By Jeff Foust on 2010 November 16 at 6:28 am ET In an op-ed on the Space News web site, Joan Johnson-Freese offers a cold dose of reality to those seeking to roll back the changes in space exploration policy made by the Obama Administration, particularly the end of Constellation program. In short, she argues, it’s not going to happen because human spaceflight, despite all the rhetoric, isn’t that high a priority in Congress to win significant additional funding:
While the Augustine commission report upon which the Obama Administration heavily relied in making the decision to cancel Constellation described strong public support for human exploration, as have past, similar surveys, the answer to a different question not asked is the important one: Compared with other areas of government funding, including health care, roads, education, defense and social welfare programs, where would you prioritize human space exploration? Unfortunately enthusiasm wanes in such a prioritization. Americans like and want a human space exploration program, they just see it as more expendable than other government programs.
Space development, she adds, has been “an anomaly” compared to other industries, because initial government investment has largely not be followed by significant commercial investment. “That must change for real development to occur, and President Obama has directed NASA to chart a course to allow and promote commercial development,” she states. Those who don’t like that new course can appeal to Congress, where they “are likely to find significant rhetorical support there – but far less financial support, reflective of the priorities of most of their constituents.”
The new National Space Policy, she said, “offers a realistic blueprint for renewal rather than a blueprint back to the Moon, or a space battleplan that threatens the very sustainability of the space environment required for security.” In that vein, the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) issued a report Monday with its suggestions on improving space security, building upon the general guidelines in the report. Among the UCS’s recommendations: declare that the US will not place weapons, including missile defense interceptors, in space; improve the robustness and redundancy of satellite systems to make them less vulnerable to attack; begin discussions on how to negotiate international agreements on space security; and modify export control regulations to “reduce unnecessary barriers” for space cooperation.
By Jeff Foust on 2010 November 15 at 12:50 pm ET As noted here over the weekend, one member of Congress, Rep. Suzanne Kosmas (D-FL), said she would make “full funding” for NASA in FY11 a priority in her remaining weeks in Congress, as members return today for a lame duck session. But will Congress even take up full FY11 appropriations bills? CQ reports that Congress may instead simply pass another continuing resolution, deferring a final decision on FY11 appropriations until the next Congress. According to the article, while outgoing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) could push through an omnibus appropriations bill, the Senate may not be able to because of “procedural roadblocks” that Republicans could create to slow down the process and seek spending cuts. A final decision on whether to press ahead with an omnibus bill or pass a CR that would fund agencies like NASA at FY10 levels into early next year will probably not come until votes on House Democratic leadership positions for the next Congress.
By Jeff Foust on 2010 November 13 at 5:16 pm ET Next week Congress will return in a lame duck session, seeking to pass a number of bills including outstanding FY2011 appropriations bills. Among those returning are a number of lame ducks who lost their reelection bids, including Rep. Suzanne Kosmas (D-FL), whose district includes KSC. Kosmas tells the Orlando Sentinel Saturday that she plans to make full funding for NASA in FY11 “one of my highest priorities” in her final days in Congress. She’s concerned that Republicans will seek to make spending cuts in the FY11 bills that could strip hundreds of millions from the $19 billion that’s in both the administration’s original request for the agency and the authorization bill signed into law last month. “If the Republican pledge to roll back all federal spending goes through, then thousands of jobs on the Space Coast will be at risk, and I will fight in the remaining weeks to ensure that NASA is not cut,” she told the Sentinel.
Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) is not a lame duck—he is just two years into his first six-year term—but he is also promising to make NASA a priority in Congress. “I’m hoping to pick up the baton,” he said in a meeting at NASA Langley Research Center in Virginia, the Daily Press of Hampton Roads reports, referring to how the state’s congressional delegation has not been as vocal in its support for NASA as other states, like Florida and Texas. He added that the authorization act provides the “right balance” between government and commercial initiatives. (Hopefully in any future support Sen. Warner provides for NASA in Congress he looks more energetic than in the photo in the Daily Press article, where he appears a bit bored, or maybe just tired.)
While Warner might think the NASA authorization strikes an appropriate balance, Gene Kranz and Jim Lovell don’t think so. They told an audience in Amarillo that the government “has lost the direction”, in Lovell’s words, as reported by the Globe-News. Lovell, the article states, supports commercialization, “but worries the government will waste money by investing in unproven initiatives.” (No doubt some people felt the same way about Constellation, though.) Kranz added he’s concerned today’s youth don’t care about space as much as previous generations: “I’m scared to see the day when a fifth-grader comes into class and doesn’t know what an astronaut is.”
By Jeff Foust on 2010 November 12 at 6:51 am ET Could NASA be a renewed priority in the new Congress? That’s the suggestion of Joanne Padrón Carney, director of the AAAS’s Center for Science, Technology and Congress, SpacePolicyOnline.com reports. In an AAAS webinar, Padrón Carney said that the potential new House Science and Technology Committee leadership of Reps. Ralph Hall (R-TX) and Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX) “could mean NASA will become a ‘high priority’ for Congress”, but did not elaborate beyond making oversight of programs a priority.
NASA did get a fair amount of attention in Congress in the last two years, including from the House Science and Technology but it seems more likely in the next two years that the center of attention will shift from authorizers to appropriators. With a three-year authorization bill enacted, the issue now is whether appropriators will fund the agency at those authorized levels, and if not, what programs will bear the brunt of cuts. And while some in the House might like to revisit the authorization bill (after somewhat reluctantly accepting the Senate version in September), the Senate might be less interested in changing the bill’s provisions.
And speaking of NASA and funding, the Orlando Sentinel calls the cost overruns on the James Webb Space Telescope “unbelievable” in an editorial Friday. “If NASA can’t get control of costs on this project and others, it has little hope of persuading Congress to give the agency the extra dollars it needs to maintain U.S. leadership in space exploration,” it adds. That may be especially true in an increasingly conservative fiscal environment in Congress.
By Jeff Foust on 2010 November 11 at 6:48 am ET Tomorrow marks just one month since the President signed into law the NASA Authorization Act of 2010, but it’s apparently not too soon for Congress to see how the agency is implementing it. The full Senate Commerce Committee has planned a hearing next Thursday morning titled “Transition and Implementation: The NASA Authorization Act of 2010″. The listing doesn’t provide any other details about the hearing, but according to a Florida Today report the witnesses will include NASA CFO Beth Robinson, OSTP director John Holdren, and an unidentified official from the Government Accountability Office.
Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL), who chairs the committee’s space subcommittee, told Florida Today that he will ask Robinson in particular how the agency would comply with the new authorization act if the Congress simply funds NASA at FY2010 levels for the new fiscal year. “We want to know: Is she going to follow the law instead of them going off on their own making decisions that are contrary to the law?” he asked. NASA received about $18.7 billion in 2010, but is authorized for $19.0 billion in 2011 under the new authorization act. One potential conflict is that, under the FY2010 appropriations bill (and the current continuing resolution funding NASA into early December), NASA cannot cancel Constellation programs or begin new ones, but the new authorization effectively dismembers Constellation, ending Ares 1 and instead starting development of a new heavy-lift vehicle.
By Jeff Foust on 2010 November 10 at 5:22 pm ET On Wednesday afternoon the co-chairmen of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, issued their proposal for reducing the federal budget deficit though a combination of discretionary spending cuts, mandatory spending savings, and tax reform. In particular, they identified $200 billion in “illustrative savings” in FY2015, $100 billion each in defense and domestic discretionary spending. Item number 24 (of 58) is the only one dealing directly with NASA:
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 wording of the statement suggests that the co-chairs may not fully understand the purpose of this “subsidy”: it is not for “training of the potential crews of such flights”, but instead to help fund the development of those systems, for use by NASA for ISS crew access as well as potential provate markets. (The $1.2 billion figure is also questionable, since it’s based on the administration’s original request that has since been altered by Congress in the authorization bill signed into law last month. If anything, though, the number is likely to be higher than $1.2 billion in 2015 assuming the full $6 billion is eventually appropriated, given the smaller figures authorized versus the White House proposal for 2011-2013.) How much traction this plan will get from fellow members of the commission, let along the White House and Congress, remains to be seen, but it does suggest that commercial spaceflight advocates will need to sharpen their arguments about why spending federal dollars on commercial vehicle development is a wise investment.
Update: the Commercial Spaceflight Federation did respond late Wednesday to the commission’s proposal, effectively playing what could be called the Russia card. “Commercial Crew will in fact result in substantial cost savings to the U.S. taxpayer,” said CSF president Brett Alexander. “Eliminating Commercial Crew would result in total reliance on Russia to get to the Space Station and result in the loss of thousands of high-tech jobs here in the United States.”
By Jeff Foust on 2010 November 10 at 6:51 am ET The Dallas Morning News confirmed Tuesday that two Dallas-area representatives, Ralph Hall (R) and Eddie Bernice Johnson (D) are in the race to become the new chair and ranking member, respectively, of the House Science and Technology Committee. Hall’s office in particular notes that Hall has “almost been assured” their chairmanship, with no discussion of any potential competition from either Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) or Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-WI)
Four former or retiring members of Congress talked about science policy issues in a Science magazine roundtable recently, with an eye towards how the new Congress and its expected fiscal conservatism will affect science programs. While not discussing NASA directly, one participant, former House Science Committee chairman Sherwood Boehlert suggested considering science funding as a “national security” item and thus protected from budget cuts. “When a lot of the conversation is about the next Congress cutting or freezing all non-national security spending, we ought to take [science] funding and put it under the national security umbrella. Because it is a question of national security–lessening dependence on foreign oil, competitiveness, providing opportunities for our young people, creating jobs.”
The meeting between President Obama and Indian Prime Minister Singh resulted in a number of announcements, including a civil space fact sheet (Word .docx format). The fact sheet doesn’t appear to contain any major developments, talking about continuing earth observation cooperation as well as plans to “continue preliminary discussion on Human Space Flight cooperation.” That last passage, though, appears to have caused some consternation in the Indian space community, which was caught off-guard about the inclusion of human spaceflight into the statement. Officials told the Times of India that it was an “embarrassing situation” as just a month and a half ago ISRO chairman K. Radhakrishnan had said there was no immediate plan for India to participate in the ISS. However, there doesn’t seem to be any contradiction, since there’s nothing in the fact sheet about the ISS, or anything else beyond “preliminary discussion” about human spaceflight.
By Jeff Foust on 2010 November 9 at 6:49 am ET The retirement of Rep. Bart Gordon (D-TN), the outgoing chairman of the House Science and Technology Committee, creates a vacancy in the Democratic leadership of the committee. Yesterday one member, Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX), formally declared her interest in being ranking member of the committee in the new Congress. “I would fight to ensure that our aviation industry and, NASA specifically, remains strong, and able to undertake each and every new mission that draws them further away from our planet and into depths of scientific discovery,” she said as part of her statement of interest in the position. Her announcement came the same day as another member, Rep. Jerry Costello (D-IL), said he was not interested in being ranking member, preferring to focus his attention on the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.
On the newly-majority Republican side, current ranking member Rep. Ralph Hall (R-TX) has already shown an interest in the committee chairmanship. However, two other members are reportedly interested in the post: Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) and Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-WI). Recall that Sensenbrenner served as chairman of the science committee from 1997-2001, and under House GOP rules would have two more years of eligibility as committee chairman.
By Jeff Foust on 2010 November 7 at 9:52 am ET President Obama is currently in India, where he is expected to formally announce on Monday the removal of the Indian space agency ISRO from a US list that restricts exports of some sensitive technologies. The Entity List, as it is formally known, specifies additional requirements for items beyond what’s already required under export control regulations. Currently ISRO and four organizations within it are on the list, requiring a “case-by-case review” for any item on the Commerce Control List for export to those organizations. That restriction dates back to sanctions placed on India and Pakistan for their nuclear tests in the late 1990s.
That move isn’t unexpected: it had been anticipated for weeks in both the US and India. In a Wall Street Journal op-ed on Thursday, former deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage, writing with another former State Department official, R. Nicholas Burns, called on both the White House and Congress to “liberalize U.S. export controls that have an impact on India, including by removing the Indian Space Research Organization (the Indian equivalent to NASA) from the U.S. ‘Entity List.'” However, that appears to be the limit of space-related progress in the president’s visit: Indian media reported last week that it’s unlikely a commercial satellite launch agreement will be completed in time. Such an agreement would make it easier for US-built commercial satellites, or satellites with US-built components, to be launched on Indian vehicles.
A few people, though, are seeking much grander visions of US-Indian cooperation in space. At a press conference in Washington on Thursday, American and Indian officials announced the creation of Kalam-NSS Energy Initiative to promote the development of space-based solar power (SBSP) in the two nations. The near-term goal of the initiative is to arrange a bilateral meeting of Indian and American experts on the topic in May in Huntsville, Alabama, in conjunction with the International Space Development Conference (ISDC), the annual conference of the National Space Society (NSS).
The effort might be dismissed as a minor effort of a few people to promote what’s widely considered a fringe topic, but it does have the backing of a prominent individual on the Indian side: former president A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, who participated in Thursday’s press conference by phone from India. Kalam spoke of the need to increase energy production to meet the needs of a modernizing India, without going into details about how the two countries might cooperation in SBSP beyond holding a joint meeting. Asked if the topic might come up in the meeting between President Obama and Indian Prime Minister Singh in New Delhi, Kalam suggested that it should instead be presented at a future meeting of G8 or G20 nations.
Also unclear is what India would bring to the table in terms of its role in developing a SBSP system. Asked what unique capabilities India could offer, Kalam discussed the development of what he called a “hyperplane”, a reusable spaceplane concept, something he said India could cooperate with the US and other nations on. (Given the difficulties any nation has had in developing RLVs, and the challenges India has faced in even building a cryogenic upper stage for its GSLV expendable rocket, jumping ahead to a “hyperplane” may seem a bit of a stretch.) T.K. Alex, director of the ISRO Satellite Centre and the Indian lead of the Kalam-NSS Energy Initiative, said later at the press conference that India could also contribute in the development of high-efficiency and lightweight solar cells. NSS CEO Mark Hopkins suggested a different role for India, saying that “a combination of American technology and the ability of India to do a lot of low-cost manufacturing” could be essential to any future success of SBSP.
By Jeff Foust on 2010 November 6 at 3:04 pm ET It took three days, but late Friday Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) declared victory in her fight for reelection to Arizona’s 8th district, narrowly defeating Republican Jesse Kelly, who conceded the race in a statement. Giffords, who had been the chair of the House Science and Technology Committee’s space subcommittee, will now be, at best, ranking member of that committee in the new Congress with the Republican takeover of the House.
Meanwhile, in the neighboring 7th district, self-identified “rocket scientist” Ruth McClung lost her bid to oust Rep. Raúl Grijalva, with the Democratic congressman declaring victory Thursday night. However, McClung told the AP that she would not formally concede until remaining outstanding ballots were counted, even as Grijalva’s lead widened.
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