credit change.gov / caption: Obama's space policy is still rhetoric
Many scientists will no doubt be cheering the fact that US president Barack Obama has confirmed that he will be greenlighting the $1.5 billion Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer mission, adding one more flight to the shuttle manifest, not that the manifest on nasa.gov is showing it yet
And well done to Orlando Sentinel's Mark Matthews for putting the question to Obama about the impact of Shuttle's shutdown on the Florida economy, quantified as 28,000 direct and indirect jobs by Matthews. Sadly Obama's response shows that despite the president's fiscal year (FY) 2010 budget proposal for the agency the space programme is some way off from having a clear cut future
Beyond the partisan rhetoric about the space agency being adrift for a number of years the review of NASA's core mission, as Obama puts it, suggests an extended review period that combined with a Shuttle retirement in just over a year must be terrifying for people at the Cape
Imagine the situation, Shuttle is months away from being shut down and Constellation hangs in the balance as climate change and new fantasy energy sources vie for the paltry sums (compared to other parts of the government) that NASA has to offer; what job prospects are there, if any, for all of the KSC workforce?
Considering the importance of Florida in the political system it seems suicidal to me that any politician would want to end a major source of income for so many voters in the lead up to the beginning of a reelection campaign. Excuse my ignorance of US political history but did Jimmy Carter ever do anything that stupid?
Then we come to the FY2010 budget proposal, which only makes Obama's comments even more strange - and Jeff Foust can correct me on this if I have got this wrong - but once an appropriation bill is signed off by the president those monies can only be spent on what the appropriation act stipulates, right?
So what does Congress do when the president wants this review and yet the review could be at odds with the legal expenditure the agency can carry out until 30 September 2010? Mmm, not bother to vote on it?
Somehow I can't see the FY2010 budget getting signed off and NASA will be stuck at the FY2009 level, another continuing resolution. And all that extra money that the FY2010 budget offered has faded away
Obama talks about a mission fit for the 21st century, well surely going back to the Mon as a first step to opening up thesolar system to human colonsiation, in effect, how more inspirational can it get?
I am not professing any support for former president George Bush's policies but it is hard to argue that keeping human spaceflight in low Earth orbit or even ending it in favour of climate science and increased robotic exploration is going to somehow be more inspirational
Hopefully in the near future Obama will know that he is appointing the NASA administrator as well, and not a director...
Imagine the situation, Shuttle is months away from being shut down and Constellation hangs in the balance as climate change and new fantasy energy sources vie for the paltry sums (compared to other parts of the government) that NASA has to offer; what job prospects are there, if any, for all of the KSC workforce?
Considering the importance of Florida in the political system it seems suicidal to me that any politician would want to end a major source of income for so many voters in the lead up to the beginning of a reelection campaign. Excuse my ignorance of US political history but did Jimmy Carter ever do anything that stupid?
Then we come to the FY2010 budget proposal, which only makes Obama's comments even more strange - and Jeff Foust can correct me on this if I have got this wrong - but once an appropriation bill is signed off by the president those monies can only be spent on what the appropriation act stipulates, right?
So what does Congress do when the president wants this review and yet the review could be at odds with the legal expenditure the agency can carry out until 30 September 2010? Mmm, not bother to vote on it?
Somehow I can't see the FY2010 budget getting signed off and NASA will be stuck at the FY2009 level, another continuing resolution. And all that extra money that the FY2010 budget offered has faded away
Obama talks about a mission fit for the 21st century, well surely going back to the Mon as a first step to opening up thesolar system to human colonsiation, in effect, how more inspirational can it get?
I am not professing any support for former president George Bush's policies but it is hard to argue that keeping human spaceflight in low Earth orbit or even ending it in favour of climate science and increased robotic exploration is going to somehow be more inspirational
Hopefully in the near future Obama will know that he is appointing the NASA administrator as well, and not a director...
on March 12, 2009 10:12 PM | Reply
Rob:
It's probably premature at this time to say that President Obama has "confirmed" an additional shuttle mission to the ISS. His comments yesterday are hard to follow, and appear to conflict with the language in the FY10 budget outline, which states that an additional flight (presumably for the AMS) "may" be conducted only if "it can safely and affordably be flown by the end of 2010.":
http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/assets/fy2010_new_era/National_Aeronautics_and_Space_Administration.pdf
At this point I think the relatively clear language of the budget proposal trumps the unclear language from the Obama interview (perhaps because he wasn't expecting a question on NASA and wasn't familiar with the details in the budget proposal.) But that's always subject to change.
One thing to keep in mind that the FY10 budget process is only at its very beginning: the documents released a couple weeks ago are only broad outlines, without any details; those will come in the complete budget submissions, probably by next month. And it will be even longer before Congress weighs in. Recall that it was just this week that Congress finally passed an omnibus spending bill for FY09 for many federal agencies, including NASA, only a little over five months after the beginning of the fiscal year...
on March 13, 2009 2:31 AM | Reply
Robbie,
Maybe you could look into this: Apart from AMS which seems agreed, these was something called the centrifuge module, which apparently NASA paid JAXA to build. I presume it is sitting around somewhere in Japan, like Cinderella, waiting for a ride.
Time to start pushing for it ... maybe the Nips are too polite.
Also re: TPS it seems that the Boeing PICA was segmented as well .. oh, dear.
Me.
noreplyneccessary
on March 13, 2009 9:09 AM | Reply
http://tinyurl.com/bg5g3v
I reported back in 2006 that the centrifuge module had been dropped
on March 13, 2009 5:35 PM | Reply
I think we will see AMS fly, the flight would be no more dangerous than any other Shuttle mission (despite the claims of some NASA officials about the probabilities of disaster) and affordable, well NASA is getting plenty of extra money in that FY2010 budget if that ever gets to be voted upon.