By Jeff Foust on 2012 April 13 at 10:47 am ET The National Space Society plans to increase its efforts to advocate for NASA’s human spaceflight programs in the near future, but will also act as a watchdog for at least one element of that effort, the space advocacy organization’s executive director said Thursday.
Paul Damphousse, who became NSS’s executive director early this year, told the audience at the Space Access ’12 conference in Phoenix that he would seek to invigorate the organization’s outreach efforts with respect to NASA’s programs. “NSS could have a done a little bit better job in the last couple of years” advocating for policies, he said. “One of the things at the top of my list is to bring back a strong advocacy role.”
That advocacy, he said, would include supporting NASA’s efforts on commercial crew transportation development. “We are big supporters of commercial,” he said, both for orbital vehicle development as well as the ongoing work by several suborbital vehicle companies. “We are engaging the Hill pretty regularly on the fact that, if nothing else, funding must remain for commercial crew because that is going to be the only thing that will get us off from relying on foreign providers to access the International Space Station.”
Damphousse said the NSS also supported [see update below] the development of the Space Launch System (SLS) heavy-lift rocket and Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle (MPCV). “It is now the law, and they are the programs of record,” he said. However, he said the organization would watch those programs closely to ensure the remain on cost and schedule, so they “certainly do not siphon funds away from other programs.”
Policy issues will be an emphasis for the organization’s annual conference, the International Space Development Conference, which will take place in Washington, DC, next month. Both NASA administrator Charles Bolden and deputy administrator Lori Garver (a former NSS executive director herself) are among those planning to speak at the conference. Damphousse said the NSS would also use the conference to roll its proposed roadmap for space exploration.
Update: Paul Damphousse sent me an email over the weekend requesting a clarification on the above paragraph regarding the claim that the NSS “supported” SLS and MPCV. He writes:
We have taken a very measured approach to ensure people understand that 1) these ARE now the programs of record and 2) the NSS is not taking the role of “bomb-thrower†in attacking something that is in fact the LAW, but rather a position that–
1. the programs of record MUST NOT exceed their budgets
2. the programs of record MUST NOT slip their schedules
3. the programs of record MUST NOT siphon funds away from other programs
4. funding for other programs (which have NSS’ strong support) MUST NOT be cut (i.e. space technology, commercial crew and cargo, etc.)
If any of these things happen, the response from the NSS will be a dramatically different one.
My apologies to Col. Damphousse for not properly reflecting his comments at the conference.
By Jeff Foust on 2012 April 10 at 6:33 am ET Literally on the same page. The two co-authored an op-ed that appeared Monday in a few different publications, ranging from the Sacramento Bee to the Bangor Daily News. The essay gives them the opportunity to restate their vision for NASA, including the agreement Congress and the White House reached last year that identified development of the Space Launch System (SLS) and Orion, commercial cargo and crew to support the ISS, and completion of the James Webb Space Telescope as the agency’s top three priorities.
The essay covers familiar ground, although one noteworthy passage comes at the end when discussing commercial crew. They argue that we must avoid “a false competition” between commercial providers and government exploration programs. However, the essay goes on to note that in order to get the most out of NASA’s budget, “NASA needs to focus its investment on only those providers that are likely to be able to provide crew transportation services by 2017.” The space agency, they add, “should consider identifying the strongest private firms at the earliest opportunity such that NASA’s precious resources are focused on ending our reliance on the Russians for transportation to the space station as quickly as possible. The cost would be less and the returns greater.”
That language is similar to what Hutchison has said in past hearings on the NASA budget proposal, where she called on NASA to limit new rounds of the commercial crew program to no more than a couple companies, not the four that currently have funded Space Act Agreements. Nelson, though, has not been as outspoken on this. At a hearing last month he said he supported increased commercial crew funding provided it did not come at the expense of SLS and Orion. In February he said he said he would fight to increase commercial crew funding. The essay’s language suggests he may be willing to support a lower level of commercial crew funding than the administration’s request of nearly $830 million.
By Jeff Foust on 2012 April 5 at 8:11 am ET What do you get the senator who has been one of the biggest supporters for space-based astronomy? How about an exploding star! The AP reports that a supernova will be named after Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) at a ceremony Thursday in Baltimore to inaugurate a new archive facility at the Space Telescope Science Institute. The facility itself will also bear her name: the Barbara A. Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes, or MAST. Supernovae are typically not named after people, so this may be only an unofficial name.
Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) released a letter Wednesday signed by him and 13 members of the state’s House delegation asking NASA to reconsider its choice to manage the International Space Station (ISS) National Laboratory. NASA selected last year a Florida nonprofit, the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS), to manage the ISS national lab, but CASIS has come under recent scrutiny after its executive director resigned and the organization itself appeared to be getting off to a slow start. “It is the general impression of the situation that CASIS is neither performing this type of work, nor actively heading toward being able to perform this type of work,” the letter states, referring to supporting ISS research. “Because of the limited life of the ISS, it may be time to consider a switch in leadership for this activity.” CASIS beat out Space Laboratory Associates (SLA), a joint effort of the Universities Space Research Association (USRA) and Ohio-based Battelle Memorial Institute.
In an op-ed this week in The Hill, Rep. Steven Palazzo (R-MS) discussed the benefits of public-private partnerships in research and innovation, specifically mentioning NASA’s commercial cargo and crew benefits. “Developing a mutually beneficial relationship between NASA and commercial industry can enable commercial providers to carry human crews to low Earth orbit in the near future,” he writes. Palazzo is chair of the space subcommittee of the House Science Committee, which in recent hearings has raised questions about NASA’s approach to commercial crew in particular.
By Jeff Foust on 2012 April 4 at 1:20 pm ET
Sunday night, the CBS newsmagazine “60 Minutes” aired a segment (video above) on the impact the retirement of the Space Shuttle program has had on Florida’s Space Coast, including profiling some of the people who lost their jobs as a result and the broader economic impact on the community. It’s hard not to sympathize with those people who have struggled to find work in the months since losing their jobs. The segment, though, has taken on something of a political dimension as well.
“President Obama cancelled NASA’s plan to replace the space shuttle in favor of a more modest program,” CBS’s Scott Pelley said in his introduction to the segment. “And then, Congress slashed the funding for that.” The implication, also expressed in the segment, was that many or even most would still have jobs there if President Obama hasn’t pushed to cancel Constellation in 2010. (Left unsaid is just how many shuttle-specific workers would have been let go even if Constellation had been retained, especially since the program was at the time of its cancellation still several years from the first Ares 1/Orion flight.) Congress also gets dinged for cutting commercial crew funding, with again the implication that more money would have retained more KSC jobs, although most of the current commercial crew development work is being done outside of Florida.
On Tuesday, NASA administrator Charles Bolden (traveling this week in Australia) responded to the “60 Minutes” piece in a blog post on the NASA website. The segment, he argued, “missed an awful lot of important context about the end of that era and where we’re headed from here.” Constellation was behind schedule, lengthening the gap in US human space access, he said, while commercial entities can more more quickly to fill that gap, with NASA following with the Space Launch System (SLS) and Orion. He also noted that unemployment is going down in Brevard County, the heart of the Space Coast, and had reached its lowest levels since May 2009, more than two years before the final shuttle flight.
By that time, though, the segment had been used as ammunition against the Obama Administration. The Republican National Committee, through its @gop Twitter account,publicized a blog post by the Sunshine State News that likened one person interviewed in the “60 Minutes” piece, Mike Carpenter, to Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher, aka “Joe the Plumber”, a figure in the 2008 presidential campaign. The post also quoted Republican officials saying that Obama broke promises he made in 2008 to retain jobs at KSC.
(Sidebar: although Wurzelbacher didn’t do much in the long run to boost John McCain’s presidential campaign, he has returned to politics, winning the GOP nomination for Ohio’s 9th congressional district. He will face incumbent Democrat Marcy Kaptur in the redrawn district which now includes, on its eastern edge, NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland. Kaptur defeated another incumbent, Dennis Kucinich, whose district had previously included Glenn.)
Democrats fired back Tuesday, the Miami Herald reported, with comments by Michael Blake, the Democratic mayor of Cocoa, Florida. Blake argued that Mitt Romney, the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination, would be far worse when it comes to space policy than the current administration, claiming that Romney’s proposals for budget cuts could clash NASA’s budget by $4.5 billion. “When it comes to NASA and space exploration, it is clear that Mitt Romney is completely wrong on the issue and out of touch with the Space Coast,” he said.
By Jeff Foust on 2012 April 3 at 6:43 am ET The issue of property rights in space has long been a topic of interest to commercial space advocates, although few others have paid much attention to it over the years. The conventional interpretation has been that private property rights aren’t possible under the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, which prohibits nations from claiming the Moon or other celestial bodies. (The 1979 Moon Treaty would explicitly prohibit property rights claims on the Moon, but few nations are parties to that treaty.) Commercial space advocates argue that the lack of a private property rights regime in space has hindered the development of space, since private interests can’t acquire or sell land on the Moon or other bodies, or have assurances that their claims will be respected by others.
One solution, of course, would be for the US to seek to renegotiate, or to withdraw from, the Outer Space Treaty, but that appears unlikely given the treaty’s wide acceptance. In a white paper released Monday by the Competitive Enterprise Institute, Rand Simberg argues for an alternative approach. He cites a proposal called the Space Settlement Prize Act that would require US courts and agencies to recognize private claims made on the Moon, Mars, and asteroids that meet certain requirements regarding habitation and transportation. The proposed law gets around the Outer Space Treaty by not having the US claim sovereignty over the territory, only recognize the private claim for the land. That, Simberg argues, is sufficient to provide the property rights certainty needed for commercial space development to flourish.
The white paper goes into greater detail on the proposal, although one element is missing: how to get this proposed legislation through Congress. Space property rights might be of great importance to commercial space advocates and entrepreneurs, but it’s a fringe issue otherwise. Given the current difficulties in Congress of getting all but the most noncontroversial legislation through, it will take a concerted effort by advocates to even get the attention of Congress on a topic that, to most, still seems like a low priority.
By Jeff Foust on 2012 March 30 at 7:08 am ET Wednesday’s hearing of the full House Science Committee on the utilization of the International Space Station (ISS) was relatively lightly attended, with only a handful of members of the committee (including its newest member, Rep. Suzanne Bonamici (D-OR)) questioning the assembled witnesses. The committee’s concerns focused on two issues: whether commercial cargo providers will enter service in time to avoid a disruption in operations of the ISS, and whether a new nonprofit organization is capable of managing research on the station.
“We have margin on orbit in terms of spares and consumables and research,” said NASA associate administrator William Gerstenmaier, which, coupled with flights by Europe’s ATV (which docked to the ISS late Wednesday) and Japan’s HTV later this year, “to last essentially about a year.” That, he felt, would provide sufficient time for Orbital Sciences Corporation and SpaceX to begin commercial cargo deliveries to the ISS.
“We’ve been assuming that we’ll get maybe one or two commercial cargo flights this year,” he said. “So we need something to occur within about the next year.” Asked by Rep. Donna Edwards (D-MD) if that meant he had a high level of confidence in those companies, Gerstenmaier responded, “They will meet the minimum milestones that I just described to you.”
Others were more skeptical. “I don’t know what to think,” committee chairman Rep. Ralph Hall (R-TX) said after describing the extensive delays that both Orbital and SpaceX have experienced under the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program. “I hope NASA doesn’t squander the incredible potential for lifesaving research and other important science.”
Asked during the hearing about the development of a government crew capability to access the ISS, Gerstenmaier said that it was unlikely any additional funding could move up the 2017 date of the first Orion test flight on a Space Launch System (SLS) booster. However, additional money could move up the first crewed SLS/Orion flight, now planned for 2021. “We would have the option of potentially moving that date forward as we refine our budgets,” he said. “The earliest we could be potentially there to help out with station would be probably in the 2018 time frame.”
The work of the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS), the nonprofit selected by NASA last year to manage research on the US segment of the station, also faced some scrutiny. “The former director of CASIS raised a number of serious concerns in her recent resignation letter,” said committee ranking member Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX) in her opening statement, referring to the letter from Jeanne Becker a month ago. “This committee will need to better understand what the situation is given the important role [of CASIS] in International Space Station utilization.” She said she hoped that the committee would hold another hearing to get the perspectives of the research community.
“They gave to us an annual performance plan of objectives and milestones they were to accomplish during this year,” Gerstenmaier said of CASIS in response to a later question about the organization. “I have sent them a letter and asked them to respond to us by today or tomorrow on what their plan is to achieve those milestones that we’ve established with them.”
Edwards suggested that the Government Accountability Office (GAO) examine the effectiveness of CASIS. “For me, the resignation of the executive director and the problems that she highlighted are really troubling,” she said. On that request, she had the endorsement of Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA). “I think it’s a request that we could all support,” he said.
Immediately after the hearing, Hall went to the American Astronautical Society’s Goddard Memorial Symposium in the DC suburb of Greenbelt, Maryland, where he received the organization’s John F. Kennedy Astronautics Award at a luncheon. In a brief speech at the luncheon, Hall mentioned the hearing he had just chaired. “I don’t care how they get there, I just want to know when they’re going to get there,” he said of ISS cargo and crew transportation. Then he raised a few eyebrows. “The most important thing to me is to save that space station and get it back to working again.” The ISS, of course, is not in immediate peril, although as noted at the hearing, station operations could be threatened in a year if commercial cargo doesn’t come online as currently planned.
By Jeff Foust on 2012 March 29 at 8:49 am ET Wednesday afternoon’s hearing by the Commerce, Justice, and Science subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee revealed few new insights about NASA’s fiscal year 2013 budget proposal or Congress’s reaction to it. However, it did emphasize that commercial crew, and the amount of funding NASA is requesting for the program, is one of the most sensitive aspects of the overall budget.
“Mr Administrator, I believe that the core mission of NASA is to build cutting-edge systems that allow us to expand our knowledge of the universe,” said Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL). “This administration, I believe, seems to think that NASA’s job is to use taxpayer money as venture capital to support speculative commercial companies, the future Solyndras of the space industry.” He complained that NASA sought to cut funding for the Space Launch System (SLS) and Orion while increasing funding for commercial crew. “When is this administration going to get the message that the Congress, I believe, is not willing to subsidize so-called commercial vendors at the expense of NASA’s core mission of engineering and exploration?”
Earlier in the hearing, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX), the ranking member of the subcommittee, reiterated similar concerns she expressed at a Senate Commerce Committee hearing earlier in the month. “I do support commercial crew,” she said in her opening statement. “However, I think NASA is continuing to throw money at too many companies with a hope of flying astronauts.” She said NASA should commission a study like it did for SLS and Orion to find what she said would be the quickest solution, one that would involve only one or two companies going forward. “Members of Congress are already coalescing around NASA choosing no more than two companies, providing competition as well as funding realities that we see in our budget and not stealing from the long-term future, which is Orion and the launch vehicle.”
Bolden did not make any new arguments for or other statements about the status of the commercial crew program or the commercial cargo providers, whose upcoming test flights may weigh heavily on commercial crew’s future. “Commercial crew and cargo are vital for me to be able for me to live up to my promise to you on the International Space Station,” he said in response to questions about the program from Hutchison, who is an advocate for station utilization. He said he believed SpaceX was still likely to launch on April 30, weather permitting, for its cargo test flight, and Orbital would be ready to launch in the summer, depending on the status of its launch facilities at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS) on Wallops Island, Virginia—delays in the completion of those facilities clearly being a sore point for both him and subcommittee chairwoman Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-MD).
Hutchison appeared almost weary of the exchanges she’s had with Bolden about the program. “I’m going to ask you a question, you’re not going to answer it, and we’re going to be where we are and we’re going to settle this one-on-one,” she said with a sigh when it was her turn to question Bolden.
Beyond commercial crew, Mikulski quizzed Bolden about whether NASA was drawing up any plans should budget sequestration proceed as currently required by law, an event that would cut the agency’s budget by 8% across the board, she warned. Bolden, who previously indicated he wasn’t worried about sequestration, said he remained optimistic Congress could avoid it. “While I am a realist, I am probably the world’s greatest optimist, and I am confident that the Congress will avoid that,” he said.
“Well, you couldn’t be an astronaut without being an optimist,” Mikulski responded. She argued, though, that NASA should have some contingency plans in place if there is a budget sequester, something Bolden said the agency hasn’t done to date. “I really would recommend both to the administration and to you,” she warned, “to really be ready for some real challenges.”
The hearing was the last one the subcommittee planned to perform before marking up its appropriations bill, which could come as soon as mid to late April. Since Sen. Hutchison is retiring after this year, Mikulski presented Hutchison at the beginning of the hearing with a gift: a small crystal space shuttle. Mikulski emphasized that the gift was from her, and not from Bolden. “I never get gifts from him,” she joked. “I’d rather have one from him.”
By Jeff Foust on 2012 March 28 at 5:49 am ET At last week’s House appropriations hearing, subcommittee chairman Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA) questioned NASA administrator Charles Bolden about utilization of the International Space Station (ISS). In particular, he asked about issues with the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS), the organization selected last year to manage research on the US segment of the lab, which Congress previously designated as a national laboratory.
“We have awarded a contract to an organization called CASIS,” Bolden said during that discussion, late in the hearing. Wolf interjected: “That hasn’t worked out very well.” “It’s going through growing pains, but we’re confident it’s going to work,” Bolden responded. That was an allusion to recent events, such as the sudden resignation nearly a month ago of the executive director of CASIS. “They have milestones that they have to meet,” Bolden said, “and we have sent them, or we are in the process of sending them, another letter to remind them of the milestones, to remind them of the plan, and then we’ll see how they go.”
Wolf tried to get Bolden to give CASIS an “interim grade” on its efforts to date, which Bolden declined to do. “It’s a hundred billion dollars that we’ve spent,” Wolf said. “We all have an obligation to the American taxpayer to make sure that it’s utilized.”
The next day, either by coincidence or cause-and-effect, CASIS announced it has organized a group of “world-class” scientists to review experiments that have been flown the ISS to determine what areas—at least in biomedical fields, its initial emphasis—hold the most promise for future work, including commercial applications. Their findings will be delivered to NASA next month.
The utilization of the ISS is the subject of another hearing at 9:30 this morning by the full House Science Committee. The hearing charter indicates members will examine issues such as a potential shortfall in cargo transport to the ISS (based on a Government Accountability Office report last December) and management of station research.
By Jeff Foust on 2012 March 27 at 7:54 am ET It’s become a tradition for the commercial launch industry in the US: every several years they ask Congress to extend the current regime for launch indemnification. This system requires launch providers to take financial responsibility (usually through insurance) for any third-party damages from a commercial launch up to a “maximum probable loss” determined as part of the launch licensing process; any losses above that level, up to a very high level ($1.5 billion in 1988 dollars) would be the responsibility of the government, subject to appropriations. The industry usually seeks a long-term, or even permanent, extension, but typically gets only three to five years at a time. The last extension, passed in late 2009, expires at the end of this calendar year.
Last week the space subcommittee of the House Science Committee examined the fiscal year 2013 budget proposal of the FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation (AST). One of the topics discussed in the hearing was the need to extend the indemnification regime this year. “It has to be extended, at least for a year,” said Will Trafton, chairman of the Commercial Space Transportation Advisory Committee (COMSTAC), an industry group that provides advice to AST. A one-year extension would give the industry some near-term certainty while providing time to “work the fine details” of a long-term extension, he said. “We, COMSTAC, would just like to get that behind us, as soon as possible.”
Industry, of course, would like a much longer extension, as George Nield, the FAA associate administrator for commercial space transportation, noted in the hearing. However, one member of the subcommittee openly wondered if the indemnification regime was necessary. Rep. Donna Edwards (D-MD) tried to differentiate between commercial launches of satellites and those carrying people as she asked if indemnification was still necessary. “Why is that on the commercial side the taxpayers should enjoy pretty much all the risk and the companies engaged in the activity bear really not a lot of the risk?”
Nield disagreed, noting that what is called indemnification would be more accurately called “conditional payment of excess third-party claims”, and that companies still bear the risk up to the maximum probable loss set in their license. (No commercial launch to date has triggered the indemnification provision.) Edwards continued to argue that as the commercial industry matures, it should bear the full risk to the public. However, a lack of indemnification would put US launch providers at a competitive disadvantage to those in Europe, Russia, and elsewhere, Trafton said. “We need it to be competitive internationally. Everybody else has this,” he explained.
In a statement after the hearing, Edwards continued to make a distinction between commercial launches of satellites and commercial launches of people, which for the purposes of third-party liability indemnification are considered the same. “However, I am concerned that we have yet to get answers to many questions that remain, including how safety regulations will be developed and whether the U.S. government should extend shared liability and indemnification protection to the commercial human spaceflight industry,” she stated.
The chairman of the subcommittee, Rep. Steven Palazzo, said that the committee would hold a hearing specifically about indemnification in the latter half of May, with GAO expected to testify on “an extensive analysis of the market” that it is performing. Meanwhile, according to industry officials, legislation is under development in the Senate that could extend the indemnification regime by up to five years and also make some other tweaks to current law.
By Jeff Foust on 2012 March 25 at 11:24 am ET Last week a House appropriations subcommittee questioned NASA administrator Charles Bolden about the agency’s fiscal year 2013 budget proposal; this week it’s the Senate’s turn. The Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee will hold a hearing on the NASA budget proposal this Wednesday, March 28, at 2 pm. As with the House hearing, Bolden is the only scheduled witness.
The Senate hearing may cover many of the same issues as both the House hearing last week as well as a Senate Commerce Committee hearing earlier this month, especially since Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX), who grilled Bolden on SLS and Orion funding at the Commerce hearing, also serves as ranking member of this appropriations subcommittee. The subcommittee’s chairwoman, Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), will likely query Bolden on the status of and funding for the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).
Incidentally, another member of that subcommittee, Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL), held a town hall meeting Saturday at the United Launch Alliance (ULA) factory in Decatur, Alabama. Shelby talked about broader political issues and didn’t appear to devote much time to space issues despite the setting, based on a Huntsville Times article about the event.
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