Space Access Update #119 9/20/10
Copyright 2010 by Space Access Society
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Contents This Issue:
– Status Report on the NASA Funding Battle
– A Friend Asks For Help
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Status Report on the NASA Funding Battle
We hand-edited a brief status
update onto the top of our main webpage last Monday 9/13; our apologies to
anyone who may have missed it because we couldn’t mail it out as well. We were on the road and without our usual web
and mail tools. (That report is now
archived as http://www.space-access.org/updates/bulletin091310.html.)
A week later, the news is
basically the same: For the second week
in a row, HR.5781 is not on the House calendar for the week (see the September
20th “Weekly Leader” posted at
http://www.majorityleader.gov/calendar/.) We understand that, at least in part due to a
significant number of constituent calls, the House leadership is aware that a
lot of people don’t like HR.5781, and probably (no guarantees, of course) won’t
put the bill in its current form up for a vote this session. Press reports indicate that negotiations
between House and Senate NASA Authorizers continue, with the outcome (if any)
now more likely to be based on the Senate bill.
So, we’ve made progress – to everyone who made a call, thanks!
But the fight on this NASA
Authorization is not over. We have quite
a bit more information now than we did a week ago – here’s our current
understanding, plus some thoughts on what might come next.
As mentioned, an unmodified
HR.5781 coming up for a floor vote is technically possible, but seems very
unlikely. (If it does happen, we will of
course oppose it, and it could come with very short notice. Stay tuned.)
We see a compromise between
Senate and House versions as moderately unlikely. All the peripheral differences look
negotiable, but the central difference between Senate and House bills is large,
and recent press reports are that Senator Nelson and Representative Gordon
could reach no agreement last week. (See
http://www.floridatoday.com/article/20100920/NEWS02/9200306/1006/NEWS01/NASA+advocates+pushing+Congress.)
That central difference: The
Senate wants to fund a NASA Heavy Lift Vehicle based on Shuttle components (but
allows NASA to ditch Shuttle components if not “practicable”) while
supporting development of Commercial Crew to Station. The House Science Committee wants to
effectively kill Commercial Crew in favor of a NASA-developed Station transport
mandated to look very much like Ares 1/Orion, with something very much like the
Ares 5 HLV to follow. The Senate
strongly recommends keeping a lot of the existing Shuttle establishment on the
payroll but doesn’t insist on it, while the House Committee insists. The Senate sees the necessity of betting on
US commercial launch providers, but the House Committee refuses to. At known (astronomical) NASA in-house rocket development
costs, there certainly isn’t enough money to do both.
There probably isn’t enough
money to actually do the House version rockets at all even without a
compromise, as we’ve noted previously.
The House bill total for their Ares/Orion look-alikes is considerably
less than the amount the Augustine Commission said was already inadequate for
NASA to do the original Ares/Orion. The
Senate HLV, on the other hand, has a built-in fallback position: If using
Shuttle components turns out not “practicable” within the $11.5
billion planned over five years, the project could be put out to commercial
bid. Elon Musk
made a point over the summer of mentioning that SpaceX
could develop an HLV for $2 billion (if someone wanted one.) ULA hasn’t been that specific, but we
understand they wouldn’t need anything near $11.5 billion either.
If a compromise bill does
emerge, it will probably be a mess. If
such a compromise includes House “poison-pill” language that holds US
commercial providers to higher standards than Russian providers or than NASA
itself (keeping in mind NASA’s long-time habit of waiving its standards for
itself whenever they prove too difficult to meet) we will certainly oppose
it. We may also oppose such a compromise
on the basis of funding specifics, but we’d have to see those specifics before
deciding that. We’re already not happy
with how far the Senate version cuts commercial Station access and various
Space and Exploration R&D items, for what it’s worth.
Another thing that could
happen is, nothing – no final NASA Authorization bill before Congress breaks
for the upcoming elections. This seems
fairly likely at the moment (but is no sure thing.) If there is no Authorization, our next focus
will probably be the Appropriations process.
More on that when we know more.
One last thing that could
happen: The House backers of HR.5781
might see they’re playing a bad hand, fold, and accept the Senate version (or
something close enough to it in the essential details.) At that point, we declare victory, take a few
days off, then commence working to get the various pieces of the new plan
implemented sensibly. Here’s hoping!
The House is currently still
scheduled to be in session through Friday October 8th, but word is they’d like
to adjourn a week earlier than that to get some more campaigning time in. That would wind this session up by the end of
next week, at which point much of what we’ve discussed here should be resolved
one way or another. Stay tuned – if
anything interesting happens in the next two weeks, it could happen fast.
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A Friend Asks For Help
We generally avoid taking
partisan positions, as tending to be a distraction from our overall goal of
cheap access. We will occasionally
mention partisan matters that are actually relevant to our goals. Representative Dana Rohrabacher (R CA) is a
long-time member of the House Science Committee who on space matters over the
years has pushed in what we think is the right direction considerably more
often than not. Notably so in this
year’s NASA funding fight, where he’s been on the correct side of some very
muddled party lines, standing up for sound NASA policy over local partisan
pork.
We understand he’s interested
in becoming Chair of the Science Committee in the event the Republicans become the
majority party in the House. We think
that he would make a good Chairman for our purposes. He has a new website, http://www.techpatriots.com/, that is
among other things concerned with helping him campaign for that post within his
party. We’re passing word along so that
if you’re so inclined, you can take a look and decide for yourself whether to
help.
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Space Access Society
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“Reach low orbit and you’re halfway to anywhere in the Solar System”
– Robert A. Heinlein
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