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Commercialization

Upcoming ISS Hearing: Usual Suspects; Same Old Message (Update)

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
March 20, 2017
Filed under ,
Upcoming ISS Hearing: Usual Suspects; Same Old Message (Update)

House Science Committee Hearing: The ISS after 2024: Options and Impacts
“Witnesses:
Mr. William Gerstenmaier, Associate Administrator for Human Exploration and Operations, NASA
Dr. Mary Lynne Dittmar, Executive Director, Coalition for Deep Space Exploration”

Keith’s 16 March note: Notice that there are only two witnesses. The first witness is NASA’s AA for government human space activities. The second witness is the mouthpiece for large aerospace companies who build the big things that the first witness wants to build. No representation whatsoever has been offered to the commercial sector (SpaceX, Blue Origin etc.) that is supposed to be a partner with NASA in the utilization of space.
Maybe Congress is afraid to hear what the private sector is going to do without NASA’s help.
Keith’s 20 March update: The witness list has been revised to include:
“Mr. Eric Stallmer, President, Commercial Spaceflight Federation
Dr. Robert Ferl, Distinguished Professor and Director of the Interdisciplinary Center for Biotechnology Research, University of Florida”

NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.

6 responses to “Upcoming ISS Hearing: Usual Suspects; Same Old Message (Update)”

  1. Bill Housley says:
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    I’ll bet if NASA had an Earth Science program that helps find more places to drill for oil and gas it would have been fine.

    • fcrary says:
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      GRACE should be able to do that. They can pull out things like the depth of the water table, so I’d expect oil prospecting to be possible as well.

  2. Tally-ho says:
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    Wow, you’re right it’s just a lobby group for the usual suspects. From their website:

    FOUNDING MEMBERS (GOLD)
    Aerojet Rocketdyne
    Orbital ATK
    Boeing
    Lockheed Martin
    Northrop Grumman

  3. Johnhouboltsmyspiritanimal says:
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    How much has that shill for old space lined the coffers of the congress folks she is speaking in front of? It would be nice to see how many and by how much these folks are on the payroll of the deep space exploration lobbying.

    • Leonard says:
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      That “shill” is a widely respected member of the National Academies Space Studies Board, and a former advisor to a variety of new space companies as well as to NASA and the FAA commercial space folks. Her testimony strongly supported commercial space companies and warned about the perils of canceling ISS too soon for commercial space – despite the fact that some members of her organization might want to see it go sooner rather than later. Since she took over her current organization they have consistently supported full funding for commercial crew and cargo. In your black and white world, apparently because she ALSO supports SLS, Orion, JWST, O-Rex, Juno, WFIRST, and the ISS, she must be a shill. FYI she is not a lobbyist and her organization (a non profit) contributes nothing to Congress. But don’t let the facts confuse you.

  4. RocketScientist327 says:
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    Keith, there is no balance. Only dealing with absolutes for another two years. You are either with SLS or against it – you cannot have a reasonable middle ground.

    I am sorry but Mr. Smith, Mr. Posey, and Mr. Brooks have no real answers to building missions around EELV and derivatives. They don’t and they cannot. There are billions of dollars and thousands of jobs at stake with SLS and Orion at MSFC and JSC.

    We are rapidly now approaching the fulcrum where Boeing and Spacex can launch humans into LEO. If you want to drink the Elon Blue Koolaid then Spacex will “Zond it up” next year. You have multi-billionaires lining up to be a part of the new space economy.

    SLS will get its three flights and something will distract us like SLS never really happened. We will all be left to marvel what we could have done if we would embraced the utilization of EELV instead of wanting a monster rocket.

    It is all academic now.