Space Access Update #97 1/26/01
Copyright 2001 by Space Access Society
________________________________________________________________________
contents this issue:
- The New Administration: A Glimpse Of Daylight
- Opposition To NASA SLI Growing
- Coming Soon In The Next Update
________________________________________________________________________
The New Administration: A Glimpse Of Daylight
1/20/01 - As I sit and pound keys this Saturday morning in January,
the TV is carrying the swearing-in of a new President of these United
States, and I'm feeling a weight I'd gotten so used to I barely
noticed it anymore lifting from my shoulders.
Not because of partisan feelings on my part - yes, I have those, (I'm
a wild-eyed middle-of-the-roader) but I try my damndest to keep them
from interfering with my job, promoting radically cheaper space access
ASAP.
The weight is lifting because of a genuine and deep difference between
the administrations of the departing President and of the new one:
Their attitude towards competition.
A major tenet of "reinventing government" turned out to be elimination
of "wasteful" duplication of effort in the name of "efficiency". Put
another way, the departing administration seemed never to meet a
centrally-planned one-size-fits-all megaproject it didn't like. Thus,
the White House-mandated NASA monopoly on Reusable Launch Vehicle
development in recent years. Thus, NASA's spending of a billion and a
half scarce federal RLV R&D dollars so far on essentially nothing more
than a few hangars full of ill-assorted high-tech aerospace parts.
In the name of efficiency, all competition for NASA's preferred flavor
of reusable launch R&D was eliminated. History will likely say that
the most important thing this accomplished was to provide a glaring,
unmistakeable, irrefutable example of what happens when an established
bureaucracy gets a monopoly over a mission for which there's no
national sense of urgency: The mission takes a back seat to other
agendas, not least the timeless bureaucratic imperatives of turf-
expansion and butt-covering.
NASA did great things back when they were driven by a sense of
national urgency - but July 20th, 1969 was a long time ago.
Absent unlikely-to-reappear national urgency, the only practical way
to keep bureaucratic eyes on national goals is competition - the real
liklihood that, if one organization bogs down into money-sucking
viewgraph-shuffling, some other outfit will blast past it, get the job
done, and peel off a thick slice of its next year's budget.
The new administration is not ideologically wedded to monopilistic
McNamaraesque "efficiency". In national education policy, President
Bush is pushing the idea that failure must have consequences if more
success is wanted. Might this carry over to our area of interest?
There are grounds for optimism: The Rumsfeld space report specifically
calls for competition among various government R&D outfits in
developing and *demonstrating* new space systems.
We don't expect all smooth sailing from now on. The "efficiency"
mindset is deeply embedded in the bureaucracies. For that matter it's
far from the only institutional roadblock to radically cheaper space
access. There is considerable danger the same people who found it
reasonable and normal to routinely bolt billion dollar payloads onto
half billion dollar rockets then spend months tinkering with them on
the launch pad will end up in charge of reshuffled DOD space efforts.
But for the first time in almost a decade, we will have a White House
not reflexively opposed to the steps necessary for a new flowering of
advanced aerospace in the nation - a flowering that can take us to the
stars.
Henry Vanderbilt
Executive Director,
Space Access Society
________________________________________________________________________
Opposition To NASA SLI Growing
Recent months have been interesting. We lost the battle of last
fall's budget; NASA Space Launch Initiative not only got full funding,
but wording was slipped in that would allow SLI money to pay directly
for Shuttle upgrades, Liquid Rocket Boosters and such - "any launch
vehicles developed fully will be owned and operated by private
industry". Partially developed, however, as "Advanced Shuttle" would
be after NASA finishes miming its way through the law's "full and open
competition" requirement... (There was some small good news over in
DOD, mind - six million dollars was appropriated for USAF Phillips Lab
work on the X-37/X-40 Space Maneuver Vehicle, helping keep AF reusable
rocket work alive another year.)
We're winning the battle of ideas, though. There have been numerous
media stories and editorials supporting our position that NASA SLI is
misguided to the point of being a $4.5 billion assured failure. Other
space activist groups are starting to come around to our point of
view, and even a Congressional leader or two have begun to express
public doubts.
Aviation Week & Space Technology on 10/30/00 had this to say: "...the
initiative [SLI] is based in large part on flawed premises. The faulty
propositions start with a belief that the space transportation needs
of the private sector and those of NASA can be melded and served by a
single vehicle. That did not work with the space shuttle, and there is
no reason to think it will work now."
And on 1/8/01 they followed with: "...it is high time for [NASA] to
realize the private sector is far better suited to provide launch
services to Earth orbit--and to setting the future direction of space
transportation. That means letting the private sector lead the way to
low-cost launchers that have reliability comparable to that of an
airplane. NASA should assume a supporting role akin to the one its
predecessor agency [NACA] played in aviation. It should separate its
requirements for launching crews and cargo to the station, and not try
to direct the aerospace industry to a shuttle successor that would
somehow also serve commercial interests. A good immediate step would
be to redirect a large part of the Space Launch Initiative to
demonstrations of practical, low-cost launch technologies."
Congressman Dana Rohrabacher, head of the House Space Subcommittee,
also had a few things to say in Space News earlier this month:
"Barring some revelation, pouring SLI resources into X-33 risks
spending good money after bad." "...NASA needs to be returned to the
successful model of aviation innovation pioneered by its predecessor,
the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, which focussed on
generic technology development that could benefit all U.S. firms.
This kept the government out of the business of picking commercial
winners and losers and ensured a level playing field for all aviation
firms interested in developing new aircraft." "[SLI] ...is
degenerating into a Shuttle-replacement program focused solely on
meeting NASA's post-Shuttle space transportation needs."
As for our fellow space activist groups, National Space Society late
last summer took a position opposing use of SLI money to bail out the
troubled X-33 program (X-33 runs out of money this March, still years
short of any semblance of a flyable vehicle), and Space Frontier
Foundation announced their opposition to SLI as currently planned at
their annual conference in October - shortly after SLI's first year's
funding was passed, alas.
We never expected even that much support in this matter from our old
friends at NSS; the organization is structured to be cautious and
conservative, and we are pleasantly surprised. We hope for more from
our colleagues in SFF, though. We will admit to a certain degree of
disappointment last spring when SFF's lobbying alter-ego ProSpace
didn't pick up on the problems with NASA SLI in time for their 2000
"March Storm" citizens' lobbying effort in Washington, but then we'd
only started publicly pointing out SLI's problems a few months before
that. A year later, though, while the Foundation has some good anti-
SLI position papers on their website, details of what they actually
plan to do about SLI are still lacking. We await public release of
ProSpace's "2001 March Storm Citizen's Agenda" with interest; as of
this writing http://www.prospace.org/mstorm still doesn't have any
details of what they'll ask volunteers to lobby for this spring.
We at SAS will again be fighting to steer NASA SLI in a useful
direction this year - at $4 billion budgeted over the next four years,
it's far too large a slice of the limited federal RLV R&D pie to allow
NASA to suck it all down the same old bureaucratic black hole
unopposed - and while we hope for help from our various colleagues, we
can't count on it.
We're going to have to crank it up this year, as the level we've been
working at, one very much part-time policy-analyst-slash-polemicist
plus a handful of advisors and volunteer activists, obviously wasn't
enough to get the job done last year.
We've had some success in the past with lobbying visits to DC and with
attending events where we could recruit and motivate and coordinate
with activists, but such trips cost time and money, and we haven't
been doing many recently. More time away from making a living also
costs money, but it's all part of what's needed if we're to seize this
year's renewed opportunity to shape the future. You reading this are
the ones who will determine if we have a chance. That's Space Access
Society, 4855 E Warner Rd #24-150, Phoenix AZ 85044. 'Nuff said.
________________________________________________________________________
Coming Soon In The Next Update
- RLV Startups Report
- News Roundup
- Space Access '01, April 26-28 in Scottsdale Arizona
- R&D Competition Policy Background
________________________________________________________________________
Space Access Society's sole purpose is to promote radical reductions
in the cost of reaching space. You may redistribute this Update in
any medium you choose, as long as you do it unedited in its entirety.
________________________________________________________________________
Space Access Society
http://www.space-access.org
space.access@space-access.org
"Reach low orbit and you're halfway to anywhere in the Solar System"
- Robert A. Heinlein