By Jeff Foust on 2011 May 28 at 11:18 am ET Thursday’s hearing of the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee’s space subcommittee on NASA’s commercial cargo efforts did not yield much of the way of new insights or surprises about the program. It did, though, provide an opportunity for some members to express their concern about, if not skepticism regarding, the ability of Orbital Sciences Corporation and SpaceX to carry out on their agreements to transport critical supplies to the ISS.
One theme from the hearing was a perceived lack of information from those companies, and NASA, about their efforts over the last few years. “Congress has generally been supportive of NASA’s commercial cargo efforts, but too often requests for information have been met with a veil of secrecy and claims of company proprietary information,” said subcommittee chairman Rep. Steven Palazzo (R-MS) in his opening statement. “I want to remind NASA and the commercial partners that you are spending taxpayer money, and lots of it, so you will not be exempt from oversight and financial scrutiny.”
Another theme, perhaps more subtle, was that commercial cargo was not a good deal, or least not a good one as other options. Members noted, as did the hearing’s charter, that in contrast to the original $500 million allocated to Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) when the commercial cargo development program started, NASA had spent or obligated through the end of FY2011 over $1.25 billion. That amount includes $288 million in cargo augmentation funding and $466 million from the follow-on Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) cargo delivery contracts. And on several occasions they noted schedule slips from the original COTS awards to both companies.
NASA associate administrator Bill Gerstenmaier, along with SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell and Orbital Sciences senior vice president Frank Culbertson, defended the progress they made. Gerstenmaier, for example, said that the augmentation funds added to the COTS awards this fiscal year are for additional testing to help buy down risk (including a test launch of Orbital’s new Taurus 2 rocket) and not because either company had run into problems. “We added these augmentation milestones to help assure where we would be,” he said. “They weren’t absolutely required.”
“The amount of money that has been paid to us on the CRS contract, that has been mentioned several times as ‘extra money’ that’s been sent to the contractors, that’s not the case,” Culbertson said, describing the CRS funds as “milestone payments” for long-lead items and the like common in the commercial world. “It is a commercial endeavor, and not a traditional government cost-plus development. That’s a really big difference from what people are used to and I think some folks in the community might be having trouble understand that.”
Shotwell challenged the price-per-pound figures included in the hearing charter, which claimed that commercial cargo would cost more ($26,700/lb.) than either the shuttle ($21,268) or Progress ($18,149). The charter, she said, used an “erroneous assumption” that SpaceX would transport only 20 metric tons of cargo, the minimum under the NASA contract. SpaceX can take much more than that on the 12 flights in SpaceX’s CRS contract, she said, and “we don’t charge NASA extra for anything above the 20 metric tons.” Depending on the specific cargo carried on each flight, she said, “if we can take the full Falcon 9 performance capability to the ISS, the cost per pound of cargo is under $10,000 per pound.” (According to the SpaceX web site, Dragon can carry 6,000 kilograms to LEO; assuming each of the 12 launches under SpaceX’s $1.6-billion CRS contract is fully packed, that works out to about $10,080 per pound.) In any case, since the various cargoes to be transported will have varying densities, cost per pound may not be the best metric for determining the value of various transportation systems.
While NASA, Orbital, and SpaceX faced scrutiny from many members at the hearing, some were more positive about the effort. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), a long-time supporter of commercialization efforts, backed the ongoing COTS/CRS efforts. “If we are indeed gambling on two companies, I think it’s a good bet,” he said. SpaceX in particular got a vote of support from a non-committee member who, in unusual move, formally introduced Shotwell. Rep. Bill Flores (R-TX), a freshman member whose district includes SpaceX’s testing facility in McGregor, Texas, said he was “proud” of the company’s efforts. “It is important that we in Congress do all that we can to make sure that we highlight companies such as SpaceX,” he said.
Some members seemed resigned that commercial providers are the only option for maintaining the space station in the years to come. “You have had and will have disappointments,” Rep. Ralph Hall (R-TX), chairman of the full committee, said in an opening statement. “Just don’t overpromise us.”
By Jeff Foust on 2011 May 26 at 7:23 am ET The space subcommittee of the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee is holding a hearing this morning on NASA’s commercial ISS cargo program. The hearing will feature executives from Orbital Sciences and SpaceX, the two companies developing cargo vehicles to transport cargo to and from the station, as well as a Government Accountability Office (GAO) official and Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA’s associate administrator for space operations.
The hearing’s charter suggests that the subcommittee will be taking a critical look at the progress the two companies have made. “To date NASA has spent over $1.25 Billion on the Commercial Cargo effort without accomplishing a demonstration to the ISS,” the charter claims. That figure appears to include all FY2011 funding (which presumably has not been completely spent yet), including $466 million in Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) contract funding to support future cargo missions and $288 million in “Cargo Augmentation” included for FY11 to provide additional milestones for the two companies under their Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) awards. The charter is critical of schedule delays in the development of Orbital’s Taurus 2/Cygnus and SpaceX’s Falcon 9/Dragon systems that led NASA to seek the augmentation funding as well as procure the CRS before any COTS demo flights. The charter also argues that the commercial vehicles will have a much higher cost per pound of cargo to the station: $26,770 per pound under the CRS contract versus $21,268/lb. for the shuttle and $18,149/lb. for the Russian Progress. (Those figures appear to be based on the minimum mass contracted under the CRS awards; those per-pound costs could be significantly lower if the contracted flights are fully loaded at the same price.)
By Jeff Foust on 2011 May 26 at 7:01 am ET Yesterday, the 50th anniversary of John F. Kennedy’s famous speech calling for a human mission to the Moon by the end of the 1960s, was an opportunity for a variety of retrospectives, not to mention comparisons to the current era of human spaceflight. One particular example of the latter was an op-ed in USA Today by former astronauts Neil Armstrong, Jim Lovell, and Gene Cernan, who lamented the lack of vision they see from the current administration on human space exploration. It’s not the first time they have voice such arguments, and the op-ed is a more a restatement of their case that, in their words, “America’s leadership in space is slipping.”
However, perhaps the most interesting paragraph in their piece, one that points at a more fundamental problem than the state of current policy, is this:
The [Constellation] program enjoyed near-unanimous support, being approved and endorsed by the Bush administration and by both Democratic and Republican Congresses. However, due to its congressionally authorized funding falling victim to Office of Management and Budget cuts, earmarks and other unexpected financial diversions, Constellation fell behind schedule. An administration-appointed review committee concluded the Constellation program was “not viable” due to inadequate funding.
The first sentence is correct in that it refers to the endorsement of the Vision for Space Exploration and NASA’s implementation of it in authorization acts passed by Congress with little opposition in 2005 and 2008. The second sentence is also correct: funding originally projected for carrying out the Vision didn’t materialize either in presidential budget requests in later years of the Bush Administration or in the appropriations bills passed by Congress. Yet, they also contradict each other to some degree: if there really was “near-unanimous support” for Constellation, then fully funding it shouldn’t have been a problem, right?
What Armstrong, Lovell, and Cernan miss in their op-ed is the current muddled situation regarding human spaceflight is not itself the problem, but instead a symptom of a deeper issue: space simply doesn’t have the same priority as it did 50 years ago, when it served as a proxy battlefield for the Cold War. It’s easy to “support” a program by passing authorization legislation that provides policy direction but doesn’t include funding; backing up that policy with the funding needed to implement has been much more difficult, as recent years have demonstrated. Moreover, it’s not likely to get any easier in the years to come as members of Congress seek to cut federal spending. The challenge today is either to come up with a new compelling rationale for human spaceflight that makes it a higher priority and thus wins support for additional funding, or to find new ways to make do with less.
By Jeff Foust on 2011 May 25 at 10:29 pm ET The House is debating this evening amendments to HR 1540, the fiscal year 2012 defense authorization act. Tucked away in the list of over 150 amendments under consideration is one submitted by Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) to provide for export control reform for satellites. The amendment, similar to standalone legislation introduced earlier this month by Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger (D-MD), would give the president the authority to remove satellites and related components from the US Munitions List (USML), thus removing them from the more restrictive ITAR export control regime, although it would still ban their export to China (as well as a handful of other countries, including North Korea and Venezuela, or any designated “state sponsor” of terrorism.)
However, when Rohrabacher took the floor at around 9:45 pm Wednesday, the the House took up his amendment, he announced that he planned on withdrawing it. After going through the background of the amendment and its need, he yielded to Rep. Buck McKeon (R-CA), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee (HASC). McKeon explained that while he supported the general thruster of the amendment, he wanted to wait until the Defense Department completed the so-called “Section 1248″ report assessing the impact of removing satellites and related components from the USML on national security. A draft version of that report was delivered to Congress earlier this month, but a final version is not expected until later this year.
“I am committed to working with the gentleman from California [Rohrabacher] and my ranking member to review our nation’s satellite export control policies and identify policy recommendations that would facilitate greater export opportunities for our aerospace companies while also national security,” McKeon said.
“Out of respect for the judgement of the chairman” and his desire to receive and study the final version of the Section 1248 report, “I am willing to withdraw my amendment,” Rohrabacher said.
Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA), HASC ranking member, said he supported Rohrabacher’s amendment and would have voted for it had it not been withdrawn, arguing that there’s no need to wait for additional studies on the subject. “Inaction is not the safe and correct course here,” he said. “We have the evidence we need. I believe we need to go forward.”
Earlier in the day, the Satellite Industry Association (SIA) and the Aerospace Industries Association (AIA) expressed support for Rohrabacher’s amendment in a joint statement. “If passed, this amendment would enhance U.S. national security and support American jobs and competitiveness. SIA and AIA strongly support the passage of this amendment,” they stated. That amendment will have to wait for another time, though.
By Jeff Foust on 2011 May 25 at 6:58 am ET The “key decision” that NASA announced Tuesday regarding the agency’s space exploration plans was not too surprising, and perhaps a bit underwhelming: NASA is transitioning its existing work on the Orion spacecraft to the Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle (MPCV). In the NASA statement and media teleconference later that day, NASA indicated there would be effectively no major modifications to Orion to become MPCV, but offered little in the way of specifics on the cost of the MPCV or when it would be ready to begin flights.
The MPCV was included in the NASA authorization act last year with a specific requirement to “continue to advance development of the human safety features, designs, and systems in the Orion project.” There was, then, an expectation that NASA would do what it announced yesterday, and transition its existing Orion contract to the MPCV; there was also some frustration in Congress that NASA was taking a long time to make that decision. Now, though, that NASA has done just that, members of Congress are expressing their support for that move, while pressing NASA to also make a decision soon on the Space Launch System (SLS) heavy-lifter.
“This is a good thing,” Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL) said in a statement. The decision “shows real progress towards the goal of exploring deep space” and also helps Florida, he added, since hundreds will be employed at the Kennedy Space Center to process the MPCV for launch. The release also notes that NASA administrator Charles Bolden called Nelson personally to inform him of the decision. In that call, Bolden told the senator that soon “NASA will be making further decisions with regard to the ‘transportation architecture’ of a big deep space rocket.”
Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) also supported the decision. “After more than a year of uncertainty and delay, NASA has come to the same conclusion that it reached years ago — Orion is the vehicle that will advance our human exploration in space,” she said in a statement (not yet posted online.) She reminded NASA, though, that it “must continue to follow law” and announce plans for the SLS. “NASA needs to follow this important step by quickly finalizing and announcing the heavy lift launch vehicle configuration so that work can accelerate and the requirements of the law can be met.”
“This was the only fiscally and technologically prudent decision that NASA could make,” Rep. Pete Olson (R-TX) said in a statement. “With this decision NASA can continue to build on current projects and investments rather than further delay with unnecessary procurements.”
NASA’s decision means that Lockheed Martin’s contract to work on Orion/MPCV will continue, and that’s a relief for people in Colorado, where much of that work is taking place. In a joint statement, Sen. Mark Udall (D-CO) and Michael Bennet (D-CO) and Rep. Ed Perlmutter (D-CO) noted the decision protects over 1,000 aerospace jobs, and nearly 4,000 total jobs, in the state, which to them appeared to be just as important as the MPCV’s role in future human space exploration. “With the Space Shuttle Endeavor’s [sic] final launch, Orion represents the next frontier in human space exploration and has the potential to stir the imagination of a new generation of young scientists while giving our economy a much needed boost,” Bennet said.
By Jeff Foust on 2011 May 24 at 7:39 am ET On Monday NASA issued a brief release stating that it will hold a briefing Tuesday afternoon “discuss an agency decision that will define the next transportation system to carry humans into deep space”. That’s led to some speculation that NASA has reached a decision on the architecture of the Space Launch System (SLS) heavy-lift vehicle. However, NASA officials speaking at a conference session last week gave no indication that a design decision was imminent.
“The agency is still working on what the integrated plan will be” for its exploration program, said Dan Dumbacher, deputy associate administrator for NASA’s Exploration Systems Mission Directorate, during a panel session at the National Space Society’s International Space Development Conference (ISDC) in Huntsville, Alabama, on Thursday. “We are working that internally. That will become more public in the late spring/early summer timeframe” with the delivery to Congress of a report on those plans. (He later said that report would be done in late June or early July,) “We are working very hard to get all of the analysis done that we need to document those plans.”
Much of the hour-long ISDC panel session, with the vague title “Flight System Development Forum”, dealt with the process of developing a design for the SLS, although with fewer details about the design itself. “Some might ask what’s the biggest challenge for the SLS going forward,” said Todd May, the SLS program manager at NASA Marshall Space Flight Center. “I really think at this point, based on the last year or so, it’s understanding and wading through the minefield of constituencies.” That includes, he said, “internal” constituencies that advocate various technical approaches as well as “external” constituencies, such as contractors, other government agencies, Congress, and the “commercial movement”. “That’s a pretty complex web, when you add all of that up, of constituencies.”
As teams evaluate a number of technical approaches, another area of emphasis has been how to efficiently manage such a program. While other agency teams looked at configurations based on liquid hydrogen or RP-1 propellants, said Garry Lyles, SLS chief engineer at NASA Marshall, another team has looked at the application of lean manufacturing concepts. “We are not going to operate the same way that we have been operating and come up with a new vehicle configuration and expect it to be affordable,” he said. “In other words, there is no perfect configuration.”
Panelists, though, offered fewer details about how that translates into a specific SLS design and how it will be procured. “We have not made a final selection on the procurement approach,” May said. “We certainly have the data we need to make that decision.” Dumbacher added that NASA will release those plans “as quickly as we can” after the delivery of the Congressional report. Lyles said a lot of major factors being weighed during the design process include tank diameter, engines (including engine costs, since the engines will not be reusable), and “complexity on the ground”, namely, the work required at the launch site to prepare the vehicles for launch. After the panel, May said their “end state” for the vehicle’s payload capacity is 130 tons, since that is what’s considered necessary for human Mars missions, but wouldn’t comment on any interim capacities.
“We want to get in to building hardware and get into the development as quickly as anyone does,” Dumbacher said. “I think that’s true of everyone involved in the process. We all want to be making progress as quickly as possible. We’re doing everything we can to get the right questions answered, do the right homework to make sure we’re doing the right things, and then get on with the development at hand and get moving on the next level of exploration.”
By Jeff Foust on 2011 May 20 at 9:10 am ET The 2011 International Space Development Conference (ISDC) kicked off in Huntsville, Alabama, yesterday with a panel titled “How Space Gets Done” featuring a number of current and former officials and experts. The title was perhaps a bit unintentionally ironic, since panelists described just how inefficiently space policy is getting done in Washington today.
“Where we are right now is, I think, rather unprecedented,” said John Logsdon, referring to last year’s events that led up to the passage of the NASA authorization act. “One can question whether that’s the right way to make choices for the next quarter-century or more of the US space program.”
Much of the panel was a review of that debate, as well as the creation of the national space policy also released last year. Marine Corps Lt. Col. Paul Damphousse, who served as a fellow in Sen. Bill Nelson’s office last year, mentioned the challenge of crafting authorization legislation that could make it through the Senate by unanimous consent, something Nelson considered the only way such a bill would pass given the limited time available. Peter Marquez, the former director of space policy at the National Security Council, mentioned work on the national space policy, including digging through historical papers and finding a quote from Eisenhower that went into the introduction of the 2010 policy after being asked by an unnamed participant in a senior leadership meeting during the development of the policy about why, rather than how, we do space.
Most of that policy work, panelists acknowledged, gets done by a relative small, insular group of people in Washington. “Getting into the old boys network is a very difficult thing to do,” Marquez said. Influencing policy is challenging, but with enough hard work by advocates, he said, good ideas make their way into policy.
So, is there a better way to develop space policy? Logsdon discussed the provision in the authorization act that calls for a “decadal study” of human spaceflight analogous to those done in the space and earth sciences. “There’s some hope that study… might provide a vehicle for coalescing around a long-term program,” he said. However, he cautioned, “there is no recognized leadership within the human spaceflight community that could serve as the focal point for forming a consensus.” That’s a concern similar to one voiced by Marcia Smith in a panel discussion in Washington in March.
Could having a cabinet-level secretary for space could provide some of that leadership? “I can’t find any rationale to do that,” Marquez said. Creating such a position, he argued, would take away authority from a number of existing civil and national security agencies, who would be naturally reluctant to give it up.
“How do we get ourselves out of this morass?” Logsdon asked. Fifty years ago, he noted, we had an external motivation in the Soviet Union; a similar driving force doesn’t exist today. “I kind of fall back on presidential leadership,” he said. “I doubt this is going to happen, but I would hope that on the 50th anniversary of Kennedy’s own speech, next Wednesday, President Obama has something positive to say about working together internationally to find a global strategy for exploration… I would not hold my breath on that happening, but something like that needs to be done.”
By Jeff Foust on 2011 May 19 at 8:53 am ET I have not had a chance to review yesterday’s Senate Commerce Committee hearing on “Contributions of Space to National Imperatives” (I’m on travel this week at the International Space Development Conference in Huntsville). However, there is at least one newsworthy item of interest to come out of the hearing. In his opening testimony, committee chairman Sen. Jay Rockefeller IV (D-WV) said that he and other committee members have sent a letter to NASA administrator Charles Bolden asking, in effect, for proof that NASA is implementing provisions of the NASA authorization act passed last year:
More than seven months after President Obama signed this [authorization] bill into law, I am concerned NASA is not moving forward with implementing it with the urgency it requires. I’m worried that NASA’s inaction and indecision in making this transition could hurt America’s space leadership—something that would cost us billions of dollars and years to repair.
It is for this reason that I’m prepared to step up the Committee’s oversight today.
This morning I, along with members of this Committee, sent a letter to Administrator Bolden. The letter outlines steps NASA should to take to help this Committee determine whether it is fully implementing the law. As I’ve said before, implementation of the law is a priority for me, and for this Committee. We simply can’t afford to get it wrong.
Space News provides some more details about the contents of the letter, which isn’t posted on the committee’s web site. The committee is asking for “bi-monthly briefings and detailed information” on the agency’s implementation plans, starting at the end of this month. The documentation includes a variety of reports on heavy-lift launch vehicle development and transition of Orion to the Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle, studies assessing demand for commercial crew transportation (including a controversial Aerospace Corporation study that suggested the business case for commercial crew didn’t close), effects on the the country’s propulsion industrial base of a new heavy-lift vehicle, and lists of contract modifications and transitions, among other documents. It’s the latest sign of frustration that has been building among some members of Congress for months about the lack of information they’ve received from NASA about their plans. NASA, though, blames the fact that a final FY11 spending measure wasn’t passed until last month; the long series of continuing resolutions and uncertainty during that time hindered their planning, they argue.
By Jeff Foust on 2011 May 18 at 7:19 am ET Another member of Congress has added his voice to the limited Congressional reaction to Endeavour’s launch on Monday. Rep. Chaka Fattah (D-PA), the ranking member of the appropriations subcommittee with oversight of NASA, issed a statement Tuesday cheering NASA on the successful launch. Fattah noted that he and Philadelphia mayor Michael Nutter called NASA administrator Charles Bolden after the launch to congratulate him on the launch; Bolden, in turn, invited both of them to attend the final shuttle launch in July. Fattah was not present himself at the launch of “Endeavor” (as the shuttle’s name is misspelled in the statement), but says that his wife and sons were there.
As noted here last week, one of the candidates in the special election for California’s 36th congressional district is an executive with an entrepreneurial space company: Stephen Eisele, the head of sales for Excalibur Almaz. In Tuesday’s election, though, Eisele’s bid to be the newest member of Congress fell a bit short: according to official election returns late Tuesday night he finished in ninth place out of 16 candidates, getting 660 votes, a little over 1 percent of the overall ballots cast.
In the last few weeks a provision tucked away in the final FY11 continuing resolution that prohibits NASA and OSTP from funding any cooperation with China or hosting visits from Chinese officials has gotten some attention, particularly after OSTP director John Holdren suggested that the administration might exploit a loophole in that ban, with a corresponding reaction from supporters of the ban like Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA). Yesterday the Chinese state-run news agency Xinhua published an editorial expressing its disapproval of the so-called “Wolf Clause”. That clause, it claims, forced NASA to revoke media credentials for Chinese journalists who planned to cover Endeavour’s launch this week (its primary payload, the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, features participation from Chinese scientists).
The clause may also prevent UCLA scientists from hosting a meeting at JPL with Chinese counterparts to exchange data from US and Chinese lunar spacecraft, according to an article in the UCLA Daily Bruin. A review of the provision by University of California Office of the President, though, said that the provision “would not necessarily prohibit NASA from funding research projects by U.S. investigators that include collaborations with Chinese colleagues.”
By Jeff Foust on 2011 May 18 at 6:50 am ET Advocacy groups, concerned about the effect of potential budget cuts in fiscal year 2012 on NASA’s commercial crew and space technology programs, are rallying support for those programs on Capitol Hill this week. Late yesterday the Space Access Society (SAS) sent out an alert about these programs, asking people to contact their representatives by Friday morning “and ask that they tell the Appropriations Committee that they support full funding for the NASA Commercial Crew and Space Technology programs.” The Space Frontier Foundation also sent our a similar alert last night.
Their concern is rooted in the the FY12 appropriations allocations released last week that could result in significant budget cuts for NASA in the coming year. “It’s going to get messy. Any item not strongly defended could be vulnerable,” the SAS alert warns. The alert continues that the leadership of the Commerce, Justice, and Science appropriations subcommittee, whose jurisdiction includes NASA, has decided to ask members of Congress this week what programs they believe should have their funding increased in decreased. A push now for programs like commercial crew and technology development—potentially vulnerable to cuts—could have “a considerable impact” on what the subcommittee decides in its markup in July. Previous lobbying efforts by SAS and others may have already had an effect: the alert notes that the subcommittee “is now definitely aware there’s opposition” to the Space Launch System, which the organization dismisses as an “earmark”.
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