Space
Access Update #140 6/1/15
Copyright 2015 by Space Access
Society
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Our
2015 Space Access conference was a success – a really excellent
cast of speakers (thanks, all!) and good attendance with a lot of new
young faces, something we think important for the long run health of
this field. We managed to bring enough in, between registrations and
donations, to make the exercise fiscally sustainable. And I was able
to delegate enough of the work involved (thanks especially to Gerry
Nordley and Tim Kyger who helped keep the sessions rolling) that I
came out the far side not needing to collapse in a mindless heap for
more than a few days.
Which,
on a personal note, was just as well, because shortly after the
conference I got the word I’d been dreading these last couple years,
that my father had at most a few days left. Albert Rudkin
Vanderbilt, “Peter” to his wife and kin and friends,
“Daddy” to his seven children, a man who spent his life
quietly, patiently, intelligently doing the right thing, died in his
sleep the morning of Monday May 11th 2015, a few weeks short of his
91st birthday. May you rest in light, Daddy.
Henry
Vanderbilt
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Space
Access 2016
We are looking at two possible
dates for our conference next year: Thursday March 31st through
Saturday April 2nd, and Thursday April 7th through Saturday April
9th. The final choice will depend in part on what sort of hotel deal
we can get – the earlier dates are preferable, but may overlap too
closely with MLB Spring Training in metro Phoenix to be affordable.
We will as always strive to keeps the cost of attending down,
appropriate we think for an industry that’s not (yet) rolling in
cashflow.
Information on potential date
conflicts we may have missed is, as always, appreciated. More when
we know more.
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Urgent
Political Priority: Commercial Crew Funding
Back in mid-March
we
wrote that full funding for NASA’s Commercial Crew program is our
top political priority for the year, followed closely by extending
the FAA AST commercial human spaceflight regulations “learning
period”.
The learning period extension is
in good shape – the Senate wants to extend the moratorium on
prematurely detailed industry regulation for five years, the House
ten, so we suspect we’ll be able to live with whatever compromise
they reach.
Commercial Crew funding for next
year, on the other hand, is in trouble. The House committee that
handles NASA appropriations (the Commerce, Justice, Science or CJS
Appropriations Subcommittee) increased Space Launch System funding by
a half-billion over NASA’s request. They took a quarter billion of
that from Commercial Crew.
The House CJS Subcommittee’s
version of next year’s CJS Appropriations bill cuts NASA’s 2016
Commercial Crew request from $1.244 billion to a billion even. NASA
is on record that such a reduction will both push back Commercial
Crew initial flights from late 2017, and also require NASA to
renegotiate their current contracts with SpaceX and Boeing. Our
analysis supports this position.
It’s not at all clear what an
extra half-billion for SLS will accomplish – NASA is on record
that increasing funding at this point won’t help get it to first
flight any sooner. Taking a quarter-billion from Commercial crew, on
the other hand, will almost certainly cost NASA a half-billion in
2018 for another year’s worth of Soyuz rides to Station.
The subcommittee version of this
bill is scheduled to go to the full House for consideration this
week, possibly as early as Tuesday. If you agree with us that
cutting Commercial Crew funding is a bad idea, you can do something
about it: Let your Representative in Congress know.
There’s no guarantee we’ll see
any result this week, mind. In fact the odds are against it. But
this is not the last step in the process, and the more support we can
build now, the better our chances of getting a good result at some
point before things are finalized.
Action
Phone or email your
Representative’s DC office as soon as possible – Monday night, or as
early as possible Tuesday – and ask them to support full funding for
NASA’s Commercial Crew program.
Getting
Contact Info
Congress has made it more of a
PITA to contact them than it used to be. DC office phone numbers are
still relatively easy to get, but public email addresses now tend to
be unavailable. You have to email them via forms on their individual
websites, and you may need to dodge “sign up for our mailing
list” offers then enter an address and zip code in their
district to get to the form.
(This is probably due to their
inboxes being flooded by mass automated email campaigns. The good
news is, if you do manually navigate the gauntlet, your message is
now far more likely to be seen and noted.)
Look up who your
Representative is by entering your home zip code at
http://act.commoncause.org/site/PageServer?pagename=sunlight_advocacy_list_page.
(You may need your zip+4, or your home address, if your zip code
covers more than one district.)
This should give you their name,
DC office phone number, and links to their website and directly to
their Contact Page.
The
Message
Give their office a call
(preferred) or write them a message. Calling or writing, don’t try
to go into depth or detail. Keep it simple and top-level. Most
incoming email won’t get read beyond the first few lines anyway. Get
the key points your first two sentences.
The heart of the message: “I’m
[your name] from [your town in that Representative’s district.] I’m
calling to ask Representative [their last name] to support full
funding for NASA’s Commercial Crew program.” Add a sentence in
your own words about the bad effects of the cuts: They’ll cause
program delay and disruption, they’ll prolong dependence on Russian
launches, they’ll force NASA to spend more on additional Russian
launches than the cuts save – pick an aspect of the problem and
describe it briefly.
If you’re emailing, you’re
pretty much done. You can provide more supporting material if you
like, but it’s not essential and there’s a good chance it won’t be
more than glanced at.
If you call and get a live
answer, ask for whoever handles NASA appropriations. If you then get
that staffer live, tell them who you are and where you’re from, give
them your message briefly and politely, answer any questions they
have as best you can, thank them for their time, and ring off. If
you get shunted to voicemail (as seems most likely, especially
tonight) state the message, briefly and politely, then ring off.
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Space
Access Society’s sole purpose is to promote radical reductions in the
cost of space transportation. You may redistribute this Update in any
medium you choose, as long as you do it unedited in its entirety. You
may reproduce selected portions of this Update if you credit this
Space Access Update as the source and include a pointer to our
website.
__________________________________________
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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