By Jeff Foust on 2010 December 7 at 8:43 pm ET POLITICO reports late Tuesday that a House GOP steering committee has recommended Rep. Ralph Hall (R-TX) chair the House Science and Technology Committee in the next Congress. That pick will be voted upon by the full House Republican caucus tomorrow, but as the article notes, the vote is seen as a formality. Hall beat out Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) to chair the committee.
The POLITICO article focuses primarily on Hall’s and other committee Republicans’ views on climate change, but on space issues a committee chaired by Hall may be a little different than one run by Rohrabacher. While both voted for the NASA authorization bill in September, Hall was skeptical of many elements of the administration’s proposal, including its commercial crew development plan; Rohrabacher was a major supporter of that program. In an op-ed in the San Francisco Chronicle last week, Mojave Air and Space Port general manager Stu Witt and UC Irvine’s Greg Autry contrasted the two on that issue. Hall, they argued, “shares the idiosyncratic view that only government can safely manage manned space flight,” while Rohrabacher’s support for commercial spaceflight “fits the bill.” However, despite the wishes of Witt and Autry, it will be Hall, not Rohrabacher, running the committee in the next Congress.
By Jeff Foust on 2010 December 7 at 6:50 am ET The impending retirement of the space shuttle program—now no sooner than mid-2011 assuming STS-135 is added to the manifest—has been feared by local and state officials because of the thousands of layoffs that will result and the concomitant impact on the region’s economy. For example, state senator Mike Haridopolos, who represents the Space Coast and recently became president of the Florida Senate, worried last month that “20,000 jobs” would be lost (which would be on the very high end of estimates); Haridopolos, a Republican and potential 2012 US senate candidate, put the blame on current Senator Bill Nelson. Another state Republican, though, sees the end of the shuttle program in less dire terms.
“You can look at it as a problem or an opportunity. The opportunity is, look at all the talent that is now going to be freed up to be part of companies,” said Florida Gov.-elect Rick Scott, at the beginning of a week-long swing through the state to talk about jobs. “We’re going to put a lot of effort into talking to companies that make sense for that workforce to work there. We’re going to talk to people all around the world to relocate plants, open plants there, because we have a ready work force.”
Frank DiBello, president of Space Florida, is optimistic that several thousand shuttle jobs can be replaced within the next few years. DiBello estimates that 6,000 jobs will be lost when the shuttle program ends, but that 2,000 to 3,000 can be replaced with “the completion of deals that are under way”, he told Florida Today. He added that he met with Scott and “foresees no problems” working with the new governor on these issues.
By Jeff Foust on 2010 December 4 at 9:17 am ET NASA administrator Charles Bolden soon won’t be the only former astronaut with a key administration post. The White House announced this week it has nominated Kathryn Sullivan to the post of Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Observation and Prediction. That position oversees the National Weather Service and other NOAA programs dealing with weather and water studies; on the NOAA org chart it’s also identified as NOAA deputy administrator, reporting to NOAA administrator Jane Lubchenco. Sullivan, who flew on three shuttle missions between 1984 and 1992, also served as NOAA’s chief scientist in the 1990s after leaving NASA.
Congress has passed a second continuing resolution (CR) to keep the government funded at FY2010 levels through December 18. The first CR expired Friday night. That continued delay in enacting a final FY11 appropriations bill doesn’t still well with the editorial board of the Orlando Sentinel, which wants Congress to fund NASA at the authorized level of $19 billion, despite calls by House GOP leadership to cut overall federal spending back to 2008 levels. “We applaud the Republicans’ determination to cut federal spending. But surely there are riper targets than the space program,” the editorial argues, citing farm subsidies as one example. “NASA has been in a fog too long. Congress needs to clear away the cloud of doubt enveloping the space program and give the agency the money it needs.”
In the latest issue of Scientific American magazine, meanwhile, the editors back the administration’s original plans for NASA and call on President Obama to “keep pushing for more reforms” of the space agency, in particular technology development and commercial crew development. “The first goal should be to fix the flaws in the plan that Congress has enacted, beginning with the lack of sufficient funds for technology development,” the editorial suggests, followed by giving the agency “some stability of funding and purpose”, including some kind of “dedicated funding stream”, which the piece does not elaborate upon.
By Jeff Foust on 2010 December 3 at 1:49 pm ET The US government will make a decision soon on whether to support a proposed “Code of Conduct” for space operations, a State Department official said Wednesday. Speaking at a “Next Steps in U.S. Space Diplomacy” forum at the Stimson Center in Washington, Frank Rose, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Space and Defense Policy, said the administration was considering the “Code of Conduct for Outer Space Activities” proposed by the EU two years ago. The code, designed to promote peaceful, safe uses of space, includes provisions requiring nations to establish procedures to avoid collisions and the production of space debris, including refraining from “any intentional action which will or might bring about, directly or indirectly, the damage or destruction of outer space objects.
“We have been working very, very collaboratively with the EU the past two years” on the code of conduct, Rose said. The new national space policy, which endorses the use of “transparency and confidence-building measures to encourage responsible actions in, and the peaceful use of, space”, allows the administration to now consider formally supporting the EU code. Rose said the State Department, and soon an interagency group, will examine whether the US can support the code. “We hope to make a decision very much in the near future.” Rose said later, in response to a question, that while the US hasn’t made a decision on whether to support that document, such a code “is very consistent with the key policies outlined in the president’s new space policy.”
The concept of a code of conduct, if not the EU’s proposed code, was also endorsed at the event by Ambassador Greg Schulte, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Space Policy. “We need to start work on ‘rules of the road'” for space operations, he said, with such rules including not just debris mitigation and collision avoidance but also potentially radiofrequency interference and “discouraging destabilizing behavior in a crisis.” He added this his office is supporting Rose’s group at the State Department in its review of the proposed EU code.
One obstacle to this approach has been an effort by China and Russia to propose instead a treaty banning weapons in space, an accord known by the acronym PPWT, something the US has opposed in part because such a treaty would be unverifiable. Rose said he had discussions with Russian officials earlier this year about their support for a code of conduct, but PPWT remains a stumbling block. “We were very much open this year to cosponsoring a [UN] resolution with Russia” on the subject, “and we came very, very close.” However, “unfortunately, they wanted a reference to their PPWT treaty in the resolution.”
By Jeff Foust on 2010 December 2 at 7:23 am ET The theme of Wednesday’s hearing by the Senate Commerce Committee was a desire by committee members to ensure that NASA enacts all aspects of the recently-passed NASA Authorization Act, and not simply the portions it likes. Sens. Bill Nelson (D-FL) and Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) repeated asked presidential science advisor John Holdren and NASA CFO Beth Robinson if they planned to carry out the law, leading Holdren at one point to state, “We are going to follow the law. I can’t emphasize that enough.” Apparently he couldn’t emphasize it enough, given the number of times he was asked.
Of particular concern was NASA’s work—or lack thereof—on two key elements of the authorization act, the Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle (effectively a continuation of Orion) and Space Launch System heavy-lift launcher. Nelson, Space News reported, went so far as to claim “certain people within the administration” sought to block the bill’s passage and now are trying to delay implementation of its elements. Part of that delay, Robinson said, was that the agency was operating under a continuing resolution (CR) and the restrictions contained in it, and had to go though a methodical process of comparing the CR requirements with the provisions in the authorization bill, something it had not yet completed for the Orion or heavy-lift programs.
Going into the hearing some hoped, as in this Florida Today editorial, that Nelson in particular would use the hearing to push to fund NASA at the authorized level of $19 billion. Instead, though, he argued that in the event NASA gets funded at the 2010 level of $18.7 billion (through the use of a year-long CR), it should not stop the agency from implementing most programs in the authorization act. “We want to see this law implemented without a lot of griping and moaning and groaning if we’re able to get that kind of appropriation,” he said. In particular, Robinson assured the committee that NASA would be able to carry out the additional shuttle mission included in the act should the agency get funded at that level.
Nelson was less pleased, though, to find out how NASA would handle the roughly $276-million difference between the FY10 funding level and the authorized FY11 level. Robinson said that the money would most likely come from the “21st century spaceport initiative” to upgrade facilities at KSC, authorized for $429 million in FY11. That response, the Orlando Sentinel reported, led Nelson to call NASA administrator Charles Bolden after the hearing and get assurances that any money cut from the program in FY11 would be made up in future years.
By Jeff Foust on 2010 December 2 at 6:50 am ET On Wednesday the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, better known as the “deficit commission”, released its final report on its proposal to reduce the budget deficit through a combination of spending cuts, tax reform, and changes to mandatory spending programs. Many in the space community noted that the report does not include the recommendation in the illustrative list of discretionary spending cuts to eliminate funding for NASA’s commercial crew development program (a recommendation that was edited by the commission after its release in November.) The final report does reference a “list of illustrative savings options accompanying this report” with $200 billion in potential savings, the same amount in the original proposal, although no such list was in fact released with the report.
Even if NASA is not included in that list, though, the proposal isn’t good news for the agency. The final report would cap discretionary spending in 2012 at 2011 levels, then cut it the following year back to 2008 levels before allowing growth at half the rate of inflation in following years. That’s potentially more jarring than the co-chair’s earlier proposal, which would have capped 2012 spending at 2010 levels then made one-percent cuts annually through 2015. Assuming across-the-board cuts, under the final report’s scenario NASA’s budget would go down to about $17.3 billion in 2013, compared to $18.5 billion (a one-percent cut from the $18.7 billion NASA got in 2010 and thus would get in 2012) it would get in the co-chair’s proposal. (The administration’s FY11 budget proposal projected a NASA budget of $19.96 billion in 2013.) And as for those who would argue that NASA should somehow be insulated from these cuts, the final report notes, “Every aspect of the discretionary budget must be scrutinized, no agency can be off limits, and no program that spends too much or achieves too little can be spared.”
By Jeff Foust on 2010 December 1 at 5:46 am ET The Senate Commerce Committee is moving ahead with plans for a hearing this morning titled “Transition and Implementation: The NASA Authorization Act of 2010″. Presidential science advisor John Holdren is scheduled to testify initially, followed by a panel featuring NASA CFO Beth Robinson and GAO’s Cristina Chaplain and Susan A. Poling. The committee hasn’t released any other information about the hearing topics.
Florida Today is hoping that the hearing emphasizes the need to fully fund NASA in FY2011. $300 million, the approximate difference in the agency’s overall budget between 2010 and 2011, “is less than a pittance in the mammoth federal budget” the editorial claims, but for the agency “it’s a must-have down payment on its future.” However, as the Orlando Sentinel reports, “almost no one thinks NASA will get the full $19 billion” in the original budget proposal (and authorization act); the only question is how big the cuts are, and how they’re distributed.
By Jeff Foust on 2010 November 30 at 6:57 am ET In what Aviation Week understandably termed a “rare one-on-one interview”, NASA administrator Charles Bolden suggested he’s slowing down any future cooperation with China and Russia, perhaps to appease some Congressional critics. Bolden said that a visit by Chinese space officials to the US, a reciprocal visit to Bolden’s October trip to China, is not planned for December as originally expected, but may be folded into Chinese president Hu Jintao’s trip to the US in January. The article suggested the delay may be an effort not to alienate Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA), a sharp critic of China who opposed Bolden’s October trip; Wolf is also in line to take over the appropriations subcommittee with jurisdiction over NASA’s budget. The report added that Russian proposals for new cooperative missions with NASA, ranging from nuclear propulsion development to a Mercury lander, are “going nowhere fast”.
The White House official who coordinated development of the new national space policy is now working for Orbital Sciences Corporation, the company announced Monday. Peter Marquez has taken a job as the company’s vice president of strategy and planning, responsible for “helping to develop the company’s strategic approach to opportunities in civil and military space programs”. Marquez, as space policy director on the National Security Council, led development of the new policy released this summer.
Increasing costs and budgetary pressures mean that military space programs need to become “more competitive”, Aviation Week reports from a recent military space symposium. How exactly to make such programs more competitive, though, remain unclear: aerospace company officials complained that scope creep plus “unnecessarily invasive oversight” by government agencies have caused costs to go up, but warned that recent interest in fixed-price contracts by the Pentagon is not always a solution. On the other hand, SpaceX’s Elon Musk endorsed the use of fixed-price contracts, saying that traditional cost-plus awards “make good people do bad things”, encouraging companies to run up costs on contracts “up until the program gets canceled.”
By Jeff Foust on 2010 November 28 at 7:39 pm ET Most readers are familiar with a proposal by the co-chairs of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform to cut NASA’s commercial crew development program, saving $1.2 billion a year. That generated criticism in some circles, including a strong response from the Commercial Spaceflight Federation. However, it appears the commission co-chairs (or, more likely, their staffs) have quietly edited that proposed cut.
The original version of the recommendation, as seen in this cached copy of the original document listing all the proposed cuts, reads as follows:
24. Eliminate funding for commercial spaceflight. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) plans to spend $6 billion over the next five years to spur the development of American commercial spaceflight. This subsidy to the private sector is costly, and while commercial spaceflight is a worthy goal, it is unclear why the federal government should be subsidizing the training of the potential crews of such flights. Eliminating this program would save $1.2 billion in 2015.
The same recommendation in official version of the document, on the commission’s web site, now reads as follows:
24. Eliminate funding to private sector for spaceflight developments. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) plans to spend $6 billion over the next five years to invest in private sector development of space transportation capabilities, which NASA plans to competitively purchase once available. Eliminating this program would save $1.2 billion in 2015.
The title of the recommendation has changed (from “for commercial spaceflight” to “to private sector for spaceflight developments”). The text of the revised recommendation is also much shorter, and is missing the odd rationale of the original (claiming that the funding would be “subsidizing the training of the potential crews”; the funding was actually proposed for vehicle development). The header of the official document indicates the update was made on November 12, two days after its initial release, but no other details about the change (or even that this particular recommendation had been changed) are posted.
The overall recommendations were made by the commission’s co-chairs, Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson. The full 18-member bipartisan commission is due to vote on a final report no later than this Wednesday, although any report released by the commission requires the votes of at least 14 commission members.
By Jeff Foust on 2010 November 26 at 10:00 am ET Earlier this week America by Heart, the latest book by former Alaska governor and 2008 Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin, hit store shelves. The book, as it turns out, spends a little over a page talking about space policy—or, more accurately, contrasting the policies of the 1960s with what she considers the diminished horizons of today.
“I wasn’t yet born when John F. Kennedy pledged in 1961 to land a man on the moon within the decade,” begins the passage in question, on page 163. (If you haven’t purchased or borrowed a copy, the easiest way to access this section is to use Amazon’s “Search Inside This Book” feature for “NASA”, then scroll up a page to catch the beginning of the relevant section.) She then describes watching the Apollo 11 landing on a black-and-white TV set. “As with Theodore Roosevelt, JFK’s ambition to put a man on the moon perfectly captured a nation that feared neither hard work nor failure.”
Today’s “national leaders”, though, she claims, lack “Kennedy’s confidence and brio”. “Instead of announcing ambitious new goals for the space program, we have the head of NASA telling Arab television that his agency’s ‘foremost’ goal, according to President Obama’s instruction, is ‘to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science and math and engineering.'” That’s a reference, of course, to NASA administrator Charles Bolden’s now-infamous interview with al-Jazeera.
The passage, though, doesn’t mention that the administration later said that Bolden misspoke and that such outreach was not NASA’s primary mission. It’s also unclear, from Palin’s claim that the administration hasn’t declared “ambitious new goals for the space program”, whether she is unaware of NASA’s new direction, including the goals announced by President Obama in his April 15th speech at the Kennedy Space Center, or if she doesn’t consider them sufficiently ambitious.
She continues:
Hearing this new rationale for our space program had us scratching our heads. What? Holding hands and singing “Kumbaya” with Muslim countries? What does that have to do with our once proud and pioneering space program? One of my kids heard the NASA change in direction and shook her head. “It’s like that Sesame Street song, Mom,” she said. “One of these things is not like the others, one of these things just doesn’t belong. Can you guess which thing doesn’t go with the others…?”
This may well be the first time Sesame Street has been invoked in the ongoing debate about NASA.
“How condescending to Muslims. How sad for America,” she concludes. “And how unsurprising coming from a man who is himself one of the leading exemplars of the new culture of self-esteem.”
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