Keith Cowing covers last week’s House Science Committee’s hearing on the new space policy.
Surprisingly, the Representatives quoted seem to favor the policy (or at least did not express opposition to it). The only real controversies mentioned in the article had to do with the cancellation of the fourth Hubble servicing mission, and the potential for NASA center closures.
Both Marburger and O’Keefe argued that the new plan is in no way intended to be a “balloon” program, committing the fedgov today to spend hundreds of billions in some distant fiscal year, and would instead be conducted incrementally, adjusting to events along the way. By “events”, I take it they mean changes in the federal budget situation, maturation of new technologies during the program, success or failure of a particular milestone in the plan, etc. But one would hope that included with these “events” would also be the development of entrepreneurial alternatives, which NASA could employ to more quickly and cost-effectively achieve a given milestone (or a portion thereof) and move on to the next.
Those who believe that the plan is a “hoax” should take note of this — if they continue to dismiss the new vision for NASA, they won’t be able to exert any influence in the shaping of it to steer the agency in a direction more amenable to the budding alternative space industry. There is no guarantee that this new vision will be any less hostile to private space, but neither is there a guarantee that it must be hostile. Washing one’s hands of the whole matter, however, increases the odds that what comes out of the process will not be to one’s liking.