It’s been a year now since Jesse Londin’s most recent post at Space Law Probe. Anyone know what happened?
Category Archives: Space
Good Luck With That
Jim Pinkerton thinks that space development should be at the center of Obama’s stimulus plan.
The problem is that, as “anonymous.space” points out, it isn’t particularly stimulating in the short run:
Unfortunately, departments and agencies with large portions of their budgets dedicated to multi-year development projects — like NASA and DoD — are extremely poor prospects for near-term economic stimulus funding. Congress appropriates the vast majority of NASA’s $17 billion budget as two-year funding, meaning that NASA has two years to get the funding on contract or otherwise awarded. NASA has an even longer period of time to spend the funding — i.e., obtain a receipt from the contractor and pay them. If the White House and Congress want to see federal funding pumped into the economy in early to mid-2009, NASA would be a very poor choice of vehicle for that funding (as much as I wish it were otherwise). Funding appropriated for NASA in 2009 would not really be flowing until 2010-12.
Space projects are about the farthest thing from shovel ready. And there’s a lot of up-front effort that has to go in to how to properly spend the money.
I met Pinkerton at a free-market space symposium sponsored by Cato about a decade ago. He was (and remains) very enthusiastic about space, but very skeptical about private space.
[Update a couple minutes later]
Over in the same comment thread as the one from “anonymous.space,” Charles in Houston has a great stimulus idea:
OK, I can’t help myself!!! I have to at least fire off a controversial and pointlessly realistic posting on the NASA As Stimulus idea!!!
Why not create a few more NASA centers? We have created lots of jobs by opening the Shared Services Center and the Independent Verification center and some other center that I forgot about and maintaining a whole host of overlapping Centers for years. Why not open a few more in Detroit and hire a bunch of auto workers to do something or the other?? You would build parking lots and visitor’s centers and attract tourists – all NASA facilities attract tourists like picnics attract ants.
He might be able to get John Conyers’ support for that one.
[Update a few minutes later]
Here’s the original version of the Pinkerton piece at Fox News, which is much easier on the eyes to read. The Lifeboat Foundation really needs a site redesign.
How To Become Spacefaring
Jon Goff and Ferris Valyn have some useful policy suggestions to implement their goal.
NASA Renegades
Popular Mechanics has an extensive story on the people pushing Direct. I haven’t read it yet, but may have some comments after I do.
Enough With The “Military Rockets” Already
Andy Pasztor makes the same mistake as Bloomberg and many others have in this WSJ piece about the potential new administrator:
One of the first big questions confronting NASA is whether the new team will embrace the Bush administration’s concept of building a new fleet of space shuttle-derived rockets to reach the orbiting International Space Station and return to the moon. In the past few weeks, there have been increasing calls by outsiders to scrap some of those plans in favor of using existing military rockets.
The Atlas and Delta are not “military rockets.”
They are commercial launch vehicles, developed partly with a subsidy from the Air Force. Anyone can fly on them who has the money, and they are built and operated by commercial contractors. They fly out of a military range, but almost all commercial vehicles do. There is nothing “military” about them. Why can’t people get this straight?
It’s The Transportation Costs, Stupid
Clark Lindsey has some follow-up thoughts on my PJM piece today on the fifth anniversary of the VSE.
A Nice Space History Find
After I mentioned the story about Bob Frosch wanting to run NOAA instead of NASA (something that I’d heard at the time, but had never really verified, even after meeting and spending quite a bit of time with Frosch in the early nineties), I decided to dig into it to see if it was true or apocryphal. Which resulted in finding this transcript of a very long but interesting interview with him, that contains a lot of interesting Carter-era NASA history.
It confirms that NOAA was his first pick, and he expected to get it, but was edged out by someone more politically connected (I didn’t bother to find out who it was — the NOAA history site didn’t make it very easy to figure it out). The first question on the table for the incoming Carter administration was whether or not to cancel Shuttle, which they didn’t seem to understand, and Frosch’s first task was to figure it out, because they were looking for places to cut for the president’s own programs. In the end (obviously) it wasn’t cancelled, but the planned fleet was cut from seven to five (and really four, because Enterprise never flew). Had they built the full seven, it would have cost a couple billion more at the time, and we’d have five (or possibly four, because we might not have replaced Challenger) now instead of three, and eking another few years out of it might look a lot more attractive.
But this part struck me as kind of funny, given the rumors that have been flying about Obama’s plans:
Frosch:…there was another question that came, not so much from the President, but began to come from OMB and Frank Press, which is important to reorganization. It is: why does NASA have so many centers? Why don’t you close a few centers? You know, it’s a perpetual question. It tended always to focus on Huntsville, largely because they were the engine place, and the mentality of a lot of OMB and political types is a very short-term mentality; and so, they were saying, “Gee, we’re almost through with the development of the Shuttle engines. Obviously, you don’t need Huntsville. After you finish the engines, you dispose of Huntsville.” You can decrease the number of people. And remember, the President came in saying there were too many bureaucrats; you’ve got to decrease the number of bureaucrats. There was a lot of pressure — “What are you going to close?” In fact, there was a rumor around NASA that the reason I had been selected was because, as I told you, in the Navy job I actually closed something. Okay, so that was mixed up in this whole organizational guestion.
DeVorkin:
That rumor wasn’t well founded, was it?
Frosch:
No, no: as far as I know, it had nothing to do with it. Nobody was thinking about that at all. Oh, there were funny rumors, that since Lovelace and Frosch had both had experience in the Pentagon, the whole place was going to be swallowed up by the Pentagon. In fact, there were people running around at one stage, saying we were brought in to militarize NASA. It was very peculiar, but the only thing you do about these things is you ignore them (laughs), very straightforward. So, we launched, among other things, into “what are we going to do about reorganization?”
The more things change…
Pots And Kettles
…in which Keith Cowing accuses me of being “snarky” (in comments). Guess his irony meter is on the fritz. Oh, well, can’t complain. I’ve been getting steady hittage off it for the last hour or so.
Anyway, with regard to the pick for White House liaison to NASA, I’d just like to see something more to his qualifications than that he raised money for Obama (and of course, his sexual orientation is entirely irrelevant, at least to me).
Please, No
A new candidate for NASA administrator, according to NASAWatch.
There is nothing in his resume that makes me think that he understands anything at all about space policy issues, and the fact that he’s worked with Hans Mark gives me the heebies, if not full jeebies.
As for this quote:
The general also has some strong views of his own: ‘I believe if you could get rid of all the nuclear weapons this would be a wonderful world,’ he says.”
I wouldn’t disagree with the sentiment, as far as it goes, but what does it imply in terms of his beliefs and potential acts? Does he think this is an attainable goal, or is it some out-of-context quote about what he’d do if he had a magic wand? If the former, what policies would he promote to achieve it (not that NASA administrator has much to do with that)?
There is nothing here that gives me a good feeling about this potential pick. Not that the Obama administration cares what I think, of course.
[Update a few minutes later]
I know, you’re asking, “what’s the problem with Hans Mark?”
The trivial reason is that he was the one who recommended Mike Griffin to the Bush administration. A more substantive one is that he has made many statements, or at least implications, over the years that private citizens have no business being in space, and that it’s a realm only for government astronauts. Which would be in keeping with his German upbringing and long NASA pedigree. He is a government space man, first, last, always.
[One more before-bed thought]
The general is reportedly very close to the president elect. That can either be very good, or very bad, depending on just what it is he/they want to do. The last time we had a NASA administrator close to the president, it worked out pretty well (Jim Webb, Apollo). Whatever he wants to do, he can count on White House support from the top, if he gets the job. The question remains: what will the Obama space policy be?
[Wednesday morning update]
Mark Whittington once again displays his complete inability to sanely read the emotions of other people. It’s nutty to think that I’m in a “blind panic.” It’s just as dumb when he claims that I’m “full of rage,” or any of the other extreme emotions that he often misattributes to me. But that’s Mark — perhaps he’s just projecting or something.
And Jeff Foust has more on the potential pick.
[Bumped]
[Early afternoon update]
FWIW, there’s an interesting comment over at NASAWatch, from someone who calls himself “Space Exec”:
It’s well known that Gration was angling for a top job in the Department of Defense in the Obama Administration. During the campaign he had an opportunity to be involved in creating Obama’s space policy, but barely engaged due to lack of interest and quickly pivoted over to other things – leaving the job to 20-something policy staffer Carlos Monje instead.
If he’s appointed, the signal sent to the entire space community will be that NASA is nothing more than a consolation prize for the Presidents’ buddy who couldn’t get the job he wanted. Or, at best, maybe NASA is some kind of training wheels for Gration to prove his management abilities.
How soon until he has his eyes on some of the slots at DoD that will be opening up when Gates leaves (Secretary of the Air Force, for example)? Is he really going to be effective if his term is only one or two years? Is he going to have the respect of the NASA team given his apparent lack of interest in space science or exploration?
If this is the case, it reminds me of the Frosch appointment during the Carter administration. Bob Frosch reportedly wanted to run NOAA (something for which his previous career better suited him) but that post went to someone in more political favor, and he ended up with NASA as a consolation prize. We don’t need someone at the agency right now with little previous interest in space, and whose eyes are on a bigger (in his mind) prize. But we’ll see.
[Bumped again]
[Mid-afternoon update]
I’ve verified the Frosch story. It’s actually very interesting.
A Spacefaring Society
Jon Goff and Ferris Valyn describe its attributes, and benefits, for the Obama administration. Hope they’re listening.