By Jeff Foust on 2011 January 8 at 1:58 pm ET
 Gabrielle Giffords speaks at the SpaceVision 2009 conference in Tucson in November 2009 with her husband, NASA astronaut Mark Kelly.
Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) was shot this morning outside a grocery store in Tucson, according to multiple media reports. Giffords was hosting an event outside the store when she and a number of other people, including several staff members, were shot by a single assailant. Giffords’s condition is currently unknown, but some reports indicate she was shot in the head. Giffords served as chair of the space subcommittee of the House Science and Technology Committee in the last Congress and was likely to be the ranking member of the same subcommittee or have a similar role in the new Congress. Her husband, Mark Kelly, is a NASA astronaut.
Update 4:05pm EST: At a press conference at the University Medical Center in Tucson, a surgeon says Giffords is out of surgery and he is “very optimistic” about the prospects for her recovery.
Update 5:20pm EST: NASA administrator Charles Bolden issued the following statement about today’s tragedy, also available on the NASA web site:
We at NASA are deeply shocked and saddened by the senseless shooting of Representative Giffords and others at Saturday’s public event in Tucson. As a long-time supporter of NASA, Representative Giffords not only has made lasting contributions to our country, but is a strong advocate for the nation’s space program and a member of the NASA family. She also is a personal friend with whom I have had the great honor of working. We at NASA mourn this tragedy and our thoughts and prayers go out to Congresswoman Giffords, her husband Mark Kelly, their family, and the families and friends of all who perished or were injured in this terrible tragedy.
Update 5:40pm EST: Rep. Ralph Hall (R-TX), chair of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee, released this statement through the committee:
I am shocked and saddened by this terrible news, and my prayers are with Gabrielle, her husband Astronaut Mark Kelly, her family, her staff, and all those who were injured and lost their lives and their families. Gabrielle has so many friends in Congress and is an outstanding Congresswoman for her district and for the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology. I have been to her district with her to support solar energy and to the Cape with her to support the Shuttle flights. She is a wonderful person, and our prayers are with her, Captain Kelly, and the families of all the victims of this tragedy.
By Jeff Foust on 2011 January 7 at 7:15 am ET NASA administrator Charles Bolden spoke this week at the AIAA Aerospace Sciences Meeting in Orlando (the first speech by the administrator whose prepared text was posted on the NASA web site since a statement about the rescue of Chilean miners in mid-October). Much of Bolden’s speech was looking back at the shuttle program, but he did devote some comments to the agency’s future, noting that NASA is ready “to vigorously launch the exciting new direction we’ve been given through a strongly bi-partisan Authorization Act.” There’s nothing groundbreaking in his comments, although it may be worth nothing that he devotes a couple of paragraphs to commercial crew and cargo transportation development, and one to the additional shuttle mission authorized in last year’s act, but has only a single sentence about the Space Launch System, the heavy-lift launcher also authorized in the act.
In New Mexico, a change in administrations has cost Spaceport America executive director Rick Homans his job. Homans announced his resignation Wednesday, saying that new governor Susana Martinez (R)—who took office on New Year’s Day—had forced him to either resign or be fired. Homans had expressed an interest in staying on at least through the completion of the commercial spaceport’s construction later this year. Homans had served in several roles for former governor Bill Richardson, including as the state’s secretary of economic development when plans for the spaceport were announced a little over five years ago. The Martinez administration plans to form a search committee to find a replacement for Homans. In comments announcing his resignation, Homans said he’s concerned that the spaceport project could “slow down or fall apart pretty quickly” without a clear show of support for the effort by Gov. Martinez.
Martinez had previously indicated she had formed a “spaceport review team” to study the project, including its contract with anchor tenant Virgin Galactic; that team has received input from, among others, former astronauts Harrison Schmitt and Sid Gutierrez. Thursday, the Martinez administration announced that Schmitt has been nominated to be the state’s secretary of energy, minerals, and natural resources.
By Jeff Foust on 2011 January 6 at 7:20 am ET The 112th Congress started yesterday, which means big changes in the House as Republicans take power after four years of Democratic control. The new Republican leadership has already made its stamp on the science committee, which, according to its web site, is now known as the Committee on Science, Space and Technology; it had previously been known as the Committee on Science and Technology. (That’s one of the few visible changes for the time being, though: the site, which previously had been the one for the committee’s Republican caucus, still refers in some places to chairman Ralph Hall as the ranking member, and the link to the committee’s Democratic site was, as of Thursday morning, still listed as “Majority Website”.)
The name change, and other factors, have led some to conclude that the committee will take a sharper, more critical look at NASA and the Obama Administration’s space policy in the new Congress. “NASA may be especially susceptible to political wrangling in the new Congress because many influential Republicans” such as Hall, Nature News reported this week, “have NASA centres in their districts or states and support a strong manned-spaceflight programme. Their resistance will make it harder for Obama to give the agency a fresh direction.”
However, the ability of authorizers like the science committee to affect change at NASA may be limited during the next two years. With a three-year authorization act in place, there seems little opportunity to substantial changes to the bill: the House could always pass legislation to amend that authorization or make other changes, for example, but it would be difficult to get that through the Senate, which authored the current authorization act and whose proponents, like Sens. Bill Nelson (D-FL) and Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX), remain in office. The committee can hold hearings, of course (and Hall has already talked about bringing executives of commercial spaceflight providers like SpaceX before the committee), and provide insights and advice to appropriators, but legislative actions may be more difficult to enact.
In the new Congress, it seems that influence on space issues will shift from authorizers to appropriators. Last year appropriators by and large deferred to authorizers, waiting for a NASA authorization act to be passed, and even then the best they could do was a Senate appropriations bill, which closely followed the authorization bill, that made it through the full appropriations committee but no further. The new Congress will soon have to take up an FY11 appropriations bill of some kind, and soon thereafter start work on FY12 spending bills, with concerns about reducing the budget deficit weighing on members. That’s likely where the real action will be in the next two years.
By Jeff Foust on 2011 January 5 at 7:08 am ET Last week’s Orlando Sentinel report that NASA will have to spend nearly $500 million on Ares 1 because of a provision in the FY10 appropriations act that has persisted through the series of continuing resolutions isn’t news for people in the industry, but it has attracted the attention of editorial writers at papers that ordinarily wouldn’t pay much attention to space issues. Some examples:
“A failure by Congress has locked NASA – long the symbol of American innovation and technological ingenuity – into funding a program President Obama has killed,” argued the Toledo Blade in an editorial Sunday. (While the administration sought to kill Ares 1, it was the authorization act passed by Congress that effectively did the program in.) “Thanks to congressional inaction on the 2011 budget, the future has taken a back seat to cosmic pork.”
In a brief editorial Monday, the Raleigh News and Observer also speaks out against the continued funding of the program. “‘If we can put a man on the moon …’ is a phrase invoked whenever America faces a daunting challenge. This budget foul-up is a reminder that we reached the moon because of NASA, and not because of Congress.”
“Is it too much to ask? Can our elected representatives in Washington make even a game attempt to avoid obscene wastes of taxpayer money?” asks the Buffalo News Tuesday, complaining about the continued spending on Ares 1 and taking aim in particular at Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL). The senator, the editorial argues, “called [the administration’s proposal] ‘the death march for the future of U. S. human space flight.’ In reality, the senator was probably upset about the death of a future U. S. human employment program in his home state.”
It remains to be seen, though, if any of this editorial-page outrage will translate into action by Congress to remove the offending provision or take other action on a final FY11 spending bill before the current CR expires in early March.
By Jeff Foust on 2011 January 2 at 6:54 pm ET NASA’s current predicament—being required to spend money during the ongoing series of continuing resolutions on elements of Constellation effectively canceled by the NASA authorization act—has gotten the attention of one member of Congress, but with the potential for undesired consequences for the space agency. Appearing on CBS’s “Face the Nation” Sunday morning, guest host Harry Smith asked Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) how much spending could be cut over the next couple of years. Issa’s response (from page 15 of the transcript):
I’m looking at about two hundred billion. As the amount that we can either identify and eliminate the waste or at least begin the process and I’ll give you one that’s pretty easy. It’s been in the papers. In the last days of last congress they funded five hundred million dollars for a rocket program at NASA that’s already been shut down. That can’t be too hard to undo.
The potential problem for NASA is that Issa and like-minded fellow members of Congress could see that spending not as an artifact of FY10 appropriations language that needs to be updated to allow the agency to instead fund other programs, like the new heavy-lift Space Launch System included in the authorization act, but as waste to simply be cut entirely.
By Jeff Foust on 2010 December 30 at 8:24 am ET The Orlando Sentinel’s article about the continued funding of Ares 1 despite being effectively canceled in the NASA authorization act has gotten fairly wide coverage during a slow news week, with Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) getting much of the blame because of his provision in the FY2010 appropriations bill, still in force during the ongoing series of continuing resolutions, that prohibits NASA from terminating any Constellation programs. (Winner of the most lurid headline contest? “Sen. Shelby’s Pork Lust Forces NASA To Spend $500 Million On Canceled Rocket Program”.) A spokesman for Sen. Shelby, though, tells the Huntsville Times that’s not the case. “NASA is just making excuses and continuing to drag its feet, just as it has done for the past two years under the Obama administration,” Jonathan Graffeo told the paper. “The Shelby language is unambiguous and sends a clear message to NASA: Use the money Congress appropriates as intended – to build a rocket that will maintain our leadership in space.”
Meanwhile, everyone agrees that there is ambiguity in New Mexico: will Rick Homans keep his job as executive director of the New Mexico Spaceport Authority, which runs Spaceport America? Gov. Bill Richardson, a Democrat who appointed Homans to the post, is leaving after two terms in office, and Republican Susana Martinez will take office on January 1. Homans tells the Santa Fe New Mexican he’d like to stay on, but wants “further discussions” with the new administration about their plans for the spaceport and its governance. “I’d say it’s a fluid situation,” he said. He has been campaigning, of sorts, to stay on, with an op-ed outlining the spaceport’s accomplishments in 2010 in NMPolitics.net. He also has the support of the Las Cruces Sun-News, which called for Gov.-elect Martinez to retain Homans and his team in an editorial Tuesday.
When Orbital Sciences announced its CCDev plans this month, it was heralded in many quarters as a new entrant. Others, though, recalled that Orbital had similar concepts—a winged vehicle launched atop an EELV or other rocket—dating back over a decade. As I noted on NewSpace Journal yesterday, Orbital’s vision back then of how such a system should be developed and operated was quite similar to NASA’s current plans and the proponents of present-day CCDev proponents. In particular, there’s this passage from testimony of Orbital’s CTO at a hearing of the House Science Committee’s space subcommittee in October 1999: (emphasis in original)
We envision this Space Taxi to be industry owned and operated; however, the cost of development, production, and operation of the Space Taxi System would be paid for predominantly out of government funds because it satisfies unique NASA needs that are not currently aligned with those of commercial industry. The launching of this Space Taxi System, however, could be competed among commercial RLV or EELV suppliers that meet the cost and safety requirements. These future RLVs would be commercially developed with private capital and would be commercially owned and operated. Their development will be enabled by NASA’s current and planned future investments in RLV technologies and could be enhanced by government-backed financial incentives, such as tax credits, loan guarantees or advanced purchase agreements. Once a truly commercial Space Station becomes operational or the current Space Station becomes sufficiently commercialized, NASA and industry launch needs will be in almost complete alignment, and a completely commercial Space Taxi may become a viable business opportunity. We strongly believe that industry ownership of the Space Taxi from initial operation is critical to enable the eventual development of such a commercial Space Station.
The name of Orbital’s CTO at that time? Mike Griffin.
By Jeff Foust on 2010 December 29 at 6:47 am ET More end-of-the-year odds and ends:
Among the new members of Congress taking office next week is Rep.-elect Sandy Adams (R-FL), who defeated Suzanne Kosmas in November in Florida’s 24th district, which includes the Kennedy Space Center. In an op-ed in the Daytona Beach News-Journal today, Adams says she’ll seek to make human spaceflight the “core mission” of NASA. “I will work to educate my colleagues about the importance of restoring human space flight as the mission of NASA — not as an afterthought or something that would be ‘nice’ to do, but as the core mission of the agency,” she writes. Her concerns are based on what she perceives to be “a national security issue” (“We cannot and should not be forced to rely on the Russians and Chinese to get our astronauts into space”) but also a local jobs issue. She does not get into specifics, though, about what she will do to achieve that goal.
Adams and others, though, may have to fight on another front: against scientists and others who would like to see funding for space research spent instead on studying the oceans. In a CNN.com commentary, Kevin Ulmer of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution argues that the planet “needs a Hubble for its oceans”, specifically, a global monitoring network that would provide real-time information on ocean conditions. He has an idea of where the money could come from for such a system: space programs like the James Webb Space Telescope. “I, for one, would gladly wait a bit longer to learn of oceans on distant planets in return for the ability to see our own precious seas with the clarity and detail that will be required to insure the continued existence of life on this planet.”
How the administration will propose to allocate funding for NASA and other federal agencies in 2012 will be delayed a bit, POLITICO reports. Typically budget proposals are released on the first Monday of February, which would be February 7, but administration officials now say the FY12 proposal will come out a week later, around February 14. The delay is due to the belated Senate confirmation of new OMB director Jack Lew and continuing delays in finalizing appropriations for FY11. Space advocates will have to wait a bit longer, then, to see how much love the administration has for NASA.
By Jeff Foust on 2010 December 28 at 8:42 am ET A few items of interest for those catching up from the holidays:
Regular readers know that Congress’s inability this month to pass either an omnibus spending bill or a full-year continuing resolution means that provisions in the FY10 appropriations bill remain in effect, including one that prevents NASA from terminating any elements of Constellation. An Orlando Sentinel article Monday puts that into perspective: it means NASA will spend nearly $500 million until March on Ares 1 in fiscal year 2011, even though the program was effectively killed by the NASA authorization act signed into law in October. NASA officials say while it might look like the money is being wasted, much of it is “directly applicable” to the heavy-lift vehicle included in the authorization act—provided a shuttle-derived architecture for the system is selected.
In a separate article, the Sentinel wonders if NASA can afford to continue business as usual for Orion given the successes in the past year by SpaceX. One passage indicates that SpaceX has some supporters within NASA who are seeking to cut down on the layers of bureaucracy and get things done cheaper:
Inside NASA, some employees have taken to wearing T-shirts emblazoned with the letters “WWED,” which stands for “What Would Elon Do?” — a reference to SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk, the Internet tycoon who invested his own fortune in pursuit of his dream of sending humans into space at affordable prices.
In the article, NASA Orion project manager Mark Geyer said the agency is getting the message and is “scaling back layers of supervision and looking at other ways to cut costs.” The article also notes, though, that under current plans, Orion would not be ready to transport astronauts to the ISS until 2018. By comparison, NASA officials involved with CCDev stated this month that commercial vehicles could be ready to begin service by late 2016; commercial advocates would no doubt argue that such vehicles could enter service even sooner.
The commercial option is looking attractive to agencies outside the US as well. Canadian Space Agency president Steve MacLean told the Canadian Press that he would be open to buying seats on an American commercial vehicle to allow Canadian astronauts to visit the ISS. “If everything goes well, and if it shows that to our satisfaction everything is OK, everything is safe and secure, yes, it’s possible,” he said.
All of these policy changes in the last year, though, represent a significant change from Obama’s 2008 campaign white paper on space policy, which included an endorsement of the Vision for Space Exploration’s central goal of a human return to the Moon by 2020 and plans to “expedite the development of the Shuttle’s successor systems”. Salon has flagged that change as an example of one of the “promises Obama wants you to keep forgetting”. Salon cites this and other examples to disprove a statement by the president: “There’s not a single thing that I’ve said that I would do that I have not either done or tried to do.”
By Jeff Foust on 2010 December 23 at 11:29 am ET In a Wall Street Journal op-ed last week, author Homer Hickam called for a human mission to the Moon’s south pole without adding “a cent to the paltry amount NASA gets”. He didn’t describe specifically how to get that done, only suggesting that “its excellent engineers” would figure out a way. If they did, they might end up with something like what Paul Spudis and Tony Lavoie have proposed, an architecture that they claim can result in “a fully functional, human-tended lunar outpost capable of producing 150 metric tonnes of water per year” for $88 billion. The schedule for achieving this is flexible, but Spudis notes that it could be done in about 16 years, with peak annual funding of $7.1 billion. Missing from the technical analysis, though, is what’s needed to win political support for such a venture from the White House, Capitol Hill, and the various other constituencies in the space community.
The Moon, though, might seem passé for Loren Thompson, COO of the Lexington Institute. In a Forbes.com column, Thompson identifies space as one of four areas where America “could materially improve the nation’s outlook without costing much money or leading to further political polarization.” Specifically, he wants NASA to mount a human mission to Mars by the early 2030s, “and do it without spending any more money than NASA was planning to spend anyway.” Human spaceflight “seems to be in its death throes” under the current administration’s policies, he claims, “and the only near-term human space flight initiative on the books is a handout to rich California businessmen to update old technology,” an apparent reference to NASA’s commercial crew and cargo program, which includes awards to Elon Musk’s SpaceX (but also a number of other companies not backed by “rich California businessmen”.) “By organizing the human spaceflight program with Mars in mind, NASA can develop a near-term investment and exploration agenda that gets us somewhere interesting without any additional commitment of funding,” Thompson claims. How exactly NASA would do that, though, is apparently left as an exercise for the agency’s excellent engineers (although one assumes Bob Zubrin would have some ideas in that regard.)
By Jeff Foust on 2010 December 22 at 10:31 am ET Yesterday the House and Senate, as expected, approved another continuing resolution (CR), this one funding the federal government through March 4 at FY2010 levels. The passage means that it will be up to the new Congress—one with a new Republican majority in the House and a narrower Democratic majority in the Senate—to deal with FY2011 spending. As previously noted, the CR doesn’t contain any new anomalies or other provisions related to NASA, which means that, among other items, the prohibition in the FY10 appropriations bill that prevents NASA from terminating any Constellation programs remains in effect, despite the human spaceflight plan enacted in the NASA authorization act signed into law in October.
The extended CR has raised questions about NASA’s ability to carry out various initiatives, including an additional shuttle mission authorized in the new act. However, Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL) told Florida Today this week that the new CR should not imperil that mission or other NASA priorities. That, though, may be based on the assumption that NASA would get in 2011 no less than the FY10 topline of a little over $18.7 billion versus the authorized (and requested) level of $19 billion. In a hearing at the beginning of December Nelson said he expected NASA to carry out the provisions of the authorization act if funded at the 2010 level, and, in particular, got a commitment that NASA could carry out the additional shuttle mission if funded at that level. However, there remains the possibility that a new, more fiscally conservative Congress might seek to cut funding below the 2010 levels, either overall or for specific programs, when it convenes in January.
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