After Republican vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan gave a speech in Orlando where he briefly discussed space, a local television station, WKMG, sought more details from him about what a Romney Administration might do in space, but didn’t learn much. “We want to engage with NASA, commercial technology, the private sector, and our national security to come up with a space program mission,” Ryan said when asked about what the campaign’s policy meant for programs like Orion, SLS, and commercial servicing of the ISS. When pressed further about whether SLS and ISS servicing in particular could be cut, Ryan answered, “I don’t know the answer to that.”
The journal Nature, meanwhile, has taken a lengthy look at science policy during the Obama Administration, including, briefly, space policy. “Human space flight and many other elements of NASA’s mission were never priorities of the Obama administration,” the article concludes, citing cuts in astrophysics and planetary sciences programs (compared to increases in earth sciences). One passage in particular, about the administration’s 2010 effort to cancel Constellation and make other changes to NASA, may be of interest:
“This was a major policy pronouncement but it was revealed in a budget release,†says Scott Pace, director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University in Washington DC. Normally, an administration prepares Congress for such a change — but Obama’s sudden move led to what Pace calls a “bruising, year-long fight†with lawmakers in both parties. Eventually, several parts of the Constellation programme were reinstated. But by then, NASA had become an agency adrift, left to the mercy of parochial interests in Congress.
The content of that paragraph isn’t particularly controversial, given the wide acknowledgement that the timing of the administration’s space policy changes was less than optimal; few would disagree that a “bruising” fight on the changes ensued in Congress thereafter. However, the article doesn’t note that Scott Pace, besides heading the Space Policy Institute at GWU, is also chairman of the Romney Space Policy Advisory Group, as noted in this statement last week tied to the release of the Romney campaign’s space policy white paper.
The Orlando Sentinel, though, is disappointed with both campaigns’ space policies. In an editorial today, it calls on both campaigns to provide more details about what they would do on the issue if elected. “Voters who consider space a national priority should demand details from both campaigns,” it concludes. However, not many voters, even in Florida, likely consider space “a national priority.”
Given that difference, it’s not surprising that Gingrich is, perhaps, a little disappointed in the space policy white paper the Romney campaign issued Saturday. “The Romney plan for space starts to move in the right direction but could be much more robust,” he told NBC News on Sunday. “We could move into space much, much faster than we are. Romney is better than [President] Obama on space but could be bolder and more visionary.”
Obama’s Florida campaign has responded with a statement criticizing Ryan for his past votes and budget proposals. “Congressman Ryan has repeatedly voted against NASA funding, and the Romney-Ryan budget’s cuts – if applied across the board – would cut funding for space exploration programs by 19 percent,” campaign spokesman Danny Kanner said in the emailed statement. The latter is a reference to proposals by the House Budget Committee, chaired by Ryan, that would cut non-defense discretionary spending by 19 percent by 2014, according to the White House’s Office of Management and Budget. The claim that Ryan “repeatedly voted against NASA funding” is a reference to votes cast by Ryan again NASA authorization acts in 2008 and 2010. These bills, though, were authorization bills, and did not directly providing funding for NASA, instead authorizing spending levels rarely met by later appropriations bills.
The statement also claims that the Romney campaign for being “mostly silent” on NASA, but does not mention the space policy document released yesterday by the campaign that contains the most detail to date on what a Romney Administration would do in space.
The space program strengthens the entrepreneurial spirit and commercial competitiveness. It launches new industries and new technologies. President Obama campaigned quite a bit around Florida on the Space Coast in 2008 and made lots of promises. This is one of those other broken promises. We have presided over a dismantling of the space program over the last four years. He has put the space program on a path where we are conceding our global position as the unequivocal leader in space. Today, if we want to send an astronaut to the space station, we have to pay the Russians to take them there. [boos] China may someday be looking down on us from the Moon. That’s unacceptable. Mitt Romney and I believe that America must lead in space. [applause] Mitt Romney and I believe we need a mission for NASA, a mission for space program, and we also believe that this is an integral part of our national security.
Since it came up both in Ryan’s speech and the white paper, it’s worth remembering that the reliance on the Russians for access to the ISS is something that predates the Obama Administration: under the Bush Administration’s Vision for Space Exploration and NASA’s implementation of it, there was always a planned gap of several years between the retirement of the shuttle (in 2010) and the introduction of a replacement transportation system (by 2014 in the original VSE documents, a date that was slipping to the right as NASA worked on Orion and Ares 1.)
Also, as in the white paper, Ryan doesn’t indicate what the “mission for NASA” should be, other than that it should be a different one than under the current administration.
Unfortunately, President Obama has failed to deliver a coherent policy for human space exploration and space security. As a result, he has created uncertainty and confusion within U.S. industry and the international community. The President’s disjointed collection of scientific projects lack guiding principles, plausible objectives, or a roadmap for long-run success. They also have left American astronauts to hitch rides into space on Russian spacecraft. America’s capabilities are eroding, and with each passing year will become more difficult to rebuild.
I will reverse this course and set a clear roadmap for space exploration. NASA will retain the intellectual capital to conduct research and to develop new generations of spacecraft for government missions that are not commercially viable, but it will promptly transition out of routine space operations in low Earth orbit as private sector capabilities mature. In improving the competitiveness of U.S. industry, government can play important supporting roles as a steady patron of R&D, an enlightened regulator, and a first buyer or anchor tenant for space goods and services. We will have a space program worthy of a great nation — one that strengthens our national security, builds peaceful engagements with other space-faring nations, and promotes the creation of a growing private sector for space commerce that will make America even stronger in the 21st century.
in the paper, Romney outlines four priorities he would have for space policy if elected, many of which are similar to comments his campaign provided to ScienceDebate earlier this month. One would be to give NASA “clearer priorities”, reiterating previous comments in his ScienceDebate answer that NASA does not require more money. Romney would also place an emphasis on international partnerships by being “clear about the nation’s space objectives and will invite friends and allies to cooperate with America in achieving mutually beneficial goals.” He includes an emphasis on national security space, calling for a “robust” program including “ehe development of capabilities that defend and increase the resilience of space assets,” again paralleling his ScienceDebate comments. A final priority will be to revitalize the space industry; he “will work to ease trade limitations, as appropriate, on foreign sales of U.S. space goods and will work to expand access to new markets.”
The document also includes a specific discussion of commercial space activities. In it, the Romney campaign says NASA will lead the way in human space exploration, but “will look whenever possible to the private sector to provide repeatable space-based services” like cargo and crew transportation to low Earth orbit. The private sector will concentrate on “commercially viable activities — from satellite launches to space tourism to new businesses and industries that U.S. entrepreneurs will no doubt create if provided a friendly environment for doing so.”
The white paper reiterates a proposal that Romney first discussed in Florida in January, that he would bring together experts from various disciplines to develop new goals for NASA. “He will bring together all the stakeholders — from NASA, from the Air Force, from our leading universities, and from commercial enterprises — to set goals, identify missions, and define a pathway forward that is guided, coherent, and worthy of our great nation.’
The document features as much attention to the perceived failings of the Obama Administration’s space policy as its own plans, however. “Over the past four years, the Obama Administration, through poor policy and outright negligence, has badly weakened one of the hallmarks of American leadership and ingenuity — our nation’s space program,” it states. Among its other claims: “For the first time since the dawn of the Space Age, the United States has no clear plan for putting its own astronauts into space.” (Presumably it considers neither Orion and SLS, nor commercial crew efforts, as “clear”; neither are discussed in the document.) The White House is also blamed for cost and schedule problems with national security space programs and for “poor management of programs, its indifference to the industrial base, and the lack of investment in leading edge technological improvements” that have eroded the capabilities of the aerospace industry in the US.
Thursday afternoon four Republican members of the House of Representatives formally unveiled legislation that they claim will depoliticize NASA. The “Space Leadership Preservation Act” (sometimes called just the Space Leadership Act) would make a number of changes to how NASA is run, including the establishment of a board of directors and a fixed ten-year term for the NASA administrator. Those and other changes, the bill’s sponsors argue, would provide stability to an organization that has gone though changes in recent years that have resulted in canceled programes and wasted money.
“We’re introducing this legislation today to restore the NASA we know and love,” said Rep. John Culberson (R-TX), the lead sponsor for the bill, at a press conference outside the US Capitol. “The NASA that we know is capable of maintaining that world leadership in space exploration, if we would just get the politics out of NASA, allow them to do what they do best, to allow NASA to be led by the scientists, the engineers, the astronauts, the professionals that have made that agency an extraordinary place.”
The legislation would establish a Board of Directors whose members would be appointed by the White House and Congress. The board would be responsible for developing a budget proposal for NASA that would be delivered simultaneously to both the White House and Congress, and also selecting nominees for the posts of administrator, deputy administrator, and CFO. The President would select one of the nominees provided by the board for those posts; the administrator, under this model, would serve a single ten-year term. NASA would also have power to perform multi-year procurements for launch vehicles and spacecraft under the bill.
“The status quo has to change,” said co-sponsor Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA). The bill takes elements from other agencies—like the ten-year administrator’s term from the FBI, and the board of directors from the NSF—to provide that change, he argued. The bill “is an effort to start a national conversation on this whereby we can preserve, energize, and enhance the space program.”
This approach, the bill’s sponsors argued, would give NASA stability and protect it from sudden changes in policies; several cited the Obama Administration’s move to cancel the Constellation program in 2010 as one example. “The administration’s canceling of the Constellation program, after investing nearly $9 billion and five years of development, is the perfect example of why these changes are needed,” said Rep. Bill Posey (R-FL), a co-sponsor of the bill. He added that bill would ensure that “recent success stories with commercial crew programs will continue on a positive trajectory.”
The bill “could be called the ‘Neil Armstrong Leadership Act,'” suggested Rep. Pete Olson (R-TX), citing the late Apollo 11’s concerns after the current administration sought to cancel Constellation. “Neil Armstrong became outraged. This bill takes cares of the problems Neil Armstrong was so concerned about.”
But why introduce this bill now, so late in the current Congress? The House is wrapping up work today and expected to then go on recess until after the November elections. The limited time available once members return is likely to be devoted to dealing with the FY2013 budget and seeking a solution to avoid the automatic spending cuts that would go into effect in January under sequestration.
“We are offering the bill today because we want this, I hope, to become a part of the debate in the presidential campaign,” said Culberson. He added that that they’ve been promised a hearing by House Science Committee chairman Rep. Ralph Hall (R-TX). “We’ve encountered wide-ranging and very deep support for the concepts behind this bill.” He added that Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) is “keenly interested” in supporting the bill in the Senate. Wolf, meanwhile, held open the possibility of the bill becoming law “by March or April of next year” when the continuing resolution that will fund the government for first six months of fiscal year 2013 ends.
But the prospects of the bill’s passage, or its signing by the President, remain unclear. For all the talk about getting “the politics out of NASA”, all of the current co-sponsors of the bill are Republicans. Another Houston-area member, Rep. Gene Green (D-TX), told the Houston Chronicle that while he was interested in the legislation, he had not been contacted during its development. “It sounded like they just wanted Republicans on it; they didn’t want it to be bipartisan,” he told the Chronicle.
It’s also unclear whether any president, regardless of party, would support a bill that transfers some the of executive branch’s power to Congress. Eight of the 11 members of the proposed board would be selected by Congress (three by the majority and one by the minority in each house), giving it a majority over the selection of nominees for administrator and in the development of the budget. Congress would also get to see the resulting budget submission, which today, as for most other agencies, goes only to the Office of Management and Budget. (OMB would still be free to alter it in the administration’s overall budget proposal, but Congress would be able to see what changed.) What would a president of either party gain by agreeing to a proposal like that?
Four members of the House of Representatives will appear at a press conference this afternoon outside the Capitol to announce new legislation that they claim will “change business as usual at NASA and result in a more stable and more accountable space program.” Reps. John Culberson (R-TX), Frank Wolf (R-VA), Bill Posey (R-FL), and Pete Olson (R-TX) plan to discuss the “Space Leadership Act” at the 1:30pm press conference; the announcement also indicates that Reps. Lamar Smith (R-TX) and James Sensenbrenner (R-WI) are also co-sponors of the bill.
The announcement provides no details about the legislation, but in the past some of these members have talked about legislation to provide “continuity” for the space agency by giving the NASA administrator a 10-year term and giving the Office of Management and Budget “less input” into the budget development process. However, introducing such legislation so late in the current Congress makes it highly unlikely it will progress very far this time around.
The Cleveland Plain Dealer reports that the House will take action today on legislation that would give ownership to Apollo-era astronauts of some artifacts from those missions in their possession.The bill, HR 4158, was introduced by House Science Committee chairman Rep. Ralph Hall (R-TX) in March after several events where NASA asserted it had ownership of items that these former astronauts had sought to sell, including a checklist Apollo 13’s Jim Lovell had planned to auction. The bill will give “full ownership” of any artifact received by any astronaut in the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs, with a specific exclusion for lunar rocks and other lunar material.
The bill is one of 27 listed for consideration today by the House under suspension of the rules, which limits debate but requires a two-thirds majority for passage. The vote won’t take place until this evening.
In her speech at the AIAA Space 2012 conference Tuesday, NASA deputy administrator Lori Garver mentioned that NASA had just delivered to Congress a “comprehensive report outlining our destinations” for human exploration of the solar system. That report, formally titled “NASA Exploration Destinations, Goals, and International Collaboration”, is now available on NASA’s web site. However, for those who have been following NASA’s exploration plans, there’s not much, if anything, new in this ten-page document, as it reiterates plans for continued utilization of the ISS, a human mission to a near Earth asteroid in the mid-2020s and to the “Mars system” in the mid-2030s.
Curiously, a Wall Street Journal article played up a perceived interest in human lunar exploration. The report delivered to Congress, the Journal reported, “includes a section focusing on the scientific benefits of establishing a long-term human presence on the lunar surface.” Yet there is hardly any mention of the Moon in the 180-day report, including nothing on a lunar base. (The reporter may have been confusing the 180-day report with the earlier “Voyages” report, which does discuss the benefits of and requirements for human lunar exploration.)
The Journal article also claims that Garver said that “an unspecified mission to the moon is tentatively scheduled as early as 2017.” That is simply the first Orion/SLS mission, designated EM-1, which would send an uncrewed Orion around the Moon in 2017. EM-2, the first crewed Orion mission, would follow in 2021, also on a circumlunar trajectory. However, in a panel session Tuesday afternoon at the Space 2012 conference, NASA associate administrator Bill Gerstenmaier said that NASA was looking at what other things could be done on those missions, such as visiting a Lagrange point. “We’re in the process of doing those trades to see what makes sense,” he said.
