By Jeff Foust on 2012 November 9 at 6:14 am ET What do you do when the candidate who won the election was the one whose budget cut your favorite program? In the case of The Planetary Society, the answer is to congratulate him—and ask him to reverse those cuts. In a statement Thursday, the organization congratulated President Obama on his reelection Tuesday while asking him to restore funding for NASA’s planetary science program in the forthcoming 2014 budget proposal.
“As our economy continues to rebound, we call on President Obama to invest in our future by making a commitment to increase NASA’s capacity to pursue groundbreaking robotic and human space missions over the next four years,” the society’s statement reads. “The first step along this path would be to restore NASA’s Planetary Science funding to $1.5 billion in the upcoming 2014 budget.” That restored funding, the organization said, could be used to support Mars sample return mission planning, as well as for another flagship-class mission, to Jupiter’s icy moon Europa. Such work, it added, would also “create high-tech, high-skilled jobs across the country.”
The Planetary Society has been an outspoken opponent of the administration’s proposed 20-percent cut in planetary science funding, from $1.5 to $1.2 billion in the 2013 budget proposal, including its “Save Our Science” (SOS) initiative. The House and Senate have partially restored that funding in their versions of appropriations bills that include NASA, but a final spending bill awaits negotiations in the coming weeks on far larger issues on federal spending in an effort to avoid the automatic spending cuts of sequestration that would take effect in January.
By Jeff Foust on 2012 November 8 at 5:41 am ET The day after 2012 general election, a campaign of a different sort formally got underway: the race to chair the House Science Committee. With current chairman Rep. Ralph Hall (R-TX) term-limited by House Republican rules from remaining the chairman, three members are vying to take over the position. On Wednesday, Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-WI)—the current committee vice-chairman who also chaired the committee from 1997 until 2001—formally announced his candidacy for the job.
“I am seeking the chairmanship for the House Science Committee because our nation’s science and space policy is at a critical juncture,” he said in a statement. Later, he specifically cited NASA and commercial space policy as an area of interest to him: “Specifically, we must responsibly fund our research and development programs, refocus NASA and foster the developing private space industry, and put the United States back on a path toward being a leader in STEM education.”
Sensenbrenner is expected to face competition from two other members: Reps. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) and Lamar Smith (R-TX). Smith currentlt chairs the House Judiciary Committee but, like Hall, is being term-limited out of that position. He confirmed to The Hill that he’s interested in seeking the science committee chairmanship, putting an emphasis on space issues. “It is important that NASA have a unifying mission,” he said. “Even though it has been almost 40 years since man last set foot on the moon, we should continue to shoot for the stars.”
By Jeff Foust on 2012 November 7 at 12:49 pm ET Last night’s results indicated that something close to the status quo will reign in space policy in the near future. The balance of power remains unchanged: the Obama Administration will be in office for the next four years, while the Senate remains in Democratic hands and the House in Republican hands for the next two. There will be some second-order changes: ScienceInsider notes that about a fourth of the House Science Committee’s current membership won’t be back next year, and the committee will need a new chairman with Rep. Ralph Hall (R-TX) term-limited under Republican rules. And there will also be speculation about changes at NASA, including how long current administrator Charles Bolden will remain on the job.
However, just because there hasn’t been any major changes on either end of Pennslyvania Avenue doesn’t mean, as a SPACE.com article put it today, that “NASA will likely continue along its current path” towards a human mission to a near Earth asteroid by 2025. While that goal may remain on the books, the ability of NASA to achieve that goal will strongly depend on what happens over the next eight weeks regarding negotiations about the 2013 budget and efforts to avoid sequestration. Without a deal, eight weeks from today—January 2, 2013—the automatic spending cuts known as sequestration will go into effect, cutting NASA’s budget by over eight percent. Even if a deal is reached, the space agency may face spending cuts, although likely in a more targeted fashion than those implemented by sequestration. Those cuts could certainly impede NASA’s ability to continue on its current path. In other words, don’t look too far ahead just yet.
By Jeff Foust on 2012 November 7 at 6:48 am ET Former NASA astronaut Jose Hernández (D) failed in his bid to represent California’s 10th district in the House of Representatives, losing to incumbent Rep. Jeff Denham (R) 54-46%. Hernández also lost to Denham in the district’s open primary in June, finishing a distant second with several other candidates on the ballot; the margin in the general election was smaller. The race was a “caustic” campaign, in the words of local newspaper the Modesto Bee, with money from national campaign funds flowing into the race.
Down in southern California, Rep. Brad Sherman (D) easily won reelection over fellow Rep. Howard Berman (D) in a rare general election between two incumbents of the same party. Both candidates for Calfornia’s 30th district have been active on export control reform issues for the space industry in the past.
By Jeff Foust on 2012 November 7 at 12:23 am ET Two-time former congressman Nick Lampson (D) is losing in his bid to return to Congress, where he served on the House Science Committee’s space subcommittee. CNN has called the election for the 14th district for his opponent, Randy Weber (R); Weber was leading 54-45% with a little over half the vote in.
By Jeff Foust on 2012 November 6 at 8:20 pm ET Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL), running in perhaps the biggest space-related Congressional race in this campaign, appears to be cruising to victory tonight. With a little over 50% of the votes tallied, Nelson had a 57-41% lead over Rep. Connie Mack IV (R-FL), his Republican challenger. CNN has already declared him the winner, as has the Tampa Bay Times. With the retirement of Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX), with whom Nelson had worked on a variety of space policy issues, Nelson will effectively be the leading voice on space issues in the Senate in the next Congress.
By Jeff Foust on 2012 November 6 at 12:58 pm ET Regardless of the outcome of today’s election, there will be some key challenges for space policy in the next four years. Can NASA’s current approach to human spaceflight and space exploration be sustained given the nation’s fiscal challenges? If not, what should replace it? At a forum last week on Capitol Hill organized by the Marshall Institute, panelists offered their own prescriptions for a revamped, more sustainable approach to space exploration.
“Right now, I fear that our national leadership is on the verge of canceling all deep space human exploration,” warned Charles Miller, president of NextGen Space LLC and the former senior advisor for commercial space at NASA. “We are on the edge of a cliff. No matter who wins, we are probably looking at a return to a Clinton-era policy where human spaceflight is the ISS and only the ISS. Deep space exploration is on the verge of being deferred for another decade as a luxury we can’t afford.”
Miller, in his speech (his prepared remarks are published in this week’s issue of The Space Review) argued that the “why” of space exploration should be to expand human civilization (featuring free markets and free people) across the solar system. He warned, though, that this goal alone wasn’t sufficient to merit support from the American public. “This was Newt Gingrich’s mistake in Florida in late January,” Miller said. “Newt mistook the repeated standing ovations he received from the hundreds of space industry people in that room in Florida for something that the far larger electorate cared about. We all need to learn from his mistake.”
He called for a “pragmatic” alternative strategy that he outlined in a five-point plan that leverages the capability of the private sector, particularly in commercial space transportation, and alternative contracting models like that used in NASA’s Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program. That, he argued, had national security as well as commercial and exploration benefits. “Our national security is harmed because US launch vehicles are more expensive, and less reliable, because they fly less often,” he said. “Our national security is harmed when it depends on Russian rocket engines.”
Two other panelists, while not offering plans as detailed as Miller’s, also made the case for more pragmatic approaches for space exploration. “I am very concerned about calls for bold missions,” said Adkins, president of Adkins Strategies, LLC and a former staff director of the House Science Committee’s space subcommittee. “I’m worried that a bold vision that says that you have to do something like Apollo is akin to swinging for the fences, where, yes, you might get a home run, but it’s more likely you’re going to strike out, particularly in this environment.”
Any program, Adkins said, needs to be broken up into smaller, more feasible steps—“singles, doubles, and triples†in his analogy—to maintain momentum. “I think the greatest threat to human space exploration is to continue to have unrealistic expectations and to continue to go nowhere.”
James Vedda, author of the recent book Becoming Spacefarers (reviewed here), argued for the importance of building up infrastructure to sustain human exploration and development over the long term. He noted that the settlement of the American West didn’t really take off until some key infrastructure, such as railroads and telegraphs, were put in place starting in the mid 19th century. “The same is going to be true for space development,” he said.
“What we did in Apollo was brilliant; it achieved its goals,” Vedda said. “But it was not something put in place to spread humanity across the solar system.” To accomplish that goal, he said, we need to move to turn cislunar space into an “industrial park,” building up experience and also creating value that can lead to the next steps. “We don’t want to do this like an athletic competition, where you have this finish line” after which you go home. “We want to have things that have staying power.”
Beyond Miller’s five-point plan the panelists didn’t propose much in the way of specific initiatives to implement the changes they would like to see. None saw the need for major structural policy changes, like the creation of a new National Space Council. In addition, a NASA-specific BRAC to reduce the agency’s overhead might be useful but would be a “political nonstarter,” as Adkins put it. He did suggest it may be more feasible to do a “federal BRAC” involving NASA and other agencies, like the Department of Energy and NIST. “At the end of it, NASA could be a net beneficiary,” he suggested.
“These are very challenging times. There is a path through this,” Adkins said. “Budget will constrain policy and drive it.”
By Jeff Foust on 2012 November 6 at 6:24 am ET On Friday, the National Research Council released the list of committee members for a new review of the US human spaceflight program. This review was mandated by Congress back in the 2010 NASA authorization act, which called on NASA to contract with the National Academies in 2012 for “a review of the goals, core capabilities, and direction of human space flight” based the goals set in various legislation dating back to the 1958 Space Act. The provision in the 2010 act called for a “broad spectrum of participation with representatives of a range of disciplines, backgrounds, and generations, including civil, commercial, international, scientific, and national security interests.”
The committee list does appear to meet that “broad spectrum” criterion. The co-chairs are Jonathan Lunine, a planetary scientist at Cornell University; and William Perry, the former secretary of defense in the Clinton Administration. Other members include former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, James Cartwright; Andrew Kohut, president of the Pew Research Center; and Ariel Waldman, founder of Spacehack.org who has also been, among other things, “a sci-fi movie gadget columnist for Engadget.” A diverse group, indeed.
The composition of the committee has raised a few eyebrows—and questions—from observers. There’s a strong emphasis in the committee in the area of surveys, with several other members besides Kohut with expertise in that area. There’s a mix of people from the physical and social sciences as well. Notably absent, though, are any representatives from the aerospace industry itself (one member, Franklin Martin, is a consultant who provides “independent review services for NASA spaceflight projects”), either from the major aerospace companies or the smaller entrepreneurial firms. There’s also only one person on the committee who has flown in space: former astronaut Bryan O’Connor, now an independent consultant. The absence of such people can be seen as a weakness, or a willingness to take a different approach to such a study. (There is a public comment period on the committee’s membership that is open until Thanksgiving.)
There’s also the question of how useful the committee will be. The study, according to the committee’s website, will provide “findings, rationale, prioritized recommendations, and decision rules that could enable and guide future planning for U.S. human space exploration.” Similar language in the 2010 authorization act gave the perception that this is a “decadal” study for human spaceflight analogous to the ones done in the sciences. The usefulness of such a study has been debated in the past, with mixed opinions about how well it could guide future programs. The committee’s final report is due out in May 2014.
By Jeff Foust on 2012 November 4 at 11:23 am ET As the 2012 campaign (finally) reaches its conclusion, most of the attention in space policy circles has been on the presidential campaign, as people attempted to compare and contrast the positions of President Barack Obama and Gov. Mitt Romney. However, there are a number of Senate and House races whose outcomes might also play a key role in shaping space issues in 2013 and beyond, or at least have some space-related angle to them. A quick overview of some of the more key, competitive races:
Florida Senate: Perhaps the biggest space-related congressional race is the one for the Senate in Florida, as Sen. Bill Nelson (D) seeks reelection against challenger Rep. Connie Mack IV (R). Nelson, along with Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX), played a key role in 2010 in crafting the human spaceflight policy compromise enacted in the NASA authorization act that year. However, with Hutchison not running for reelection, a Nelson defeat could leave that plan without a dedicated champion in the Senate—and perhaps Congress as a whole.
Recent polls, though, appear to show Nelson has a good chance of winning a third term. Those polls show Nelson with leads of between 3 and 13 percentage points; the two most recent give him six- and nine-point leads. (Another not included in the RCP list, by Reuters/Ipsos, gives Nelson a 12-point lead.)
Space has made a cameo appearance as an issue in the Nelson-Mack race. In an October 17 debate between the candidates, Nelson charged that Mack was “the only member of the Florida delegation that voted against a bill to help NASA.” That was a reference to the 2010 NASA authorization bill, which Mack was the only House member from Florida delegation to vote against it. (PolitiFact recently investigated Nelson’s claim and found it “mostly true”, confirming the voting record but noting that a vote against the bill wasn’t necessarily a vote against NASA.) Mack, son of former Florida Sen. Connie Mack III and great-grandson of Hall of Fame baseball manager Connie Mack, doesn’t specifically touch upon space on the issues section of his website. Nelson, meanwhile, identifies “maintaining a robust space program” as one of his priorities on his campaign website.
Texas 14th Congressional District: One of the few competitive House races in Texas is the seat being vacated by Rep. Ron Paul (R). The Democratic candidate is a familiar name in the space community: Nick Lampson, who in two previous stints in Congress represented districts that included the Johnson Space Center, and served on the House Science Committee’s space subcommittee. (The 14th district does not include JSC proper but, in the latest redistricting, does incorporate much of the area immediately south of the center.) Lampson is running against Republican Randy Weber, a member of the state legislature.
Polling data for this race is hard to find, although one mid-October poll gave Weber a three-point lead over Lampson. However, Lampson has won several key endorsements, including, last week, from the Houston Chronicle. Lampson, on his campaign website, devotes a section to NASA, calling for “robust funding” for the agency and continued support for human spaceflight, “including full utilization of the ISS through partnerships with academia and industry.” Weber’s site makes no mention of space among the various issues he discusses there.
California 10th Congressional District: This central California district is not a hotbed of space activity, but it has attracted attention because of one of the candidates: former NASA astronaut Jose Hernández, a Democrat running against Republican incumbent Rep. Jeff Denham. Polling data is again scarce for this district: a poll in September by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee gave Hernández a two-point lead over Denham, 46% to 44%. (Denham handily beat Hernández in the open primary in the district in June, but with several other candidates on the ballot.) While neither candidate talks about space (other than a passing reference, in a historical context, by Hernández on technology investment), Hernández is perhaps the only candidate whose campaign logo resembles a shuttle mission patch.
California 30th Congressional District: Thanks to redistricting and California’s open primary system, this race is unusual in that it’s pitting two Democratic incumbents agains each other: Reps. Howard Berman and Brad Sherman. Both have been active in the past on export control reform to aid the space industry, including Berman’s co-sponsorship of an amendment to the House defense authorization bill approved in May. In a bruising (nearly literally) campaign, though, Sherman has held the lead in polls, including a 13-point lead in a September poll, although the race may be tightening.
By Jeff Foust on 2012 November 2 at 7:08 am ET Florida radio station WMFE interviewed Rep. Bill Posey (R-FL) about Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s views on space policy. Posey does cover some highlights of Romney campaign’s space policy, including providing “clearer goals” for NASA. “Romney/Ryan recognize that NASA has long been asked to do too much with too little,” Posey said in the ten-minute interview. “The President’s goals, as you may know, are vague, to somewhere, someday: maybe an asteroid, maybe a meteorite, maybe this, maybe that, but there’s no goals,” he claimed, adding that money NASA spends on Earth sciences, particularly climate change, is misspent given there are “16 or 17 other agencies” that also study the subject. “Romney/Ryan, and Bill Posey, believe that NASA needs to stay more keenly focused on space.”
Posey said that a Romney Administration would support the Kennedy Space Center. “Kennedy Space Center and Cape Kennedy [sic] are the epicenter of space,” he said. “I don’t think Romney/Ryan would do anything to undermine it.” However, as the Romney campaign has indicated previously, Posey said that support would not come in the form of additional NASA funding. “I think the NASA budget right now, NASA could live with, if their mission was clearly defined, if they weren’t involved in so many different things, in so many different directions,” he said.
Posey spent part of the interview talking about some of his own views, including his support for the Space Leadership Act introduced in Congress in September. Posey doesn’t say if a Romney Administration would support the bill, but drops a hint that it might. “There have been over two dozen programs started and stopped before they reached their goals in the last few decades,” Posey said, recounting one of the selling points for the legislation. “I think Romney and Ryan, both, anticipate changing that.”
Posey dropped one interesting item at the end. He directed his staff, he said, to look “specifically at space’s impact on Congressman Ryan’s district, and there’s space industry right in his district.” (Ryan represents a district in southeast Wisconsin not typically identified as an aerospace hotbed.) It was unclear from the interview if Posey provided that analysis unsolicited to the Republican vice presidential candidate, or if it had been requested by the campaign.
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