A Delta 2 rocket carrying the Soil Moisture Active Passive, SMAP, satellite launches early Saturday, Jan. 31, 2015 from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif. The launch is a three-year mission to track the amount of water locked in soil, which may help residents in low-lying regions brace for floods or farmers prepare for drought conditions. (AP Photo/NASA, Bill Ingalls) Photo: Bill Ingalls, HOPD / NASA
Photo: Bill Ingalls, HOPD
A Delta 2 rocket carrying the Soil Moisture Active Passive, SMAP, satellite launches early Saturday, Jan. 31, 2015 from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif. The launch is a three-year mission to track the amount of water locked in soil, which may help residents in low-lying regions brace for floods or farmers prepare for drought conditions. (AP Photo/NASA, Bill Ingalls)

In a speech Monday at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden called the agency's proposed budget a "clear vote of confidence" in NASA's employees. It looks more like a vote of confidence in the employees of SpaceX.

That's not necessarily a bad thing for Houston and the Johnson Space Center.

The space agency's $18.5 billion budget, proposed by President Barack Obama, adds $519 million in new funding, but much of that increase is dedicated to the commercial crew program ("Obama's NASA budget to fund rocket, spacecraft," Page A1, Tuesday).

After the Space Shuttle program was retired in 2011, the United States has relied on Russia's Soyuz capsules to ferry our astronauts to the International Space Station. We're charged more than $70 million per seat for the privilege. As part of building a new route into space, NASA has been contracting with SpaceX and Boeing to develop manned spaceflight capabilities that could deliver astronauts to the International Space Station. This so-called space taxi service will promote the domestic space industry while providing NASA with a cheaper route into low-Earth orbit. NASA has already relied on private companies for unmanned cargo missions to the International Space Station, and ferrying astronauts is the next step.

Shifting to the private sector for manned missions may seem like a threat to Houston's role as the home to NASA's astronaut corps, but this is more of a collaboration than a zero-sum competition.

SpaceX is currently building a launch site on the South Texas coast at Boca Chica Beach, where it plans to launch its Falcon rockets. Boeing already has contracted with Houston's Johnson Space Center to use its Mission Control for flights, a welcome development for that currently underutilized facility.

The promise of less expensive launches should also mean more room in the budget to sustain the International Space Station, a core duty of the Johnson Space Center. If Congress doesn't have room in the budget for humanity's only outpost beyond the Earth's surface, Houstonians can say goodbye to Mission Control as one of our city's key economic jewels.

The commercial crew program also lets NASA move beyond low-Earth orbit. After years of perfecting the technology and developing the expertise, now is the time for the private sector to fill in where NASA once broke ground, freeing up the space agency's engineers and scientists to focus on the next frontier.

This is where the proposed budget falls apart. As Chronicle reporter Eric Berger diligently laid out last year in his "Adrift" series, NASA has failed to fully dedicate itself to a new giant leap in manned space exploration. Despite rhetoric and optimism from the top, NASA lacks the focus and funding necessary for something on the scale of a moon shot. Berger's reporting has made clear that NASA's $4.5 billion exploration budget is far below what is needed to send an astronaut to Mars and return her safely. The agency's focus is also divided between a mission to Mars and plans to use a robotic spacecraft to put an asteroid near the moon, followed by a manned landing on the space rock.

Meanwhile, Houston's own Rep. John Culberson, a Republican who chairs the House appropriations subcommittee responsible for the NASA budget, has put his weight behind a planned probe to the Jovian moon Europa. That icy moon may be humanity's best hope for finding life beyond Earth within our solar system, but Culberson's advocacy does more to help California's Jet Propulsion Laboratory than Houston's Johnson Space Center.

With its current funding and priorities, NASA's next big thing won't be until 2017, when it holds another unmanned test launch of the Orion space capsule. Orion is supposed to get humanity to Mars, but NASA can barely get it off the ground without a multi-year turnaround time.

It has been more than 40 years since Houstonians left footprints on alien soil. It likely won't be another 40 before we do it again, but there's no guarantee those footprints will be accompanied by an American flag.

 

http://www.houstonchronicle.com/opinion/editorials/article/NASA-adrift-6060222.php

Ted Cruz to Oversee Obama-Gutted NASA

By Emily Zanotti on 1.13.15 | 1:31PM

This morning, a bunch of science-focused entertainers, whose greatest contribution to actual science involved starring in science fiction shows and occasionally chatting about their experiences on podcasts and Twitter, were losing their minds over Ted Cruz's appointment as chair of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee which will give him, among other responsibilities, oversight of NASA. According to said entertainers, unschooled in the basics of conservative and libertarian ideology, Ted Cruz will most certainly use his new power to gut the space program and retask all Federally-employed scientists with figuring out how dinosaurs could peacefully coexist with humans in the Garden of Eden just short of 10,000 years ago.

Now, while concern about Ted's plan for NASA may not be unfounded - after all, he could now very well use NASA's resources to track down the rest of his species on a faraway planet - the only evidence that even the Huffington Post could find of Ted's disrespect for NASA's mission is a speculative connection to Cruz's efforts to shut down the government in 2012, which gave most of NASA's employees an unexpected vacation. While it's fair to say that a brief disruption in funding might have lasting effects, it's also fair to say that NASA itself wasn't among Cruz's priority targets. In fact, if anyone has had a negative impact on NASA's long term viability, it's the Obama Administration, which has repeatedly gutted NASA programs in it's annual budget.

In 2012, for example, the same year Ted Cruz shut down the Federal government over budget issues, the Obama Administration's dropped NASA's planetary science funding by $300 million, which nearly killed NASA's Mars exploration program, despite 2012 successes. It is only because of Republican efforts in the House, specifically Houston-area Representatives who couldn't bear to see NASA's 2016 Mars mission jeopardized, that those budget suggestions were ignored. In fact, the cuts to Planetary Science have become so troubling that Bill Nye "The Science Guy," who has been a vocal opponent of anti-science rhetoric from "right-wing nutjobs" in the past, recorded a video open letter to Obama directly, chastizing the President and his administration for their utter callousness towards the importance of NASA's solar system-focused endeavors. The President didn't listen. His 2014 draft budget again eviscerated NASA's most promising programs.

When Ted Cruz receives the White House's NASA's budget suggestions for 2015, he'll find that they've recommended massive cuts once again: while Space Technology will get a boost (largely because of competition from commercial spaceflight), Earth Science funding will be cut by $56 million (and not even by "Climate Science deniers" in Congress!), Astrophysics will be cut by $61 million and Planetary Science will once again face a cut of up to $65 million (which even Slate considers a minor victory, considering that the White House continually wants to slash that budget even further). With NASA planning major leaps forward in planetary exploration for 2016, the balancing act will be very tricky.

So perhaps the concern for NASA's future is a bit unfounded, at least as far as Ted Cruz's potential machinations are concerned, especially given that Ted Cruz represents a state that has a proud heritage of spacefaring industry. Perhaps they should all be more worried about the President. If they can spare some criticism for him, of course.

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