Romney's Space Policy – Still TBD? (Updated)
Romney’s silence on NASA’s future worries space fans, Orlando Sentinel
“Congressional and industry sources said Romney’s vagueness also could be attributed to divisions within his own team. His advisers include former NASA chief Mike Griffin, who championed Constellation and the big-government approach of exploring space. But other Romney aides are said to support, at least philosophically, Obama’s push to rely more on the private sector to send astronauts into orbit, in part because they see that alternative as more cost effective. The conflict pits old-school Republican support of NASA spaceflight against its fiscally conservative roots — complicated by an unwillingness to side with the current administration. How the internal battle plays out could determine which course a Romney administration would chart for NASA.”
As Republicans Call Out Romney For Having No Clear Vision For NASA, Floridians Deserve the Truth From Romney On Space Issues, Barack Obama 2012
“Over the past few months, Mitt Romney has hoped that Floridians wouldn’t notice how he has no plan for NASA nor any vision for space exploration outside of the Romney-Ryan budget that would devastate the space program. But now that even Republican leaders are calling on Mitt Romney to reveal his real plans for the space program and the middle class, maybe Floridians will finally get answers from Romney.”
Well, a debate in the Romney camp is much better than having Griffin definitely getting his way.
A broken leg is “much better than having Griffin definitely getting his way.”
Steve
He has supplied no details for any of his purported policies; why would space be any different.
I watched a fair amount of the Republican convention and a lot of speakers kept saying that Romney has a plan. But not one of them said a single word about what that plan might be. We’re still waiting.
Steve
If Rommey were to make it, it sounds to me like the Tea Party is gaining strength. As Steve said, we are becoming more dependent everyday on commercial Space. Someone said that Rommey could cut NASA to a couple billion buget which I doubt. BUT
What if
The tea party wanted to cut NASA to ITS NACA bones? What would that NASA look like?
CUT SLS, CUT or morph Orion to something more useful, I don’t Know what to say about that big telescope. More R and D
But wouldn’t it be likely that the Tea Party could say cut all this waste and what do we have left?? What if the Tea Party could be sold to think cheap cots funding is theirs. The small business angle.
Sounds like possibilites here.
BUT Rommey sounded like Reagan on military so I guess I’m just being to hopeful. We have jerks around the world we need to fight. Hummm maybe we act pretty jerky our selves lots of the time.
Any body want to open up a Space suit/vehicle business?
The Tick Pilot
It’s curious George (no pun intended), but the ideas you attribute to the Tea Party I attribute to the Republicans.
As for your Space suit/vehicle business, I’ll put my resume together for the Canadian Rep job.
Steve
We have jerks to fight.. to the tune of 2 trillion dollars? Increase the miltiary budget by 2 trillion at the same time cut government revenue with tax cuts?
At this point in the 2008 campaign, didn’t Obama advocate gutting NASA to fund education priorities?
http://images.spaceref.com/…. Perspectives will change a bit once a President is in the White House.
Gut NASA? To be specific, what Obama proposed to do in the 2008 campaign was to push Constellation back five years, and use the money saved for education. Well, you know, once in the White House, he killed Constellation as a program, and a main element of it – a heavy lift launcher, is coming back around five years after when it was going to. Obama did pretty much what he said he would do, though it’s debatable whether the funds not expended on Constellation actually made it into education.
Welcome to reality.
Helen.
Personally, I liked his 5-year deferral proposal because the other part of it was to invest in necessary R&D (people seem to keep forgetting about that part of it). But one real plus is that it would have given us five years to come up with ideas for why we should have killed the stupid thing.
Steve
Amen. But what’s funny is how space advocates show such relief that Obama was never able to “gut NASA’ as it was feared by many that he was going to do. In fact, Obama ended up doing pretty much what he said he would do. He didn’t “gut NASA”, but essentially successfully delayed by five years much of a program that was on very difficult fiscal footing and, as the Augustine Committee later concluded, was essentially fiscally unachievable as originally presented.
Your point below, that a President Romney would cancel any effort to send humans to a NEO is precisely right in that (1) it’s seen as an Obama goal and (2) Romney’s alleged advisers Mike and Scott have the Moon firmly in their eyes. But that goal was picked up by NASA on the basis of what sounded like an offhand remark by Obama, and is rapidly turning into an unaffordable prospect anyway. I suspect that goal may well be largely abandoned before the election.
The space industry isn’t developed enough to be lootable, so of course Romney has no interest in it.
Ken,
Good point. But then again, I thought he was supposed to be Mr. super business builder. Can’t he build it up and then loot it?
Steve
Too much work to grow an industry. Easier (and more quickly profitable) to loot an existing one.
I can’t imagine what Romney stands to gain by trotting out space as a campaign topic. As to “destinations”, Newt branded renewed lunar exploration with a laughable premise. Human return to the Moon is now a live wire that no one dares touch. To Mike Griffin, going back to the Moon is all about being able to go farther. Why, Romney might wonder? As to near Earth asteroids, NASA is realizing that’s a LOT harder than anyone had expected. Stay tuned. That shoe will drop. Mike and Scott are hardly likely to argue. As to jobs and the economy, as said here in this forum, Obama’s efforts to commercialize space pretty much fit the bill, so why would Romney even bring it up? Obama, however, could get some mileage out of those efforts of his, as a symbol of federal investment in technology commercialization, perhaps with a nod eastward to the Research Triangle.
And don’t spout this crap about winning Florida. The GOP convention was in Florida, and it would have been a great place to nod eastward and make promises about or even allusions to the importance of future space efforts. But not even Rubio brought it up. The importance of space, at the convention, was just history (Neil Armstrong).
That Romney’s space policy is “TBD” is by design. It’s not just TBD to us. It’s TBD to him. He said himself that he would form a panel to advise him in the White House as to the future direction of NASA. That’s how you turn a “TBD” into a check-mark for managerial responsibility.
Helen,
Agreed. But what I still wonder about is that JOBS is a big issue for both parties, and space jobs are a fairly significant chunk of those that have been lost recently. Obama has at least paid lip service to this, in Florida and elsewhere, whereas the R’s seem to have completely ignored it, which seems to me like shooting themselves in the foot. When there are many minor issues and only few major issues during an election, no party can afford to ignore any issues, no matter how small. So the R’s are worse than quiet about space; they’re deliberately snubbing it.
Steve
Romney “said himself that he would form a panel to advise him in the White House
as to the future direction of NASA. That’s how you turn a “TBD” into a
check-mark for managerial responsibility.”
What nonsense! It is not responsible – managerial or otherwise – for one running as president to cowardly avoid an issue. Say what you want about Newt, Golden, or Obama – and I have said plenty of bad things – at least they had a plan.
Exactly right. Apologies that my saracasm wasn’t more evident. Checking boxes is what you do when you don’t have a plan, and box-checking is perceived as managerial responsibility, if not national vision. At least Obama had a plan, which started out as delaying Constellation for five years. He lived up to much of that plan.
It will be interesting to see how space policy is addressed in the Democratic convention. Being in the general neighborhood of a technology commercialization powerhouse – the Research Triangle – is an opportunity for the Dems to link space technology and space commercialization with national needs in, they’d be glad to confide, a very unspecific way.
The indisputable fact is the the Chinese are working to surpass the US and control space. We ignore this at our peril. Any space policy must address this and include human and robotic elements.
SPACE4US,
You clearly sound like a Republican. The fact is that EVERYBODY with space capability is working to surpass the US and control space. So what; it’s the nature of the game. Whether or not either your statement or mine is “indisputable” is another matter entirely; it’s an opinion, at best. But again, so what? Are you suggesting that there’s some imminent threat in this situation? If so, quit living in the Cold War era. If not, then what does it hurt? In the long run, the important thing is that somebody on the planet is sufficiently capable and experienced in space. It can stop being a foolish “Us and Them” situation any time we choose. It just takes one party to propose it and I think we’ll find that it won’t take too long for everyone else to sigh with relief and fall into line, including the Russians and the Chinese. This is not blind optimism on my part, but rather a willingness to see the world as it really is today instead of continually reliving the fears of the 1960’s. People the world round still do dumb things (like watch reality TV) but, on the whole, we’re all smarter than we used to be, and no longer ready to kill ourselves and each other over social/political concepts that mean little or nothing. Anyone’s contribution to space will benefit everyone in the future. The key is to be sufficiently respected to be a major partner, and that is accomplished by being a major contributor.
Steve
If only the winning candidate would read Wayne Hale’s recent blog “Space Exploration – A Presidential Priority” we might have a chance. I say winning candidate because at the moment the last thing on either candidate’s mind is space because that is not a topic that concerns voters as we quickly approach an election that is just weeks away.
After the election however the attention will move onto setting the agenda for their term as president, and almost certainly space will be one of the things that they will be looking at, either to cut, expand, or keep the status quo. That’s when we really need them to read Wayne Hale’s words and hopefully gain a better perspective of the long term importance of space policy.
Mike,
I have never managed, so far, to get copies of the actual wordings in the COTS and related contracts, or the commercial crew contracts. This being the case, I have worried about whether there might be nothing in these contract terms that disallows the government from unilaterally canceling the contracts at any time. I don’t discount the possibility that the Republicans, if elected, couldn’t simply decide that we can’t afford COTS and commercial space, for whatever logic they invent, and shut down the whole works, throwing away everything that’s been accomplished, in the name of “saving” money.
This would kill off more than half the of the companies that we group under commercial space (or new space) in short order, and severely cripple the rest. That would almost certainly eliminate all of the Soyuz alternatives for US astronauts, except perhaps Boeing’s CST (if they’re willing to bite the bullet). Even Orion would probably be canned (a canned can?) if the Republicans persist in their fiscal-issues-are-all-that-matter attitude.
I haven’t heard word one from the Romney camp about the Soyuz situation, something that seems to inflame even non-space politicians. I wouldn’t be surprised if Romney-Ryan selected to stay with what they would (mistakenly) see as a known cost instead of investing in alternatives.
As for the asteroid program, and by extension manned Mars, they would be canceled almost immediately for the simple reason that President Obama at some point proposed them.
I have no idea how bad things would be for NASA/space under a second Obama term, but I think it’s safe to say they’ll be worse under Romney. With either outcome, I think America’s recovery has to begin with an honest admission that it is no longer #1 and on top of the heap. Republican leaders still think the US is #1 in everything even as they whine about the debt and lack of jobs. I think their own delusions make it impossible for them to oust Obama, but then again, a lot of citizens are buying into those delusions. I find it sad.
Steve
If it would get them elected, Romney/Ryan would propose to send Clint Eastwood up in space (hmm, that would make a good movie). He could add an extra empty chair for Eastwood to talk to. That would make just about as much sense as anything else that comes out of their collective mouths.
More of the same? Please, please, anything but the Republican buffoonery.
C_D,
If you consider the issue to be important, but admit that you don’t care what the candidates say about it, then your vote means nothing. Even though it may not work as well as we would wish, the concept of elected representatives still has to be adhered to or it’s guaranteed not to work at all. Every vote should be made to count, or it’s all just a complete sham.
Steve
It will *very* interesting come October if SpaceX makes it’s timetable for the first contracted supply mission to launch to see what Romney AND Obama say.
*Very* interesting. Any care to put on their Johnny Carson “Carnac the Magnificent” hat and guess what will be said?
Why does anyone think that Obama delayed Constellation by 5 years? Orion and a slightly downsized version of Ares 5 continue in development and their schedules are pretty close to what was found out by Augustine. Fact is they are no more affordable or sustainable today than they were 8 years ago, and no closer to flight either. The big change is the elimination of Ares 1, which, based on how well Ares 1 had proceeded, probably sped up the program.
I seriously doubt space and NASA will be anything but an issue in the noise this year during the last 3 months of the campaign. That said, I would bet that SLS will not survive past FY13 regardless of who wins the WH for the next 4 years. I think Obama never really supported it but felt he needed to throw Florida, etc. a bone and Romney will look at it and the cost and return on investment and make the right decision, kill it.
Recent Mars rover landing is just another nail in the coffin to these megabillion billion dollar manned mission hardware. Spend the money to invest in the future so in 10 – 20+ years perhaps humans can really get somewhere and not just tread water in LEO (ISS) and try to get someone to Mars no matter what the cost and return on investment.
I calculated that if NASA’s budget were maintained as a percentage of GDP since we landed on the moon, then today the NASA budget would be $60 billion today, and the federal budget was in surplus then. Imagine where we would be today? Curiosity would definitely have company. Federal spending today is higher today, 24% of GDP compared to 19.4% then, but the economy today is well below capacity.
By comparison, defense spending during the vietnam war as a percentage of GDP would today be $1.3Trillion which is about what it is today. So the NASA budget hasn’t kept pace with defense.
Just think if President Kennedy would have said: “Free market capitalism provides better transportation systems than a big government top down command economy under communism. America wants to send Lunar geologist to Luna .. what is the per seat cost for a commercial ride?”
Just think where we would be today if NASA was still buying commercial seats to Luna? The 10th iteration? The 20th?
“Hmm, I didn’t get everything I wanted from Obama concerning the space program, so I think I’ll vote for a couple of guys who’ll sink the economy, make the rich richer and the poor poorer, start a war with Iran, take women back to the 19th century, lie every time they open their mouths, have nothing but contempt for science and scientific principles, whose energy policies will accelerate climate change, and who have no space policy at all.”
Gosh, sounds like a thoughtful, well-reasoned, sensible position to me….
Why does anyone think Romney would know which direction to head in?
The space program has not put forward anyone who has demonstrated the leadership to define the direction in which it ought to head. The closest was Griffin who defined something, but it was an untenable and unreasonable plan, because his plan was to re-create Apollo; why would Apollo have been the right model? It did not work 45 years ago when it was already in place.
If the people of the space program cannot figure it out and build a story and a reasonable plan, why would anyone else be able to?
Lack of US space program leadership, compounded by a NASA/prime contractor attitude that all we need is more money-a LOT more money, are the critical issues facing the program today. They’ve been getting money. Maybe not as much as they want, but they have done so little with the money they’ve been getting why would anyone believe them to give them a lot more?
Honestly, I’m a Romney-Ryan supporter (go ahead, flog me) but I really hope the campaign’s position ends up being to just stick with the current policy. It’s a good policy and NASA needs consistency more than anything else. Changing the “vision” with every new president has been as decimating to the space program as the funding shortfalls.
The united states has lost 17 million jobs since President Obama took office?
I didn’t write whatever comment was in there. Guess I’ll be changing some things.
penguinlover,
What is that supposed to mean? And why why did you post it under a “Romney’s Space Policy” thread?
Is there anyway to read the comments from the first version of this thread before the update. I missed a few of them.