Bipartisan legislation sets NASA's focus on the Moon

George M. Cecala
Office of Representative Bill Posey
Cannon House Office Bldg.
U.S. House of Representatives

U.S. Representatives Bill Posey (R-FL), Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX), Chairman Frank Wolf (R-VA), Robert Aderholt (R-AL), John Culberson (R-TX), Steve Stockman (R-TX), Pete Olson (R-TX), Rob Bishop (R-UT) and Ted Poe (R-TX) have once again reintroduced bipartisan legislation directing NASA to develop a plan for returning to the Moon and establishing a human presence there. The RE-asserting American Leadership in Space Act, or REAL Space Act (HR 1641), sets a clear course for NASA toward human space flight while keeping within current budgetary constraints.

“The Moon is our nearest celestial body, taking only a matter of days to reach,” said Rep. Bill Posey, who as a young man worked on the Apollo Program at the Kennedy Space Center. “In order to explore deeper into space—to Mars and beyond—a moon presence offers us the ability to develop and test technologies to cope with the realities of operating on an extraterrestrial surface.”

“Space is the world’s ultimate high ground, returning to the Moon and reinvigorating our human space flight program is a matter of national security. Returning to the moon would allow NASA to continue to develop technologies that have not only enhanced our exploration programs but have been applied across all disciplines of science,” said Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee.

“Last year, the National Research Council committee charged with reviewing NASA’s strategic direction found that there was no support within NASA or from our international partners for the administration’s proposed asteroid mission. However, there is broad support for NASA to lead a return to the Moon. So the U.S. can either lead that effort, or another country will step up and lead that effort in our absence -- which would be very unfortunate,” said Rep. Frank Wolf, Chairman of the House Commerce-Justice-Science Appropriations Subcommittee.

“Moon missions, both human and robotic, offer the United States true international cooperation, while ensuring that we lead from the front. Other nations, private industry, and government experts all regard the Moon as the right place for NASA to direct its resources. The time to reassert the United States as the leader in space is now and the REAL Space Act is the next step,” said Rep. Robert Aderholt.

“Congress should be committed to NASA and to expanding the frontiers of scientific progress. This bill is the correct path forward to get Americans to the Moon and expand human knowledge,” said Rep. Steve Stockman who represents the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. “With a real destination and a realistic timetable, we can achieve our greatest dreams. Without it, we risk seeing our future plans perpetually delayed or cancelled, and only watching as other nations seize the lead in space exploration—and reap the benefits in jobs, inventions, investments, national pride and international respect. I urge my fellow Members of Congress to cosponsor this vital legislation, and I urge space advocates and organizations to join together in support of this bill and in support of the Moon being the stepping stone to Mars.”

Rep. Pete Olson said, “The REAL Space Act clarifies NASA's mission, something it has been lacking in recent years. Human space exploration is critically important to America's global future. President Kennedy understood that the real benefit of exploration to our nation was not landing men on the moon, but what it would take to get there — the technology, the initiative and the will to do it. He knew, as we know, that space exploration is both a scientific and national security priority. This legislation sets clear and achievable goals that will ensure America maintains global preeminence in both space exploration and scientific discovery.”

Rep. Rob Bishop said, “This legislation is not just about landing another human on the Moon. It is about restoring our nation’s now defunct human space flight program and setting clear and achievable goals that will lead to advancements in science and technology. If we are to be leaders in the exploration of the cosmos, to the Moon and beyond, we must have our own innovative resources to get there. It’s going to be next to impossible to maintain our preeminence in the exploration of space if we are having to hitch rides from other countries. Going back to the moon has always been an essential stepping stone for technology development for manned exploration to other parts of the galaxy. This legislation restores and clarifies NASA’s role in human space flight and sets the U.S. back on course to lead exploration of the cosmos.”

Specifically, the REAL Space Act directs NASA to plan to return to the Moon by 2022 and develop a sustained human presence there as a stepping stone for the future exploration of Mars and other destinations within our solar system. The legislation also emphasizes the importance of maintaining the United States’ preeminence in space, and underscores the necessity of preserving America’s independent access to space.

Returning to the Moon presents many scientific, technological and economic benefits for the United States and the world at large. The economic contribution of NASA’s space program is in the tens of billions of dollars. The technologies developed through and transferred from our nation's program have created advancements across all disciplines of science and advances in healthcare in particular have saved and enriched countless lives.

Aside from providing a training ground for space faring enabling technologies, humans still have much to learn from exploring the Moon. To date, twelve Americans have explored a section of our Moon smaller than the National Mall. There are many minerals, isotopes, and other natural resources that can be gleaned from the Moon’s surface such as ice deposits, which can be used to sustain an outpost or produce rocket propellant for deep space exploration.

Setting the Moon as the goal will reengage the public’s interest in the space program and inspire a new generation of American students to study science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) where they currently lag behind students in competitor nations.

Related:
General Bolden on the Moon (April 10, 2013)

WSJ Op-Ed calls for scrapping SLS

Space Politics

In an essay in Monday’s issue of the Wall Street Journal, Robert Walker and Charles Miller make a pitch to President Obama: complete the job he started in his first term in handing over space transportation entirely in the private sector. “Just as the government does not design or build automobiles, ships, trains or airplanes, NASA should not be designing, building or launching rockets to go to low Earth orbit,” they argue. 

Specifically, they want the President to kill the Space Launch System, the heavy-lift rocket that emerged from the 2010 compromise about the administration’s policy, saying that those launches should be turned over to the private sector. 

Read the summary, HERE.

TASC: NASA 'essential for national security'

Support for NASA and Space Exploration in the U.S., as essential public policy and vital to national security, is not expressed as often or as acutely in the 21st century as it was when the civilian space agency was founded in 1958. Instead, considering the agency in the context of the Cold War, as part of an arms race with the former Soviet Union, is often dismissed as ancient history. The agency's role in serving an essential national security interest is usually, at best, remembered only as secondary to its contributions to the quality of life of Americans.

But in the background, in congressional cloakrooms and committee hearings, NASA's role in service to American national security is paramount, even over and above pork barrel politics, and more now as budgetary constraint becomes less abstract with each increase in the national debt ceiling.

The public voice in support of NASA being vital to American national security is rarely heard above the noise of debates over NASA's future exploration roadmap and over the self-continuity concerns of a vested bureaucracy.

Former U.S. Senator and Apollo veteran Harrison Schmitt and  others, have, on occasion, reminded us that NASA's most basic constitutional reason-for-being is still the role it plays as a vital arm of America's national security.

Now a study has been released by The Analytic Sciences Corporation (TASC) expressing this national security raison d'etre in the context of the 21st century. As a think-tank arm associated with the aerospace industry the think tank behind the study may not be a totally dispassionate one, but it at least puts forward the effort as justifying NASA's expense not as either a museum curator or an enabler purely of the dreams of academia or futurists, but as a federal arm serving an over-arching "compelling state interest."

"For the United States," the study's introduction reads, "maintaining a leadership role in space is an essential component of national security, providing the U.S. and our allies “unprecedented advantages in national decision-making, military operations, and homeland security.”* NASA is essential for national security, not only because of its role in developing new space capabilities and technologies, but also because it is explicitly excluded from military activity by the National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958. Simply stated, NASA is uniquely positioned to facilitate international collaboration on peaceful uses of space in ways the military cannot.

"This paper explores the important roles of international cooperation, cost-reducing technology development and game-changing innovation, as well as NASA’s role supporting a strong commercial space industry. NASA can improve its national space security posture even during times of budget austerity."

The paper can be read online, HERE, or downloaded as an Adobe Reader (pdf) file, HERE.

* National Security Space Strategy, January 2011, DOD and ODNI

"Everyone's gone to the Moon..."

A lunar base creates new capabilities [Pat Rawlings/SAIC].

Paul D. Spudis
The Once and Future Moon
Smithsonian Air & Space

Where does the Moon fit into plans for future human space exploration?  From reading the space media, you might get the idea that the very notion is dead and buried, killed by President Obama’s casual dismissal of the idea in a speech over two years ago at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, followed this year by Mitt Romney’s dismissive remarks on the Moon during the Republican primaries.

Nevertheless, many in the international community (and in the United States) are keeping the lunar flame alive for a variety of reasons, not the least among them being that it is understood that politicians aren’t rocket scientists – nor should we expect them to be.

The Global Exploration Conference (GLEX) held last month in Washington DC was remarkable for the fact that most of our international space partners are proceeding with plans for lunar return as though its abandonment had never occurred.  The Russians were particularly eager to express their desire to establish capability on the Moon at the meeting, while in recent months strong interest in permanent lunar return has been expressed by the Europeans, Canada, India, Japan and of course, China.  Moreover, unlike many within our own national space agency, the world sees the Moon not simply as a box to be checked-off on the way to Mars but as the enabling asset for space exploration.  As Vladimir Popovkin, head of the Russian Federal Space Agency Roscosmos put it, “It’s a new Moon,” pointing out that the recently confirmed discovery of water at the poles of the Moon enables sustainable, permanent habitation of that body and the creation of new capabilities for voyages to the planets.

Our international space partners believe that spaceflight beyond LEO should entail incremental steps that will gradually extend reach and capability.  Once such a paradigm is adopted, expensive designer missions to plant a flag or do a “touch-and-go” at an asteroid are seen as having limited value and making no economic sense.  On the other hand, the gradual expansion beyond LEO using nearby assets builds a permanent, lasting space faring capability.  The Moon fits into such a scheme by virtue of both its proximity and usefulness.  In the absence of some technical miracle, such as the discovery of new physics that fundamentally change the nature of spaceflight, we are wedded to rocket technology for the foreseeable future.  The rocket equation dictates that it will remain difficult and expensive to reach space and operate there.  Given such problems, some now recognize and conclude that the Moon offers provisioning capability and for this reason and many others, is a desirable destination and near-term goal.

Our pioneering (and current) model of space access requires launching everything from Earth’s surface, taking months to complete a mission, yet gathering minimal information (due to limited time in the vicinity of its designated target) and leaving no lasting or reusable infrastructure in space.  This template guarantees that human spaceflights will be infrequent, expensive and subject to abrupt cancellation due to political whims.   If one views the civil space program primarily as an annoying expenditure whose ambitions must be constrained by making a previously small portion of the program (such as “commercial” launch services) the raison d’être of the entire effort and deferring any real goals to an indefinite and nebulous future, our current path might seem completely reasonable.  However, it appears that the international community believes that space is a real theater of human endeavor and their goal is to make it part of their domain and utility – until recently, also a goal of the American space program.  Perhaps it still is.

Despite common perception, the Moon has not been officially abandoned as a goal for the United States space program.  The current NASA Authorization Act of 2010 lays out the goals and approaches to be followed by the agency in executing its mission.  The Findings by the Congress (section 301) outlines the rationale and goals of the space agency’s human exploration efforts.  As I have written previously, in the seven points dealing with future agency activities, cislunar space is mentioned in four and the lunar surface is called out twice as destinations.  Development of the ability to use the in situ resources of space to create infrastructure is specifically cited in Sec. 301a (4).  The entire section 301 is worth a careful reading.  It calls for a program that uses a gradual, incremental approach to the extension of human reach in space beyond LEO, specifically specifying both commercial and international participation.  There is nothing in the current law that is at odds with the plans and desires of the international community as expressed at the recent GLEX meeting.  The only place one reads about the Moon being abandoned as a national goal for America is in the press and such cases, it is always in the context of a single off-hand remark in one Presidential speech.

From the perspective of two years later, that off-hand remark sounds increasingly ill thought-out and hollow.  Given its context in the speech, the statement seems to derive from the idea that lunar return must perforce be a repeat of the Apollo experience of 30 years ago.  NASA itself has fed this idea, depicting the return to the Moon as the equivalent of a Gemini program within the Apollo-to-Mars fixation of many in the agency.  In their 2006 preliminary plans for lunar return, NASA started out properly by describing the development of an outpost at one of the poles of the Moon and emphasizing human presence and development, but over the next few years architectural studies increasingly drifted away from an outpost and towards the sortie concept, in which we would stage (entirely from Earth) and execute one-off missions to sites of scientific interest all over the Moon for visits of limited duration.  Such an exploration approach dissipates assets and thus increases costs and reduces surface capability and infrastructure.  It was this exploratory approach to lunar return that the Augustine committee evaluated and declared to be “unaffordable,” not the concept of building a centralized outpost that could support ISRU and space development (an approach that the committee did not even consider).

President Obama signed the NASA Authorization bill of 2010 – a bill crafted when his party controlled Congress – and the findings presented in that bill are now law.  So even though the agency and most of the media seem to be blissfully unaware of it, NASA has been charged by Congress to develop space systems capable of conducting missions to and throughout cislunar space, including to the lunar surface.  Our international partners agree with this intended direction, convinced that the Moon is the appropriate next destination for humans in space.

NASA’s reluctance to go in this direction, even while other nations are making plans, forfeits the opportunity for our international leadership in space.  Our space program has to demonstrate the feasibility of using lunar resources to secure us a place as participants and entrepreneurs in the vast economic future of space.

Originally published at his Smithsonian Air & Space blog The Once and Future Moon, Dr. Spudis is a senior staff scientist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute. The opinions expressed are those of the author and are better informed than average.

UA Undergrad takes the Moon to Washington

"We have to conquer the moon first," UA
undergraduate researcher Michael Schaffner,
among 74 out of 850 applicants chosen to
present research on Capitol Hill [Associated
Students of the University of Arizona].

La Monica Everett-Haynes
UANews

Michael Schaffner recalls reading about advancements in robotics and NASA's Space Shuttle program while growing up in the 1980s, events that helped develop his affinity for science and engineering.

Now Schaffner, a University of Arizona (UA) undergraduate researcher, is putting that childhood passion to practice, working with other researchers to expand knowledge about water deposits on Earth's Moon.

"The moon is one of those places where it is a fundamental first step. If we want to have a chance for a multi-planetary voyage, we have to conquer the moon first," said Schaffner, a UA senior studying systems engineering.

And because of his involvement with UA research investigating the location and behaviors of hydrogen on the moon, Schaffner has been selected to take his research to the nation's capital during the Council on Undergraduate Research (CUR) Posters On the Hill event.

Schaffner is one of 74 students out of pool of 850 applicants selected to present their research in Washington, D.C. as part of CUR's 16th annual undergraduate poster session to be held April 24. Students in a broad range of disciplines will have the chance to speak with congressional Representatives and Senators, and also members of national organizations and other government agencies. 

Schaffner will exhibit a poster, "Water on the Moon: Remote Sensing from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter."

He conducted the research as an undergraduate intern for the Arizona Space Grant Consortium. Schaffner worked with William Boynton, a UA professor for the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, and other collaborators.  

Read the article, HERE.

America's Deep Space Vision:

Former U.S. Senator Harrison "Jack" Schmitt
(R-NM), veteran geologist and Apollo 17 lunar module
pilot during a television interview at Goddard Space
Flight Center, June 3, 2009

Settlement of the Moon and Mars versus asteroid visits

Harrison Schmitt
The Heartland Institute

America’s eroding geopolitical stature, highlighted by the July 21, 2011, end to flights of the United States Space Shuttle, has reached crisis proportions. Obama Administration officials now spin the nebulous thought of Astronauts flying many months to an undetermined asteroid in 2025 as an actual “National Space Policy.”

On the other hand, Republican candidates for President have not yet recognized the importance of international civil space competition in the federal government’s constitutional function to provide for the nation’s “common defense.” Candidates appear to be uninterested in having the United States lead deep space exploration, including the establishment of American settlements on the Moon; or may actually consider Obama’s unfocused proposals as being credible rather than realizing that those proposals would transfer geopolitical dominance to China and control of American space transport to Russia.

Although the Bush Administration and Congress did not follow through with adequate funding, at least the 2004 Vision for Space Exploration put forth by President Bush and approved by Congress was a legitimate formulation of a National Space Policy. It implicitly recognized that America’s best security interests would not be served by being dependent on Russia for access to space or by ceding to China both deep space exploration and access to space resources. Unfortunately, with the acquiescence of Congress in 2010, President Obama cancelled what had become known as NASA’s Constellation Program – a program designed to maintain and expand America’s hard-won position as the world’s leading space-faring nation. Meanwhile, China is building a major new deep space launch facility in Hainan and developing new rockets and spacecraft to take over the exploration of the Moon from the United States and the free world.

A properly funded Constellation Program, would have returned Americans and their partners to the Moon, begun creation of the infrastructure and operational capabilities to settle there and go to Mars and beyond, and provided a timely replacement for the aging Space Shuttle. Assuming that the Obama Administration actually requests authorization and budget authority to implement a human mission to a near-Earth asteroid (NEO), including the required heavy lift rockets, specialized spacecraft, operational infrastructure, and hiring authority, how would such a mission stack up relative to returning to the Moon?

Mars Mission Preparation

Heavy Lift Launch Vehicles & Operational Experience. Both repeated trips to the Moon and an occasional asteroid mission require an Apollo Saturn V-class, heavy lift rocket to escape the Earth’s gravity-well. Lunar exploration and an eventual commercially supported lunar settlement, however, would give a much greater, long-term return on investment of the same taxpayer dollars. Operational experience and multi-generational training gained at a Moon base or settlement is far more relevant to exploration and bases on the gravitationally similar Martian surface (3/8 gravity versus 1/6 gravity) than a mere “rendezvous and docking” with a near zero gravity asteroid.

Physiological Countermeasures. Understanding of the physiological countermeasures to space radiation exposure necessary for travel to Mars can be gained on the Moon sooner and at much lower risk with the added benefit of the future production of lunar water for radiation shielding. Of particular importance is determining whether the Moon’s one-sixth Earth’s gravity triggers physiological re-adaptation after astronauts experience the adverse effects of prolonged exposure to zero gravity during travel to Mars. This cannot be determined on a near zero-gravity asteroid. (The complexity and cost of physiological countermeasures on a Mars mission is critically dependent on knowing if this re-adaptation occurs in one-sixth gravity or not.)

Operational Approaches. Operational approaches for Mars landing and exploration, such as communications delays and lander concepts, can be evaluated and simulated realistically during lunar operations but not during an asteroid mission. Similarly, layered engineering defenses related to planetary biological protection and dust mitigation on Mars can be fully tested at a lunar base or settlement but not during a short visit to an asteroid. In addition, Mars atmospheric entry and descent vehicles and procedures can be tested in the low-density upper atmosphere of Earth more logically as an adjunct to a lunar exploration and settlement program than as part of a single purpose mission to an asteroid. Entry, descent and landing by large spacecraft through the thin but operationally significant Martian atmosphere are challenges for which there currently are no known engineering solutions.

Jack Schmitt occasionally would amuse or frustrate flight controllers watching on live television in Houston by habitually raising his helmet sun visor in order to analyze the true color of lunar samples. His moonwalks were a geologist's dream, and he remains the only professional scientist to visit the lunar surface. Apollo 17 commander Gene Cernan snapped among the very few pictures showing an astronaut's face on the Moon as Schmitt stowed samples of Tracy's Rock, on the slope of North Massif, during their third and final EVA, December 13, 1972 [NASA/JSC/ALSJ].

Commercialization of He-3 and other Lunar Volatiles. Commercial access to the fusion energy resource of the Moon, Helium-3, also opens the potential of interplanetary fusion rockets that would allow continuous acceleration and deceleration between Earth and Mars, thus lowering travel risk to humans exploring deep space. Further, the Helium-3 production by-products of hydrogen, oxygen, and water can significantly lower the cost and risk of deep space travel and space station re-supply. A one-time visit to an asteroid provides no technically or commercially viable alternatives in this arena.

Reduction of Risk for Mars Missions. Programmatically, the transition from a lunar exploration and commercially supported settlement initiative to one focused on Mars landing and exploration would be more straightforward than a one-shot asteroid visit. Lunar exploration overall imposes much lower risk to explorers and mission success than a brief visit to an asteroid and is far more applicable to the reduction of the risks of Mars transit and exploration.

Science

Solar System History. Far more new science related to the early history of the Earth and other planets can be gained through renewed lunar exploration, sampling and analysis than similar activities related to an asteroid. Most asteroid science has been and can be gained from meteorites and multi-spectral imaging by the Hubble and future Webb telescopes. Robotic missions to asteroids, like the Dawn spacecraft now at Vesta, can answer most remaining questions about asteroids, particularly if sample returns are implemented in the future. Finally, the history and evolution of the Sun can be investigated extensively by studies of the long-term variations in solar wind composition and effects recorded in over-lapping layers in the lunar regolith (impact-generated rock debris). Such studies would not be productive on an accessible asteroid.

 Republican candidates for President have not yet recognized the importance of international civil space competition in the federal government’s constitutional function to provide for the nation’s “common defense.”

Astrophysical, Earth and Solar Observatories. A far-side lunar observatory shielded from both solar and terrestrial radio noise would be a boon to observational astronomy; however, no synoptic observational science of other parts of the universe, particularly in radio frequencies, can be conducted in a practical way from an asteroid. Also, a multi-spectral polar Earth observatory at a lunar pole, with simultaneous solar observation, would establish long-term, continuous, full sphere monitoring of weather and climate as well as providing a coherent means of synthesizing more detailed but much less synoptic data gathered from near-Earth satellites. Asteroids, of course, provide no such climate, weather and atmospheric physics-related opportunities.

Resources and Commercial Opportunities

Commercialization of He-3 and other Lunar Volatiles. Terrestrially valuable energy resources, that is, Helium-3 fusion fuel and solar energy, exist on the Moon a short distance from the Earth, but are not a practical option for shipment or transmission from an occasional passing asteroid. In this regard, much is known about the commercial parameters of potential lunar resources; however, little is known about the concentrations, physical and chemical form, or ease of access of potential resources on NEO asteroids. Also, gravity can assist in resource extraction and processing on the Moon but not on a near zero gravity NEO asteroid. Due to communication delays, possible resource mining and processing on an asteroid must be autonomous for relatively short intervals with only periodic human command input. This is unlike resource mining and processing on the Moon where it can be continuous either by human crews or by tele-robotic operation from Earth.

Economics of Lunar vs. Asteroidal Resources. Unlike the available analyses for the energy resources of the Moon, the required financial envelope for potential commercialization of asteroid resources is completely undefined with major questions as to technical practicality. Once Americans permanently established themselves on the Moon, available lunar resources include readily accessible and relatively low cost consumables necessary for operations in space, including water, hydrogen, oxygen, helium, carbon and nitrogen compounds, and food products. Various solid elements and oxides also could support manufacturing of products for use at a lunar settlement or elsewhere in space.

In dissolving Constellation from national space policy among the only vehicles to actually fall by the wayside was the Altair lander concept [NASA].

Tourism. Lunar tourism will eventually become a viable commercial opportunity once launch and support costs are compatible with the heavy lift launch costs required by commercial energy production (about $3000 per 220 pounds); whereas, asteroid tourism, as well as asteroid mining, will remain the stuff of science fiction for the foreseeable future.

Launch Opportunities and Mission Operations

Frequency of Access. For hypothetically possible missions to near-Earth asteroids (NEOs) that cross the orbit of the Earth, very few asteroid rendezvous opportunities exist over time versus essentially continuous opportunities for the Moon. Time for human asteroid exploration will be short because of increasing energy requirement to return as the asteroid moves away from Earth. On the other hand, stay-times on the Moon have no such constraint.

“Rendezvous and Docking” at an NEO. Because of the near zero gravity of an asteroid, an asteroid mission is a “rendezvous and docking” mission requiring very difficult operational procedures in order for astronauts to explore and sample the materials found there. Asteroids in orbit between Mars and Jupiter, such as Vesta currently being imaged by Dawn, require prohibitively long flight times for human visits until new, much more rapid propulsion technology exists.

Education

Stimulation of Learning and Ambition. An asteroid mission would provide flight opportunities to only a few astronauts and thus limit the interest of children and young people in preparing for careers related to space and technology. In contrast, an indefinite commitment to lunar exploration and commercially supported settlement offers a permanent set of career opportunities as a stimulus to STEM education and economic innovation throughout the country. Importantly, the Moon is a destination children and young people can see with their own eyes in the nighttime sky. That sight would become even more inspiring with the knowledge that men, women and families are living and working on the Moon as those youngsters look up to the sky…and to their futures… while other children look up to see Earth.

Leadership and National Security

Lunar exploration and settlement as a precursor to missions to Mars and beyond would be far more productive and practical than a onetime mission to an asteroid. A return to the Moon also constitutes much less risky national policy in the still risky business of deep space exploration.

All public indications are that our Cold War II adversary, China, includes space in its vision of geopolitical dominance as well as in its plans for technological, educational and energy resource advancement. China’s announced long-term space policy is focused on the Moon. The United States stands as the only viable bulwark of freedom on the planet. If the Federal Government ignores this challenge, as well as the commercial energy resources of the Moon and its role as an essential steppingstone to Mars, its constitutional duty to provide for the security of America will be fatally compromised. An asteroid mission constitutes an unacceptable diversion in our broader responsibility to future generations.

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The Apollo Model & FY 2011

Four days shy of six months out of office, former President Lyndon Johnson (right) watches the launch of Apollo 11, together with Lady Bird Johnson and Apollo 10 Cmdr. Thomas P. Stafford, Jr., July 16, 1969. Whatever else might be said of LBJ, no single politician can be more credited for the creation of NASA as a civilian space agency or for shepherding the national resources necessary to achieving the Apollo lunar landings, as Senate majority leader, Vice President and President. Like Johnson, NASA is a "creature of Congress" [NASA].

“Today outer space is free. It is unscarred by conflict. It must remain this way… Men who have worked together to reach the stars are not likely to descend together into the depths of war and desolation.” Senate majority leader Lyndon B. Johnson (D-TX), 1958

Taylor Dinerman
Hudson New York

Perhaps the primary goal of the Obama administration's 2011 budget NASA proposal was to kill, once and for all, the Apollo Moon mission model that has determined the way the US space agency operates for nearly the last 60 years.

The so-called compromise proposal that unanimously passed the Senate Commerce Committee on July 15th gutted most of the Obama proposal. The House version does even more damage to the administration's proposal. While the Bush era Constellation program would seem to be dead, at least in name, its substance has survived for at least another year. There is a lesson here, not only for those who would reform NASA, but also for those who want to reform any reasonably sized government agency.

The first lesson is: Do not ignore Congress. NASA as it exists is the product of decades of Congressional action. Reformers may believe that they know what the agency needs, but without Congressional support, they have no hope of making a difference...

Read the article, HERE.

Congressional Support Grows For Heavy-Lift

Frank Morring, Jr. & Irene Klotz
Washington, Cape Canaveral
Aviation Week

A small groundswell is rising in Congress for a faster start on the heavy-lift launch vehicle President Obama says he wants, but it may be swamped by the backwash from growing irritation over NASA’s sluggish production of justification for its “game-changing” new approach.

A bipartisan gang of 62 House members wants Obama to initiate “the immediate development and production of a heavy-lift launch vehicle that, in conjunction with the Orion crew exploration vehicle, may be used for either lunar or deep-space exploration.”

Their June 22 letter to Obama, circulated by Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.), follows word from Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) that a new NASA authorization with at least some bipartisan support would include both a heavy-lifter and a crew exploration vehicle leveraging “the workforce, contracts, assets and capabilities of the shuttle, Ares I and Orion efforts.”

But, while some lawmakers appear ready to compromise with the White House on ending the Constellation program that has been funding Orion, the Ares I crew exploration vehicle and other follow-ons to the retiring space shuttle fleet, other space leaders are moving in completely different directions.

Read more HERE.

NASA budget gets a boost

Bart Jansen
Florida Today

WASHINGTON — A key House panel agreed Tuesday to accept President Barack Obama's proposed funding increase for NASA but without taking a position on changing the agency's course.

The House appropriations subcommittee governing NASA unanimously approved $19 billion for the fiscal year starting Oct. 1, a nearly $276 million increase from the current year.

But approval came with a requirement that the House and Senate science committees, which have strongly opposed Obama's budget, agree on a NASA policy before the money is spent.

"Unfortunately, a determination about the direction of the space program has been effectively put on hold for well over a year," said Rep. Alan Mollohan, D-W.Va., who heads the subcommittee.

Congress has been unable to approve a budget blueprint for spending this year, so committees are starting to decide on spending without knowing precise amounts. Lawmakers could take the rest of the year negotiating a dozen spending bills that govern NASA and the rest of the federal government.

The panel's top Republican, Rep. Frank Wolf of Virginia, said it might be unrealistic to think Congress will approve a NASA policy this election year.

"We need a strong American space program," Wolf said. "I hope we can find a compromise because we need it."

More HERE.

'Child of Apollo' Jeff Hanley ousted as head of Constellation program

Mark K. Matthews &
Robert Block
Orlando Sentinel

NASA ousted the outspoken head of its Constellation moon program on Wednesday, prompting an immediate protest from congressional lawmakers who again accused the White House of taking steps to kill the project.

Word that Constellation Manager Jeff Hanley was moved to a deputy position at Johnson Space Center reached Congress just as the House science committee was meeting with NASA chief Charlie Bolden to debate White House plans to replace the space shuttle with commercial rockets.

"It is a great concern to us that you take the manager out of his position and reassign him to another position," said U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, an Arizona Democrat who has fiercely opposed White House efforts to shut down Constellation and its aims to return astronauts to the moon.

Read the article, HERE.

Feingold seeks early end to Constellation

Until national space policy is amended by Congress, perhaps with a budget for the next fiscal year which begins October 1, previously approved and funded work on the Constellation program will continue. While the administration has announced plans that include ending Constellation and terminating work underway for manned lunar exploration, Congress will ultimately determine the future of national space policy.

Leaders for Democrat Party majorities in both the U.S. House and Senate have no plans to begin work on next year's budget until after congressional elections on November 2.

Because the current fiscal year ends a month earlier, temporary spending plans will most likely be approved to bridge gaps in comprehensive budget authority. A "lame duck" Congress, after November's election, with it's present membership intact and still in session between the election and the inauguration of the next Congress in January, might be unable to agree on spending authority and priorities for all or part of the federal government.

Even if, after the election, the present Congress is able to agree on a FY 2011 spending plan, adjustments and even complete reversals of its best laid plans might be implemented almost immediately after the next Congress is seated in January. These scenarios are especially more likely if the make-up of the next Congress is dramatically different, having been changed by the voters in November.

Obviously, putting a permanent axe to Constellation and present work underway to return humans to the Moon (including the "Armstrong National Laboratory" as the American part of a permanent international station at the lunar south pole) would be harder for a new Congress to reverse if this work that is still in progress is terminated sooner rather than later.

All of which might explain why Senator Russ Feingold (D-Wisconsin) is seeking to short circuit any return to the Moon by quietly amending unrelated legislation. Proponents of Constellation are also running committee amendments to unrelated legislation in hopes of reiterating the present national space policy.

For more, Mark Whittington of Associated Content has more details, along with further speculation about Senator Feingold's motivations for amending Senate Bill 3356, HERE.

Will NASA’s embrace kill NewSpace?

A notional scene showing the besieged Constellation lunar lander Altair, composed of Apollo, LRO, Kaguya & Google Earth data to create an "accurate-looking" scene of a landing near the wrinkle ridges and ghost craters of southern Mare Crisium. The site is among fifty Constellation "Regions of Interest."

Taylor Dinerman
The Space Review

Whatever her motives were, when Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) destroyed the George H.W. Bush Space Exploration Initiative in 1992, she demonstrated how a single powerful senator could wreck any president’s proposals, especially on a seemingly marginal issue like civil space policy. She went through the NASA budget and zeroed out anything that even remotely resembled funding for SEI. It took NASA many years to recover from those drastic cuts to the human space exploration technology program.

The resentment aimed at SEI is nothing compared to what the NewSpace industry now faces on Capitol Hill. The cancellation of the Constellation program proposed in the 2011 budget is facing a bipartisan firestorm in Congress. It is doubtful that the President will want to make a special effort to support the new NASA program. His threat to veto the 2010 defense budget if it included money for the alternative F-35 engine turned out to be empty. The thousands of jobs and the irreplaceable expertise that this new plan throws away are far more important to the members of Congress, especially in the current economic climate, than are the arguments and promises from the new team at NASA.

In spite of its flaws—and if anyone says there is such a thing as a flawless government program ask them what they’ve been smoking—Constellation balanced the technological, political, and legal realities of today’s government environment. The new program is the product of a philosophy that, while it may be promising in the very long term, is simply not ready for prime time.

If the Moon program could be described as belonging to the 20th century, the NewSpace industry is beginning to look as if they belong to the 18th century. Like French courtiers wandering the halls of Versailles looking for a favor from the King, individuals who used to be regarded as brave entrepreneurs will now haunt the corridors of power looking for a subsidy or an earmark. They will prove their technical expertise by writing proposals that are perfectly adapted to the prevailing bureaucratic winds. It may be good business, but it does not have much to do with 21st century market capitalism.

Now that the NewSpace industry is in a direct fight with the powerful members of Congress they may find that in spite of support from NASA’s leadership, they lack the political strength overcome the opposition. If the men and women who sit on the appropriations committees feel their interests and even their political survival are threatened, they will strike back, and strike back hard.

Read the full article, HERE.

Columbia on their minds?

Over north central Texas, February 1, 2003, traveling on the edge of space at Mach 18, the first Space Shuttle Columbia breaks apart during re-entry, killing all seven of her crew and scattering wreckage over thousands of square miles of east Texas, northeast of Houston. Ironically the flawless regularity of the program's final missions following a very restricted return to space, a clear-headed attention to detail and professionalism and (finally) a realistic assessment of what was always an incredible, useful, but inherently dangerous test vehicle has led many outside NASA to again take vehicle safety for granted, the temptation to push the vehicle into its fourth decade of service seems easy. More ironic, the long gap in U.S. manned spaceflight ahead, after the Shuttle's retirement in 2010 (a billion dollar line item, already well underway), is leading to a brain-drain and erosion of institutional memory and experience at every level. More tempting still is to forget how the United States came to be in this position, to allow an institution's mere self-continuity and tradition to become its sole reason-for-being.

In 1971, mostly in denial concerning a sparsely populated gap in U.S. manned space flight after Apollo 17, Congress settled on the promise of a Space Shuttle. The fire that destroyed Apollo 1 and her crew on the pad in 1967 and the breathtaking close call of Apollo 13 three years later made the future safety of manned spaceflight every bit as much of a paramount concern at the time as today, with only five Space Shuttle missions scheduled before its retirement a year from today, even as we approach the fortieth anniversary of Apollo 13 next April.

It would belabor the point to review the Space Shuttle's record, its surprising capabilities, needed more today in no small part because of its 130 missions. And it only seems obvious that the Shuttle never lived up to its primary selling points decades ago, those of convenience, lowered cost and primarily safety, because of those missions since 1981. The Hubble Space Telescope was also a product of that same difficult and clumsy long-term planning so typical of Washington, built to accommodate the two-year election cycle of the U.S. House of Representatives, with its power of the purse.

It's a good idea to look back and to ask how we got here, and to consider America's present dilemma concerning manned spaceflight to be a clear repetition of a similar process that unfolded almost four decades ago, once again in a age-old political dynamic built around short-term planning. In 1971 no one believed a decade would pass before the Space Shuttle flew, or that aside from the surprisingly useful Skylab missions and the Apollo-Soyuz rendezvous in 1975, that first gap in manned spaceflight would last until 1981. The missions underway had NASA's attention, as an institution where lunar travel never lost its novelty.

A similar situation is underway once again, with tight budgets and a host of nested institutions and stockholders prepared to argue over what, in an age where entitlement obligations exceed double the value of all the assets of America and Americans, mere table scraps. A unified vision articulated finally, after the loss of Columbia, is hanging by a thread. And partisan adversaries are squaring off for a bruising fight, each accusing the other of being unrealistic.

Jeff Foust has been following an almost invisible set of congressional hearings, that seemed to suddenly crop up, ostensibly dedicated (once again) to "safety" of one vision of NASA's future over another.

From his writings on his Blog "Space Politics," Jeff offers "A few notes on the human spaceflight hearing," Thursday.

Meanwhile Mark Whittington, writing for the Houston Space News Examiner in "Ares 1 vs.commercial launchers - how to replace the space shuttle?" and points to "Two recent editorials in the journal Space News, one by Congressman Ralph Hall opposing a commercial solution to Earth to low Earth orbit space flight," and "the other by Patti Grace Smith, a former FAA associate administrator" writing for commercial space transportation, and supporting commercial space flight, illustrates development of a new and quite unnecessary controversy in space policy. "

And Keith Cowing for NASA Watch details where prepared statements can be read and the scheduled rebroadcast of the House committee hearings this coming weekend, HERE.

Senator Shelby 'slams' Augustine panel

Mark Matthews
The Write Stuff
Orlando Sentinel

In a forceful floor speech, Alabama’s senior senator defended NASA’s current plan to return astronauts to the moon and jabbed the recent findings of a presidential space panel tasked with evaluating the agency’s troubled Constellation program.

“While I commend the Augustine Commission for their hard work, I find many of the aspects proposed in their summary report to be unsatisfactory and disappointing,” said U.S. Sen. Richard Shelby on Monday, referring to a 10-member space panel led by retired Lockheed Martin CEO Norm Augustine.

Read the Post, HERE.

Texas congressional delegation wants 'Stimulus' money for NASA

Stewart M. Powell
Houston Chronicle

Texas' top lawmakers in Congress want President Barack Obama to pony up some of the $787 Billion in economic stimulus money to rescue NASA's manned space program and ensure that astronauts one day will travel beyond the orbiting International Space Station.

Twenty-eight Republican and Democrat members of Texas 34-member delegation, led by Republican Sens. John Cornyn and Kay Bailey Hutchison, delivered their appeal by letter on Monday, days before Obama is expected to hear a White House panel of experts recommend greater spending.

The lawmakers asked Obama to divert $3 billion from the unspent portion of the economic stimulus package that continues to be doled out as part of an economic recovery plan stretching over two years.

Read the analysis, HERE.

RTG power for deep space, long lunar nights 'strugglling in Congress'

GPHS-RTG that are used for Galileo, Ulysses, Cassini-Huygens and New Horizons [NASA-JPL]

Heads up to RLV and Space Transportation News, for "Effort to restart plutonium-238 production struggling in Congress."

"A request of $30 million by the administration to initiate a program to restart production has been eliminated in Senate legislation and reduced to $10 million in the U.S. House," Topspacer reports.

The National Academies of Science issued an alarm, earlier this year, calling radioisotope power systems, "an imperative for maintaining United States leadership in space exploration."

In a report available online, issued jointly, the Aeronautics and Space Engineering and Space Studies boards wrote, "for nearly 50 years, the United States has led the world in the scientific exploration of space. U.S. spacecraft have circled Earth, landed on the Moon and Mars, orbited Jupiter and Saturn, and traveled beyond the orbit of Pluto and out of the ecliptic. These spacecraft have sent back to Earth images and data that have greatly expanded human knowledge, though many important questions remain unanswered."

"Spacecraft require electrical energy. This energy must be available in the outer reaches of the solar system where sunlight is very faint. It must be available through lunar nights that last for 14 days, through long periods of dark and cold at the higher latitudes on Mars, and in high-radiation fields such as those around Jupiter. Radioisotope power systems (RPSs) are the only available power source that can operate unconstrained in these environments for the long periods of time needed to accomplish many missions, and plutonium-238 (238Pu) is the only practical isotope for fueling them. The success of historic missions such as Viking and Voyager, and more recent missions such as Cassini and New Horizons, clearly show that RPSs—and an assured supply of 238Pu—have been, are now, and will continue to be essential to the U.S. space science and exploration program."

"Multi-Mission Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators (MMRTGs) are the only RPS currently available."

Cassini's mission to Saturn has been sending spectacular images of that planet's rings as they pass through a near-perfect solar phase-angle as that planet travels through equinox, revealing never-before-seen details of that mysterious system five years after the school-bus sized probe arrived in Saturnian orbit and and ten years after it launch from Kennedy Space Center.

Meanwhile, ten years after it's fastest-ever departure from Earth, New Horizons will encounter Pluto and it's three known moons in 2015.

Lunar water and space policy

Jeff Foust
Space Politics

"Overall, it’s hard to see this discovery of water as a reason in and of itself for humans to go to the Moon. However, from the standpoint of making a human presence there potentially easier and less expensive, it may improve the odds of justifying other reasons to return to the Moon—if advocates can put together a compelling case."

Read the brief, HERE.

House Science and Technology Committee releases GAO report on Constellation

House Science and Technology Committee chairman Bart Gordon (D-TN) releases report that confirms Congress has, and apparently will continue, to under-fund the future of American manned spaceflight.

Congress confirms, Congress under-funded NASA

Science and Technology Committee
U.S. House of Representatives
Press Release, Sept. 25, 2009

(Washington, DC) – Today, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report, "NASA: Constellation Program Cost and Schedule Will Remain Uncertain Until a Sound Business Case is Established.”

The report was requested by House Committee on Science and Technology Chairman Bart Gordon (D-TN), as part of the Committee’s ongoing oversight of NASA’s major acquisition programs. NASA’s Constellation program is developing the Ares I Crew Launch Vehicle and the Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle as the agency’s first major development projects in a national initiative to return Americans to the Moon and eventually send humans to Mars as well as other destinations in the solar system.

The GAO’s report, based on a review conducted earlier this year, was completed prior to the successful completion of the Orion preliminary design review (PDR), the successful test firing of the Ares I first stage booster rocket, the establishment of a launch date for the Ares I-X test flight, and the decision to adopt a single- or dual-plane isolator system to address any thrust oscillation vibrations that might occur on the Ares I launch vehicle.

Chairman Gordon asked GAO to assess NASA’s progress in implementing prior GAO’s recommendations for the Ares I and Orion projects, and to identify risks, if any, faced by the Constellation Program. GAO found a poorly phased funding plan that runs the risk of funding shortfalls in fiscal years 2009 through 2012, resulting in planned work not being completed to support schedules and milestones. This approach, GAO reported, has limited NASA’s ability to mitigate technical risks early in development and precludes the orderly ramp up of workforce and developmental activities.

“Following on the heels of the Science and Technology Committee’s September 15, 2009 hearing on the Review of U.S. Human Space Flight Plans Committee’s Summary Report, during which it became crystal clear that NASA hasn’t been given adequate resources to implement the Constellation Program, it should come as no surprise that funding is at the center of NASA’s inability to complete the work necessary to build confidence in the cost and schedule estimates the agency develops for Constellation” Gordon said.

At the September 15th hearing the chair of the review committee, Mr. Norman Augustine, provided the committee’s assessment of the Constellation program, stating that: “We did review the program, its management. We believe it to be soundly managed…We believe that the existing program, given adequate funds, is executable and would carry out its objectives.”

“Constellation has been underway for four years, and we have invested almost $8 billion in it to date. I am heartened that the review committee found the program to be sound and one that can be successfully implemented if given adequate resources in a timely manner. GAO’s report provides a sobering indication of the negative impact that funding shortfalls can have on complex and technically difficult space flight programs like Constellation, no matter how dedicated and skillful the program’s workforce is,” added Gordon.

GAO recommended that, as NASA addresses the findings and recommendations of the Review of U.S. Human Space Flight Plans being conducted per direction from the president, the NASA Administrator direct the Constellation program, or its successor, to develop a sound business case before proceeding into its next phase. NASA concurred with GAO’s recommendation.

“The GAO’s report is a timely reminder of the demanding steps and detailed analyses and information needed to ensure the successful completion of human space flight programs. Constellation is already well down the road to delivering flight hardware under extremely challenging conditions. The choice is clear: either we give the Constellation program the funding it needs so the dedicated men and women of NASA and its contractor team can successfully do their jobs, or we let our lack of commitment fritter away all that has been accomplished to date,” added Space and Aeronautics Subcommittee Chairwoman Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ).

For more information, visit the Committee’s website: science.house.gov

Congress cold to Augustine panel

Houston Chronicle & Bloomberg

Lawmakers pushed back today against a U.S. presidential panel’s conclusion that NASA can’t afford to return astronauts to the moon by 2020 with a new rocket and spacecraft and should instead consider another plan.

“I’m pretty angry,” said Representative Gabrielle Giffords, an Arizona Democrat who chairs a House space subcommittee. “We’ve been given a set of alternatives that almost look like cartoons.”

Story HERE.

NASA needs stability and resources

Jeff Ashby, Michael Bloomfield, Bob Crippen, Roger Crouch, Jan Davis, Brian Duffy, Jim Halsell, Steve Hawley, Rick Hieb, Scott “Doc” Horowitz, Bruce McCandless II, Don McMonagle, Pam Melroy, Charlie Precourt, Ken Reightler and Kent Rominger
Houston Chronicle

"Our aerospace industry is the envy of the world, employing 650,000 Americans in high-wage, high-skill jobs. It is one of the few industries that actually enjoys a trade surplus with our foreign competition. Every time NASA accomplishes a great achievement, the interest of our young people in pursuing a career in science and engineering spikes upward. When they graduate from college, not all will end up working in the space program, but many of them will join leading technology companies all over America."

"We believe that America's space exploration program has positively impacted the world perhaps more than any single national endeavor during the last half century. Our space leadership is a projection of this country's technical capability leveraged to foster peaceful cooperation among nations in a politically uncertain world. Each of us has been part of this great space legacy — and continues to be committed to ensuring the safety, vitality, sustainability and excitement of the future space program. U.S. investment in space and technology generates tens of thousands of jobs, stimulates small businesses and entrepreneurship, drives innovation and inspires the next generation of engineers, scientists and explorers so critical to America's future."

Read the full editorial HERE

GAO report on NASA management of COTS

From SpaceRef.com Full GAO Report HERE.

"During the course of our review, we found NASA's management of the COTS project has generally adhered to critical project management tools and activities and the vast majority of project expenditures were for milestone payments to COTS partners. NASA has established fixed-price, performance-based milestones in its agreements with commercial partners and partners are only paid once the milestone has been successfully completed. NASA has also taken several steps since the beginning of the COTS project to ensure that risks were identified, assessed, and documented, and that mitigation plans were in place to reduce these risks. NASA has communicated regularly with its partners through quarterly and milestone reviews and provided them with technical expertise to assist in their development efforts and to facilitate integration with the space station. As of the end of fiscal year 2008, NASA has spent $290.1 million, with 95 percent of project funding spent on milestone payments to COTS partners."

Read the full SpaceRef.com article HERE.