By Jeff Foust on 2011 October 27 at 10:15 am ET Wednesday’s hearing by the House Space, Science, and Technology Committee on NASA’s Commercial Crew Development (CCDev) program didn’t yield any major breakthroughs or other significant news. Industry members in the hearing’s first panel expressed their confidence to develop systems to transport NASA astronauts and serve other markets in the next several years, provided adequate funding. NASA’s associate administrator Bill Gerstenmaier also backed the program, while NASA inspector general Paul Martin covered some of the challenges the program faces. Two themes did emerge from the nearly three-hour hearing, though.
1. Congressional skepticism is about markets, not capabilities: During the hearing several members of congress, including committee chairman Rep. Ralph Hall (R-TX) and ranking member Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX), expressed their doubts that CCDev would unfold as NASA and industry claim. However, unlike some witnesses at past hearings that expressed doubt that commercial entities had the capabilities to develop such vehicles (such as former astronaut Gene Cernan, who said in testimony last month that commercial providers “don’t yet know what they don’t know” about building crewed spacecraft), members focused on the market. Their concern was whether other markets, like space tourism, research, and flying astronauts from other nations, constituted sufficient markets.
Some witnesses, like John Elbon of Boeing and Steve Lindsey of Sierra Nevada Corp., saif their business cases closed even if they only secured NASA business. Still, some members wondered if investing $6 billion over five years (NASA’s estimated cost of CCDev; some committee members asked for more details about the analysis NASA used to come up with that estimate) was a better deal than simply purchasing additional Soyuz flights, even if the services eventually offered by US companies were at a lower per-seat price than Russia, citing the amortization of that investment as well as concerns about costs to the government for indemnifying commercial providers. Members like Hall and Johnson, as well as Rep. Donna Edwards (D-MD), did not seem immediately convinced by arguments from NASA and industry.
2. CCDev’s FY12 budget is looking increasingly likely to be no more than $500 million: As NASA deputy administrator Lori Garver warned last week, Gerstenmaier said that funding CCDev at $500 million (the current Senate mark) rather than the administration’s request of $850 million would result in a one-year delay in vehicles entering service, to 2017, with the result that NASA would have to pay $480 million to Russia for an additional year of flight services. However, when asked by committee members, Gerstenmaier said that one-year delay would be the only major impact provided the program was adequately funded in future years. He added that NASA was still about a year away from making a decision to buy additional Soyuz seats.
Those comments, and the response, suggest there’s no major push among committee members to lobby House appropriators and fellow members to increase the CCDev budget above the Senate’s version. (Notably, they did not ask about the effects on the program if the House version of the budget, with only $312 million for CCDev, passed.) Senate leaders indicate they will finally vote on the “minibus” appropriations bill that includes NASA next Tuesday night, with “a quick turnaround” in the House shortly thereafter, according to POLITICO. So for advocates of CCDev seeking full funding, time is running out.
By Jeff Foust on 2011 October 26 at 5:41 am ET In advance of this morning’s House hearing on NASA’s Commercial Crew Development program, the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee has released the hearing charter. This includes a set of questions that will likely form the basis of questions during the course of the hearing:
- What are the major accomplishments to date by industry on efforts to develop a commercial crew launch capability? What are the remaining major technical challenges that must be addressed?
- From industry’s perspective, what are the biggest programmatic challenges with NASA’s Commercial Crew Program regarding (1) the agency’s procurement strategy and (2) its approach to insight and oversight?
- What are the industry’s assumptions about the size and vitality of the commercial market (non-US government) for launching astronauts to low Earth orbit?
- What are the likely sources of non-Government passengers that are willing and able to afford the high cost of a trip to space?
- What are NASA’s plans to acquire one or more operational commercial crew systems for ferrying astronauts to and from the International Space Station?
- What does NASA consider to be the biggest challenges confronting commercial crew developers as they attempt to develop and demonstrate their launch vehicle and crew systems?
- Have clear lines of responsibility and accountability been established to ensure safe and successful design, development and operation of human systems?
- What requirements and processes is NASA adopting to maintain the highest level of crew safety, including design and reliability standards for a launch abort system? What steps is NASA taking to coordinate requirements and regulations with the Federal Aviation Administration to ensure compatibility?
- What level of federal investment does NASA require to ensure that at least two commercial providers will be certified and sufficiently funded?
The charter notes that Blue Origin, the one funded CCDev-2 awardee not included in the list of witnesses for the hearing, “was invited but chose not to attend.” The charter also reveals that NASA has signed a third unfunded CCDev Space Act Agreement, this one with Excalibur Almaz. That agreement was signed just last week and no details about the agreement have been released, nor have NASA and Excalibur Almaz formally announced the agreement.
By Jeff Foust on 2011 October 25 at 7:04 am ET At last week’s International Symposium for Personal and Commercial Spaceflight (ISPCS) in Las Cruces, New Mexico, NASA deputy administrator Lori Garver made the argument that spending on NASA’s Commercial Crew Development (CCDev) program now would save more money later that would have to go to Russia for continued Soyuz flights. She is not the only person in government or industry making the case for CCDev, as several recent comments demonstrate.
Earlier at ISPCS, George Nield, associate administrator for commercial space transportation at the FAA, suggested that CCDev wasn’t getting enough funding. “Unfortunately, for the next several years, we will be completely dependent on the Russians to take our astronauts to the space station,” he said in remarks last Wednesday at ISPCS. “Although several companies are eager to show they can do the job as part of the Commercial Crew Development program, the limited amount of money that has been allocated to the program to date calls into question, at least for me, whether we are really serious,” he said.
At the same conference, Robert Bigelow of Bigelow Aerospace blamed his company’s recent decision to lay off just over half of its workforce on the slow pace of CCDev activities. Bigelow had hoped to launch its first operational habitats in 2014, but a combination of a lack of vehicles available to service those modules as well as delays among potential customers forced him to slow down the pace of work at the company and downsize its workforce. “Why be ready in 2014 with two of our large spacecraft ready for launch and fly, and we don’t have transportation and our clients aren’t ready?” he said in a speech at ISPCS last Wednesday.
The Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel (ASAP) is also warning about CCDev funding, Aviation Week reports. At an ASAP meeting last week, one member, John Marshall, worried that “without sufficient funding, NASA will be forced to delay its development objectives or refocus the funding it has on a single provider, undermining reliability and cost effectiveness,” according to the article.
Meanwhile, there’s been one addition to Wednesday’s hearing about CCDev by the full House Science, Space, and Technology Committee. NASA Inspector General Paul Martin will join Bill Gerstenmaier on the second panel. At the end of June Martin’s office issued a report on “challenges” facing NASA’s commercial crew plans, citing several issues ranging from crew safety requirements to various models of NASA insight or oversight of commercial providers to contracting mechanisms.
By Jeff Foust on 2011 October 21 at 3:21 pm ET Former Speaker of the House and current 2012 Republican presidential candidate said Thursday he would “absolutely” privatize human spaceflight if elected president. Speaking at a town hall meeting in Dallas, Gingrich was asked about the Space Launch System (SLS) heavy-lift rocket that NASA is developing as required by the 2010 NASA Authorization Act. “I think it is disgraceful the way getting into space has been turned into a political pork-barrel. It’s an abuse of the taxpayer and an abuse of America’s future,” he said, according to a statement from the Space Frontier Foundation, which also provided a transcript of the exchange. “It is a tragedy that between bureaucrats and politicians we have reduced NASA to the point where we are relying on Russian rockets to get to the space station.”
Gingrich did not stop there, though. “I would call for a total replacement of the current structure of NASA with a brand new system that is aggressively designed to challenge free enterprise,” he said. He went on to discuss his preference for prizes to enable exploration as an alternative to traditional government-led programs, something that dates back to his time in Congress. “If you had taken 5 or 10 percent of the NASA budget in the last decade and put it into a prize for the first people to get to the Moon permanently, you’d have 20 or 30 folks out there getting to the Moon, we’d already be on the Moon, and the energy level would be unbelievable.”
Not surprisingly, the Space Frontier Foundation strongly supported Gingrich’s comments in its statement, while noting that was not endorsing Gingrich or any other candidate. “We are gratified to hear Speaker Gingrich bring his years of experience and obvious intellect to the discussion of space policy,” said Foundation chairman Bob Werb. “Fiscal responsibility and a strong space program can go hand in hand, if we leverage the genius of the private sector.”
By Jeff Foust on 2011 October 21 at 8:39 am ET As the Senate continues to debate a 2012 funding bill that includes NASA, one key question is whether the Senate will provide any additional funds for NASA’s Commercial Crew Development (CCDev) program above the $500 million currently in the legislation. In Statement of Administration Policy (SAP) earlier this week, the White House asked the Senate “to provide sufficient funding for the Commercial Crew Program”, without specifying what it considered specific. Now, a top NASA official warns that any savings from funding the program below the administration’s original request of $850 million would be offset by sending more money to Russia down the road.
Speaking at the International Symposium for Personal and Commercial Spaceflight (ISPCS) in Las Cruces, New Mexico, Thursday, NASA deputy administrator Lori Garver confirmed that NASA’s current plans for CCDev require $850 million in fiscal year 2012 in order to remain on track to have a domestic commercial crew transportation capability by the end of 2016. “If we don’t get full funding in 2012, this is at risk,” she warned.
A schedule slip, she said, would require spending more money on Russian crew transportation services. “One additional year of buying services from the Russians will cost the United States $450 million,” she said. Thus, she argued, it made more fiscal sense to spend an additional $350 million now—the difference between the Senate version and the administration’s request—on US companies than $450 million in mid-decade on Russian flight services. “Take it [the Senate mark] up $350 [million], giving it to US companies today, taking us up to the requested amount and giving us the best chance to be able to replace this foreign government service by 2016 while saving $450 million we would have to pay the Russians. That’s the choice.”
The Senate’s version of the 2012 appropriations bill is actually more generous to CCDev than the House version, which offers only $312 million for the program. If the House version were to pass, that could result is significant changes in NASA’s plans for the program. At a meeting of the FAA’s Commercial Space Transportation Advisory Committee (COMSTAC) in Washington last Friday, Phil McAlister, director of commercial spaceflight development at NASA Headquarters, said that if the agency received the $500 million in the Senate bill, it would likely proceed with the next round of the program, the Integrated Design Phase, although perhaps with some changes. “At the very macro level, $500 [million] is going to have an impact,” he said. “There are some ways you can see that we could move forward.” At the lower House level, though, he said, “we’d most likely pull the draft RFP” for the next CCDev phase. “We would revisit our acquisition approach at 312.”
“The less money you get,” he concluded, “the longer it’s going to take. The longer it takes, the more money it takes.”
By Jeff Foust on 2011 October 20 at 9:41 am ET The House Science, Space, and Technology Committee announced yesterday that it is holding a hearing next Wednesday titled “NASA’s Commercial Crew Development Program: Accomplishments and Challenges”. Even with the hearing now only six days off, the committee has not released the names of any witnesses who will testify before the full committee. One can, though, anticipate participation from NASA officials and probably executives from companies that have CCDev awards from NASA.
Update 2:50 pm: Here’s an updated witness list released by the committee earlier today:
Panel One
- Mr. John Elbon, Vice President and General Manger, Space Exploration Division, The Boeing Company
- Mr. Steve Lindsey, Director, Space Exploration, Sierra Nevada Space Systems
- Mr. Elon Musk, CEO and CTO, Space Exploration Technologies
- Mr. Charles Precourt, Vice President and General Manager, ATK Space Launch Systems
- Mr. George Sowers, Vice President, Business Development and Advanced Programs, United Launch Alliance
Panel Two
- Mr. Bill Gerstenmaier, Associate Administrator, Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate, NASA
By Jeff Foust on 2011 October 20 at 8:18 am ET The Senate is considering this week a package of appropriations bills dubbed a “minibus” since it’s not as encompassing as an omnibus bill. This bill combines the Agriculture; Commerce, Justice, and Science (CJS); and Transportation appropriations bills into a single measure, based on the bills that passed the Senate Appropriations Committee in recent weeks. The minibus bill has been debated on the Senate floor this week, although there have not been any amendments related to NASA, NOAA, or the FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation (AST).
The Office of Management and Budget issued a Statement of Administration Policy (SAP) about the minibus bill earlier this week, providing the White House’s opinions about elements of the legislation. It warns the bill “falls short of the funding needed” to keep the first satellite of the Joint Polar Satellite System, the successor to NPOESS, on schedule for a 2017 launch. It asks for funding at the level of the administration’s request ($1,070M vs. $920M), adding that “without sufficient funding for JPSS the Nation faces a significant risk of a gap in satellite coverage that will result in degraded weather forecasts”.
For NASA, the SAP offers more general language, appreciating the Senate’s support for the Space Launch System, Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle, and James Webb Space Telescope programs. The SAP asks the Senate to “provide sufficient funding for the Commercial Crew Program” to avoid delays, but doesn’t specify what that level of funding should be. (The Senate bill offers $500 million for CCDev, while the administration’s budget requested $850 million.) The SAP also asks the Senate to fund the Space Technology program at the appropriations committee’s level of $637 million, below the approximately $1 billion requested.
The SAP is silent on FAA/AST, which the Senate bill would fund at $15 million, the same level as last year. The report accompanying the Senate transportation appropriations bill does not discuss its decision to fund AST below the requested $25 million. This likely means no funding for a Commercial Spaceflight Technical Center or a low-cost space access prize, two major initiatives in the FY12 budget request for the office.
By Jeff Foust on 2011 October 19 at 7:45 am ET As part of its efforts to reform its procurement of space systems, the Air Force has looked at a number of strategies, including the concept of “block buys”, where a relatively large number of items—satellites, rockets, etc.—are purchased at a time, allowing for lower per-unit prices. A plan to do a bulk buy of EELV-class launch vehicles, though, is facing new scrutiny after the release of a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report this week.
Under what the GAO calls the “leading proposal” for a launch vehicle acquisition strategy, government agencies would agree to acquire eight EELV boosters cores a year for five years. This would, DOD officials argue, provide some stability for the the industrial base and help contain costs over the current approach of effectively buying one launch at a time. A block buy today of EELV-class booster cores, though, would effectively be a sole-source award to United Launch Alliance (ULA), which manufactures the Atlas and Delta rockets. A long-term award could effectively lock out emerging competitors like SpaceX, even as the Air Force, NRO, and NASA are developing criteria for certifying new vehicles, as those agencies announced just last week.
“We do have a bit of a challenge with the Air Force,” SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said last month at the National Press Club, citing the proposed block buy. One of the rationales for the block buy, he said, was preservation of the nation’s industrial base, “although for some reason, oddly enough, we’re not included in the industrial base.”
The GAO report concluded that while the DOD was gathering data to support its decision on an EELV procurement strategy, it still had “critical gaps” in its knowledge, including limited data on the health of the industrial base. It also noted that the planned buy might be too large, creating an oversupply of booster cores that would have to be stored, incurring additional costs if those cores are stored for a year or more.
The report also addressed the potential for competition, with the DOD sounding conflicted about whether to encourage competition. “Some DOD officials acknowledge competition offers potential benefits, but others believe that competing for EELV launches will endanger the program’s stability and threaten its long history of launch successes,” the report stated. The Program Executive Office (PEO) for Space Launch in the Air force, Roger Correll, told the GAO that “he believes competition will benefit the program, and intends to work with ULA and potential competitors to incentivize cost efficiencies while maintaining mission success.”
Because of the potential for competition and other uncertainties, the GAO report recommended, among other items, that the DOD “reassess” the length of the planned block buy in order to incorporate the additional data it’s collecting about its procurement strategy. That recommendation was the only one of seven that the DOD did not fully endorse in its response, included in the GAO report. “The decision on specific contractual quantity and period of commitment will be balanced among price, operational requirements, budget realities and the potential for new entrant competition,” Deputy Secretary of Defense Ronald Jost wrote in a letter to the GAO.
SpaceX played up that the GAO report’s conclusions in a press release Tuesday, saying it “raises troubling questions for taxpayers” about the proposed block buy. On the other hand, the Lexington Institute’s Loren Thompson, no fan of SpaceX, argued that ULA’s rockets might be a better deal even at higher prices, given their track record of successful launches versus SpaceX’s limited history. “Once risk is factored into the comparisons, it’s hard to see how federal officials could justify placing a billion-dollar spy satellite, or for that matter astronauts, on Falcon 9 or any other SpaceX launch vehicle until there was much more evidence of their reliability,” he wrote.
Musk, in his National Press Club speech, played up SpaceX as an underdog to the much larger aerospace primes, who, he said, devote far more resources on lobbying than his company. “If this decision is made as a function of lobbying power,” he said of a proposed block buy, “we are screwed.”
By Jeff Foust on 2011 October 18 at 8:29 am ET In recent weeks Herman Cain has shot upwards from relative obscurity to the top tier of Republican presidential candidates, earning him increased attention in the media. Last Thursday he sat down for an interview with Erin Burnett of CNN, which touched upon a number of issues. Asked about what he thought the biggest foreign threat to America is, he talked about Iran and North Korea and argued they were reasons for building up ballistic missile defense systems, which led to this exchange:
BURNETT: Modern “Star Wars”?
CAIN: That’s not as far as — that’s not totally modern “Star Wars”. That’s enhancing capabilities that we already have. Phase two would be to have “Star Wars” type missile defense capabilities that are located in outer space, which is one of the reasons that I want to relaunch our space program and get away from this dependent upon Russia in order to be able to get into outer space.
Cain did not go into any additional detail about what other reasons he may have for “relaunching” the space program and how he would go about doing it. It’s also not clear from his response if he’s made the distinction about having to rely on Russia for human access to space, which is true and will be the case for the next several year, versus simply launching satellites (for missile defense and other applications), for which there are a number of American vehicles capable of doing so. (I tried contacting the Cain campaign through their web site, but their form generated the error message: “Failed to send your message. Please try later or contact administrator by other way.”)
By Jeff Foust on 2011 October 14 at 8:44 am ET By the end of this year Congress may have the key documents it needs to press ahead with legislation to enable space-related export control reform, even if the odds of success are still long. At a meeting Thursday morning of the Export Control Working Group of the FAA’s Commercial Space Transportation Advisory Committee (COMSTAC), Brian Nilsson of the National Security Council discussed the administration’s ongoing export control reform efforts, including an ongoing review of the items in the various categories of Us Munitions List (USML). That review is intended to determine which items should remain on the USML and which should be transferred to the less-restrictive Commerce Control List (CCL).
“We have all 19 categories in some form of draft,” Nilsson said. “This has been extraordinarily labor intensive.” The focus has been on Category VIII, which covers aircraft and covers the largest number of licenses, followed by categories covering tanks and naval vessels. “The other category in the priority list is Category XV,” which covers space-related items, he said. The goal is to have the administration’s proposals for transferring items for the categories released by the end of this year.
Category XV is a special case, though, because of legislation over a decade ago that placed satellites and related components on the USML. Coupled with the release of its plans to transfer items off the USML, Nilsson said, will be the delivery to Congress of what’s known as the “Section 1248″ report, named after the section of the 2010 defense authorization bill that called for it. The report, analyzing the national security implications of moving satellites and their components off the USML, as due a year and a half ago, although an interim report was provided to Congress this spring. “It didn’t really answer the mail, quite candidly,” Nilsson said of that interim report. The updated report, tied to the review of Category XV, will be ready by the end of the year. “The action-forcing event, from talking to some our colleagues in Congress, will be the 1248 report,” he said.
With the delivery of the Section 1248 report and the proposed transfers of items off the USML, it will then be up to Congress to enact legislation giving the administration the authority to make those transfers. Also attending the working group meeting was Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, who spoke as much about his concerns about China than about the specifics of export control. However, asked if he would, in principle, support reform efforts while carving out exceptions for China and other so-called “126.1 nations” subject to arms embargoes, Rohrabacher had a one-word answer: “Yes.”
It’s not clear, though, how well that simple assent will translate to congressional support for legislation required for those reforms. One clue will be how Congress responds to proposed changes to other categories of the USML that will be submitted in the coming weeks. One observer noted that if there’s pushback from key staffers on the administration’s proposals in those categories, the prospects for space-related export control reform—or even export control reform in general—don’t look good. If Congress is more open to those changes in other categories, then the door remains open, if only a crack, for space-related reform.
Meanwhile, the ongoing reform process is having an unanticipated, adverse consequence: delaying ongoing reviews for export control licenses. At a space law conference Wednesday held by the University of Nebraska College of Law, Dennis Burnett, vice president for trade and export controls for EADS, said he had noticed an “uptick” in turnaround times for licenses recently because so much staff time has been devoted to the reform work. That’s particularly the case with categories deep in the review process, like Category VIII. “You’re seeing really big delays” in that category, he said, adding that the turnaround times have been much faster, so far, for Category XV space items.
With elections coming up, Burnett asked, “who knows what happens next year?” That could mean an accelerated pace for the administration’s export control efforts, he concluded. “The administration knows they’re running out of time, and they need to get as much done as they can.”
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