…and the ongoing policy insanity of completely ignoring the issue. A good essay by Stewart Money.
[Cross-posted at Competitive Space]
Category Archives: Space
The Misnamed Blog Carnival
The latest Carnival of Space is up.
For anyone interested, I’ve never participated in this, primarily because in my experience, they’re not really carnivals of space — they’re carnivals of space science, a subject in which I have little more interest in than other kinds, except to the degree that it provides knowledge of how to develop and settle it. This is a specific instance of a more general irk — when many people learn that I’m an expert on space policy and technology, or I do a radio interview, they assume that I’m both an expert on and interested in space science and astronomy and (even more annoyingly) UFOs. It’s the same kind of general public level of (lack of) knowledge that leads to phrases such as “rocket scientist.”
Jupiter Bound
Leonard David has a nice story on a vehicle that’s being built almost in his back yard. Let’s hope Webb doesn’t eat up all the funding for it.
Who Would Have Thought?
There are documentation problems at NASA. It’s endemic to the industry. It’s one of the causes of high costs. And failures. Be sure to read the comments.
One of the advantages that SpaceX has is that with a tightly integrated co-located team, the knowledge is much more accessible, though individuals become more critical
On The Stupidity Of ITAR
…and immigration policy. This is probably an issue that the CSTF should take up.
The Current State Of Space Policy Play
Henry Vanderbilt has a summary of what’s going on with the NASA budget, though it’s a fast-moving topic. For instance, this sort of nonsense occurred after he got the mailing out:
On Wednesday the full House, debating the full-year continuing resolution HR 1, voted 228-203 to approve an amendment that would transfer $298 million from NASA to the Department of Justice’s Community Oriented Policing Services, a program that provides funding for local police forces. The amendment, introduced by Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) was actually debated Tuesday evening by the House and failed by a voice vote, but prevailed in the recorded vote hold over to the next day, with 70 Republicans joining 158 Democrats to approve the amendment.
In the current environment, the agency is a wounded antelope on the savannah, and the jackals and hyenas are going to be swarming on it in the coming days and weeks, with people like Anthony Weiner foremost among them.
This is awful on two levels — first, that there is no sensible discussion about what our space policy should be, and second, that there was no discussion of whether or not community policing is even a legitimate federal responsibility. I’d like to see the names of the Republicans who voted for this atrocity, and see how many have claimed fealty to the Tea Party, because if so, they’re flaming hypocrites, and should be mocked and shamed.
[Cross posted at Competitive Space]
[Update a few minutes later]
John Healey at the LA Times agrees:
…it’s hard to extrapolate from the actions Wednesday to a coherent vision of smaller government. The vote that really confounds me is the one in favor of a proposal by Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) to restore $298 million for COPS, a neighborhood policing program. The money is to come out of NASA’s budget, shrinking that agency’s funds by an additional 1.6%.
I wouldn’t argue that hiring cops is more or less important than conducting space missions. But hiring cops is clearly a local responsibility, and NASA is clearly a federal responsibility. If you’re going to shrink the federal government, the starting point should be eliminating its involvement in what are purely local affairs. You can’t get more local than neighborhood policing.
But that’s not the logic typically employed by members of Congress. In their calculus, anything that promotes law enforcement is A Good Thing. And until NASA has a mission as sexy as winning the race to the moon, it will never be able to compete with programs like COPS.
Here’s an idea for an even sexier mission: opening up the solar system and its resources to humanity. Which it could afford to do if we would end the insistence on making it a jobs program for engineers of unneeded new rockets.
Competitive Space Task Force
I have a new web site up. It’s not pretty but it does the job. I may start blogging over there on space policy issues. If so, I’ll cross post here, though.
[Wednesday morning update]
I’ve got the site blocked temporarily while I fix some things that I broke last night. I hope it will be up a little later this morning.
[Update a while later]
OK, I’ve fixed things, I think, and reopened the site.
The NASA Budget Proposal
I haven’t had much to say about it, because I don’t think it’s going to survive contact with the enemy on the Hill. The real battle will be in shaping what comes out of the next CR, and at least getting some anomalies in it so that NASA can stop wasting money on Constellation.
NASA Budget Issues
Andy Pasztor (I know, I know) has a piece in today’s Journal about the NASA budget proposal that was released a few minutes ago. As Jeff Foust notes, when he writes:
Commercial-space projects are years behind schedule, and critics still worry about placing undue reliance on them.
…compared to what? At least they weren’t slopping more than a year per year, as Constellation was, and they were spending orders of magnitude less money. Jeff also says:
…the article doesn’t say what that cutback in commercial crew funding is in respect to. If it’s compared to the 2012 projection in the administration’s FY11 budget request, which called for $1.4 billion, that is almost certainly correct, especially since the NASA authorization act passed last year included only $500 million for commercial crew development in 2012. It would be more newsworthy if the administration’s commercial crew request was less than that $500-million figure, especially since the article also indicates that the budget proposal “would be broadly consistent” with the act.
Actually, my reading of it is that it’s a cut from the $500M figure:
The White House last year initially proposed NASA spending of more than $1.2 billion annually on commercial spacecraft. Congress later reduced that figure to less than $500 million a year, and the latest budget envision further trims.
That sounds like a cut from the half billion to me. But then again, it is Andy Pasztor. Anyway, we’ll know today.
[Update a few minutes later]
Clark Lindsey has more thoughts, and there’s a lot of discussion in comments.
[Update a few mintues later]
Jeff Foust has more over at The Space Review today.
In Case You Missed It
Iowahawk has the scoop on the vice president’s plan to jump the Grand Canyon with Amtrak. Speaking of which, Ray LaHood showed up at the Commercial Space Transportation Conference on Thursday. The topic of his speech? High-speed rail.
The country’s in the very best of hands.