White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) staff told the National Research Council (NRC) today that a 2002 study by Futron is one of three “data points” that the White House used in crafting its commercial crew strategy.

In response to a question as to what market analysis was done to demonstrate that there is a non-government market for sending people into space, OSTP staffer Rich Leshner told a joint meeting of the NRC’s Space Studies Board (SSB) and Aeronautics and Space Engineering Board (ASEB) that OSTP had three data points indicating there is “a chance for a market there”:

• eight people have paid $25 million each to fly as tourists on Russia’s Soyuz spacecraft;
• more than 100 non-U.S. astronauts have flown to low Earth orbit on U.S. or Russian spacecraft either paying in cash or “in kind” contributions; and
• a 2002 Futron study combined with a poll by Zogby International looking at the U.S. market for orbital flights indicated there would be a “robust” market in 2020.

He did not address how relevant the Futron study would be today under the significantly changed economic circumstances since 2002. (Editor’s Note: The Futron study forecast that, for orbital flights, by 2021 “60 passengers may be flying annually, representing revenues in excess of US$300 million.”)

Mr. Leshner was part of a panel of OSTP and Office of Management and Budget (OMB) staff members discussing the FY2011 budget for NASA and NOAA at the SSB/ASEB meeting. Another panel member, OMB Branch Chief Paul Shawcross, stressed that the Constellation program was not “realistic” and since the International Space Station is “crucial,” he asked “what was the alternative?” In response to another question about when more details will be available, Mr. Shawcross said that NASA was working on them with input from the White House, but they are not yet ready to be released adding “there’s more out there already than people realize.”

A panel of House and Senate committee staff followed the White House panel. Richard Obermann, staff director of the House Space and Aeronautics Subcommittee of the House Science and Technology Committee, and Ed Feddeman, his Republican counterpart, both said that the committee’s February 25 hearing demonstrated that their members support the budget request for science, aeronautics and technology development, but not the human space flight component. Dr. Obermann quoted committee chairman Bart Gordon (D-TN) as saying that he was not certain there were sufficient votes in the committee to win approval for the President’s request. Dr. Feddeman stressed that not only were his members skeptical of the scant information the President provided about the plan, but they were offended by the fact that the White House provided advance information to select reporters while embargoing information to Congress.

Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee Republican staff member Jeff Bingham said that his committee had not yet had time to review the request other than for the human space flight component. He explained that the bill recently introduced by Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison (S. 3068) was intended to stimulate discussion about those issues. He said the bill was not about extending the shuttle program for its own sake, but only if it is needed to ensure the International Space Station is sustainable through 2020.

Senator Bill Nelson (D-FL) offered President Obama a lot of advice about what he should say at the April 15 “space conference” the White House is planning for April 15 in Florida. In a speech on the Senate floor yesterday (pages S1254-1256), he reiterated many of the concerns he expressed during a Feburary 24 hearing. Basically he feels there are many good elements of the FY2011 budget request, but he faults the roll-out of the request as creating the misperception that President Obama is killing the U.S. human spaceflight program. He sees the April 15 conference as the President’s opportunity to clarify and amplify his position, for example by explcitly saying that human exploration of Mars is the goal, perhaps with intermediate stops along the way. He urges the President to:

“Stop listening just to the budget boys and OMB. Listen to the cries of an American people who once again want to be challenged and inspired, as President John F. Kennedy inspired the Nation and the Nation came together and did what was considered to be almost the impossible. It wasn’t impossible. It was extraordinary, and it was an American achievement..”

The following events may be of interest in the coming week. For more information, check our calendar on the right menu or click the links below. Times, dates and witnesses for congressional hearings are subject to change; check the relevant committee’s website for up-to-date information. All meetings are in Washington, DC and all times are EST unless otherwise noted. Closed meetings and hearings are listed for informational purposes only.

Monday-Tuesday, March 8-9

• NRC Space Studies Board and Aeronautics and Space Engineering Board, Keck Center, 500 5^th Street, NW, Washington, DC
  • The two boards will meet jointly on March 8, some sessions are closed
  • The two boards will meet separately on March 9, some sessions are closed
  • SSB meeting continues on March 10, but is closed to the public

Monday-Thursday, March 8-11, Los Angeles, CA

• 8^th Responsive Space Conference

Tuesday-Thursday, March 9-11, Greenbelt, MD

• American Astronautical Society 48^th Goddard Memorial Symposium (March 9 is an evening reception; sessions are March 10-11)

Tuesday, March 9

• It’s closed to the public, but according to Congress Daily’s Daybook the House Appropriations Committee’s Select Intelligence Oversight Panel will hold a hearing on the National Reconnaissance Office budget, 5:00 pm, H405 Capitol. NRO Director Bruce Carlson is the witness. It is not listed on the committee’s website as of March 7.
• Also closed, but listed on the House Intelligence Committee’s website, is a hearing on the Military Intelligence Program and Service Elements FY2011 Budget Request, 10:00 am, HVC-304 Capitol. Witnesses are listed on the committee’s website.

Wednesday, March 10

• House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee Air Force Posture Hearing, 1:30 pm, H140 Capitol
• House Science and Technology Committee Hearing on R&D Budget Proposals at EPA and NOAA, 2:00 pm, 2318 Rayburn House Office Building
• Senate Armed Services Strategic Forces Subcommittee Hearing on Military Space Programs, 2:30 pm, 232 A Russell Senate Office Building

Thursday, March 11

• This is closed, too but the House Intelligence Committee will hold a hearing on the National Intelligence Program and Military Intelligence Program FY2011 budget request, 9:30 am, HVC-304 Capitol. Director of Intelligence Dennis Blair and Defense Undersecretary for Intelligence James Clapper are the witnesses.
• House Armed Services Defense Acquisition Reform Panel hearing on Managing the Defense Acquisition System and the Defense Acquisition Workforce, 3:00 pm, 2261 Rayburn House Office Building. This hearing is listed in Congress Daily’s Daybook, but is not on the committee’s website as of March 7.

Friday, March 12

• National Space Club Goddard Memorial Dinner

UPDATE: The text of the White House announcement is now available on the White House website.

ORIGINAL STORY:

President Barack Obama will hold a “space summit” in Florida next month to explain his vision for NASA according to a White House statement quoted by the Associated Press today. The summit will be on April 15, probably near Kennedy Space Center, though the specifics have not been formally announced.

The President’s new plan for NASA, outlined in his FY2011 budget request, would cancel NASA’s Constellation program, which is intended to replace the space shuttle as the U.S. human space transportation system. The President’s plan instead would rely on foreign and as-yet-unproven domestic commercial crew launch services to take astronauts to and from the International Space Station. It also would fund technology development for future, undefined human space flight missions beyond low Earth orbit, as opposed to the Constellation program that is aiming to return humans to the Moon by 2020. The White House and NASA call the Constellation program unexecutable without significantly more funding ($5 billion a year more, according to NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver).

The President’s plan has been met primarily with skepticism, antagonism and outright anger from Democrats and Republicans in Congress and much of the aerospace workforce, especially in Florida. With the space shuttle scheduled to be terminated at the end of this year, some shuttle workers were to transition to the Constellation program. If that program is cancelled, the workforce impact could be severe.

The President’s plan does have some supporters. The White House included former astronaut Sally Ride in the roll out of the plan on February 1, along with letters from legendary Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin and Norm Augustine, who chaired a blue-ribbon panel last year that provided options for the future of the human space flight program. The Planetary Society has mounted a campaign to win support for it, and the President of the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA), Bill Smith, wrote a letter to the editor of the Washington Post supporting the FY2011 budget request because of its investment in space and earth science.

Only one Member of Congress has publicly spoken in favor of it, though — Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), a long time advocate of commercial space activities. The FY2010 appropriations act that funded NASA included language prohibiting NASA from spending funds to cancel Constellation or begin a new program until Congress permits such action in a subsequent appropriations bill.

Dick Covey, former astronaut and President and CEO of space shuttle operator United Space Alliance (USA), announced yesterday that he will retire from the company in three weeks. His departure on March 26 will be a week and a half before the next shuttle launch on April 5. No reason was given for the timing of his resignation and a replacement was not named. Former astronaut Dan Brandenstein is USA’s Chief Operating Officer. After the April 5 launch of STS-131, three more shuttle launches are scheduled before the program is terminated under the existing plan. As reported earlier, Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison has introduced legislation to continue shuttle flights after that time.

In a statement released late Thursday, NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden reaffirmed his commitment to the President’s FY2011 budget request following a Wall Street Journal article that publicized an internal NASA email that suggested NASA was developing a “Plan B.”

In the statement, Gen. Bolden said that he was “open to hearing ideas from any member of the NASA team, but I did not ask anybody for an alternative to the President’s plan and budget.”

Speaking at a heavily attended breakfast meeting of Women in Aerospace, NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver projected confidence that as NASA continues to communicate with Congress about the change proposed in the FY2011 budget request they will see that it is “a good plan.”

“The President took on the status quo with his eyes wide open,” knowing that change always is difficult. He was willing to do that, she said, because of the importance he ascribes to NASA and the need for a “sustainable and affordable” way for the space program to move forward. Noting that the 5-year budget allocates $100 billion for NASA, she said President Obama “feels we can do better” and NASA is important enough to fight the battle. She stressed that the country’s elected leaders are making the decisions, starting with the President, and now Congress will evaluate his proposal.

She outlined the increases that the budget proposes for science, aeronautics, technology development, and education, but focused on the proposed cancellation of the Constellation program. Praising the Constellation workforce, she said that the Obama Administration had inherited a “system that made no sense to continue.” The Augustine Committee’s finding that NASA’s budget needed to increase by $3 billion for a successful human space flight program was not for continuing Constellation. She said keeping Constellation on a reasonable schedule would cost $5 billion more a year and the money just is not there. If Congress insists that Constellation continue, she asked, what will be cancelled in order to make that funding available?

In response to a question about how much it would cost to keep the space shuttle flying, she said that when she arrived at NASA she was told that the time to make such a decision already had passed so they had not looked at how much it would cost.

She emphasized that the commercial crew proposal is for “all our partners” in COTS, CCDEV, and Constellation. The main difference is that NASA will “loosen our grip a bit” through a different procurement mechanism than traditional programs like Constellation.

“This matters,” she said, calling on the aerospace community to “come together and work toward a common ground.”

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UPDATE: NBC correspondent Jay Barbree was on MSNBC earlier today talking about why he feels a Plan B is needed. Click here to view the segment.

ORIGINAL STORY:

Citing an internal NASA email, the Wall Street Journal reports today that NASA is working on “Plan B” in case Congress does not agree to cancel the Constellation program. The newspaper said that it had seen an email from NASA Johnson Space Center Director Michael Coats to other NASA centers and program offices saying that NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden had “agreed to let us set up a ‘Plan B’ Team” to “flesh out” alternatives. The newspaper asserted that “The move to draft a compromise highlights behind-the-scenes maneuvering by NASA officials to save big chunks of existing programs now in jeopardy,” but quoted an unnamed NASA spokesman as saying that Gen. Bolden and NASA “are fully committed to the President’s budget.”

Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX), ranking member of the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee, has introduced legislation to “close the gap in U.S. spaceflight.” A press release on the committee’s website explains that the bill would continue space shuttle launches as work on a new system continues. The bill’s key points as stated in the press release are:

• Make shuttle retirement dependent on the availability of replacement capabilities for comparable size crew and cargo delivery, whether government-owned or commercial, (assuming a rate of 2 missions a year), or until it is conclusively demonstrated that it is the space shuttle cargo capabilities are not needed to ensure space station viability;
• Require International Space Station (ISS) operations and full utilization through at least 2020, and further establish the ISS National Laboratory operating mechanisms and procedures;
• Provide for the acceleration of a government-owned human space flight capability to as close to 2015 as possible;
• Expand support for Commercial Orbital Space Transportation (COTS) to support ISS — both for cargo and for eventual crew launch capability;
• Reaffirm long-term goal of moving beyond low-Earth orbit whether to the Moon, Mars or alternative destinations;
• Provide for the near-term evaluation of heavy-lift rocket launcher design options, including shuttle-derived options, to enable the expansion beyond low-earth orbit and accelerate the start of vehicle design activity; and
• Authorize top-level funding for all of NASA’s mission activities, but would only address the human space flight policy issues.

A SpacePolicyOnline.com summary of the Feb. 25, 2010 House Science and Technology Committee’s hearing on the NASA’s FY2011 budget request is now available. Find it on our left menu under “Our Hearing Summaries” or simply click here.