(Space Politics) Houston’s delegation optimistic about Constellation

Link: http://www.spacepolitics.com/2010/03/20/houstons-delegation-optimistic-about-...

On Thursday morning eight members of the House from the greater Houston area held a press conference with Houston mayor Annise Parker (at the podium above, flanked by the House members), who was visiting Washington in part to lobby to project jobs at the Johnson Space Center that might be jeopardized by NASA’s plans to cancel Constellation. While Parker described her concerns about the economic impact to the city and region should those plans go through, the Republican and Democratic members who gathered with her expressed considerable optimism that Congress would move to preserve Constellation in the coming months.

“All of us, from Democrat to Republican, no matter geographically where we’re located in the Gulf Coast area, support the effort to save the Johnson Space Center and Constellation,” said Rep. Gene Green (D), who served as the master of ceremonies for the 40-minute press conference on Capitol Hill. “I happen to be a person that is optimistic,” said Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D). “I see the light at the end of the tunnel.” And Kevin Brady (R): “It is an uphill fight, but I become more optimistic each day, because together I believe we can get this done.”

The arguments they used in support of Constellation covered familiar grounds: concerns about local jobs, about the potential loss of inspiration for students to study science and engineering, and national security and loss of international prestige should Constellation not go forward. While the arguments were familiar, the rhetoric was amped up a bit. “If we do away with the Constellation project, American astronauts are going to have to hitch a ride into space, and that means we going to have to ride with the Russians or the Chinese, or maybe the Iranians,” said Ted Poe (R), referring at the end to a recent sounding rocket launch by Iran carrying several animals briefly into space. Al Green (D) contrasted efforts in Congress to generate new jobs with the potential to lose jobs at JSC under current plans. “We’re talking about shover-ready jobs that we want to bring online, when we have ‘already’ jobs that we ought to protect… Why lose the already jobs?”

The members, and Mayor Parker, gave mixed messages about one aspect of the new plan, its reliance on commercial providers to transport cargo and crews to low Earth orbit. “This is not an attack on private sector participation in spaceflight,” Parker said. “We believe that the private sector can add innovation and can be a partner, but we believe that the United States needs to be the lead in this effort.”

Some, though, raised various concerns about handing over human access to LEO to the private sector. John Culberson (R) likened it to privatizing the Marine Corps: “It is as inconceivable to me that the president would privatize the Marine Corps and hand over their job to the private sector as it is to imagine the closing down of America’s manned space program.” He later asked, “If the private sector exclusively owns access to space, who owns the technology? They’d have the right to sell it to any nation on the face of the Earth?” (Someone should probably acquaint the congressman with ITAR.)

The members were less specific, though, about how they plan to preserve Constellation. Jackson Lee did discuss some “logistics”, as she put it, including a meeting she had with Rep. John Spratt (D-SC), chair of the House Budget Committee, about this. “He’s asked for language that we can submit to be able to impact the congressional budget resolution,” she said. “That is an action item that is enormously important to get ourselves back in place.” She said she’s also provided White House staff with information about this during a meeting by the Congressional Black Caucus with President Obama.

She added that the she’s introduced legislation “to declare NASA as a national security asset”. This is a reference to H.Res. 1150, a resolution she introduced earlier this month with 16 cosponsors, mostly from Texas. The resolution includes, among other language, the claim that the “elimination of the Constellation program will present Homeland Security implications for cyberspace, critical infrastructure, and the intelligence community of the United States”. She also claimed that “right now the intelligence committee is having a hearing on NASA as an intelligence, or as an asset.” A check of the intelligence committee’s web site doesn’t turn up any hearings in the past week that would featured NASA, as least in their titles.

While the members of Congress exuded confidence that, one way or another, Constellation would be preserved, Parker sounded a little more pragmatic, focused more on preserving jobs and economic activity at JSC. “This is not an attack on the president, this is an appeal to the president and the administration to work with us,” she said. “I have confidence that the administration is considering what to do, whatever the final outcome may be, to make sure that there’s not an abrupt end and everything falls off the table.”