By Jeff Foust on 2011 March 27 at 10:12 am ET With Congress in recess this past week, members have been in their home districts talking about policy issues—which, in the case of certain districts in Alabama and Florida, means talking about space. Florida Today reports that Rep. Bill Posey (R-FL) told an audience of local retired military officers that the US is making “a horrible mistake” by not having a clear path forward for human spaceflight, saying that space is the “ultimate military high ground” (but not further explaining the link between human spaceflight and military space applications, which rely on unmanned spacecraft.) By contrast, Rep. Sandy Adams (R-FL), whose district includes KSC, did not mention space in a luncheon speech Friday, telling Florida Today afterwards that her constituents “all know that I am working hard for NASA.” One constituent interviewed after the speech, in fact, said she would have liked to hear more from Adams about space issues.
With all the concerns about funding levels, heavy-lift launch vehicle programs, commercial crew development, and the like, Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL) decided to focus instead Saturday on another NASA issue: outreach to Muslim countries. “Quite frankly, I don’t think that’s the mission of NASA,” he told a town hall audience in Athens, Alabama, the Huntsville Times reports, referring to comments made by NASA administrator Charles Bolden last year. (The administration would agree with Rep. Brooks: they later said Bolden misspoke.) Brooks said he hopes that Congress will stop those outreach plans, the Times reported, and “focus on strengthening NASA and the space program” in the name of “American exceptional ism”.
Novelist and Miami Herald columnist Carl Hiaasen doesn’t say much about space, but NASA’s current situation, where it’s forced to continue to spend money on Constellation programs, even those elements cancelled in last year’s authorization bill, was too much for him to ignore. Hiaasen directed his invective at Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL), who authored the provision in the FY2010 appropriations act, still in effect thought the series of continuing resolutions, that keeps NASA from cancelling elements of Constellation. “Yet instead of doing what’s best for all American taxpayers (and for NASA, which is scraping for funds), the senator is content to sit back and watch nearly $280 million go down a black hole – and into the hands of major campaign contributors,” Hiaasen wrote, referring to campaign donations Shelby received from ATK and its employees. (It does seem at times as though we’re in the middle of a plot of a Hiaasen novel: all we need is an epic showdown in The Everglades.)
By Jeff Foust on 2011 March 26 at 11:08 am ET What kind of heavy-lift vehicle does NASA want to build, or at least thinks it can build? That was one central topic of discussion in a speech and Q&A session by NASA administrator Charles Bolden on Capitol Hill on Friday, organized by the Space Transportation Association.
Congress has already provided direction to NASA on this in the 2010 NASA authorization act: build a “Space Launch System” (SLS) that can launch 70-100 tons into low Earth orbit, starting by the end of 2016, and is eventually upgraded to 130 tons. NASA, though, is still studying what the SLS would look like, and, to the consternation of some members of Congress, delivered an initial report to Congress in January that said an SLS concept that meets the payload and schedule constraints of the act isn’t possible within projected budgets. Bolden said those study efforts were proceeding, with an emphasis now on deciding on the propulsion system: “whether you go with LOX/hydrogen the way we did with shuttle, or LOX/RP the way we did back in the Saturn days… whether you use solids.” He said NASA is getting “really close” and, later, “perilously close” on making decisions on this.
However, it wasn’t clear from Bolden’s comments whether what emerged from those studies would meet the act’s requirements for payload capacity and schedule. Asked why the agency could’t just announce that it would develop the vehicle in the act, Bolden said, “Because I don’t want to, for one thing, and because it may be that we can’t do that. We don’t know.” (It’s unclear whether Bolden meant that he doesn’t want to build the SLS as specified in the act, or instead meant that he doesn’t want to say now that NASA will build such a vehicle; he later claimed he meant neither of those things.) Bolden cited budget uncertainties for 2011 and beyond in the new climate of fiscal conservatism as a key factor in determining what NASA can do for an HLV. “This time last year, the worst you could do [for a fiscal year 2011 budget] was 2010 level,” he said. “Today, 2010 level is pretty good.”
Bolden emphasized that his interest is on an evolvable launch system, in contrast to Constellation’s plans to develop the Ares 5 with only the Ares 1 as an intermediate step. “What got us in trouble with Constellation was there were people in NASA who believed that they were going to get one shot, and one shot only, at a heavy-lift launch vehicle, and ‘I gotta build the biggest rocket known to man because I’m never going to get to come back to that,” he said. “I don’t live by that philosophy. I think we have to be able to do small, incremental steps, demonstrate that we can keep to cost and schedule, and then people will begin to have confidence that we know what we’re talking about. If we can’t do that, we’re not going very far with anything.”
“NASA does not need a 130-metric-ton vehicle probably before the next decade,” Bolden said later. “We know we’re going to need it if we’re going to go to an asteroid, in a reliable way, and we’re definitely going to need it when we talk about going to Mars. But we would take a lesser capability in an earlier heavy-lift system so that we can get the job done,” he said, not specifying how lesser that initial capability could be. He added that “traditional rocket companies that want to sell me a 130-metric-ton vehicle, but don’t want to evolve it, they may lose. They may lose because there’s some other company that wants to give me the capability that I need right now that can be evolved to what we will need down the road.”
This is not the first time that Bolden has spoken out on heavy-lift development. In an appearance earlier this month at CSIS, Bolden said that “we can’t” go directly to a 130-metric-ton vehicle, and that NASA would “continue to negotiate and discuss with the Congress why that is not necessary.” That speech came shortly after the Senate Appropriations Committee had put forward a full-year continuing resolution that appeared to call for immediate development of a 130-ton HLV.
(As an aside, it’s worth noting that the NASA authorization act refers to payload capacity in “tons”, while Bolden’s comments, and some previous NASA documents, make use of “metric tons”, which are about 10 percent heavier (2,205 versus 2,000 pounds). It’s a minor point in the grander scheme of things, but you would think that an agency that lost a spacecraft because of a mismatch in metric versus English units would be more attuned to that.)
Bolden also, curiously, suggested that NASA would not be the only user of any heavy-lift vehicle it develops. “When I talk about a heavy-lift launch vehicle, it’s not a NASA vehicle any more. In this day and age, it’s a heavy-lift launch vehicle that’s going to be used by the national intelligence community, the DOD, because we’re the only ones building a heavy-lift launch vehicle, and we’re building it for that purpose,” he claimed. Later, when talking about a 130-ton vehicle, he suggested that while NASA does not have an immediate need for such a rocket, “probably the intelligence community can use it as soon as I can give it to them.” While there may be some concepts floating around the national security space community, unclassified and classified, for projects that could require a heavy-lift launcher, there are no existing projects under development or consideration that need anything larger than the Delta 4 Heavy, which can put about 25 tons into LEO.
For some additional reporting and commentary on Bolden’s speech Friday, I recommend SpaceRef and SpacePolicyOnline.com.
By Jeff Foust on 2011 March 25 at 6:06 am ET While Congress has been in recess this week, it will be back in business next week, with a busy schedule of hearings on tap:
At 10am on Wednesday, March 30, the space subcommittee of the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee will hold a hearing titled “A Review of NASA’s Exploration Program in Transition: Issues for Congress and Industry”. Scheduled to appear are Doug Cooke, NASA’s associate administrator for exploration; Scott Pace, director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University; and Jim Maser, who is listed as chairman of AIAA’s Corporate Membership Committee but is perhaps better known as president of Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne (and who recently warned that that continued uncertainty in space policy could hurt the country’s space industrial base.)
At 10:30 am on Thursday, March 31, NASA administrator Charles Bolden will appear before the Commerce, Justice, and Science subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee for a hearing on the FY2012 NASA budget request.
The Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee has two hearings scheduled next week of at least tangential relevance to space policy. On Thursday at 10 am the subcommittee will host John Holdren, director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, while at the same time on Friday the subcommittee will hold a hearing on NOAA, with administrator Jane Lubchenco testifying.
By Jeff Foust on 2011 March 24 at 1:03 pm ET While the current situation involving NASA’s budget and restrictions on terminating Constellation contracts is familiar to most readers here, the Orlando Sentinel lays it out in dollars and cents: NASA is forced to “waste” $1.4 million per day on Constellation contracts it can’t cancel because of a provision in the FY2010 appropriations bill, even as we approach the halfway mark of FY2011. A spokesman for Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL), who vowed earlier this year to remove the so-called “Shelby provision” (after Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL), who got it included in the FY10 appropriations act), blamed “partisan politics over a broader government spending measure” for the failure to get that provision eliminated. (Republican appropriators earlier this month also said that they would seek to eliminate that provision in the next CR, but failed to do so.) NASA officials, including Administrator Bolden in a House appropriations hearing earlier this month and his associate administrators in a Senate hearing last week, have shied away from claims that the current situation has been causing them to waste money, but made it clear they’d like the language removed sooner rather than later.
In an editorial today, Florida Today calls on Congress to fund commercial crew development as the best means to limit the impending gap in US human spaceflight capabilities. The paper notes that the current situation the US finds itself in, with the US reliant on Russia for access to the station for at least several years after the shuttle’s retirement this year, is an artifact of the original implementation of the Vision for Space Exploration back in 2004, which was endorsed by Congresses with both Republican and Democratic majorities. “In the hyper-partisan climate in Congress, the announcement brought familiar criticism from Republicans that the Obama administration is ceding U.S. human spaceflight to Russia,” the editorial states, referring to the latest NASA contract for Soyuz flights. “The rhetoric accomplishes nothing, further poisoning the atmosphere when level-headed bipartisan leadership is necessary to steer NASA through the post-shuttle transition.”
By Jeff Foust on 2011 March 24 at 7:17 am ET In less than a month, on April 12, NASA administrator Charles Bolden is scheduled to announce which sites will receive the agency’s three shuttle orbiters—Atlantis, Discovery, and Endeavour—when the fleet is retired later this year. That means the sites seeking the orbiters are ramping up for one final lobbying push, and often calling on their Congressional delegations to twist (or, at least, try to twist) the arm of Bolden to win one of the orbiters.
Florida: On Wednesday, Rep. Sandy Adams (R-FL) called on NASA to give one of the orbiters to the Kennedy Space Center, citing the spaceport’s three-decade history of launching the shuttles. “The Space Shuttle is as much a part of Florida as sunshine and beaches,” she writes in a letter to Bolden. “I urge you to consider the important role the people of Florida have played in this era of exploration and adventure, and that you choose to house one of the Shuttles at the KSC complex.”
Houston: While conventional wisdom puts Florida as one of the frontrunners for a shuttle, people in Houston are more nervous, fearing they may lose out to another site in the middle of the country, such as the Air Force museum in Dayton, Ohio. Earlier this week 18 members of the Texas Congressional delegation, including Houston area members as well as others such as Ralph Hall (R) and Joe Barton (R), sent a letter to President Obama asking that NASA award Houston an orbiter, claiming that failing to do so “would forever diminish the service rendered by the City of Houston and create a blemish on its significance to the legacy of NASA as it closes this chapter in its history.” Leading the effort is Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D), who notes in a release accompanying the letter that she is “a zealous advocate for NASA” and was spurred into action after hearing that Houston “had fallen to the bottom of a list of cities being considered ” for a shuttle.
That appears to be a reference to a Houston Chronicle article about Houston’s prospects, noting that the Air Force budget request for FY2012 includes $14 million for the Air Force museum to prepare to receive a shuttle orbiter. The newspaper followed that report up with an editorial calling for the city to receive a shuttle, asking Bolden “to look beyond the politics of placement and do the right thing”. (The same editorial also claims that “Congress has passed legislation exempting the Smithsonian from preparation charges”; that appears to be incorrect, as that provision was in a House appropriations bill it passed last December but was not approved by the Senate.)
Houston is relying on more than just positive history to win an orbiter: Local TV station KTRK reported that Bolden met Wednesday with families of astronauts lost in the Challenger and Columbia accidents, who lobbied to get Houston an orbiter. Bolden didn’t comment on the meeting in an interview with the station, but said that he thought there were “six to ten places” that he thought qualified for an orbiter, not disclosing what those sites were.
Chicago: That city’s outsider bid for an orbiter got support last week in a letter to Bolden by the state’s two senators, Richard Durbin (D) and Mark Kirk (R). With ties to the shuttle program tenuous, the senators played up the city’s ability to secure funding for major projects (as Chicago’s bid calls for a new building for Adler Planetarium on the city’s lakefront, as well as Adler’s expertise in education and public outreach. While the senators were polite, the Chicago Sun-Times was a bit more blunt in an editorial this week: “Not to be unkind, but for NASA to give the shuttle to any other Midwestern city would be a comparative act of charity.”
New York: Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) is doing more than just write letters: he invited Bolden to tour the Intrepid Sea-Air-Space Museum, the New York City museum vying for an orbiter. “It’s time for the Intrepid to do one last recovery mission by permanently hosting a retired shuttle,” Schumer wrote. (Bolden declined the invitation, the New York Daily News reported, as a spokesman explained that Bolden had already visited the museum “on numerous occasions”.)
As this lobbying continues for a couple more weeks, it’s interesting that the space-related topic that generates the most interest among members of Congress, particularly those who ordinarily pay little attention to space issues, has nothing to do with NASA’s future in space but instead is about disposing of its past.
By Jeff Foust on 2011 March 23 at 6:42 am ET Tucked away in last year’s NASA authorization act is a provision calling for an independent study about human spaceflight:
SEC. 204. INDEPENDENT STUDY ON HUMAN EXPLORATION OF SPACE.
(a) IN GENERAL.-In fiscal year 2012 the Administrator shall contract with the National Academies for a review of the goals, core capabilities, and direction of human space flight, using the goals set forth in the National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Authorization Act of 2005, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Authorization Act of 2008, the goals set forth in this Act, and goals set forth in any existing statement of space policy issued by the President.
The study’s scope, timeframe (the legislation calls for “findings and recommendations” for fiscal years 2014-2023), and use of the National Academies has caused many people to liken this to the decadal surveys used in various space science disciplines, such as the recently-released planetary science decadal survey. But would such a study for human spaceflight be effective?
That question was debated last week during the Arthur C. Clarke Foundation “Living in Space” session, part of the Satellite 2011 trade show in Washington. While the session was sparsely attended, with no more than about 15 people in the audience, the event featured a good debate about whether such a study will make much of a difference in shaping the long-term future of human spaceflight.
“Part of the problem, the reason why we’ve been going around and around and around, is that we have not been forced to reach a consensus” on the goals of human spaceflight, said NASA’s Phil McAlister. “This is why I believe in this Academies-like study that will allow the human spaceflight community to come together, like the science community has done for years and years, effectively.”
“With that kind of document and blueprint… then finally, maybe, we can get the long-term consensus required to actually finish one of these programs,” he said. “That is my sincere hope.”
Marcia Smith of SpacePolicyOnline.com, who previously worked at the National Academies, is more skeptical of the utility of a human spaceflight decadal survey. One concern she has is the scope of such a study. “You don’t do a decadal survey for ‘space science.’ The communities are too diverse,” she said. Instead, there are separate decadals for astronomy, planetary science, and other fields, narrow enough to make it likely to achieve consensus on goals. “I do not believe you can do that with human spaceflight, and I have been encouraging everyone I know to not call this thing that Congress is requesting a decadal survey.”
Scientific decadal surveys also benefit from strong leadership from scientists universally accepted by the community, such as Mars scientist Steve Squyres in the recent planetary science decadal or Roger Blandford in the astronomy and astrophysics decadal released last year. Smith wondered if there was a person with similar standing in the human spaceflight community to lead this study. “The human spaceflight community is so fragmented, and there are so many groups that want to do this, that, or the other, I cannot think of a single individual” with the standing of a Blandford or Squyres, she said. Anyone selected, she suggested, should be somewhat younger than chairs of past space studies like Norm Augustine and Tom Young. “I don’t know an individual who has that kind of support in the human spaceflight community, whatever that is,” she said.
Smith added that while decadal surveys look good to outsiders, they have their flaws and drawbacks as well. Well-connected scientists, she said, can do end runs around the surveys and win funding for their own programs regardless of their standing in the surveys’ final reports. Last year’s astrophysics decadal survey generated controversy when, instead of recommending one of the many mission concepts presented to it as the community’s top priority, it created a new mission called WFIRST. “There is this myth that somehow decadal surveys solve all of your problems,” she said.
McAlister, though, saw a decadal survey, as imperfect as it might be, as better than the current state of affairs. “I don’t see any plan for getting this community together that even has a hope or a chance as good as the decadal,” he said. “Noting its issues, that, to me, that has by far the best potential for bringing the community together.”
By Jeff Foust on 2011 March 22 at 7:42 am ET Rep. Sandy Adams (R-FL) issued a press release Monday about the letter that she and Rep. Pete Olson (R-TX) sent last week to Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), chairman of the House Budget Committee. As reported last week, Adams and Olson asked Ryan to spare human spaceflight programs from any budget cuts, suggesting that Earth sciences programs could instead be cut. “I strongly encourage Chairman Paul Ryan and the rest of my colleagues to make human space exploration a top priority as we continue our discussion on our Republican budget for the 2012 fiscal year,” Adams said in the release. “While I believe there are ways we can trim NASA’s budget – specifically within the Earth Science account – we mustn’t do so at the expense of human spaceflight, which is a proven economic driver and job creator.”
The release includes a copy of the letter to Rep. Ryan. In it, Adams and Olson extol the virtues of spaceflight and space exploration, from the development of new technologies to inspiring youth to pursue education in science and engineering fields. However, the Obama Administration, they claim, “willingly cedes that leadership” in human spaceflight to China, Russia, and even India: “We cannot continue to accept this administration’s assault on American exceptionalism and world leadership.” Because of that, they ask Ryan, as he crafts budget guidelines for FY2012, that he ensure that “any substantial reductions in programs or budget lines within the NASA budget would spare human spaceflight.” They offer to “extend our hands to work with you and your staff to identify other areas within the NASA budget that will reduce unnecessary spending and get our nation’s debt under control.”
As noted last week, this letter is a different approach than earlier this year, when members like Reps. Adams and Olson suggested that funding from Earth sciences programs be redirected to human spaceflight. This letter makes no such explicit request, instead arguing that while NASA’s budget may need to be reduced as part of broader efforts to reduce federal spending, those cuts should come from Earth sciences and not human spaceflight. That exposes a potential logical flaw in their argument: by suggesting that some NASA programs be cut without also calling for increases in spending for human spaceflight, it does nothing to address their concern about the “assault on American exceptionalism” posed by the administration’s budget request for human spaceflight.
By Jeff Foust on 2011 March 20 at 3:26 pm ET Lost in yesterday’s developments in Libya was the release of a joint statement by US President Barack Obama and Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff during President Obama’s visit to Brazil. The lengthy statement covered a wide range of topics, including, interestingly, three paragraphs devoted to space policy:
President Rousseff welcomed the emphasis the U.S. National Space Policy has placed on international cooperation and expressed her wish to expand the dialogue with the United States bearing in mind the guidelines of the Brazilian space policies, aimed at technological capacity building and the commercial use of infrastructure and technology.
In this context, they welcomed the signing of a new bilateral Framework Agreement on Cooperation in the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space and expressed their desire to commence negotiations of a new agreement to protect launching operation technologies.
Furthermore, they affirmed the commitment of their countries to security in space and decided to initiate a dialogue in that area. They also instructed the appropriate agencies in the two countries to discuss the establishment of a Brazil – United States. Working Group on satellite-based earth observations, environmental monitoring, precipitation measurement, and natural disaster mitigation and response that would facilitate future dialogue and cooperation in these fields.
The middle paragraph appears to refer to the long, difficult road to launching US satellites, or even US launch vehicles, from the Brazilian spaceport at Alcântara. That facility is ideally located for GEO launches, as it is located within three degrees of the Equator, but has been used primarily for sounding rockets. Brazil developed a small launch vehicle, the VLS-1, but the vehicle never successfully launched; during preparations for its third launch in 2003, the rocket exploded on the pad, killing 21 people. There has been interest from other vehicle developers about using the site, but one hindrance has been the lack of a Technology Safeguard Agreement between the US and Brazil, to comply with US export control laws to protect US technology. A TSA was signed in 2000, but the Brazilian government declined to ratify it after some legislators expressed concerns that it violated the country’s sovereignty.
The agreement suggests the two countries are willing to reopen discussions that could lead to a new TSA. But who will use the spaceport? One long-discussed vehicle has been the Ukrainian Cyclone-4 rocket. While those plans have suffered numerous delays (a 2004 report indicated that Cyclone launches from Alcântara would begin “sometime after 2007″), there may be some progress, as groundbreaking on Cyclone facilities at the spaceport took place last September. Interestingly, a WikiLeaks cable from December 2008 reports that Ukrainian officials met with staff of the US embassy in Brazil, asking for US government support from the project; the Ukrainians offered to lobby the Brazilian congress to win approval of the original US-Brazil TSA. A couple months later the US declined the offer, according to another WikiLeaks cable.
By Jeff Foust on 2011 March 18 at 7:12 am ET Yesterday the Senate passed yet another short-term continuing resolution (CR), extending funding for the federal government for three more weeks, through April 8. That CR cuts $63 million from NASA, targeting earmarks left over from the agency’s FY2010 spending bill. This CR is likely to be the last such stopgap measure before “the decisive showdown next month” on a final FY11 spending bill, POLITICO reports. That echoes comments made earlier this week by Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) at a Senate Commerce Committee hearing about NASA, where she said that “the sentiment on the Hill now” is that this short-term CR would be the last.
While the final FY11 spending bill remains uncertain, lobbying continues about FY2012 appropriations. Space News reported late Thursday that two House members have asked a key lawmaker to protect NASA’s human spaceflight programs from potential budget cuts. Reps. Sandy Adams (R-FL) and Pete Olson (R-TX) asked Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), chairman of the House Budget Committee, which sets overall spending levels for appropriators, to preserve funding for NASA human spaceflight programs, while suggesting that NASA’s Earth science programs, home to what Adams and Olson call an “overabundance of climate change research”, could be ripe for cuts.
This argument for human spaceflight versus Earth sciences isn’t new, but this letter suggests a change in their approach. In a February letter to Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA), chairman of the appropriations subcommittee whose jurisdiction includes NASA, six House members, including Adams and Olson, call for redirecting Earth science funding to human spaceflight. “With your help, we can reorient NASA’s mission back toward human spaceflight by reducing funding for climate change research and reallocating those funds to NASA’s human spaceflight accounts,” they wrote last month. In the Adams/Olson letter to Ryan, though, they seem to be conceding that NASA’s budget will be cut, and want to direct those cuts away from human spaceflight. “To be clear, we believe that NASA’s budget can be reduced,” they write, as quoted by Space News, arguing that those cuts come from Earth science and not human spaceflight but apparently not suggesting that money be transferred from Earth sciences to human spaceflight.
By Jeff Foust on 2011 March 17 at 6:39 am ET Space industry supporters, backed by two former astronauts, held their annual Space Day in the Florida Legislature on Wednesday, seeking support for legislation to make the state more competitive for space businesses. This includes securing $10 million in funding for Space Florida as well as passing legislation to provide tax credits for spaceflight projects. The bill, SB 1224 in the Florida Senate and HB 873 in the Florida House, would provide $10 million in non-transferable and $25 million in transferable corporate income tax credits per year, although they cannot be claimed before October 2015. Supports said there’s a good chance the legislation will be enacted given support from key legislators and because “business incentives aimed at creating jobs are sure to appeal to Gov. Rick Scott,” according to Sunshine State News.
Another space-related bill expected to win passage in Florida is SB 652/HB 703, which would amend the state’s existing law that provides immunity to spaceflight operators by repealing a 2018 sunset date for the law that was in the original legislation. Similar legislation is also making its way through the Texas Legislature. On Tuesday the Texas Senate unanimously passed SB 115, which would provide immunity for spaceflight operators in Texas. The legislation was uncontroversial enough members were cracking Star Trek jokes prior to voting on the bill, the Austin American-Statesman reported. This is the second time the state’s senate has approved such legislation: a similar bill, SB 2105, won unanimous approval from the Texas Senate in 2009 but died in the Texas House.
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