U.S. Space Policy: What the Frak is Going On?

Space shuttle Atlantis lands on runway 33 at NASA Kennedy Space Center's Shuttle Landing Facility concluding the STS-129 mission. Photo credit: NASA Jack Pfaller

There’s a whole bunch of things going on in the fight over NASA’s budget among different states. A brief overview: there are deep concerns and guarded optimism in Florida, cries of lawbreaking from Alabama, strong condemnations in Texas and Utah, and great enthusiasm in Virginia.

Let’s start with Florida, where there seems to be some optimism:

Sen. Bill Nelson met with President Barack Obama today to discuss NASA, and the Florida Democrat came away optimistic. “Excellent conversation,” he said of his White House talk.

But Nelson refused to go further, saying any details would have to wait for Obama’s April 15 space summit in Florida.

Nelson is pushing for Obama to use his Florida visit to announce the addition of one more shuttle flight and a heavy-lift rocket development test program that could save 1,500 to 2,000 Kennedy Space Center jobs.

Nelson’s guarded optimism was echoed by Frank DiBello, president of Space Florida, who said in the same Florida Today story: “We do see a lot of good in the president’s budget.”

Meanwhile, Florida’s leading politicians gathered in the nation’s capital earlier this week to plot strategy to overturn Obama’s proposed policy:

Gov. Charlie Crist huddled with Florida lawmakers this morning to plan how the state could overturn a White House plan for NASA that cancels the agency’s Constellation moon rocket program and its future jobs at Kennedy Space Center.

Lawmakers asked Crist to unite with other governors in opposition to the White House proposal and provide encouragement for new businesses to relocate to KSC, which faces as many as 9,000 job losses when the space shuttle finishes its final four missions planned for this year.

“All of us are deeply concerned about what the administration is doing,” said Crist, flanked on either side by the two lawmakers who represent KSC and its workforce: U.S. Reps. Suzanne Kosmas, D-New Smyrna Beach, and Bill Posey, R-Rockledge.

Rep. Posey has joined a group of House members asking for NASA to conduct a study an alternative to NASA’s proposed alternative:

More than a dozen U.S. House members today called on the White House to abandon its plans to cancel NASA’s Constellation moon rocket program and urged the agency to study ways it could continue developing its own spaceflight vehicles.

The lawmakers, including U.S. Rep. Bill Posey, R-Rockledge, want NASA to conduct a 30-day study that would find ways within NASA’s proposed $19 billion budget to “ensure uninterrupted, independent U.S. human space flight access,” according to a letter outlining their request.

The NASA experts would be appointed by center directors at Johnson, Marshall and Kennedy space centers. Those three centers have the most to lose if Constellation is cancelled.

Rep. Kosmas is co-author of a bill that would keep the space shuttle flying beyond it’s planned retirement date later this year and accelerate growth on a replacement vehicle. The Orlando Sentinel reports that she met with President Obama last week to discuss health care reform, which is the administration’s top domestic priority:

President Barack Obama put the personal touch on his health care lobbying last week, inviting U.S. Rep. Suzanne Kosmas, D-New Smyrna Beach, to the White House for a 15-20 minute discussion, according to congressional Democrats.

The Thursday morning powwow wasn’t a “hard sell,” said sources, but a chance for Obama to convince Kosmas that she should support the healthcare package, which she voted against last year. The freshman lawmaker is one of only a handful of undecided votes in the U.S. House.

A Kosmas aide confirmed the meeting, but said Kosmas had not made up her mind.

Up in Alabama, one representative has called for an investigation of the space agency:

U.S. Rep. Robert Aderholt wants the Government Accountability Office to investigate whether NASA is violating the law by beginning to shut down the Constellation space exploration program without Congressional approval.

Aderholt, R-Haleyville, in a letter sent Friday and co-signed by 15 other NASA state representatives, including U.S. Rep. Parker Griffith, R-Huntsville, also asked the GAO to determine whether NASA’s work on “a new, unauthorized plan,” for the space agency violates the law….

Aderholt’s letter references the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2009, in which supporters of Constellation inserted language requiring NASA to get congressional approval before killing it.

“While the word contract does not appear in the bill language . . . this question naturally occurs: To what extent can planned contracts be cancelled, suspended or slowed and the agency still be considered to have not terminated the program?” Aderholt’s letter asks the GAO.

A NASA official denied any violations of the law.

Meanwhile, Houston’s newly-elected mayor also headed for the nation’s capital this week to do some lobbying for her home city:

Mayor Annise Parker will begin a whirlwind tour of Washington today in which she will try to persuade a skeptical Obama administration not to shelve the Constellation space program, as well as shore up relationships between the city and federal transportation officials.

Parker is scheduled to meet with senior Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, Transportation Secretary Roy LaHood, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan and members of the local congressional delegation in a two-day blitz. Shortly after she was elected, the administration had invited her to “open dialogue” on certain key issues in Washington, and today’s trip marks her first opportunity to take the president up on the offer, Parker said.

The mayor indicated a key focus for her and other area boosters is to cement Houston’s role in the future of space exploration, as well as persuading the president to restart the Constellation program. The $108 billion project represents thousands of Houston-area jobs and would be canceled this year under Obama’s budget proposal.

“I don’t know what the best plan is for going back to space, for continuing human spaceflight,” she said. “I want to ensure that we are and remain one of the centers of human spaceflight.”

Out in Utah, efforts to save the Constellation program are heating up in Utah, the home of solid-fuel rocket producer ATK. Members of the state’s Congressional delegation sent a letter to the President earlier this week urging him to change his plans:

Members of Utah’s congressional delegation are urging President Obama to reconsider his decision to kill Project Constellation, NASA’s program to develop the Space Shuttle’s successor and further explore the cosmos.

In a March 15, 2010, letter, Sens. Orrin Hatch and Bob Bennett and Reps. Jim Matheson, Rob Bishop and Jason Chaffetz implored the president not to scrub the project, a move that would kill thousands of jobs in Utah and across the U.S. and surrender the nation’s lead in space exploration.

In sending the letter, Hatch said Utah members of Congress want the president to understand the consequences of scrapping Project Constellation and our nation’s manned-space-flight capability.

“Our nation’s investment in the space program has inspired generations of Utahns and paid huge technological dividends over the past 50 years,” Hatch said. “Not only has the space flight program spawned hundreds of new companies, many located in Utah, and thousands of jobs based on the technology such flights demand, but it also played a key role in our nation’s defense sector which provides for our national security. It is vitally important we maintain our nation’s leadership in technology and defense and not cede our leadership position to China, India or Russia. Such a course will come back to haunt us in the future. Canceling the project now, in a time of high unemployment and after our nation has already invested heavily in the technology, is penny wise and pound foolish.”

The mood is much different in Virginia, where the House of Delegates passed a resolution supporting the President’s plan:

WHEREAS, the Virginia legislature has adopted specific policies and budget measures over the past years to enable the FAA-licensed commercial spaceport on Wallops Island to flourish and attract the commercial space launch firm Orbital Sciences Corporation to loft payloads into orbit and to the moon, using the Minotaur I, Minotaur V, and the Taurus 2 space launch vehicles, bringing billions of dollars of new space-related investment and hundreds of new aerospace jobs to the Commonwealth; and

WHEREAS, bolstering the commercial space launch industry within the United States, the proposed FY 2011 National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) budget supports the goal of making the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS) “the top commercial Spaceport in America” over the next decade; and

WHEREAS, Orbital Sciences Corporation has wholeheartedly embraced the proposed FY 2011 NASA budget proposal, with Orbital’s CEO and Chairman David W. Thompson indicating “As a commercial partner to the space agency for over 25 years, Orbital is very excited about this new course for America’s civil space program”; and

WHEREAS, the global commercial space market is now a $250 billion per year industry with the United States having fallen from first in commercial space launch to fourth behind Russia, the European Space Agency, and Ukraine and faces the danger of falling further behind as China and India bring cost-effective commercial space launch systems online; and

WHEREAS, it is recognized that the nation that is the world’s leader in commercial space will capture the lion’s share of new jobs in the future with Virginia now well-positioned to provide commercial space launch services from launch facilities on Wallops Island; now, therefore, be it

RESOLVED by the House of Delegates, That the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport hereby be commended for fostering greater development of commercial space launch services and particularly for supporting fiscal policies that serve to enable the MARS to maximize its commercial space launch potential…

And so it goes. More updates as they become available.