroid resources. A typical 500-ton asteroid, he noted, would have about 200 tons of water ice and other volatiles. “NASA guarantees that they’ll purchase tons of propellant from a provider from this object or others that are recovered,” he said. “You get commercial delivery of that water to lower the cost of deep space operations for people and robots.” That would eventually lead, he said, “to an economic expansion into cislunar space, where raw materials and solar energy are available, people are involved, commercial companies are involved, getting their own material by duplicating that initial demo that NASA did.”
Asked to summarize his concept in an elevator pitch, Jones offered a one-sentence explanation: “Make money in space and protect the planet at the same time.”
Would such an approach, though, put NASA in competition with companies like Planetary Resources (for whom Jones is an advisor) that are interested in extracting asteroid resources on their own? “I applaud that kind of innovation and spirit,” Jones said. “The danger to them is that they lose their shirts” if they fail. “NASA risks becoming irrelevant if they don’t get into this realm.”
By Jeff Foust on 2012 December 14 at 6:03 pm ET  An unlikely sequestration scenario. This illustration was included in an AIA press release Thursday about its study on the economic impact of sequestration-triggered budgets cuts at NASA. We’re now only two and a half weeks away from the dreaded “fiscal cliff,” which includes significant budget cuts (aka “sequestration”) for NASA and other federal agencies. While discussions continue, there’s no sign that the White House and Congress are particularly close to a solution to avoid those automatic budget cuts.
Although the size of the cuts has been known for some time—an 8.2% cut across NASA’s various budget accounts, for a total of nearly $1.5 billion in cuts compared to the agency’s fiscal year 12 budget—the agency has not disclosed how it would implement those cuts, making it difficult to understand what programs, field centers, or contractors could be particularly affected by the cuts. However, the Aerospace Industries Association (AIA) has attempted to measure the fiscal and employment impact of the cuts on the overall national, as well as various state, economies in a report the organization released this week.
“Sequestration budget cuts… are the single greatest threat to our space programs’ continued success,” the AIA report, which also includes NOAA, warns. “Such a deep and reckless cut to these agencies would senselessly jeopardize U.S. space leadership and stifle exactly the kind of investment in innovation that our economy needs.”
The report’s basic conclusion: the cuts to NASA alone would result in a $2.8 billion reduction in Gross National Product and the loss of nearly 20,700 jobs. Texas would feel the biggest impact of any single state, with a loss in total output of more than $750 million and 5,600 jobs lost. It’s followed closely by California, with nearly $700 million in lost output and nearly 4,600 jobs. Rounding out the top five were Colorado, Maryland, and Alabama.
The report doesn’t go much into the methodology of its analysis, but it’s based on an earlier study that the AIA released, performed by Stephen S. Fuller of George Mason University, that took a broader look at the effects of sequestration on the economy. That report used an economic impact model called IMPLAN to convert the reduced federal spending into impacts on the economy and reduced jobs. It’s worth noting that while the press release about the report said that “over 20,000 NASA contractor jobs” could be lost, the original study’s job numbers included “indirect” and “induced” job losses, at suppliers or other subcontractors and in the general economy, respectively. (An AIA spokesperson confirmed Friday that this methodology was also used in the new report.) All the job losses related to NASA spending cuts would be in the private sector, as NASA is prohibited under its current authorization act from laying off civil servants through fiscal year 2013.
The exact economic and employment impacts will depend on exactly how NASA implements sequestration cuts, and many hope that this will be an academic exercise, with a solution to avoid sequestration found before the looming deadline. However, in even that case there’s likely to be some kind of spending reductions for non-defense discretionary programs like NASA—hopefully not severe enough to stop Curiosity before it stumbles across its Martian surprise party.
By Jeff Foust on 2012 December 13 at 1:13 pm ET Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX), the incoming chairman of the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee, announced yesterday the list of Republican members who will serve on the committee in the next Congress. The list includes many returning members, including former chairmen Ralph Hall (R-TX) and JAmes Sensenbrenner (R-WI). Among the others coming back are space subcommittee chairman Steven Palazzo (R-MS) and current space subcommittee members Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), Frank Lucas (R-OK), Michael McCaul (R-TX), Scott Rigell (R-VA), and Mo Brooks (R-AL).
The list includes several new committee members, either existing members of Congress being assigned to the committee or newly-elected members. In the former category is Rep. Bill Posey (R-FL), whose district will now include the entire Space Coast. (He previously shared the region with Rep. Sandy Adams (R-FL), who served on the space subcommittee; Florida redistricting moved her closer to Orlando and into a primary against Rep. John Mica (R-FL), who defeated her.) Posey’s appointment ensures that the region will continue to have a voice on the committee. “Space Coast residents will continue to have a strong advocate in Congress for human space flight, space exploration and technological innovation,” Posey said in a statement Thursday.
Among the new members of Congress joining the committee is Rep.-elect Jim Bridenstine (R-OK). After leaving active duty as a pilot in the US Navy, he served as executive director of the Tulsa Air and Space Museum, spearheading a long-shot—and ultimately unsuccessful—effort to have NASA award one of the Space Shuttle orbiters to the city. He also organized an air show in Tulsa in April 2010 that featured flights by rocket-powered X-Racer planes of the Rocket Racing League, and owned one of the teams in the league.
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