The NASA Budget, Continued

This is a follow-up to my blog from yesterday on President Obama's budget. I've finally gotten caught up on my news reading, and assuming the reports are correct, here is my take on things. Please refer to the disclaimer above as far as the relationship of my opinions to NASA, my employer, or any other space-related organization...this is Bart, Private Citizen, writing.

• Killing Constellation: The President has proposed a budget that would drastically scale back or delay the schedule of the Constellation Program, which was tasked with going to the Moon, Mars, and beyond. Constellation has several major components, including launch vehicles (Ares), a crew exploration vehicle (Orion), a lunar lander (Altair), surface systems (hardware like power and habitat systems needed for living and working on the Moon), extra-vehicular activity (EVA--spacesuits), and ground systems. It takes a lot of money, in normal-person terms--not Department of Defense terms--to design, build, test, and field all this stuff. It also takes time. The less money you give these activities, the longer they take or the less likely it is that they will be done at all. Having not seen the budget, I can only guess that Constellation has either received a total cut or enough of a cut that any NASA-run return to the Moon would not happen until my five-year-old niece is old enough to start complaining about her kids' taste in music.
• Increasing Funding for Commercial Launches to the International Space Station (ISS): This is actually a smart idea and could/should have been done by the Bush Administration. Right now the only way to get human beings and the stuff they need to live and work on ISS is by the Space Shuttle, which will be retired after ISS is completed; crew/cargo launches by the Russians; or cargo launches by the Europeans' Automated Transfer Vehicle or, soon, Japan's cargo vehicle. But really, once Shuttle is retired, the only nation capable of flying people to and from the space station after 2011 will be Russia. This reality is just now occurring to normal (i.e. non-space) people. So what are the options?
  --Build a new rocket to replace the Space Shuttle. NASA has been doing this since 2005, in the form of the Ares I crew launch vehicle. Ares I, on its current development schedule, will not be ready to send astronauts to ISS until 2015 according to NASA plans. A presidential review panel thought that it would be more like 2016-2017. That would mean depending on Russia, et al., for at least five years, but at the end of that time NASA would again be able to send people up there.
  --Rely only on international partners until the ISS retires.
  --Encourage/pay for American private-sector aerospace companies to build launch vehicles (rockets) and spacecraft (crew capsules) to get astronauts and cargo to ISS. Some of this is already being done under the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program, which was designed to help new companies--outside of the usual big players like Boeing and Lockheed Martin--develop these capabilities. Two companies are getting money under COTS, SpaceX and Orbital Sciences. SpaceX is the only company of the two developing both a launch vehicle, Falcon 9, and a spacecraft, Dragon.
  
  If the Obama administration is proposing more money for COTS, which seems like an easy funding vehicle since it already exists, that money could go a couple different directions:
  --Accelerating SpaceX and Orbital's work.
  --Paying to modify Boeing/Lockheed rockets (now built under a joint operation called United Launch Alliance) to launch a Dragon or Orion capsule to ISS. This money, reportedly $6 billion, could go toward "human rating" the Atlas or Delta launch vehicles, essentially adding some more bells and whistles to them to make them safe and reliable enough to put humans on top of them.
• Extending ISS Operations: This, too, makes sense. Under current plans, ISS would be completed in 2010 and then only enjoy four or five years of full-scale science and engineering operations before being closed down and deorbited (dropped into the Pacific). This presents several problems, including the difficulty of safely deorbiting a 400,000-pound space station and violating the international agreements the U.S. signed, which said that we would keep ISS operational for ten years after full assembly, which would be 2020.

Now a more ambitious person might ask, "Why don't we fund Constellation, COTS, and ISS?" A more pragmatic person--say, a politician--will stick his or her finger in the air, try guess which way the political winds are blowing, and guess (correctly) that the public isn't interested in government spending on a Moon mission "when there are so many more important things to be done here on Earth," like creating jobs. Let's pause for a moment, and savor the tragic irony of that position. Contrary to the public perception that money spent on NASA is wasted on "space," money spent on space hardware is spent mostly on salaries for people, products, and services on EARTH: high-education, high-paying jobs that would result in industrial and consumer spending now and technology advancement and spinoffs in the future.

So where does this leave us? If the President gets his way--and don't count on that--the extensive launch facilities at Kennedy Space Center would be converted to support Falcon 9, Atlas V, or Delta IV launches to ISS. The rocket-designing workforce in Huntsville, which is eager to build Ares I and the much larger Ares V for exploration missions, would be looking for jobs at ULA in Decatur. A bunch of people in Houston currently supporting Space Shuttle missions would lose their jobs, but those helping build Orion would keep theirs, and eventually NASA would again need mission control operations to support Orion missions to ISS. But for now, a lot of jobs in Florida and Alabama and Texas would be shifted to other duties or cut outright. In an economy with 10 percent unemployment, such a decision, on top of killing America's long-range ambitions for space exploration, would not be particularly popular with some segments of the electorate.

Others, like my friends at the Space Frontier Foundation (SFF), are thrilled that the government is finally getting out of the "space operations" business. I've had my moments of doubt on that issue myself. In an economy that is healthy and with a workforce that's aging, retiring the Shuttle made sense--the older folks could retire and make room for the young punks eager to prove their stuff in the marketplace. And yes, there are things the private sector can do better, like keep their eyes on the ball programmatically. They don't argue every year as to whether their goal is to make money or not. Even if management and employees change regularly, everyone knows the business is there to make money.

The government, meanwhile, has an argument about the budget every year. Some years, they want to focus on increasing employment in Florida; other years they want to spend more on environmental monitoring; in more forward-thinking years, they want to spend money on fundamental research into aerospace, space science, planetary science, and other forms of astronomy; and sometimes they think it's a good idea to send people into space. It's a chaotic way to run a business, which is why governments are not the natural mechanism for exploiting space as a long-term concern. However, exploration is an iffy proposition for businesses. Payoffs are hard to determine. Obtaining funding for purely speculative ventures is difficult or impossible without a guaranteed return on investment. Governments are also now the only organizations willing or able to fund blue-sky engineering projects like single-stage-to-orbit rockets, in-space nuclear propulsion, or large-scale outposts in orbit or on the Moon.

The previous two paragraphs explain why I have no problem with a "mixed fleet" or "mixed economy" in space. There are things government does very well, like fund basic research and development, which offer no payoff or incentives to the private sector to accomplish. This would include things like building new exploration launch vehicles or launch vehicle technologies. Government also can fund basic infrastructure, like the first outpost in low-Earth orbit, on the Moon, or at the bottom of the sea. It is also responsible for maintaining the peace, collecting taxes, and regulating things like civil law and consumer protection. The building of ISS, Constellation, space telescopes, and NASA research centers, along with setting up the Office of Commercial Space Transportation fit these functions quite well. However, there are things that private enterprise can do much better, like improving efficiency in routine, known services, such as launching cargo and (eventually) crews to ISS. The private sector can better design, build, test, and field smaller products and services for known applications, like spare parts, accounting services, or employee cafeterias. Private businesses are also best at improving upon and mass-producing new technologies once the basic principles are known.

The sticking point for the SFF is Ares I, which they see as competing with Atlas, Delta, etc. And on a purely apples-to-apples comparison of capabilities, they might have a point: Ares I and human-rated commercial rockets would both be able to launch human beings to ISS. However, while the private sector sees that capability as redundant (true), government sees that as a strategic (national security) capability, which exists outside of questions of profit or loss. Let's say, for example, that Russia and the U.S. start a diplomatic tussle, and the U.S. government no longer considers American crew members on ISS "safe." Uncle Sam would want the on-call ability to launch a rocket to ISS to retrieve those crew members. Would a private-sector comapany, its investors, or its insurers allow a private rocket and spacecraft to head into a situation that likely spelled a danger to, and loss of, company property? Possibly--but only if government was the insurer--at which point we've got a nationalized space prgoram, which was exactly what the private sector guys are trying to avoid. So: there are reasons to have a government-built and -operated rocket that can go to ISS.

But SFF overlooks the primary purpose of Ares I, which is to support missions, in tandem with Ares V, to the Moon, asteroids, Mars, or wherever. If Congress can get access to ISS more cheaply via Delta IV, they will take it...but others will still want Uncle Sam to be able to do it, just in case.

And lastly, the big point I hear the rocket guys in Huntsville argue all the time is that no private company has launched a crew or cargo ship to ISS, leaving out the important word: yet. Until that "yet" happens, the private sector needs to cool its jets, so to speak, on making claims of superiority over NASA; meanwhile, NASA needs to accept that eventually they will lose their monopoly on human access to Earth orbit. Assuming the 2011 Obama budget passes as written, the private sector will have to, as my friend Tom Olson put it today, "put up or shut up." And in the meantime, a bunch of aerospace workers in Florida, Alabama, and Texas could be facing a very tough 2011.

This ain't over.

Potpourri CXVII

Continuing to clear out my inbox...way too much going on these days.

First up from the Space Frontier Foundation, an editorial suggesting that President Obama exhibit "political courage" and kill the "boondoggle" that is the Ares I crew launch vehicle. Sorry to break it to my SFF friends, but in the midst of ten percent unemployment, political courage will be anything BUT present. Do they really think they're going to forcibly disemploy 7,000 civil servants and contractors in a hotly contested state like Florida just prior to the mid-term elections? Sorry, I don't see it happening. And until SpaceX or the Delta IV/Atlas V rockets have launched a crew to the International Space Station, NASA and the government won't consider them "proven" systems. Gonna be another long year.

Meanwhile, speculation continues on the future of NASA's budget--more money? Less money? Less additional money than they hoped? Friends and family ask me if I know what's going to happen. Answer? No. I can probably tell you in vague terms who the players are and what they want the government to do--like the SFF above--but as far as who has the President's ear and what that person or group of persons will tell him to do, I haven't a clue. And then there's Congress to consider. This is a surprisingly complex business for such a small industry.

The world's coolest jobs? Well, maybe. Not gung-ho to be a medical marijuana tester, but that's me.

From Berin Szoka: An editorial on the Supreme Court's recent ruling in Citizens United v. FEC (the Federal Election Commission) on allowing companies to make political ads defending their interests. Little hint here--it's called free speech.

Another state-level web initiative to provide more government transparency--this time on the State of Florida's budget. As the Down Under Defense Expert (DUDE) puts it, "Believe it when you see it." Speaking of which, when I tried to open the link to www.TransparencyFlorida.gov, I got bupkis. The site wouldn't open. Great transparency.

From Regina, some educational resources:

• A catch-all site for teachers looking to augment their in-class resources.
• Teacher resources from Annenberg Media.
• The federal government's site for citizens to order government information publications (Pueblo).
• Another teacher resource...this one seems to focus mostly on "social studies."

And finally, miscellaneous links from my regular surfing:

• Recommended by Doc for its general entertainment value: MentalFloss.com.
• A one-person stealth plane, courtesy of NASA.
• A sign of the Apocalypse is upon us: the late Ted Kennedy's Senate seat has gone to a Republican. Of course the Apocalypse probably really won't happen until the Cubs win the World Series, but that's just me being goofy.
• Good news for my friend Anthony: Hong Kong remains the freest economy in the world. What do they know that America has forgotten?
• NASA is making space program artifacts available to museums and other educational institutions. Hmmm. And speaking of making space program artifacts available, NASA is also lowering the price of retired Space Shuttles. Is all this really a good idea?
• From D2, your word of the day: narratology.
• Senator Russ Feingold has suggested delaying the Constellation Program. Oh, goody.
• According to a Rasmussen poll, the American public generally favors cutting back on the space program. Right, because cutting that 0.57 percent of the budget is gonna make a whit of difference when we're spending gazillions on bailing out banks, fighting wars for oil, and increasing the size of government healthcare. Priorities, people. Gotta focus on priorities--those space geeks are obviously getting too much of your money!
• Jerry Pournelle on a variety of topics.
• The lead story on the front page from the Huntsville Times one day this past week. Oy.

Tom Wolfe on the Death of NASA

This has been a good weekend for retrospectives on Apollo 11 and the space program. This Tom Wolfe editorial is worth reading. Wolfe gave us The Right Stuff: book and movie, both of which celebrated the early Mercury 7 space cowboys who engaged in Single Combat with the Soviet Union back in the day. I particularly like this excerpt from the editorial:

It was at this point that NASA’s lack of a philosopher corps became a real problem. The fact was, NASA had only one philosopher, Wernher von Braun.

Toward the end of his life, von Braun knew he was dying of cancer and became very contemplative. I happened to hear him speak at a dinner in his honor in San Francisco. He raised the question of what the space program was really all about.

It’s been a long time, but I remember him saying something like this: Here on Earth we live on a planet that is in orbit around the Sun. The Sun itself is a star that is on fire and will someday burn up, leaving our solar system uninhabitable. Therefore we must build a bridge to the stars, because as far as we know, we are the only sentient creatures in the entire universe. When do we start building that bridge to the stars? We begin as soon as we are able, and this is that time. We must not fail in this obligation we have to keep alive the only meaningful life we know of.
...
What NASA needs now is the power of the Word.

As a NASA writer, I have had to walk a fine line between the practical and the inspirational...the Word, as Wolfe would put it. The problem is that NASA cannot agree on what Word they want to share. "We do cool things! Get inspired by us!" only goes so far. Talk about high-tech jobs, and you hear complaints about pork and corporate welfare. Talk the far future and you get yawns (the sun won't bulk up into a red giant for 4-5 billion years). Talk too alarmist and you get incredulous laughter or bad science fiction movies ("We're gonna get killed by an asteroid like the dinosaurs!"). Talk too nationalistically and you get complaints about racism, imperialism, sexism, and all the other -isms that allegedly plague the Western World. Talk too capitalistically and you hear about exploitation of the workers and corporate greed and "wasting money on space when there are so many more important things to do here on Earth."

I know a lot about this because I've researched it, written it, and taken pains to overcome it. Tom Wolfe's Single Combat seems to be the only type of rhetoric that has worked in this country. It was used in a singular moment in history when technology, culture, and politics combined to convince a nation to try something spectacular. It was not the norm. So if the Single Combat narrative doesn't work anymore, what else will? Other things can, have, and should be tried:

• We should search for other life in the cosmos and extend the life we know to other stars (von Braun's bridge to the stars).
• We should use the resources of space--solar power, metals from asteroids, helium-3 fusion from the lunar crust or the atmospheres of the gas giants--to power our industries instead of polluting the Earth with hydrocarbons.
• We should extend human civilization--people with children actually living and working in free, permanent communities beyond the Earth.
• We should use the Moon and other locations in the solar system as places for preserving the life forms, cultural artifacts, and technological achievements of our civilization. These Vaults or treasure ships could let other races in the galaxy know that "We, too, once lived and had our fair time in the sun--remember us!"

All of these are cool, exciting projects that would inspire naturally without the sometimes-desperate "inspiration" messages that can wear thin after awhile. Will a robot or a better form of Teflon really "inspire" another generation of scientists or engineers? Will human beings doing these things in space inspire? One would hope.

But what are we bickering about instead? How to get there, and who will pay. America scrapped the Saturn IB and Saturn Vs or turned them into museum pieces. We are about to retire the Space Shuttle. And now we're arguing about what sorts of vehicles to buy when we cannot even agree upon where we wish to go, why, or what we're going to do when we get there. That direction is supposed to come from our political, technical, and cultural leaders. Our political leaders are more interested in spreading government largesse in the hopes of stimulating a shaky economy. Our technical leaders are absorbed in arguments over the rocket architectures--or not interested in human spaceflight at all. Our cultural leaders are more interested in studying the impacts of the Twitterverse than the space program that helped make that 'verse possible.

I'm convinced that if the nation was doing something important with its space program, the taxpayers wouldn't care about the how so much as the what and the why. Will the Augustine Panel address such issues? The Vision for Space Exploration gave NASA a nudge back in the direction of exploration for exploration's sake, but that's been a hard sell with a tough economy, with the discussion quickly devolving from purposes to hardware. So now we're building the hardware, and the nation was never told or has forgotten why. If it isn't for the purposes of Single Combat, why are we doing it? Would Saving the World or Saving Humanity be sufficient? Will the American public buy it? I can only hope so.

Space Potpourri

I consider this entry from the Space Cynics important reading. Here's the most important part, from a space perspective or a political economy perpsective:

The reason I decided to show this here is not to engage in a “who can spend more like a drunken sailor on shore leave” debate between the righties and the lefties - since both parties have long since given up any semblance of fiscal conservatism, proving once again that the old saying:
“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse (generous gifts) from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy….”

The reader comments afterward also provide good food for thought. When the federal budget balloons to an absurd $3 trillion and human space exploration receives a comparative pittance ($400 million--about the price of a fully-loaded A380), you quickly get the hint that space is not a priority. Most of that money is going toward domestic spending--that is to buy votes--your votes. If you're kept fat and happy through largesse from the treasury, you might not notice that you yourself are paying for that largesse through higher taxes, a weaker dollar, a weaker economy, and slower technological progress.

I return to the analysis I made of a book by W. D. Kay, Can Democracies Fly in Space?, while in grad school. He closed the book by repeating the title question and then answering, "It depends on how badly they want to." Of course Kay completely dismissed the idea of a libertarian, business-focused space effort, but then the book was written in 1995, well before the current round of "New Space" entrepreneurs started working. But Kay's thesis was based entirely on the notion that only national governments can afford to go into space, a premise I heartily challenge. Also, a national space program, as we have seen, has political constraints that businesses do not. Businesses exist to make a profit, that's it. A government-funded program has to justify its existence year after year in a partisan environment where much larger and more expensive concerns are being debated, like war, health care, and (now) business "bailouts."

Maybe I need to go to bed. Reading and thinking about all this is a little too discouraging to read the day before Monday. Ciao.

Space Cadet Politics

Nader Elhenawy has a rather long, but worthwhile piece on The Space Review. Go on and read it, or my selective commentary won't make much sense.

*

I could not help being struck by the predominance of a libertarian-conservative outlook among those who follow these matters online. (I specify it as libertarian-conservative because our use of the word “libertarian” tends to overlook the long history of left-libertarianism.)
Why this should be the case is far from obvious.

The author would not be surprised by the prevalence of conservatism/libertarianism in space if he read a little more Robert A. Heinlein, who was a science fiction writer focusing on rockets. He also was a 1930s liberal and later '50s and '60s conservative/libertarian, but a capitalist all the way down the line.

Re: postmoderism as a conservative perspective

I found this twist on things interesting, but ultimately irrelevant. Classical liberalism, with its emphases on individual liberty and progress, is now part of today's conservative-liberatarians. Meanwhile postmodernism is very much a part of progressivism/liberalism, with its emphases on relativism, postcolonialism, feminism, and other -isms that question Western rationality, technology, and universal philosophies (e.g. Christianity, capitalism).

The "final frontier" of Democrat John F. Kennedy (and his disciple Gene Roddenberry) is now questioned as "imperialist" by postcolonial theorists in that same party. Progressives support green power and genetic activities because they are small, earthbound, and so not likely to intimidate or overpower the individual. Rocketry cannot help but be big--a sin in itself, for reasons that elude me--because of the sheer number of experts and money required to make it a going concern.

In short, space is merely an extension of our present and past ideological battles applied to a broad canvas--the ultimate blank slate. Examples can be found in the pages of science fiction. The "Future History" short stories of Robert Heinlein collected in The Past Through Tomorrow might be seen as the genesis of the conservative-libertarian viewpoint. If you want to see an example of government-centric "New Deal" or "Great Society" liberalism in space, check out Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy, starting with Red Mars. Another "grand vision" for space is the (Carl) Saganite ethos of making the universe safe for robots, while humans stay home. Still another is that of Gerard K. O'Neill, which is more or less the vision of the National Space Society. O'Neill believed in large orbital settlements/cities in space, manufactured by and sustaining a high-tech industrial civilization. It's very difficult to find a postmodern vision for near-term space exploration because most of the component ideologies that make it up are more concerned about denouncing and undoing Western capitalism/conservatism here on Earth.

One thing that I should point out is that science and technology are essentially apolitical. You can be a communist, a capitalist, a Mormon, or a Zoroastrian--if you follow the laws of nature and build things correctly, you can get people and cargo into space. As the Soviet Union proved. As did Communist China, India, and now Iran. A human future in space is, perhaps, inevitable. The form of society that the future takes is up for grabs. So we'll see how it all sorts out. The private sector might, indeed, win the battle to control the economy in low Earth orbit...at least until the government decides to regulate them out of existence.

Random Reading

Here are a variety of things that have crossed my path in the last week or so. Commentary will come to me eventually.

New article by Steve Cook (Manager of the Ares Projects) on Ares management practices: http://appel.nasa.gov/ask/issues/33/33s_owning_product_and_process.php

Also, some very cool pictures of the Constellation Program ("Yes, America, we DO have a space program..."): http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/02/progress_on_nasas_constellatio.html

What is the G-20? http://www.g20.org/about_what_is_g20.aspx

Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity, by David Allen

How to Handle Difficult People, with Sue Hansen

The Space Renaissance Forum

Singularity Sky by Charles Stross

Bank CEO rips on the TARP program: http://www.twincities.com/ci_11722986?source=most_viewed

Online source for hard science fiction: http://www.mikebrotherton.com/diamonds/?index

Escape from Hell, the sequel to Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle's Inferno, is available for sale.

Barack Obama on Space Issues

First, I must say that I tried with great thoroughness to find a direct statement on BarackObama.com about space exploration. Unlike John McCain's site, the Obama campaign does not list space among its issues. However, the following policy paper...

http://www.barackobama.com/issues/pdf/PreK-12EducationFactSheet.pdf

...includes one of the most distressing policy statements space fans have seen from a presidential candidate in years:

Barack Obama’s early education and K-12 plan package costs about $18 billion per year. He will maintain fiscal responsibility and prevent any increase in the deficit by offsetting cuts and revenue sources in other parts of the government. The early education plan will be paid for by delaying the NASA Constellation Program for five years, using purchase cards and the negotiating power of the government to reduce costs of standardized procurement, auctioning surplus federal property, and reducing the erroneous payments identified by the Government Accountability Office, and closing the CEO pay deductibility loophole. The rest of the plan will be funded using a small portion of the savings associated with fighting the war in Iraq.

This sort of policy is straight from the space advocates' least favorite talking point: "Why are we spending all this money on space when there are so many more important problems to be solved here on Earth?" Aside from the obvious--we need space technologies to make life better on Earth--there is simply a problem with this sort of policy thinking. Space exploration get kids interested in what they're hearing in school, and usually a hell of a lot more than one might find through some other egghead government program. (Pg. 15)

There are some Obama fan blogs on the site. While I assume that only supportive postings would be allowed, I must discount those posts because they are not official campaign statements. However, the education policy item was not the last Obama statement on space seen in the blogosphere:

http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=26647

Despite being unable to find this on the campaign web site, I must accept the content from Keith Cowing:

Barack Obama's Plan For American Leadership in Space

Over the decades, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has embodied the adventurous spirit that lifted this nation to greatness and inspired people around the world. Barack Obama believes that the United States needs a strong space program to help maintain its superiority not only in space, but also here on earth in the realms of education, technology, and national security. Over the years, NASA technology has been applied to improve everything from computers and medical technology to baby formula and automobiles. Work done at NASA, whether here on earth or in outer space, impacts the daily lives of all Americans.

Develop the Next-Generation of Space Vehicles: The retirement of the Space Shuttle in 2010 will leave the United States without manned spaceflight capability until the introduction of the Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV) carried by the Ares I Launch Vehicle. As president, Obama will support the development of this vital new platform to ensure that the United States' reliance on foreign space capabilities is limited to the minimum possible time period. The CEV will be the backbone of future missions, and is being designed with technology that is already proven and available.

Complete the International Space Station: The International Space Station is an example of what we can accomplish through international cooperation. Barack Obama is committed to the completion of the International Space Station.

Continue Unmanned Missions: Robotic missions provide a level of endurance and cost-effectiveness that is unsurpassed. The Voyager probes, launched in the 1970s, are still sending back data beyond our solar system. Closer to home, the Spirit and Opportunity rovers have been exploring the surface of Mars for more than 1,300 days, 14 times longer than their intended mission length. Along with Earth-orbiting platforms like the Hubble Space Telescope and the Chandra X-Ray Observatory, unmanned missions have yielded some of the greatest scientific discoveries of the last century. Barack Obama is committed to a bold array of robotic missions that will expand our knowledge of the solar system and lay the foundations for further manned exploration. \

Monitor the Forces and Effects of Climate Change: Barack Obama has proposed bold initiatives to put America on the path to stop global climate change. His administration will set standards based on rigorous scientific inquiry that, in turn, cannot take place without a capable space program. The task of researching and understanding the forces that affect our home planet will require a constellation of climate monitoring space platforms. As president, Obama will ensure that NASA has the funding necessary to play its part in the fight against global climate change.

Support Scientific Research: In the past, government funding for scientific research has yielded innovations that have improved the landscape of American life, technologies like the Internet, digital photography, bar codes, Global Positioning System technology, laser surgery, and chemotherapy. Today, we face a new set of challenges, yet the United States is losing its scientific dominance. Over the last three decades, federal funding for the physical, mathematical and engineering sciences has declined at a time when other countries are substantially increasing their own research budgets. Barack Obama believes federally funded scientific research should play an important role in advancing science and technology in the classroom and in the lab. He will work to diversify the makeup of the scientific community and provide federal research programs a much- needed infusion of funds.

Maintain Surveillance to Strengthen National Security: Orbiting surveillance satellites provide a vital way to ensure compliance with non-proliferation treaties and monitor emerging threats. For example, nuclear facility construction in North Korea and Iran can be closely monitored from above without the challenges faced by weapons
inspectors on the ground. Satellites can be further used in the effort to secure loose nuclear weapons and materials around the world, an effort which Barack Obama has promoted aggressively in the U.S. Senate.

Keep Weapons out of Space: China's successful test of an anti-satellite missile in January 2007 signaled a potential new arms race in space. Barack Obama does not support the stationing of any weapons in space. He believes the international community must address the issue of space weaponization head-on and enter into a serious dialogue with Russia, China and other nations to stop this slow slide into a new
battlefield.

Strengthen Math and Science Education: Fifty years after Sputnik, science and math education in American schools is facing a crisis. As the Gathering Storm report concluded, "danger exists that Americans may not know enough about science, technology or mathematics to contribute significantly to, or fully benefit from, the knowledge-based economy that is already taking shape around us." Barack Obama will make math and science education a national priority, and provide our schools with the tools to educate 21st-Century learners.

Recruit High-Quality Math and Science Teachers: Barack Obama's will establish a Teaching Service Scholarship program to recruit an army of new teachers. These scholarships will prioritize recruiting math, science and technology degree graduates. Obama will create Teacher Residency Programs to train teachers using mentorship, graduate study and hands-on training to develop 30,000 teachers a year, providing additional teachers in math and science. In addition, Obama will devote $100 million a year to Professional Development Schools to help new teachers, or veteran teacher needing to hone their skills, learn from professionals in the field. Professional Development Schools will partner universities with school sites that exhibit state-of-the-art practices and train new teachers in the classrooms of expert teachers while they are completing coursework.

Enhanced Science Instruction: Barack Obama will work with governors to create flexible and workable systems for the states to achieve the goal of ensuring all children have access to strong a science curriculum at all grade levels. Obama will also support state efforts to make science education a priority at the pre-K level.

Improve and Prioritize Science Assessments: Science assessments need to do more than test facts and concepts. They need to use a range of measures to test inquiry and higher-order thinking skills including inference, logic, data analysis and interpretation, forming questions, and communication. Barack Obama will work with governors and educators to ensure that state assessments measure these skills.

This is actually a lot more to work with than the McCain statement, though I note that even when it appears on the Obama campaign site, the original reference is not from the campaign, but NASAWatch's news site, SpaceRef! I am forced to wonder why this position paper has not been posted by the campaign. Okay, enough political snarkiness. I'll now consider the statement itself.

The first paragraph is much like a lot of the McCain statement: motherhood and eyewash, "Space is good," blah blah blah.

Obama's first priority: Develop the Next-Generation of Space Vehicles. The statement includes Orion and Ares I, not Ares V, the heavy-lift cargo launch vehicle that would enable lunar exploration. As I noted in my analysis of McCain's piece, what campaigns choose to include matters. Of course what they don't include matters, too.

Next: Complete the International Space Station. This is a continuation of Bush's Vision for Space Exploration as well. Good.

Next: "Continue Unmanned Missions... Barack Obama is committed to a bold array of robotic missions that will expand our knowledge of the solar system and lay the foundations for further manned exploration." Most of the statement addresses existing robotic missions; the campaign carefully pays homage to science missions of the past and missions currently in action, but no statement is made mentioning future, planned, or new programs.

Next: Monitor the Forces and Effects of Climate Change. This was a major theme of Obama's staffer at ISDC. This, like the statements made by McCain's aide, bodes well for NASA's Earth Science.

Next: Support Scientific Research. This seems to be focused mostly on spinoff research. NASA is doing this now. No problem. The statement also notes that "Over the last three decades, federal funding for the physical, mathematical and engineering sciences has declined at a time when other countries are substantially increasing their own research budgets." However, as I noted by my posting on Wednesday, the NSF is looking to get at 14% increase in its budget for 2009. Obama's statement here might become OBE (government talk for "overcome by events").

Next: Maintain Surveillance to Strengthen National Security. This is in line, more or less, with McCain's belief in using space assets to support national defense. Fine and dandy. However, I must take issue with these points: "Orbiting surveillance satellites provide a vital way to ensure compliance with non-proliferation treaties and monitor emerging threats." Satellites cannot easily detect underground nuclear facilities, such as Iraq and Iran have built.

Next: Keep Weapons out of Space. This is mostly a statement of intent for us, not something Obama can hope to enforce on other countries, as the Chinese ASAT test proves. He can stop further development of U.S. capabilities if he wants, but it's nice to know that we at least have the capability now. A great deal of fuss was made about the U.S. National Space Policy when it came out, with some folks saying that Bush was advocating war in space. Hardly. What the policy does say is:

• The United States considers space systems to have the rights of passage through and operations in space without interference. Consistent with this principle, the United States will view purposeful interference with its space systems as an infringement on its rights;
• The United States considers space capabilities -- including the ground and space segments and supporting links -- vital to its national interests. Consistent with this policy, the United States will: preserve its rights, capabilities, and freedom of action in space; dissuade or deter others from either impeding those rights or developing
  capabilities intended to do so; take those actions necessary to protect its space capabilities; respond to interference; and deny, if necessary, adversaries the use of space capabilities hostile to U.S. national interests;

In plain Chicago English: "We'll leave you alone as long as you leave us alone. Somebody messes with us, we're gonna mess with them."

Next: Strengthen Math and Science Education. The remainder of the space statement is dedicated to this point, so I'll have to dissect it a little more deeply. "Barack Obama will make math and science education a national priority, and provide our schools with the tools to educate 21st-Century learners." This is roughly the statement Obama used as his defense when challenged on his cutting-Constellation-to-fund-education proposal. Obama believes in getting kids the math and science education first. No argument with that--they need it. However, space advocates like me would also say, "If you cut the space program, you eliminate one of the things that gets kids interested in math and science in the first place."

"Recruit High-Quality Math and Science Teachers." The statement then goes on to propose a scholarship program for teachers (cost unknown) and a $100 million fund for professional development for teachers. That would pay for about one third to one quarter of the price of the Mars Rovers, which to date have logged over 1,600 days' worth of mission time (1,510 days or more longer than their intended mission length). These missions have provided thousands of images and untold numbers of "teaching moments" for sufficiently interested educators.

"Obama will also support state efforts to make science education a priority at the pre-K level." Again, this sounds like a proposal to spend more money. The U.S. now spends the third-most per primary and secondary school student in the industrialized world, behind only Luxembourg and Switzerland, but ranks 17th in math and science scores. More money is not necessarily the answer.

"Improve and Prioritize Science Assessments: Science assessments need to do more than test facts and concepts. They need to use a range of measures to test inquiry and higher-order thinking skills including inference, logic, data analysis and interpretation, forming questions, and communication." This is a complaint I've heard from a couple of science teachers. Kids are being drilled on how to pass tests, not necessarily think creatively, practically, or logically. Eliminating reliance on testing would also require dismantling a lot of the education bureaucracy, including the bipartisan No Child Left Behind Act. Far be it for me to complain about that, but I wish Obama luck in de-emphasizing the Scantron test while taking on the educational bureaucracy and teachers' unions.

Bottom line: Despite the earlier space-for-education comment, there is not a lot here that is new. Indeed, when it comes to space policy, a lot of Obama's statement here is a status quo follow-on to the Bush presidency's policies and doesn't differ much from McCain's. However, a few differences did strike me:

• Obama would continue executing one half to two-thirds of the Vision for Space Exploration: finish ISS, retire the Shuttle, build Ares I/Orion. The question of Ares V development and human exploration is left wide open.
• A strong emphasis on Earth Science, in connection with climate change analysis.
• No mention of what will happen with NASA's overall budget, and a definite sign that an Obama administration would do some sort of intensive review of NASA's programs and priorities before proceeding any further.
• Some lip service is paid to national defense, but not without a little posturing about weapons in space.
• Like McCain, there is little to no reference here to commercial space or space tourism. One might wonder why, though perhaps for different reasons than one might wonder about McCain's exclusion of these topics.

If you are deducing from my comments that I am not a fan of Obama, you are deducing correctly. I have a lot of issues with him, the first one being that I don't think he has the experience necessary to be Commander in Chief of the DC Chamber of Commerce, much less the United States of America. I have tried to be fair with his policy statements and have noted where I agree or have no objection to them. However, that Constellation-for-education trade statement is still out there, and will make advocates like me leery of him until he actually shows his cards.

Bottom Line on the Two Major Parties' Candidates' Space Polices: Coming from a very parochial view of the space business (i.e., a supporter of the Ares Projects and Constellation), I would say that the only difference between McCain and Obama is going to be the size of the cut they'd get--anywhere from $0 to infinity and beyond.

John McCain on Space Issues

Darlene the Science Cheerleader pointed me to the this link about space on the John McCain campaign site and wanted my thoughts on what it might mean. Campaign statements are often deliberately murky until the candidate is in office. First of all, since space is not a high-priority item in anyone's campaign, the McCain statement is short enough to be quoted here in full:

America's Space Program

"Let us now embark upon this great journey into the stars to find whatever may await us." -John McCain

John McCain is a strong supporter of NASA and the space program. He is proud to have sponsored legislation authorizing funding consistent with the President's vision for the space program, which includes a return of astronauts to the Moon in preparation for a manned mission to Mars. He believes support for a continued US presence in space is of major importance to America's future innovation and security. He has also been a staunch advocate for ensuring that NASA funding is accompanied by proper management and oversight to ensure that the taxpayers receive the maximum return on their investment. John McCain believes curiosity and a drive to explore have always been quintessential American traits. This has been most evident in the space program, for which he will continue his strong support.

Fortunately, because the statement is so brief, the McCain camp's emphases are easy to spot:

• Keeping the U.S. Space Exploration Policy (a.k.a. the Vision for Space Exploration or VSE) funded. The fact that he called out the VSE by name is a hopeful sign for those of us who support the Constellation Program, which is responsible for executing it.
• "A continued American presence in space is of major importance to America's future innovation and security." This could refer to scientific exploration, technology development, and/or satellites dedicated to national defense. Most likely his emphasis is on the last two, with "innovation" being another way of saying technological development, which, in turn, supports U.S. leadership abroad and national defense. This is a typically McCainish issue, as he is very much a "national defense guy" in the Senate. A cautionary note is in order here, though: an "American presence in space" need not require human beings.
• "ensuring that NASA funding is accompanied by proper management and oversight to ensure that the taxpayers receive the maximum return on their investment." This, too, is a standard McCain issue. He is a big advocate of government accountability and (where necessary) closer congressional oversight of government agencies. The "maximum return on investment" line is interesting, as I'll explain below.

The rest of the words are motherhood and apple pie eyewash. They are nearly content-free except to say, "Space is good." Bottom line, if you were to go only by this campaign statement, you might be led to believe that the bullets above represented the whole of McCain's attitudes toward space.

However...

The content above needs to be balanced against other statements Senator McCain or his staff have made. Two particular instances come to mind:

• The statements his staffer made at the 2008 ISDC, which I summarize here, and Jeff Foust analyzes here, here, and here. Floyd Deschamps, McCain's representative at a debate on space policy, made it quite clear that Senator McCain was concerned about global warming/climate change, and that this might equate to more funding of NASA's Earth Science programs.
• McCain is committed to balancing the federal budget by 2013. Given the increasing size of the "non-discretionary" federal budget--Social Security, Medicare, interest on the debt--that means cuts to everything else are on the table, and NASA's budget is very discretionary. It is also an easy and highly visible target, despite its miniscule portion of the budget. Again: NASA gets seven-tenths of 1 percent of the federal budget.

And quite frankly, for space policy geeks like me, there are way too many unanswered questions in the McCain space policy statement. I wouldn't exactly call the paragraph above a policy, more like a statement of intent. For instance:

• What will be done about the human spaceflight "gap" after the Shuttle is retired? How will he propose that the U.S. access the International Space Station? Will he continue to support COTS? Obtaining access to ISS via international partners? Or will he extend our contract with the Russians?
  
  (Policy Wonk Note: Extending the Soyuz flights seems unlikely, as McCain co-authored the 1992 Iran-Iraq Arms Non-Proliferation Act. Why should this matter? In short, the agreement to buy Soyuz flights to ISS only runs through 2011. After that, we might stop doing business with Russia because they continue to provide Iran with technical assistance in building nuclear reactors and (conceivably) nuclear weapons.)
• It seems clear that McCain will continue to support the Constellation Program, but at what pace of development? Will he shift gears if SpaceX gets its act together and flies cargo to the ISS before Orion gets there? Will he commit to start serious development work on the Ares V cargo launch vehicle in 2011? What provisions for private sector participation and development is he prepared to make when we start building an outpost on the Moon? Constellation has a potentially long run ahead of it. Much like the Truman Doctrine, stating the policy is not enough, it will require long-term follow-up by many more presidents to come.
• What will be done with ISS itself? Right now, the station is due to be completed by 2010. America has no way to access ISS from the time Shuttle retires until 2015, at the earliest, when Ares I/Orion come online. Funding for ISS is scheduled to end in 2016-2017, meaning the U.S. would get only about two years' worth of direct, productive use out of the station. This issue must be addressed.
• Will McCain do anything to support personal spaceflight/space tourism and the "NewSpace" community's efforts to break the NASA/Lockheed/Boeing dominance of the field, or will he just keep his hands off and let nature take its course?
• What will be done about planetary and space sciences--the new telescopes, orbiters, and landers NASA has planned--James Webb Space Telescope, Mars Sample Return, Kepler, etc.?
• What about funding for aeronautics? This is an especially big issue in Congress, as nearly all 50 states have aerospace contractors, subcontractors, and third-tier suppliers. Boeing also has some serious lobbyists. Consider the recent dustup over the award of some Air Force tankers to Northrop Grumman and EADS--these guys have clout and money to spread around. A lot of the U.S. trade deficit is offset by Boeing's commercial and military aircraft, and those aircraft remain among the world's finest thanks to investments in aviation technologies at NASA field centers (especially Glenn, Dryden, and Langley). That part of the NASA budget cannot be ignored.
• Finally, what will be done with the NASA budget overall? Will it only keep pace with inflation? Will it be cut? Will it be increased? The last two questions are especially interesting, because they will teach us a lot about how McCain will lead--like a President, or like a Senator. Presidential thinking requires one to make priorities and to target increases (or cuts) that match those priorities. Senatorial thinking tends to spread the wealth (or pain) equally or proportionally to keep everyone equally happy (or not).

That's why McCain's statement about making sure "the taxpayers receive the maximum return on their investment" is so interesting. Maximizing one's return on investment implies a targeted approach to spending. In that case, there will be a definite shift in the shape of the budgetary "pie slices" within NASA. For good or ill, some programs' fortunes will improve while others would be cut.

To make a long explanation longer, I still have a lot of unanswered questions about McCain's space policy statement, and much that I must try to interpret based on other statements McCain has made elsewhere. Given the low priority of space in general, I'd say that folks in the industry will still be playing "wait and see" well into McCain's (or Obama's) first year in office.

I'll take on Obama's space policy approach tomorrow.

What Should We Do In Space?

Here's a hypothetical question for your Sunday evening: let's say you were a space fan--not just a fan of science fiction, but the sort of person who finds exploration and human settlement of the solar system an intriguing and worthwhile notion.

• What steps do you believe are necessary to make a spacefaring civilization a reality?
• What would you want the United States to do to make that happen?
• What should we build first, where should we go, and what should we do when we get there?

Okay, maybe my hypothetical question is too much for you. There's no way in heck ANYTHING about space interests you, let alone sending people out there to live on the Moon, Mars, an asteroid, the moons of Jupiter, or beyond. However, let's say you knew that your nation was committed to going into space, and all you could do is affect what they did when they got there.

• What sort(s) of activities would make space exploration and settlement worthwhile to you as a taxpayer ("If I've gotta pay for it, I might as well get X out of it!")?
• What should the country to do to make sure space exploration was "done right?"
• If the country was going into space and you knew your one vote wasn't going to stop it, what would make you more accepting of, or interested in, the activity?

I know what my answers are to these questions. I'd appreciate hearing from others.

Thanks.

/b

Images and Commentary: ISDC 2008

Here are some rough impressions and pictures from this past weekend's International Space Development Conference (ISDC). I was insanely busy running around on various tasks, from selling calendars to attending meetings to "working the room" (an acquired, but necessary skill), and occasionally sitting in on sessions.

Friday, May 30

The first session I have notes--but no pictures--for was Congressman Nick Lampson (D-TX). He admitted some hard facts for the audience, including:

• The political system responds quickly only to a crisis.


• NASA is being asked to do more with less.


• Research and development (R&D) and science are not "in vogue" at the moment.


• The troubled economy causes people to question space investments.


• Given the partisan environment between the Congress and the President, he doesn't hold out high hopes for NASA's budget this year. A continuing resolution is likely again.


• China is producing ten times as many science graduates as we are.


• Space, like everything else, has become a partisan issue.

However, Lampson is a space fan. "It's not always going to be about government. Space will grow our economy." He acknowledged that science and space exploration should be among the nation's top priorities going into the next presidential/congressional term. "It's all about inspiration," he said. It's about "challenging ourselves to do great things." He added that "We can't afford to put science on hold for five years." He encouraged National Space Society (NSS) members to "get to know your member of congress." He described a group of Congressmen called the "Center Aisle Caucus," which is a bipartisan group trying to reach across the aisle to get things done. Lampson sees space as one of those things. This Caucus sent a letter to the House leadership about space.

Lampson closed by saying that NASA contributes to the economy and our culture, and I think that's absolutely right. However, given the number of nations getting into unmanned space exploration, I'd say that human spaceflight is one of the "differentiators" of the American culture.

During the Q&A, Lampson explained that the partisanship on space came not within the space constituency, but more from competing budgetary priorities (e.g. veterans, housing, etc.).

He acknowledged, again, that it was going to get harder to get money for anything.

In response to a question about getting NASA, the Department of Defense, and the Department of Energy to cooperate on developing space solar power, he said that "Anything is possible." He urged NSS members to "use Congress to change things."

***

After the Lampson thing, I took to wandering the hallways. I must confess to leaving the session on the Constellation program because, quite frankly, I hear about that every day. I discovered that I hadn't brought my cell phone charger and happened to pester a friend with an iPhone. He looked up a Verizon store online using said, "See? That's why you need one of these things." No thanks. Nice to have the assist, though. This is the point where one of my pals would call me a "Luddite in techie's clothing." She's right, so why argue?

In the bar, I met a gentleman who was presenting on a rocket called Neptune. This puppy is a serious behemoth: 6,000 metric tons (about 13.8 million pounds). For comparison, the currently planned Ares V is slated to be 7.5 million pounds at liftoff, while the Saturn V was around 6.7 million pounds. About the only place the U.S. could launch such a beast would be on Baker Island in the middle of the Pacific. I told him good luck with selling that in the current environment. Yikes!

***

The next speech I managed to attend (again without having my camera handy--let's face it, dear readers: I'm not much better off when I have it) was for Simon "Pete" Worden, former USAF General and now Center Director for NASA's Ames Research Center. Worden is something of a legend in the space community and NASA itself, known as he is for bucking the bureaucracy and occasionally getting himself in trouble for it. Worden's talk focused on opportunities in the future.

Worden began by reminding the audience that space is no longer solely the province of the United States. He also stated that "leading in space means leading international efforts." He then went on to note some of the upcoming international efforts heading for the Moon, including China's, Japan's, and India's.

Worden isn't afraid or ashamed to use profanity in his talks. One of his more amusing lines, in describing the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) mission was, "As a former Air Force guy, I really like bombing the shit out of the Moon." He is also not above taking a few good-natured pokes at rival centers, like Marshall or Goddard, as when he noted the cost of some of his "micro-satellites" and other projects compared to "that Goddard shit." One of my friends asked him, "How do you manage to survive at NASA?" Worden explained that [NASA Administrator Michael] Griffin will occasionally call him on the carpet and demand, "What'd you ask that for?" Indeed, when Worden brings in a reference (unattributed) describing NASA as "a self-licking ice cream cone," one does indeed wonder. My coworkers and I are impressed with the amount of innovation and collaboration that goes on at Ames, especially in connection with Generation Y. Being in Silicon Valley, I suppose that entrepreneurial, looser environment is more likely to occur. "We're sort of the 'un-center'," he said at one point.

Other space opportunities Worden mentioned included the Google Lunar X Prize; the International Lunar Network, which is looking to rebuild the world's community of lunar scientists; launching very large (10-25 meters wide) telescopes to the L2 Lagrange Point; using Ares/Orion for human servicing of telescopes at that location; lower-energy exploration missions to asteroids, which he described as "slicker than snot"; using biotechnology to facilitate human exploration and exploitation of space resources; and in-situ resource utilization of volatiles in asteroids to support exploration. Anyhow, Worden made quite an impression, and was undoubtedly one of the more popular NASA speakers at the conference.

***

One of the "must-see" events for me at this ISDC was the debate (more of a moderated Q&A) between representatives of the threee major presidential campaigns: Clinton, McCain, and Obama. The discussion was facilitated by CNN correspondent Miles O'Brien, and it was quite obvious early on in the discussion that O'Brien and the Clinton representative (former NSS officer, NASA policy person, and "space mom" Lori Garver). The McCain representative, Floyd Deschamps, and Obama representative, Steve Robinson, were either not up on the topic or not apparently interested.

Opening statements:

Obama sees space policy as part of science policy, which is where the other two candidates (and most presidents after Kennedy and Johnson) put it. His efforts on space/science would focus on:

• Building and supporting the pool of talented people capable of carrying science forward.


• Inspiring America's youth (can I tell you how BORED I am with that phrase?)


• Creating a supportive environment for R&D.


• Applying science and engineering toward addressing Earth-based problems, most notably climate and energy issues. On the matter of climate, Obama would use space to support "evidence-based" decision making.

McCain's presidency would focus on fiscal responsibility (in my language, budget cuts). McCain would:

• Appplying information from unmanned spacecraft (i.e. satellites, orbiters, landers) to human exploration activities.


• Evaluating the best way to address the human spaceflight gap.


• Establishing a balanced program of human/robotic exploration and addressing climate change monitoring via satellites.

Hillary Clinton, much as it pains me to say so, has the most clear, forward-thinking, and positive space agenda of the three (but then I was never a one-issue voter--and Hillary's got many other issues that are trouble-making without including space in the mix). Clinton's priorities include:

• Promoting an ambitious space agenda, which sounds nice but was somewhat vague on the execution side. She did mention human and robotic exploration, though.


• Promoting Earth science.


• Promoting aeronautical research.

These points were included in a speech she delivered on October 4, 2007. Garver also pointed out that Clinton was one of the few Senators from a "non-space" state who signed on to the Mikulski-Hutchison bill to add $2 billion to NASA's budget to make up for losses due to Hurricane Katrina and other issues.

In the Q&A section, Deschamps and Robinson made it clear that science/R&D spending needed to increase; however, Robinson ducked the issue of Obama wishing to fund education initiatives by delaying the Constellation Program for five years.

Deschamps dodged a similar question about whether McCain would restore funding to Al Gore's Triana environmental monitoring program, but indicated that McCain would evaluate any gaps in environmental monitoring knowledge.

Robinson drew hisses from the audience when he said that "We've been on Mars for four days," when in fact the U.S. has had probes on Mars since 1977. He compounded his error by repeating the comment later. He stated that it would be more inspiring to students to have a probe on Mars that the could interact with. "We shouldn't say inspiration comes in just one form." I believe Miles O'Brien retorted that "We've never named a high school after a robot." In any case, the crowd got the distinct vibe that human spaceflight was not high on Obama's list of space activities to pursue.

Asked what their top priority for NASA would be, the camps answered as follows:

• Clinton: "Exploration (human and robotic)." Possibly increase NASA's budget, but shift more money toward robotic exploration and Earth science (which might end up being a wash, as far as Constellation is concerned).


• McCain: Science and climate change.


• Obama: The decisions will be made by the space community (in other words, he punted).

Asked about privatizing operations in space, Lori Garver stated that that approach was right for operations in low Earth orbit (LEO), but "the devil's in the details," whatever the hell that means. Asked if NASA was a good midwife for business, Garver said, diplomatically, "They're still learning."

McCain wanted to focus on return on investment to the taxpayers and privatizing the International Space Station via private-sector research activities. He added that "prizes were a good thing."

On the issue of military space, Robinson had a clear set of talking points, which boiled down to: "We don't need new battlegrounds" and "We need to find ways to foster cooperation." A follow-up question caused him to repeat these points.

Deschamps indicated the need for the U.S. to protect its space assets, but also added that McCain was not looking for a new battleground.

Garver reitered the policy of keeping military and civilian space activities separate, though she noted that cooperation with the Chinese would be difficult since they did not do so.

On the subject of the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), which has been causing the U.S. to lose its competitive edge through excessive export control laws, Garver said Clinton wanted to fix ITAR. One such reform might include moving some items on the ITAR list from the control of the State Department to the Department of Commerce. McCain's camp would review the situation (though I'm baffled as to what yet another review would do to help--we've known about the problem for at least 8 years). Deschamps reminded the audience that "technology is always ahead of the law," but then committed McCain to trying to have the law keep up with it anyway. Robinson answered truthfully, if painfully, "I have nothing to add."

Asked if space is a priority, the answers generally went like this:

• Clinton: Having the presdient make a declaration is not enough. An announcement of a mission needs to be backed by funding and policies.


• McCain: [Not in my notes--I bought a DVD of the session, so I will review later and revise].


• Obama: "We cannot tell kids to 'go be scientists' if they can't go to schools where they can become them."

My overall assessment:

• There seemed to be very little difference between the candidates.


• Space won't be a priority to the President until there's a crisis.


• NASA's budget is unlikely to increase, but basic science/R&D funding will, possibly via the National Science Foundation.


• Human spaceflight will muddle along based on whatever budget it can eke out.


• Robotic exploration and Earth science (i.e. climate change) will be the priorities of all three candidates when they finally get around to addressing space issues.

I'll take a shot at explaining the pictures below later. I didn't get much sleep last night, and sleeping on an airplane doesn't quite cut it, though I did make a valiant attempt. I think I need one of those neck pillows.

More later.

***

The first event I have photos for was the Friday evening gala, where the NSS was presenting the Robert A. Heinlein Award to Burt Rutan, builder of SpaceShipOne and the forthcoming SpaceShipTwo. The Master of Ceremonies (MC or "emcee" in Americanish) was CNN's Miles O'Brien. He was followed by former 20/20 anchor and NSS Governor Hugh Downs, who shared some remiscences of his childhood (including his less-than-six-degrees-of-separation connection to astronaut Neil Armstrong) and focused on how and why the way we record and present the space exploration events of the present will have an effect on the future.

Hugh (I feel I can call him by his first name here--I actually talked with the man during the 2005 ISDC) was followed by Fred Ordway III, an eminent NASA rocket guy and author who served as a consultant on the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. Ordway gave a tribute to the late Sir Arthur C. Clarke.










Finally, O'Brien introduced and gave the Heinlein Award to Mr. Rutan. Perhaps I should share some of the blame for what happened next. Earlier that afternoon, Rutan had stopped by the NSS booth, where Dan Linehan was selling his new book on SpaceShipOne (more on that later). Rutan hadn't decided what he was going to say that night, so I jokingly asked him if he was going to repeat his 2006 appearance, where he appeared in "the capacity of a humorist." That was the performance where he'd taken the time to pick on every single program represented in the room. He indicated that he was offended and more than a little upset with the speech that Neil deGrasse Tyson had delivered the night before. He took umbrage with the notion that Apollo/Saturn had nothing to do with being visionary and were all about "war." He stated that Buzz Aldrin was similarly uncomfortable and angry with Tyson's remarks and at one point said, "Okay, I'll hold his arms, you punch him."



















Rutan then began repeating his 2006 performance, starting out by saying that he only came here (Washington) under duress, and strongly urged that NSS hold its conventions "anywhere but here." He explained that he was "depressed in the presence of regulators" because "the folks here tell us what we cannot do...and I spend a lot of my time telling my people that they can do anything. There's no limits on what you can do if you believe you can do it."

He moved on to discuss the difference between research and development. He described Apollo as research: "You're only doing research when more than half the people you're working with think what you're doing is impossible." He stated that the Constellation Program amounted to development work. "We are averse to doing research." He predicted that the current operational model, where NASA designs and the contractors build would fail. That came as a surprise to me, since I just helped Steve Cook write a speech about the fact that the NASA-leads-contractors-follow model derives directly from the Apollo model he claims to admire.

Another good pull quote: "Our best visionaries couldn't predict what we could do if we're challenged." When Rutan is on a roll, there are few forces on Earth that can stand in his way.

Rutan then set off a landmine, and kept setting them off for the next 30+ minutes: he dared to question, in the midst of a rather liberal capital society, the orthodoxy of global warming: "This will prove to be the biggest sham in history." And he went on from there.

Imagine yourself at a family reunion with other non-family guests present. A grandfather or uncle whom you deeply admire, love, and respect gets ripped and suddenly goes off on a tear about some political topic using none-too-polite language while doing so. Say he says that X group or Y profession is destroying the country, and whoever believes X or Y group was a g-damned idjit. You might happen to agree with your grandfather or uncle, but you know that many of your guests do not, and that your grandfather is, in fact, coarsely insulting some deeply held beliefs of said guests or the guests themselves (an example being one of his comments about the media: "I'm am so relieved that you are now irrelevant"). What do you do? You get embarrassed, and hope to hell he shuts up soon. That's sort of what listening to Rutan was like, but he did it all stone sober.

Here's the thing: Rutan is The Man in this business right now. He can write his own ticket. He designs aircraft like nobody else on this Earth, and he did what others said was impossible: build a new vehicle capable of reaching space for around $30 million. He is now building a bigger version to carry passengers, something that means access to space for anyone healthy and wealthy enough to pay. He also recently recovered from heart surgery. He lives in an area (Mojave, CA) and profession where competence is admired above all, and he's made great contributions demonstrating said competence. His work is proceeding without government payment or favor. Does he perhaps feel that he can say anything he damn well pleases? Most likely. Does that mean he should? I leave that to the discriminating reader. As an observer who is both a personal admirer and someone who agreed with much of what he said, I still found his behavior and performance boorish and unnecessarily rude. It's not like he's going to listen to me, but he should have enough "situational awareness" to realize that he did himself no favors with that speech, and might in fact have cost himself a fair amount of goodwill.

Suffice to say, Rutan is better off in Mojave, as he bloody well knows. If you wish to advance by accomplishing something in the physical world, you're better off outside the Beltway. If you want to succeed by winning friends and influencing people, you're better off in Washington.

***

Saturday, May 31
On Saturday, I paid a brief visit to the Near Earth Object (NEO) track, which was not exactly presenting to a full room. A couple of items I did pick up from the talk:

• The number of NEOs found larger than 1 kilometer (km) across is leveling off, while the number of NEOs <1km>


• NEOs are an international issue, which requires trust and serious diplomatic effort.


• The risk line of where the Apophis asteroid could strike is long, running from Siberia to the mid-Pacific to Venezuela to the west coast of Africa. That's a hell of a margin of error!


• There is a 600-meter-wide gravity-induced "keyhole" for Apophis. If it flies near Earth within this 600 m range in 2019, it will likely strike Earth in 2036. Yow!


• Potential asteroid deflection technologies include direct kinetic impact, attaching thrusters, moving the asteroid via space/gravity tugs, and "standoff nukes."


• Stopping km-sized objects is currently beyond our abilities. Food for thought.

***

The next session was on space tourism investing. Speakers for the session included Brett Alexander from the Personal Spaceflight Federation, Carissa Christensen from the Tauri Group, and Andrew Nelson from XCOR Aerospace. Ms. Christensen spoke first.

The Tauri Group did a two-year study on investment indicators within the personal spaceflight (PSF) industry. She described the types of investments as happening in three types:

1. PSF services (the act of actually putting people in space).


2. PSF-related hardware (e.g. rockets, which might be used for other applications).


3. Non-PSF-related revenue (e.g. advertising).

Total investments in all services amounted to $175 million in 2006, $268 million in 2007. Overall employment in personal spaceflight was 1,227 people. Total investment committed to personal spaceflight is $1.2 billion, with ~25% of that spent so far.

Christensen described PSF as being in an "investment and development" phase. I later asked her if she (or anyone else) had done any comparisons between PSF investments and historical investments in commercial aviation at a similar phase of development. She said no, but indicated that market demand and World War II had a greater influence in commercial aviation's development than investment alone.

Mr. Nelson, who was soon to start as Chief Operating OFficer of XCOR, described PSF as "an interesting marketplace." He described his primary customers as thrill-seekers or consumers of adventure tourism. He wants to give them an experience that makes people say, "Holy crap, I wanna get back on," sort of like roller coaster enthusiasts.

Like Ms. Christensen, Mr. Nelson stressed the importance of market demand: "If you don't have a good market, then a good team and good technology won't help you." He stated that demand for PSF needs to be in the hundreds or thousands of flights per year to become a serious enterprise.

Nelson also stressed business basics, like personal assets, capital, and cashflow: "Cashflow is more important than your mother."

***

Saturday's lunch speaker was Anousheh Ansari, the third person to visit the International Space Station as a paying tourist. (If you're a tracker of such things, she was also the first woman and the first Iranian-American.) She was introduced by my buddy (and coauthor) Loretta Whitesides.

Ms. Ansari's first comment did not fill me with a great deal of optimism: "I want to talk about hope." A few comments later, she said, "They [the children of the world/nation] can be the change they want," more or less confirming for me that she's an Obama supporter. However, unlike Mr. Rutan, Ansari did not delve too deeply into the political. She said some good, if cliched things that won applause:

"Impossible is possible."

• "Space is open for business."
• "[Space] represents hope."
• "[Space] is the ultimate way to think outside the box."
• "Let's create a generation of dreamers."
• "I think spaceflight should be mandatory for heads of state."

She concluded her talk with the following poem/saying from Karen Ravn:

Only as high as I reach can I grow
Only as far as I seek can I go
Only as deep as I look can I see
Only as much as I dream can I be

I guess I'm getting cynical in my old age, but it takes a little more than poetry to move me. That said, I still appreciated the sentiments. While I envy her success and her trip to ISS, I don't look at Ms. Ansari as some sort of visionary, like Rutan or Bob Zubrin. She's a consumer of space tourism services, as I one day hope to be. Still, Homer Hickam is currently writing up Ansari's biography, and that story might be worth reading. After all, how does one transition from a 16-year-old Iranian exile to a multi-millionaire and space fan? That would be a tale worth knowing.

***

For reasons that elude me (but far be it for me to complain about them), I bought a ticket for a movie being screened at ISDC, The Wonder of it All. Boy, and am I glad I did! At a shade over 82 minutes, Wonder manages to capture biographies of some of the men who walked on the Moon, which the American public probably hasn't seen in ~40 years. The movie is like an extended sidebar of In the Shadow of the Moon, another recent Apollo documentary I enjoyed, dealing as it does with the astronauts' personal lives. The ones being interviewed included Buzz Aldrin, Alan Bean, Gene Cernan, Charlie Duke, Ed Mitchell, and John Young.

What comes across fairly quickly is how extraordinary these men were, either through their intelligence or eloquence, or both. Gene Cernan, for example, was on track to become a combat pilot in Vietnam before he became an astronaut. Most of the men were combat or test pilots, a profession with a 75% survival rate. Most of them are Silent Generation folks--low-key, humble, stoic. Buzz Aldrin discusses his mother's suicide a year before the landing of Apollo 11, as well as his own bouts with alcoholism, almost stoically. These men are much as they were when introduced to the public in the 1960s: soft-spoken, no-BS kinds of guys who would rather talk about (or better, just fly) spacecraft than become subjects of history. And yet they are. One wonders what would have become of them had they not all become astronauts.

Here's one of my favorite lines from Al Bean, the astronaut who became quite an accomplished artist after his journeys to the Moon: "If you've got a song in your heart, you'd better sing it." This was his big "lesson learned" from his adventures. He seemed to be saying, "If you don't share what talents you have in this life, no one will ever know about them." While my pastor probably wouldn't approve, I understood the sentiment.

***

Saturday was also the date for the Space Shuttle Discovery launch. A good chunk of the ISDC crowd turned out in "the big room" to watch the launch on the TV. And ya know, I like to think of myself as this hardbitten cynic who's had enough of the shuttle and all of its little crises--it bugs me to no end that every Shuttle flight has become a nail-biter thanks to that stupid foam. But damn, put me in a room full of fellow enthusiasts cheering the liftoff at the correct places (liftoff, separation, MECO), and all the old feelings come back: humility, patriotism, pride.

Just after the launch, the next track/session was announced, and it was all about Generation Y. Interestingly, despite the fact that the session was designed to help over-40s understand and work better with Gen Y, most folks over 40 left the room. Hell, most people over 30 left the room! Not exactly the best way to keep a conversation going.

The session was hosted by my buddy Loretta Whitesides, who began with a talk of her own. She stated that the goals of an inter-generational dialogue should be:

• Bringing in more young people.
• Mentoring more young people.
• Finding ways for Gen Y to contribute its unique skill set.

Loretta, perhaps because she's an Xer like me, made some good conciliatory gestures to the previous (Boomer) generation, including a note that "We are standing on the shoulders of giants." She also was more constructive than the "gimme gimme" attitude of some Gen Y folks, by stating the need to "ask not what the space program can do for us, but what we can do for our space program." Unfortunately, the next speaker (Rivers Lamb, I believe) was not on the same track.

Using an advanced version of a PowerPoint presentation the Gen Y set has given in other NASA venues, Lamb did his level best to characterize Gen Y as willing to serve, but then ended up contradicting a great deal of that by emphasizing what NASA needed to do to cater to them. He provided a bunch of different words to describe Gen Y (parenthetical remarks are my own):

• Confident
• Ambitious
• Expecting (to be entitled?)
• "Famous" (a la the Internet, Facebook, etc.)
• Open (to the point of TMI)
• Direct
• Empowered
• Wired
• Global
• Mobile
• Independent (except when living at home with Mom and Dad into their 30s)
• Information-rich
• Multitasking (short attention span)
• Associative
• Instantaneous (I want my data/promotion now)
• Always "on" (inability to disconnect from electronic toys, helpless in a blackout)
• Impatient--occasionally unrealistically so
• Diverse

As far as the abilities of Gen Y go, Lamb had these to offer:

• Able to absorb discontinuous information and analyze it.
• Can see global view
• Want to change the world
• Used to complex information
• Engaged, productive
• Creative communicators

Lamb described failure for Gen Y in the following terms:

• Not pursuing opportunity
• Not trying
• Not being true to oneself
• Not getting dream
• Compromising integrity

Additional Gen Y behavioral traits included:

• Need to feel valued
• Follow leaders based on credibility, not authority (this is also a Gen X trait)
• Failure is an option (and if failure happens, one can always go back and live with Mom and Dad, right?)
• Openly talk about career paths, options, and salaries (this is such a no-no in my world, that I hesitate to even explain it, but I will in case a Gen Yer is reading: You don't tell your boss that you're looking for another job, unless said job is in the same line of work you're in now. If you're an undertaker and you tell the boss you want to be an underwater basket weaver, said boss might not discourage you, but s/he might stop giving you any useful assignments in the job you're in now, under the assumption that you're gonna leave soon. I love the earnestness and niceness of Gen Y, but their political naiveity is startling.)

As advice to Gen Y, Lamb provided the following:

• Seek out mentors
• Turn boredom into positive contributions
• Strive to understand the system (this is a good one, and a bit of advice that is often overlooked)
• Share success
• This one I add from my own experience and from having to lead Gen Y workers: take time to listen to your elders' "war stories." You might want an answer, NOW, quick and dirty. However, you can miss a lot of the nuance, situational awareness, and "why" that comes with experience if you ask for only the quick-and-dirty answer. You can ask for a quick answer, but if the boss starts giving you a long answer anyway, sit there and listen because there's reason why you're getting the long version.

As far as advice for non-Gen Y bosses, Lamb offered the following:

• Be direct, not abstract, in your feedback.
• Allow for a collaborative environment (i.e., one that gives Gen Y a voice in the decision-making).
• Allow learning by doing.
• Emphasize skill development, not loyalty. (I hate to break it to Gen Y, but loyalty still counts for something. A lot of large organizations are nearly feudal in their expectation of loyalty up and down the chain of command. Demonstrate that you're willing to follow the boss's program, and s/he is more likely to back you up when you come in seeking that promotion or transfer you're wanting.)

The next person I have notes about is my pal Cassie Kloberdanz, whom I wrote a paper with for last year's Mars Society Convention. Cassie gave more of a first-person narrative of her experiences as a Gen Yer within NASA. She makes clear that she had different experiences at different centers: good at Marshall Space Flight Center, not so good at Kennedy Space Center.

What differentiated a good from a bad experience for Cassie were the following traits:

• Earning responsibility.
• Leadership that had interest in her goals.
• Coaching and communicating.
• Excitement, training.
• A culture of inclusion.

In short, Cassie thrived best in environments where the management showed interest in her and her personal goals and aspirations. I think it's safe to say that most people would thrive in such organizations. However, Gen Y has some unrealistic aspirations if they expect all managers to cater to their needs in this fashion. Many bosses have their own careers to worry about, as well as their bosses' goals. And that means any Gen Y worker must understand that in order to advance their own careers, they might occasionally have to set aside their own, personal goals to serve the goals of the organization or people for which they work.

Unfortunately, I had to go to an NSS Policy Committee meeting, and so was unable to participate in the Q&A afterwards. That might have proven interesting.

***

The dinner Saturday night was supposed to have Buzz Aldrin as the guest speaker. However, at the last minute Buzz had to bow out because he wasn't feeling well. And jeez, who can blame him? He'd spent something like three weeks on the road prior to ISDC, and he's 78 years old! The man's entitled to a break now and then.

As a substitute speaker, NSS brought in Lt. Col. Michael "Coyote" Smith, USAF.

Lt. Col. Smith was responsible, along with a group within the Department of Defense called the "Caballeros," for developing a collaborative, online discussion and report about space-based solar power. The report got some traction because DoD, as one of the largest purchasers of petroleum products in the world, is interested in reducing its fuel costs as much as (or more than) the American consumer.

"Coyote," along with his pals "Lips" and "Green Hornet" ("Horny," if truth be told) met in a variety of Irish pubs around the DC area to develop the SBSP idea, as they had little support from within DoD. The Caballeros did something unique, as they opened up their discussions to select members of the general public, seeking guidance and input, as "this is too important to the U.S., our allies, and the world."

I found the forward thinking of the Caballeros--more formally, the National Security Space Office--refreshing and much less militaristic than some of my more paranoid space advocacy peers might have expected. For example, Smith was eager to promote the following up front:

• Prevention of an energy/resource war in the future
• Freedom from war
• Real wealth creation
• Economic security

Coyote pointed out that low-cost SBSP being developed and used in the industrialized world would reduce the cost of more traditional (i.e. petroleum-based) resources for the rest of the world. He did admit that "the business case is not there yet," but felt the matter was "too important to the U.S., our allies, and the world" (he repeated the phrase, lest we miss the point) to ignore.

The Caballeros received one of NSS's Space Pioneer Awards in recognition of their efforts to change the conversation about SBSP. I myself won an Award for Excellence for my efforts in supporting the Society for the past year (no pictures as of yet). However, I decided that a future goal of mine would be to do something minor like "change the world." I want one of those pewter globes, dammit!











Sunday, June 1
The last speech I attended in full was presented by Lori Garver, space policy advisor for the Hillary Clinton campaign, and former NASA policy person, and Executive Director of NSS.











Ms. Garver almost became the first female space tourist ahead of Anousheh Ansari, but the funding/sponsorships fell through. She said a couple of curious things during her talk. One of them was that she was a former Republican who subsequently switched camps (she supported Kerry in 2004, Clinton in 2008). She stated that Sean O'Keefe didn't want Democrats supporting the Vision for Space Exploration, which makes no damned sense, given how hard it is to sell space as it is.

When asked what NASA should be doing in 20 years, she suggested the following priorities:

• Focusing on new technologies.
• Conducting science.
• Investing in things that do not produce a commercial return on investment.

She admitted that NASA probably could/should do more about SBSP and seemed enthusiastic about the idea of building solar cells out of the lunar regolith. She also indicated that NASA was in danger of losing its budget unless it tied its activities to more Earth-based concerns (i.e. energy, the environment), but stated that there was still bipartisan support for Constellation. The big argument with Constellation? "It's not the architecture, it's the rationale." Sounds like the mother of all mixed messages, if you ask me.

In any case, Ms. Garver wished us well, thanked us for our efforts, and encouraged us to continue advocating with our elected officials about space issues.

***

When I wasn't buzzing around meetings or meal speeches, I was in the exhibitors' room. The following images are from there.

The item on the table is a mockup of a solar power satellite built by the Moon Society.

Constellation had a presence in the room, albeit in model and video kiosk form only. You can tell I've been in this business too long when I start griping about the fact that the model is not the right Ares I configuration.











Case in point: the shape of the Orion Launch Abort System has since changed to a more aerodynmic shape to cover the entire crew module.










Other items of interest in the Exhibitors room included a display for the Space Elevator Centennial Challenge, which is sponsored by the Spaceward Foundation. The climber competition is much more ambitious than previous events: elevator climber vehicles must now climb one kilometer. The 3/8-inch cable will be suspended from an aerostat (tethered blimp).











Other displays in the room included Apogee Books and David Robinson, a space artist who helped judge the 2009 Space Settlement Calendar Art Contest I ran this year.




















And, lastly, we have Your Humble Narrator, relatively at ease at the Calendar sales booth. Thanks for reading.