In comments on this post, Chuck Divine has a review of last night’s space policy debate in DC.

Muncy was superb. His top ten myths of the Bush space plan were excellent. Myth #1? The plan is about NASA. No, it’s not. The plan is about us (humans). Muncy eloquently put forward the observation that space was about all kinds of human endeavors.

Former astronaut Searfoss was the big surprise. He was critical of NASA, supportive of private space endeavors. He observed he lost six friends when Columbia burned up. I was very favorably impressed.

Hudgins and Park were very predictable. To be honest, I could have done a better job at presenting cases for their positions (even though I have some disagreements with both) than they did. Debate training from high school and college (at least what I got decades ago) does give me a bit of an advantage, though.

Rick Searfoss wouldn’t have been a surprise to me. He’s a ‘stro who gets it, and is on XCOR‘s board of directors.

I’m still too busy to write much, and it’s not going to get much better until the end of the month–it will be a challenge even to do my Fox columns this week and next–but in the meantime, go read this little history of presidential space initiatives by Dwayne Day, over at The Space Review.

For those who aren’t familiar with past attempts to set a new direction for NASA, it provides a lot of good guidance, and potential food for thought as to how to avoid the mistakes of that past. It also debunks the nonsense that anything that NASA does beyond LEO automatically costs four hundred billion dollars (which of course, because NASA is doing it, is automatically inflated to a trillion dollars by clueless commentators).

And by the way, congratulations to Jeff Foust on the one-year anniversary of The Space Review. It should be one of your weekly must-read links if you’re interested in space policy and technology.

[Update on Wednesday]

Clark Lindsey has an email from someone at NASA who says that the SEI cost estimate was even more inflated than Dwayne says (scroll down a little).

…the internal NASA JSC number was $100 Billion — this number was doubled by the comptroller at JSC and then doubled again by the Comptroller at NASA Headquarters.

It wouldn’t surprise me at all.

[Update at 8:45 AM PST]

Dwayne responds in comments.

Too busy to blog (I’m working overtime, have a sick furnace and a sick cat), but fortunately, Henry Vanderbilt over at the Space Access Society is picking up the slack. He’s very upbeat, and has an update on X-Prize progress, a smart analysis of the president’s space initiative, and the new House legislation on launch regulation, a subject that I still haven’t had much time to analyze.

As part of his new space policy analysis, he also has a powerful argument against the “Bush space policy hoax” folks.

…we think this new plan is very unlikely to be
what many are claiming, mere election-year feelgood puffery. Were
it so, the Administration would be making promises left and right,
jobs for everyone and a contract in every district, and not worrying
overmuch whether the Congress would fund it all once the election’s
over. Instead, the White House and NASA HQ have been notably
reticent about reassuring the established NASA manned space Centers
and contractors that they’ll all have major roles in the new
initiative. Refusing to promise job security is a poor way to win
votes. It is, however, a good way to keep options open to implement
the sort of major restructuring NASA will need to meet the new
program’s ambitious goals within relatively modest budget increases.

It’s long, but read the whole thing.

[Update on Tuesday morning]

There was one specific other item of note from Henry’s report that I would have mentioned last night if I hadn’t had the cat and furnace problems. Pioneer Rocketplane apparently has funding to build their suborbital vehicle, thanks to tax credits from the state of Oklahoma. Mitchell Burnside Clapp, founder and president, told me about this over a year ago, but it’s public information now.

I think that 2004 will continue to be a very interesting year for the new emerging space transport industry.

With regard to Josh Marshall’s uninformed hit piece, Keith Cowing makes a good point:

I call this hit and run policy analysis. Here is how it works: the practitioner makes some wildly unsubstantiated comments based on a few microseconds of analysis – usually on a topic about which they know nothing. They then throw in some wild cost estimates to scare folks, link a series of unrelated items together to suggest a trend (or usually a conspiracy), and then end the piece with a global pronouncement. Since the practitioner is a popular commentator and talking head on TV, most people just take him at his word. The net result: a complex issue is left lying by the side of the road in people’s minds without ever having a chance to explain itself. The fact that this flimsy analysis appears in a publication that touts itself as being “for and about the U.S. Congress” ought to have a few people at NASA’s Office of Legislative Affairs concerned.

At the risk of violating Instapundit’s trademark, indeed…

[Update on Tuesday morning]

Welcome to any first-time readers from Instapundit. I apologize for the little foofaraw in the comments section–it’s actually quite unusual.

Keith, thank you for the kind and helpful comments on the cat. I’ll continue to visit NASA Watch, and to encourage my readers to do the same, for whatever it’s worth, because I think that it is a valuable website, but judging from several comments, I do think that you’re machine gunning yourself in the foot here.

It would be nice to end this pointless (albeit mild) flamefest and actually have a few comments on the substance of the post.

I received an email from an astronomer pointing out an article in today’s Gray Lady that says a Hubble mission might be as safe, or safer, than an ISS mission. I’ve omitted the emailer’s name in case there’s any political sensitivity.

While I don’t subscribe to Josh Marshall’s hoax theory about NASA’s new focus, I do believe that the NASA hierarchy has been less than truthful concerning changes to its mission goals. When Sen. Barbara Mikulski called Sean O’Keefe concerning the cancellation of shuttle missions to Hubble, he told her that the decision was a combination of money and safety concerns. Once he heard from her that money might not be a problem, his message changed to that of safety alone. Indeed, Jon Grunsfeld’s first comments about the mission cancellation also mentioned money, but safety has now become the overriding arguement, as it is harder to dispute from the outside.

As an astronomer, I’m concerned about the future of basic astronomical research under the new NASA. NASA has quietly put off for at least a year, perhaps more, funding for its MIDEX and SPEX smaller space astronomical instrument missions and cut back funding for approved programs, and O’Keefe’s press conference about the budget was not friendly to basic science (unless you are studying the science of weightlessness on the human body) or space astronomy. Now, this is NASA’s perogative — as my husband says, none of the “A”s in NASA stand for “astronomy” — but I can’t help but think that the broader public might not be concerned about the decline of the one science everyone seems to find compelling and approachable. And it was Bush’s father who made a similar announcement about big goals for the US space program, which then petered out into nothing. It doesn’t take political animus to fear that current path could lead to little progress.

Anyway, I emailed you because I haven’t seen much sign that, outside of those of us who are directly affected, people have appreciated how much the new NASA focus is pulling money away from space science instrumentation and research. I’d like to see some discussion on this issue.

Well, I’m on record as believing that we ought to go ahead with the flight, and safety shouldn’t even be an issue, but that’s not politically correct these days. But I do believe that’s the primary driver for the decision, and don’t think that O’Keefe is being in any way disingenuous–at least I have no reason right now to think so. Risk assessments are always judgement calls, and while one engineer’s analysis may be perfectly valid, it’s always possible to find others who disagree, and NASA is erring on the side of caution right now, in response to the Gehman Commission and a reaction (and probably overreaction) to what happened a year ago.

However, I think that it’s a little too early to tell whether or not the new initiative will be good, or bad, for space science and astronomy in general. People are inferring from the fact that the Hubble decision was announced after the president’s speech that it was somehow a result of it. It wasn’t. They were both a result of the same root cause–last year’s loss of Columbia.

Actually, history indicates that we have the most vibrant space science program when we have a vibrant manned program as well (though it’s not clear whether that will be the case for deep-space astronomy). For example, as far as I know, Webb remains on track.

But what fans of space telescopes should really be doing is cheering on people working to reduce costs (i.e., not NASA), because that’s going to make it affordable for universities to put up their own suites of multi-mirror space telescopes. And if we really do set up a lunar base, farside will make a great place for a radiotelescope, blocked from the noisy earth.

Josh Marshall subscribes to the “hoax” theory of the new space policy. Jeff Foust and his commenters show him (as is often the case) to be full of it. As commenter “Brad” says:

The Marshall piece is not a serious analysis of the merits, or lack, of the new Bush space policy. The complete omission in Marshall’s story of the fact of the Columbia disaster and the floundering of NASA is telling. If Bush had done nothing at all in response, or made a Clintonian style non-decision to muddle through, that would itself warrant criticism. But instead Marshall attacks the president for having the balls to make a real choice…

…I have no illusions that Bush is some kind of space exploration enthusiast, even though he does have a background in military aviation. But I do think the Bush style of blunt decision making is what is responsible for finally cutting though the thirty years worth of bureaucratic B.S. surrounding space policy.

I am worried though that the political venom level is so high now that if Bush is defeated, his replacement will kill manned space exploration just because Bush was in favor of it. The Marshall piece is just another example of the venom.

Yes. I made this point as well a couple weeks ago.

Josh Marshall subscribes to the “hoax” theory of the new space policy. Jeff Foust and his commenters show him (as is often the case) to be full of it. As commenter “Brad” says:

The Marshall piece is not a serious analysis of the merits, or lack, of the new Bush space policy. The complete omission in Marshall’s story of the fact of the Columbia disaster and the floundering of NASA is telling. If Bush had done nothing at all in response, or made a Clintonian style non-decision to muddle through, that would itself warrant criticism. But instead Marshall attacks the president for having the balls to make a real choice…

…I have no illusions that Bush is some kind of space exploration enthusiast, even though he does have a background in military aviation. But I do think the Bush style of blunt decision making is what is responsible for finally cutting though the thirty years worth of bureaucratic B.S. surrounding space policy.

I am worried though that the political venom level is so high now that if Bush is defeated, his replacement will kill manned space exploration just because Bush was in favor of it. The Marshall piece is just another example of the venom.

Yes. I made this point as well a couple weeks ago.

Josh Marshall subscribes to the “hoax” theory of the new space policy. Jeff Foust and his commenters show him (as is often the case) to be full of it. As commenter “Brad” says:

The Marshall piece is not a serious analysis of the merits, or lack, of the new Bush space policy. The complete omission in Marshall’s story of the fact of the Columbia disaster and the floundering of NASA is telling. If Bush had done nothing at all in response, or made a Clintonian style non-decision to muddle through, that would itself warrant criticism. But instead Marshall attacks the president for having the balls to make a real choice…

…I have no illusions that Bush is some kind of space exploration enthusiast, even though he does have a background in military aviation. But I do think the Bush style of blunt decision making is what is responsible for finally cutting though the thirty years worth of bureaucratic B.S. surrounding space policy.

I am worried though that the political venom level is so high now that if Bush is defeated, his replacement will kill manned space exploration just because Bush was in favor of it. The Marshall piece is just another example of the venom.

Yes. I made this point as well a couple weeks ago.

There’s been new legislation introduced in the House a couple days ago, that amends the Commercial Space Launch Act. It appears to supercede HR 3245, introduced last fall, which I analyzed at the time.

I haven’t had the time to analyze it in detail, and I’d like to talk to some of the people involved in drafting it before I pontificate, but one major change seems to be a new way of allowing people to fly, by letting them get a permit for research and experimentation, without requiring a full launch license. I think that it’s meant to be analogous to an experimental aircraft certificate, and it’s probably to address Burt Rutan’s chafing under the licensing regime.

I’ve long advocated something like this, and it will be interesting to see if it makes it through the legislative process unscathed (and if it gets vetted by Foggy Bottom, which may be concerned that the process isn’t rigorous enough to keep us compliant with the Outer Space Treaty). There are other implications of this legislation as well, but further discussion will have to await my finding enough time to dig into it.

[Update on Saturday morning]

XCOR seems pleased with the legislation.

The Bush administration has released its proposed budget for NASA.

It reflects the new policy that the president announced a couple weeks ago, and Keith Cowing, of NASA Watch, has spared us from having to plow through the turgid document ourselves, and interpreted it in that context.

As Keith points out, the budget increases for the first few years are modest, but they are real, and NASA, having been now told that Shuttle will no longer be available a decade from now, can truly focus on new things with the funding available. The agency budget will slowly grow to almost twenty billion dollars by the end of a second Bush term (should that occur), but given the dramatic growth of the federal budget in this administration, it will remain less than its historical one percent of the total, which this year will exceed two trillion dollars.

However, there’s one little item in the budget also mentioned in Keith’s report that, while tiny, may be a portent of huge things to come. The budget of the new Office of Exploration is about a billion dollars (less than ten percent of the total NASA budget), and buried deep within it is a twenty-million-dollar line item called “Centennial Challenges.”

According to the description, the purpose of this is “to establish a series of annual prizes for revolutionary, breakthrough accomplishments that advance exploration of the solar system and beyond and other NASA goals…By making awards based on actual achievements instead of proposals, NASA will tap innovators in academia, industry, and the public who do not normally work on NASA issues. Centennial Challenges will be modeled on past successes, including 19th century navigation prizes, early 20th century aviation prizes, and more recent prizes offered by the U.S. government and private sector.”

The latter reference is to a prize offered by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) for the first autonomous robotic vehicle to navigate itself across the desert from Los Angeles to Las Vegas, in a race to be held next month. It’s for a million-dollar purse.

As this article points out, the prize may not be won this year, but even if not, the teams will learn a great deal from the experience, and be ready to try again next year (the program is currently funded at least through 2007).

Why did DARPA do it?

DARPA was convinced that good ideas existed for overcoming some of the problems plaguing vehicles that drive themselves. But officials also suspect that they aren’t hearing all those ideas because some people are unable or unwilling to run the bureaucratic paperwork gauntlet necessary to secure a DARPA contract.

“Who’s out there in their garages, their bedrooms, in their labs, working on this?” Negron said. “We want to know.” The race might appeal to some people who simply want to show what they can do, without all the red tape.

It’s also a reference to the X-Prize, which may be won this year (and if not, it won’t be won at all, because the prize expires on December 31st). This, a private prize, has spurred several teams to attempt to build vehicles that can take people out of the atmosphere, and repeat the effort within two weeks, proving out the concept of a reusable spaceship.

Both prizes are modeled on something else obliquely referred to in the Office of Exploration document (“…early 20th century aviation prizes…”)–the Orteig Prize, which Charles Lindbergh won in his solo flight across the Atlantic over six decades ago, and both take advantage of the efficiency (at least to the prize offerer) and leverage provided by such prizes. For the DARPA prize:

…it’s not a race likely to be won on the cheap. Whittaker estimates it will cost about $5 million to win the $1 million prize.

The Orteig prize similarly generated many times its value in net resources poured into the goal, and Burt Rutan’s X-Prize attempt alone has reportedly already cost more than the ten million dollars on offer. More importantly, unlike many recent NASA programs, it achieved its goal, in a spectacular fashion (a fate to soon be hoped for with the DARPA and X-Prizes as well).

What’s the down side? Again, looking at the Office of Exploration document, here’s a key phrase: “…from 19th century navigation prizes…”

I’m not sure what they’re referring to here, because the most famous navigation prize was the Longitude Act, passed by the British Parliament in 1714 (that is, in the eighteenth, not the nineteenth century). This was a 20,000 pound prize (worth millions in today’s currency) for the ability to determine the longitude of a ship at sea.

As related by Dava Sobel in her best-seller Longitude, the prize was won by John Harrison. He invented the spring-powered clock, unaffected by the rolling of the waves as previous pendulum clocks had been, which allowed ship’s navigators to know what time it was in England–necessary information to determine their position.

I should have used quotes around the word “won,” because as hard as the challenge of achieving the goal itself was, it proved even more difficult to collect the full reward, an endeavor to which he devoted much of the remainder of his life. His thinking turned out to be a little too far “outside the box,” and some used this as an excuse to try to deprive him of his rightful dues.

This should be a cautionary tale for modern government prizes as well. Anyone who’s ever dealt with Congress knows that it can be most fickle, and ultimately, the greatest barrier to the utility of such prizes may be confidence of the contestants in the ability and willingness of the government to ultimately deliver.

The initiative in the new Office of Exploration budget is small–just two percent of its budget–and perhaps just the proverbial camel’s nose under the tent, but that may be just as well. It could prove a useful pilot program to determine whether NASA is truly interested in true innovation, from previously-unknown talents, or instead in continuing to maintain the status quo.

The eyes of the alternative space community will be kept very closely on this prize.