Space Access
Update #117 8/21/10
Copyright 2010 by Space Access
Society
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Contents This Issue:
NASA Exploration Funding: The Battle Continues
– A Followup to
SAU #115
“The New NASA Exploration Policy/An URGENT Call To Action
SAU #116
“NASA Exploration Funding: An URGENT Call To Action”
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NASA
Exploration Funding: The Battle Continues
“No man’s life and property are safe while the
legislature is in session.”
– widely
attributed to Mark Twain
This is a followup to our last two
Updates, both of them urgent political alerts in the continuing battle over
fundamental reform of NASA’s human space exploration program. The good news is, with your help, the last
round was a standoff. But the fight is
far from over. It’s once again time to
get active, if we don’t want to see these reforms sunk without a trace. And this time, we actually have a couple of
weeks warning.
State of Play
The House NASA Authorization bill, HR.5781 was up for full
House consideration, but was pulled back at the last second when it became
clear there was considerable lack of consensus on major provisions. (To every one of you who called your
Representative, thanks!) The Senate NASA
Authorization, S.3729, meanwhile has been approved by the full Senate. Both House and Senate are now on recess till
the week of September 13th.
The Senate version is not great, but is livable, with $3.9
billion overall Exploration funding split as follows: $1.6 billion for NASA
development of a new in-line Shuttle-derived heavy-lift launcher, $1.1 billion
for continuation of the Orion capsule, and $1.1 billion for the rest of
Exploration. That last $1.1 billion
includes reduced but still substantial funding for the Commercial Crew,
Commercial Cargo, and other new space technology/exploration precursors we
support. (S.3729 also fully funds
Commercial Reusable Suborbital Research, under another account.) Close to a billion dollars of NASA
exploration funding directed toward useful things is hugely better than we
would have hoped for coming into this year.
The House version is extremely bad. HR.5781 is essentially a blueprint for the
destruction of NASA human space exploration in the name of saving it.
– Out of a total $4.5
billion Exploration funding, it devotes $4.2 billion to development of a new
in-house NASA heavy booster (to be based on existing Ares work) plus a government-owned
Station transportation system based on the Orion capsule.
– It makes drastic
cuts in funding for developing US Commercial Crew and Cargo to Station capabilities,
to a small fraction of NASA’s request.
– It imposes
“poison pill” requirements on potential US commercial crew services
that neither NASA nor existing Russian crew service providers have to meet.
– It zeroes
Exploration Technology and Robotic Precursor Missions funding.
The gutting of Commercial Crew and Cargo budgets, and the
Commercial Crew poison pills, will leave
us spending hundreds of millions annually for non-US Station transport services
for the forseeable future, and will leave us with no backup should those non-US
services have technical or political problems.
The new House-mandated NASA heavy booster and
Station-transport Orion get less funding than, but a similar schedule to, what the
Augustine Commission already found unworkable for the old Ares/Orion. The issue of what Station-Orion would fly on (2015
operational goal) while waiting for the new heavy lifter (2020 goal) is not
even addressed, never mind funded. The
odds are extremely poor that these projects would ever amount to anything beyond
never-fly jobs programs. Even if the new
vehicles do eventually fly, NASA would still have no deep space missions to fly
on them, due to this bill’s effective starvation of all other Exploration precursor
work.
Pursuing the path implicit in HR.5781 would reduce our
nation’s international commercial space competitiveness, would damage our
national space technology base, and would destroy NASA’s chances of moving out
beyond low orbit in any meaningful way for decades to come.
What’s Next
Our understanding is that they’ll try to pass HR.5781 again
right after Congress returns from this recess.
There will be three opportunities to fix it: In negotiated modifications
before it’s reintroduced to the House, by amendment on the House floor, or by
negotiations in the House-Senate conference committee that will reconcile the
two versions. The process may move very quickly once Congress is
back. We need to prepare the ground now.
Recommended Action:
Contact your Representative and both your Senators, and ask
them to support the Senate version of the NASA Authorization bill, because the
House version is unacceptably bad. Get
as many of your friends as you can to do it too. Numbers count. We need to make as many of our
Representatives and Senators as possible aware of our concerns in the next few
weeks, before deals start being made on the final NASA Authorization bill. Start doing it now, don’t wait till the last
second. (We may ask you to do it again
at the last second – a little repetition does no harm.)
Contact Info for Representative and Senators: If you know
their names, you can call the US Capitol switchboard at (202) 224-3121 and ask
for their DC office. If you don’t know
who your Representative is, go to http://www.house.gov/zip/ZIP2Rep.html and
enter your home zipcode. (You may need the 9-digit version.) For
Senators listed by state, go to http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm
Once through to their office, let the person who answers
know you’re calling about the NASA Authorization bill. They may switch
you to another staffer (or that staffer’s voicemail) or they may take the call
themselves. (If you’re calling after-hours or they’re getting a lot of
calls, you may go directly to a voicemail.)
Regardless, tell them you want (Representative/Senator TheirName) to support the Senate version of the NASA
Authorization, because the House version has major problems.
Briefly give one or two reasons you support the Senate
version…
– it provides adequate funding for NASA Commercial
Crew and Cargo
– it supports US
rather than foreign crew and cargo service providers
– it provides some funding
for new NASA exploration technology
– it enhances our
national technological competitiveness
– it partially addresses
the NASA problems pointed out by the Augustine Commission and begins to restore
NASA’s ability to usefully explore
– it supports the
President’s NASA policy
…then a reason why
you oppose the House version – see the bullet points in the HR.5781 paragraph
above. Then answer questions (if any) as
best you can, and politely sign off.
OK, that’s the basic version. Some of you may want to get more involved in
this effort than making a few quick phone calls. Letters and faxes are great! (Emails much less so; you know how much spam
you get – now imagine the amount a Congressman gets. Better to phone than to email.) Keep letters to one page, state your basic
point (Dear Representative/Senator TheirName, I am
writing to request that you support the Senate NASA Authorization, since the
House version is very, very bad…) in the first sentence of the first
paragraph, then go into a paragraph or two of supporting detail, then politely
wrap up. Faxes may be slightly better
than paper mails in that they arrive faster and more reliably – if you are
going to paper-mail a letter, do it early so it has time to get through the
security checks.
And for you real self-starters out there, your
Representative and Senators are on recess, and will probably spend some time
back at home with the voters in the next few weeks.
– You can show up at a
“town hall” and get in line for the microphone with your request
ready (“I’m worried about the future of NASA. I’m here to ask that you support the Senate
version of this year’s NASA Authorization bill, because the House version has
serious problems”) plus an example or two to give if you get the time.
– You can call their
local office and try to set up an appointment to meet your legislator (or an
appropriate staffer) and spend a few minutes making the case in person. If you do, we strongly recommend you study up
on the details, do the whole well-groomed businesslike and courteous thing,
practice making your case in less than the allotted time, and unless they keep
you longer with questions, depart on-time gracefully.
– You can come up
with some other way entirely to let them know what you, their constituent,
want. We haven’t come close to covering
all the conventional effective methods here.
Just remember though, if you’re thinking of getting creative – keep it
legal, keep it safe, make VERY sure it gets the point across unmistakably
clearly – we’ve seen way too many political messages delivered so cleverly that
nobody else can tell what the message is – and make SURE it doesn’t make us all
look like flakes (way too easy when we’re talking space) or annoy people
counterproductively. (Simple parameters,
yeah, we know…) Then let us know how
you did it!
There’s one other very effective way you can help out, if
you can be in Washington DC for a few days around the start of the week of
September 13th: Some of our DC colleagues are very likely to be organizing
citizen lobbyist visits on Capitol Hill early that week. We plan to support their efforts. More on that as soon as we know more.
What it comes down to is, if we care about US space
commercial and technical competitiveness, if we want to see NASA with some hope
of going new and interesting places anytime soon, we need to keep at this, and we
need to get more organized about it. To
that end, if you do make a call, send a letter, or otherwise deliver the
message, afterwards please email us at [email protected], with
“contact” in the email title, and describe briefly who you contacted,
how you contacted them, and what (if any) response you got? (If you don’t want to go onto our mailing list
for Updates, be sure to mention that.)
Thanks!
Now go get ‘em.
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________________________________________________________________________
Space Access Society
[email protected]
“Reach low orbit and you’re halfway to anywhere in the Solar System”
– Robert A. Heinlein
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