It seems our representatives here in Colorado have suddenly noticed that the cancellation of Constellation (and Orion in particular) might mean the loss of jobs in their districts. Which you’d pretty much expect…the only surprise here is that it took them longer to get around to it than it did the delegations from Texas, Florida, Utah, etc. Colorado’s ineffectual Senators, Invisible Mark Udall and “Senator Who?” Michael Bennett, have yet to weigh in, but then it’s a tossup as to whether anyone actually cares what they have to say or even remembers that the state has a pair of Senators in D.C..
Mike Coffman, my Congressman and the one in whose district most of Colorado’s LM facilities happen to be located, paid us a visit yesterday to discuss the efforts to stay the cancellation. He is a signatory to the letter calling for a halt to the cancellation based on language in the FY2010 budget forbidding NASA from cancelling Constellation or initiating new programs – Congressmen from the space states are threatening to use the 1974 Impoundment Control Act to reverse the new policy, at least through the end of the current fiscal year.
The meeting consisted of management giving Rep. Coffman a short briefing on the history of Constellation (and in particular Orion), what it is and is intended to do. Lots of the standard rah-rah stuff: space is cool and cutting-edge, it’s a national security issue (engineering skill and innovation), and has spinoffs to the broader economy (thankfully, Tang and velcro were not mentioned). The usual.
Then the Congressman took questions. Here again, I was a disappointed by my coworkers and their attitude of entitlement when it comes to the program. Most of the questions were about what we might do to help save our jobs by persuading Congressmen to preserve the Constellation program as-is, unchanged. This focus on job security is understandable among people who might in a few months be looking for new employment in a crappy job market, but it seems awfully short-sighted in that it ignores the potential for the new policy (if actually implemented and not just happy-talk from the Obama administration) to create a much bigger industry (and thus more job opportunities) than we currently have in manned space.
There were only a few really novel questions. In one case, some guy asked earnestly whether the violation of the law implicit in the cancellation (see above) meant that Congress could now impeach Obama. Coffman seemed to get a kick out of the absurdity of this question, and kept making joking references to it afterwards (fortunately, no mention was made of the birth certificate – this was eye-roll inducing enough).
My own question focused on the commercial alternatives, and was the ONLY one which seemed to favor them. I pointed out that the new policy provides “subsidies” (bad choice of words, but not entirely inaccurate) to help new companies enter the market for cargo and crew delivery to station, which was a good thing and something exceptionally surprising to see coming from the Obama administration, and then asked whether he and the other Congressmen fighting against the cancellation would consider keeping and supporting this element of the new policy. (Which is a watered-down expression of my views on the matter, but the best I could do extemporaneously and in that specific environment.) In his answer, Rep. Coffman asserted that his first concern was preserving constituent jobs in the district, and that meant keeping Orion and Constellation going — other considerations, like new business possibilities, would have to take a back seat. Which I found disappointing from someone who claims to be a capitalist, but not surprising from someone who is a politician. Implied in his response was the belief that any of the new jobs created by the shift to commercial services would not be in CD-6, or Colorado generally, which is surprising given the new engineering work and increased launches that Tech Center-headquartered ULA would see under the new policy.
The last memorable question was a response to mine. Someone asked, his voice quavering with either nervousness or anger, if the entire policy shouldn’t be thrown out, asserting without making any supporting argument that privatization was wrong, that it was wrong wrong wrong to privatize the space program. Oh, and we shouldn’t privatize the space program…because that would be wrong…somehow. (Never mind that privatization is not even on the table.) I don’t know if his objection was merely an emotional response to the threat to his own job, or whether he was some sort of die-hard statist/Von Braunian who considers space a sphere of activity in which only the government should be permitted to operate. Or possibly both.
Posted on February 19th, 2010 under Constellation, Economics, Orion, Space Policy. Tags: capitalism, Coffman, Constellation, nasa, Obama, Orion, policy. Comments: 2
