What's a conference?

So, by now most NASA civil servants have heard the news or at least heard rumors about the news that one of the provisions included in the NASA Authorization Act of 2008 eliminates or severely restricts all conference travel and pretty much any support for conferences from NASA. It's probably not going to end up being quite that bad, but until the lawyers figure out what exactly defines a "conference" NASA has, for now at least, put out a moratorium on using 09 funds for anything that even vaguely resembles a conference (though apparently air shows are perfectly fine).

My initial reaction to this was WTF? Why would Congress want to prevent NASA scientists from doing their job? As scientists, our job is to figure things out and then communicate our results with the rest of the community and the world, that's how science works. Yes, we publish our results in journals, but conferences are a vital part of the process. We get the opportunity for immediate feedback, we get exposed to new ideas, and find people to collaborate with.

I could not figure out what the heck Congress, or specifically, Sen. Tom Coburn who wrote this provision, was thinking until I stumbled upon this article. It talks about "NASA’s long-standing practice of honoring retirees and contractors with lavish award ceremonies costing millions of dollars a year" and it refers to these parties as "conferences". No wonder Congress is upset, I agree that that is wasteful spending, but it's not a conference. A conference is hundreds or thousands of scientists or engineers gathering together to discuss science. We don't get "gourmet food and wine receptions," we are lucky to get a mid-morning coffee break.

(BTW - who are these special retirees? In my office at NASA HQ, when someone retires we take up a collection to buy a card and maybe some cake and chips and salsa and then we gather in the conference room for an hour to wish them well.)

Anyway, I'm wondering who screwed up here, Congress for rushing this bill though and not catching this, or us, the science community for failing to properly explain what we do, how we do it, and why it's important?

Whatever happened, it's going to be a tough year for civil servant scientists, they may have to find some "symposia" or "workshops" to attend this year instead of conferences. It's going to be tough on a lot of other folks too unfortunately, most of the NASA-sponsored funds for conferences, at least in planetary sciences, went towards student travel to those conferences. I hope that denying these opportunities to students was not Senator Coburn's intention.

NASA night at DPS

There is a great rundown of NASA night at the DPS (Division of Planetary Sciences) meeting up at the Planetary Society's Blog. Emily provides lots of insights into the new SMD crew at NASA headquarters; sounds like things have really turned around in the relationship between the community and HQ since Alan Stern took over.

NASA to form Lunar Science Institute

According to NASAwatch, Alan Stern announced at the DPS (Division for Planetary Sciences) meeting yesterday that NASA plans to create a NASA Lunar Science Institute (NLSI) patterned on the NASA Astrobiology Institute (NAI).

The initial selection would be of 4 to 5 lead teams at a cost of $1-2 million each, and like the NAI, the NSLI would be managed by NASA Ames Research Center.

This is pretty exciting news, and in conjunction with the new LASER (Lunar Advanced Science and Exploration Research) R&A program and last year's LSSO (Lunar Sortie Science Opportunities) program, the participating scientist program for LRO, not to mention an increase in lunar-related grants through several of NASA's other R&A lines (PGG, Cosmochem, PIDDP), the lunar community is sitting pretty good right now.

Which is important, and well timed, because a large percentage of the lunar community hail from the Apollo era, and frankly are approaching, or have already reached, retirement age. By the time we get back to the Moon in (theoretically) 2018, they will be gone and we will be in desperate need of a few good lunar scientists. Now, scientists don't just sprout out of nowhere, it takes a good 10 years of training (grad school plus postdocs) to produce a decent scientist, so by priming the system now with a small investment in R&A, NASA is actually showing some forethought and is right on schedule to maintain a viable lunar community for the next era of exploration. Way to go NASA (or, rather, Alan Stern), it's nice to see someone thinking beyond the next election cycle.

Former Karl Rove Staffer Moves to NASA as Mike Griffin's White House Liaison

Meet Jane Cherry, NASA's new white house liaison...

A little background via Daily Cos:
Jane is apparently the child of Bush loyalist parents who were big names on the Arkansas GOP scene. After graduating college in 2004, she has had a distinguished "career" working for the White House since way back in 2005, starting as a lowly staff assistant and working her way up the ladder until sometime later in 2005 when she become Associate Director of Political Affairs under Karl Rove where she remained until last week when she was appointed to NASA.

According to the Daily Kos article, under Rove, "Jane was involved in the US Attorney removal scandal, and is on the record (page 31) as such. And Jane had one of those infamous gwb43.com secret e-mail addresses. Jane and Monica Goodling discussed Goodling's "research" on people."

I have to agree with NASAWatch on this one:

First NASA gets George Deutsch, another young political appointee. We all remember what he did. Then FEMA's former Deputy Director Patrick Rhode (a pal of Michael Brown's) is given a hiding place at NASA. Now, an overtly political White House staffer (it was her job to be overtly political) who is under at least one cloud with regard to ethics - suddenly lands at NASA where she gets a $60,000-plus pay raise.

Is NASA turning to a dumping ground for young Bush loyalists of questionable capability? Based on her political shenanigans at the White House, what could she possibly bring of value to NASA? Right now NASA needs to be steering clear of politics and focusing on the tasks at hand. Bringing young political hacks to NASA will only create problems.

Some budget relief for NASA?

Via NASAwatch...

Senators Hutchison, Landrieu, Mikulski and Shelby Pledge to Introduce NASA Funding Amendment to the Fiscal Year 2008 Commerce, Justice and Science appropriations bill to provide $1 billion in additional funding for NASA when the bill reaches the Senate floor.

http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=22965

What is up with the Lunar Robotic Program? - Update

Well, it looks like Marshall is keeping it's Lunar Robotic Program office. According to an article in today's Huntsville Times (via NASAwatch), "The 32-employee Lunar Precursor Robotic Program office will be included in the NASA budget at $20 million a year for the next six years. Also, the office will continue to manage two planned NASA lunar probe missions and begin a new assignment: mapping the moon to find sites of scientific value, Shelby's office said."

I don't always agree with Keith Cowing, but he's right on the money here:

Reversing the decision could become a problem for Griffin and his successors, and "it opens up their decisions for further second-guessing," said Keith Cowing, who runs NASAWatch.com.

"It makes a joke of any leadership on Mike Griffin's part if he makes a decision and then he reverses it because Senator Shelby or (Rep. Bud) Cramer tell him to back off," Cowing said. "How can NASA administrators actually manage if they constantly have Congress reversing decisions they don't like?"

It's hard to blame Mr. Griffin though, it's not like he had a lot of options here, when Congress tells you to do something, you can't just say no. And it wasn't just one congressman, Senator Shelby convinced Senator Mikulski and Representative Mollohan, the chairs of the respective appropriations committees which oversee NASA's budget (i.e. people you don't want to piss off). I don't think Mr. Griffin had any choice here, I think the blame lies with Congress who shouldn't have made the request in the first place. Congress' job is not to micromanage. Does Sen. Shelby really think that he knows better how to get us back to the Moon than NASA does?

What is up with the Lunar Robotic Program?

In the beginning, the plan was to go to the Moon, first with robots, then with people. An extensive precursor program (the Robotic Lunar Exploration Program, or RLEP - pronounced R-Lep) was planned following the model put forth by the Apollo program with it's Lunar Orbiter and Ranger missions. There was to be first an orbiter - the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), which is on track and should launch in 2008 - followed by a lander, probably to a polar location, maybe even a permanently shadowed region, followed by another orbiter, then another lander.

Then people started doing the math, and realized we couldn't afford all that and it was pared down to the LRO and 1 lander. The program's named was also changed for no apparent reason from RLEP, to the Lunar Precursor and Robotic Program (LPRP) and the program office was moved to Marshall (from Ames, and before that Goddard).

Along the way, cost estimates for the lander started to balloon from an initial New Frontier's Class mission to something in the several billion dollar range from the rumors I heard. So the lander was scrapped all together and we were told it was not needed, as Scott Horowitz, NASA's exploration chief, made perfectly clear at the Lunar Science Meeting in Tempe a couple months ago when he said that all he really needs is "a damn good map," which LRO will provide.

With no "program" to speak of, the LPRP program office at Marshall was to be shut down and management of LRO (and it's tag-along package LCROSS) was to be moved to HQs. But then Congress got involved, or specifically Sen Shelby (R-Al), who wanted to keep a little piece of the Moon in his backyard and the 32 jobs that go with it (although in reality, none of those people would have been laid off, just reassigned to other duties). Sen Shelby was apparently able to convince Sen. Mikulski (D-Md.) and Rep. Mollohan (D-W.Va.), who respectively chair the Senate and House appropriations panels with NASA oversight, that this was important and last month they wrote a letter to Administrator Griffin proclaiming their displeasure over the closing of the Marshall office and directed $20M "be provided to continue planning for a potential LPRP mission during the remainder of the year." (See the recent article in Science.)

Mr Griffin response reiterated the "all we need is a damn good map" mantra:

“I do not need a robotic lander to reduce risks for the human landings,” Griffin said. “Everybody who has carefully looked at that has said you don’t need it.”

Griffin said such a mission, while “it would be nice to have,” is not necessary. “Right now, the budget is such that I have to focus on what’s necessary,” he said, adding that the decision to cancel the lander was not taken lightly.

“The lander wasn’t the first thing I removed from the program. It was the last thing,” he said.

It's not immediately clear how NASA will respond to the congressional directive, or more importantly, what they are going to do with that $20M, since there is no sign that they are going to change their mind about sending a lander.

I have a few problems with this situation.

First of all, I'd really like to see a lander. For science reasons obviously, but also because I'm not convinced we know enough about the conditions at the poles to start putting up a permanent base there. In particular, the electrostatic conditions in a place like the rim of Shackleton crater (the currently favored site) which is always near the terminator, may make life very hard to deal with for the astronauts and their equipment, or maybe it will be fine, but we don't really know and a lander could definitely help us find out. There are many other unknowns and risks that a lander could help us reduce, biological experiments on the reactivity of the soil and the radiation environment, for example. Deciding whether these things are "necessary" or just "useful" is above my pay grade, as they say, but if it were up to me, I would say necessary.

Secondly, I think it's ridiculous that Congress is trying to dictate to NASA how it should be run at this level. Oversight is one thing, I am a firm believer in oversight, but this is not oversight, it's practically an earmark. NASA so strapped for cash right now that we are darn near begging in the streets, and now they are going to have to cough up $20M for a project that is never going to go anywhere.

I realize that many of you are probably thinking about now that my problem #2 contradicts my problem #1 - I want NASA to fund the stupid lander, but I'm mad at Congress for forcing them to keep the program office open. What I really want is for Congress to fund NASA at an appropriate level for them to accomplish all the things that Congress has asked them to do and to let NASA figure out the best way to do it. And I want NASA to stop basing their decisions on whether or not we can afford it and instead decide the best course of action and do it, even if it takes a little longer. NASA often uses the phrase "pay-as-you-go" but they don't believe it. Of course, Congress keeps putting timetables on things (Ahh, Congress and their timetables), like phase-out of the shuttle and when the CEV has to be ready that force NASA's hand. So they are both in my doghouse.

Going to the Moon on a budget is hard, but going to the Moon unprepared will be disastrous.

LPSC part 2 - NASA night

Sorry about dropping off the face of the Earth for a week. I had the flu, but I'm doing much better now, thanks for caring. LPSC is over of course, but I wanted to add some more comments about the week, lest you think it's all about the shoes. Last Monday LPSC hosted what is known in the biz as "NASA night" when the bigwigs from headquarters come down to give us the lay of the land and listen patiently while we berate them for not giving us enough money.

Last year, NASA night almost broke out into a giant brawl after Mary Cleave spoke about how she didn't understand why we were angry after the announcement of major cuts to Research and Analysis (R&A) funding. Good times. I think we must have scared her off, she who is retiring in April, didn't show her face in Houston. Instead we were treated to Jim Green, the new head of planetary sciences, who was honest and sympathetic and actually listened to what we had to say. It was incredible.

Here are my notes from the meeting:

* The National Academies has created a "Planetary Performance Assessment Committee" to evaluate hoe well the Planetary division is addressing strategies, goals, and priorities from academy reports (this is a requirement of the NASA Auth Act of 2005)

* The current round of Discovery and Scout AOs are on track, with 3 full missions and 3 missions of opportunity selected for further study.

* M3 is on track to launch on Chandrayaan-1

* Phoenix and MSL are on track for '07 and '09 launches, respectively

* Dawn's launch has slipped to June '07.

* JUNO will launch Aug '11

* MGS is almost certainly unrecoverable. RIP.

* There will be "concept" funding for outer planet missions

* The Deep Space Network (which is still seriously underfunded and heading for trouble) has been transferred to SOMD - in theory this is because SOMD deals with all of the other communication systems, so this is just consolidating that, but I think it is a really stupid move because the Space Ops folks aren't going to prioritize it the same way that we do.

* The NEO program has been transferred to ESMD, I'm not really sure if that's good, bad, or neutral in the long run, but it draws a clear line between studying asteroids for planetary protection purposes vs. science.

* Some of the 15% cut to R&A funding from last year has been recovered (about 5.8M - though it's not clear where exactly that money came from). It will be focused towards some of the programs that were hardest hit by the funding crunch (e.g. astrobiology, instrument development, and Mars fundamental research).

* It was noted that R&A currently accounts for ~14% of the budget, which is not even close to the 25% that the National Academy decadal survey recommends. Let's hope that comes up in the new "Planetary Performance Assessment Committee" meetings.

* There was some cheers for the new rapid notification policy whereby those who have been chosen to receive grants (or not chosen) will be told within a few weeks after the decision is made, rather than months, sometimes approaching a year, that it used to take. Now only those proposals on the bubble will have to wait. Sometimes all it takes is a little common sense, people.

* There is one exciting new pot of R&A money, for a program called LASER (the acronyms are really ridiculous) - Lunar Advanced Science and Exploration Research. These funds are for basic lunar science, exploration-related applied science, data analysis from PDS data, and even for digitizing or acquiring old datasets. It will be co-funded with ESMD at a rate of ~2-3M/yr. Not bad.

Those are the highlights. All in all, a productive meeting and a hopeful sign of things to come.

There was a second meeting on Wednesday in which Doug Cooke was supposed to come and talk about Lunar stuff, but he was sick (there was a lot of that going around), so John Connolly stepped in at the last minute and did a fine job of covering the hq-speak slides (very pretty with little substance). It was pretty basic stuff about Constellation and returning to the Moon. There wasn't much new information for me, but I bet that the scientists who don't pay attention to much besides their own science probably learned a lot. Impressively, Wendell Mendell came up after John and, also using Doug's slides, gave a short history of the Constellation program. I think Wendell could talk for 30 minutes using anybody's slides, now that's a talent.

No new money for NASA in the 07 Budget

Because the Republican congress failed to do their job last year and didn't pass the 07 budget, the new congress was forced to deal with that on top of the 08 budget (not to mention learning how to be in charge again, hiring new staff, moving offices, welcoming new members, oh, and there's that whole Iraq War thing happening). So, they decided to punt - rather than carefully considering, debating and passing the budgets from the various approprations committees, or even rolling them together and passing one massive "omnibus" budget bill, they decided to extend the continuing resolution through the end of the year so they can focus on next year's budget. This basically continues the 2006 budget through 2007, which in theory isn't so bad, everybody loses out on inflationary increases, but otherwise it maintains the status quo. The problem is that NASA and NSF and NIST and many other science agencies were due for big increases this year, NASA for the Vision and the rest due to the whole compettitiveness inititive.

Congress had said that they were going to "allow some flexibility" where it was needed, giving us a little hope, and in fact, NSF and NIST both got small increases over the '06 numbers ($335M and $50M, respectively), but unfortunatly, NASA got nothing.

Senator Mikulski said in her press release that it was unfortunate, but it was the best they could do:

“While I would have liked to have increased funding for NASA, there was simply not enough extra funding available for us to do so. Within the limits of NASA’s FY 06 operating plan, we added an extra $460 million to exploration while protecting other critical NASA programs in science and aeronautics. With only seven months left in this fiscal year, I believe NASA will be able to manage their programs in exploration with minimal impact to the overall schedule.

It's going to be a tough year for NASA, and frankly, the '08 budget is not looking that much better.

Alan Stern named associate administrator for SMD

NASA has finally announced the replacement for Mary Cleave who is retiring in April as AA for the Science Mission Directorate. Dr. Cleave was trained as a biologist and an engineer, but became an astronaut almost straight out of grad school (her Wikipedia entry). She was never really accepted by the science community, which is likely one, but certainly not the only, reason for the strained relationship between the greater NASA science community and HQs for the last couple of years. She felt we were constantly whining and we felt we weren't being listened too, it was a bad situation all around.

I think that Dr. Cleave did her best in what is a thankless job, especially during tough budget years, but I for one, will not be sad to see her go.

Dr. Stern is an interesting choice for replacement. I don't know a lot about him besides what was in the press release, but he is clearly a scientist and an active member of the planetary community, so he gets points for that. (Although according to his Wikipedia entry, he was very nearly an astronaut, but I won't hold that against him.)

Alan is from Colorado, a graduate of the Univ of Colorado, he is currently executive of the Southwest Research Institute's (SwRI’s) Space Science and Engineering Division. Which, I believe, is in Mark Udall's district. Mark being the chair of the House subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics. So they should get along well.

He is also the PI on the New Horizons mission to Pluto. I know that it's going to be a while before we get to Pluto (July, 2015), but even so, doesn't that seem like a conflict of interest? I wonder if they will make him relinquish that title while he is at HQ.

Can Dr. Stern make a difference at HQ? Can he do anything to improve communication with the science community and erase some of the bitterness that has been built up the last few years? I hope so.

NASA's 08 budget announced

NASA announced it's 08 budget yesterday. You can find the transcript of Mike Griffin's comments here and the pdf of the actual budget is here

NASA will receive a 3.1% increase over last year's budget request, which is not terrible, it could be worse, of course, but it's not good, especially considering how NASA got the shaft in the continuing resolution. NSF, by contrast, got a 7% increase. Ever since the President skipped over NASA in his ACI (American Competitiveness Initiative), NASA has become something of the redheaded stepchild of science when it comes to funding.

In a press release, the chair of the House Science and Technology Committee, Bart Gordon said:

"Once again, NASA’s budget request is not sufficient to do all the agency is being asked to do. Exploration and human space flight are important long-term missions for the agency and our country. So are NASA’s core activities in science and aeronautics. Yet this budget request and its five-year funding plan do not provide the funding needed to ensure the future health of any of these initiatives. I fear we may be heading for a train wreck if no corrective actions are taken."

On the other side of the Hill, Sen Mikulski was also disappointed:

“The space program needs presidential leadership, and we expect to see that leadership in the budget. Unfortunately, we don’t see it in this year’s budget yet again. I fought to have NASA included in the American Competitiveness Initiative, but the White House refused. NASA’s work should be the hallmark of any national program to promote America’s competitiveness,” said Senator Mikulski. “I will keep fighting for a balanced space program – science, exploration and aeronautics – all leading the way for innovation and discovery.”

Times are tough, and not just for science; exploration, aeronautics, education, everything NASA does is getting squeezed.

A few good things came out of the budget announcement though:
* GPM (Global Precipitation Measurement mission) is moving forward, thank goodness, because the TRMM satellite that it's replacing is running out of fuel, and those measurements are important for things like accurate hurricane predictions.

* The next-generation LANDSAT is also moving forward after a lot of fits and starts, though to slowly to avoid a data gap, but still.

* A new funding line for Lunar Science is finally being started - this was something I tried to push for when I was on the Hill, but I could never get any traction, everyone said it was too early, we didn't need it yet, but I guess they finally felt it was time.

* For those who care, the SOFIA mission has been reinstated and is back on track.

* The budget runout allows for increases to the previously estimated costs for purchasing commercial cargo and crew services to support the ISS, which I take as a sign that they are really serious about pursuing COTS, which is kinda exciting in the big picture. I really hope that some viable commercial options materialize.

* Finally, one of the best things to come out of yesterday's announcement, in my humble opinion anyway, it sounds like they are going to readjust some of the Full Cost Accounting procedures. - "Our full cost accounting practices created a complex allocation of overhead costs which disproportionately inflated the operating costs for our research centers." - ya think?

So that's a quick look from my perspective, I haven't really had time to comb though the nitty gritty numbers yet. What do you think? Is NASA going to muddle through, or is the "train wreck" just ahead?

On the Senate Side...

Apparently, the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee also organized their subcommittees yesterday.

The former "Science and Space" subcommittee is now the "Space, Aeronautics, and Related Sciences" subcommittee. And there is now a subcommittee called "Science, Technology, and Innovation" which presumably will cover the rest of science. The space subcommittee with be chaired by Bill Nelson (FL), with Kay Bailey Hutchison (TX) as the ranking member, so they just flip-flop their roles from the 109th.

Science Subcommittee Chairs Chosen

The Science Committee announced today the subcommittee chairs for the 110th Congress and we also found out that it has reorganized it's subcommittee structure. Not only have they added a 5th committee dedicated to Investigations and Oversight, but topics have been redistributed in the other four committees as well. Below are the new subcommittee mastheads I designed last weekend (yeah, I still do a little pro-bono work for the science committee now and again)and my personal take on the new structure and chairs:


The only committee that remains untouched is the Space and Aeronautics subcommittee. That committee even retains Mark Udall (CO-2) (who was ranking member last session) as it's lead. Mark did a great job as ranking member and I'm sure he will continue to be a strong advocate for space despite the loss of his science legislative assistant (she abandoned the Hill for law school last fall). His new LA was an intern on the science committee staff while I was there, so I know firsthand that she is fabulous. Her background is in science, though more environment than space, but I have no doubts that she will get up to speed quickly. While Mr. Udall is generally supportive of the President's vision, his record shows that he is also very concerned about the recent cuts in science and aeronautics. He has pushed hard for the Hubble repair mission and for terrestrial remote sensing. His district is home to the University of CO as well as Ball Aerospace and other aerospace industry.


My Congressman, Nick Lampson (TX-22)has been named chair of the subcommittee on Energy and Environment. Yay Nick! Nick's record shows that he's somebody who gets things done and I think that he will really have a chance to shine here. As much as I love Mr. Udall, I am a little disappointed that Nick didn't get Space, but I'm sure that this new subcommittee will be a very important one in this congress. And I'm sure that Nick will still have a voice on space issues as a member of the space subcommittee.


Brian Baird (WA-3) will take the helm of the Research and Science Education subcommittee. Science Education is a topic that has traditionally been handled by the Research Subcommittee, so I don't think a lot is changing here except the name. (which just reflects the weight that Chairman Gordon's give to importance of education). Rep. Baird replace Darlene Hooley, who was ranking member in the last session and is not returning to the Science Committee this year. Rep. Baird is beginning his 4th term and I belive that this is his first chairmanship, so congrats Mr. Baird!


David Wu (OR-1) has been selected to chair the Technology and Innovation subcommittee. I imagine that this encompasses what's left of the former ETS (Environment, Technology, and Standards) subcommittee now that Environment has joined forces with Energy. I suppose this committee is also a reaction to all of the competitivness discussions from last Congress, which I'm sure are going to continue. I'm glad they broke up Environment, Technology, and Standards. It was too long to say and nobody outside of the Committee know what the heck ETS was. Mr. Wu may be most familiar to you from his recent declaration of "faux Klingons in the White House" but he did a good job as the ranking member of the ETS subcommittee, and I think he'll do just fine as chair.


Finally, Brad Miller (NC-13) is the chair of the new subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight. Mr. Miller is beginning his third term in the House and I believe that this is also his first chairmanship. I'm interested to see what this committee does. Personally, it seems to me that the best oversight can be accomplished by those who know the most about an issue, i.e. the committee that covers that issue. I'm not sure that you will get better oversight by distancing the problem from the committee that handles the agency with the problem. Like I said, I'm not really sure how this is going to work, but I'm sure they had reasons for doing it, so I hope they prove me wrong. I am positive that we will see more oversight under the Dems than we did with the Republicans in power, so do I hope that this committee will be busy.

Many returning, and some new, faces on the House Science Committee roster

Democratic committee members were officially assigned to the House Science and Technology Committee yesterday. Quite a few are returning members, though there are a few new names as well.

Returning from the 109th:
* BART GORDON, Tennessee (Chairman) - a good guy who really cares about science, he will do a great job leading this committee.
* Jerry F. Costello, Illinois
* Eddie Bernice Johnson, Texas
* Lynn C. Woolsey, California
* Mark Udall, Colorado - a heck of a mountain climber, and a real advocate for environment and space issues, also the former ranking member of the Space Subcommittee (and personally, one of my favorite congressmen).
* David Wu, Oregon - who is definitely not a Klingon and was the ranking member of the ETS Subcommittee.
* Brian Baird, Washington - who you may have seen holding his own (and holding Stephen's sausage) on Better Know a District earlier this week.
* Brad Miller, North Carolina
* Daniel Lipinski, Illinois
* Michael M. Honda, California - was the ranking member of Energy.
* Jim Matheson, Utah
* Russ Carnahan, Missouri
* Charlie Melancon, Louisiana - from what's left of the district just south of New Orleans.

Notably not returning:
Sheila Jackson Lee and Al Green, both from the Houston area, which is a bit of a loss for JSC (though we did pick up Nick!), plus I really liked Al Green (We shared a moment - the first speech I wrote that was read on the House floor, I wrote for Al, who was enjoying his first shot at controlling floor time. It was for some silly and forgotten resolution congratulating the women of NASA for their contributions to the space program, but it was kind of a big moment for both of us). Also Darlene Hooley, who was ranking member of the Research subcommittee.

Returning from the 108th:
* Nick Lampson, Texas - My own congressman from Texas' 22nd district, I'm so excited to have Nick back on the science committee. I expect great things from him.

New Faces:
* Gabrielle Giffords, Arizona - A new congressman, she comes with a business background and is quite proud of her environmental record.
* Jerry McNerney, California - Another newbie,who has no biography up on his webpage yet, but comes from a district east of San Fransico, not too far from NASA Ames.
* Steven R. Rothman, New Jersey - Now in his 6th term, he sits on Approps as well, and also considers himself an environmentalist.
* Mike Ross, Arkansas - In his 4th term, he is a Blue Dog and also sits on Energy and Commerce.
* Ben Chandler, Kentucky - This is his 2nd term, he's also a Blue Dog, and has a seat on Approps, which is pretty good for only his 2nd term.
* Baron P. Hill, Indiana - A newbie with no bio up on his site yet
* Harry E. Mitchell, Arizona - This newbie is a former gov't/economics high school teacher and Mayor of Tempe.
* Charles A. Wilson, Ohio - A newbie with a business background who also sits on Financial Services and is strongly committed to public education.

And there are still two vacancies yet to be filled (sadly Science is not really one of the more competitive committees).

On the Republican side, members returning from the 109th Congress include:
* RALPH HALL (Texas), Ranking Republican Member - a former Democrat, he flipped sides with the Republican revolution
* Lamar Smith, Texas
* Dana Rohrabacher, California - Former Reagan speechwriter and avid surfer, he's very outspoken and big on using space for defense purposes.
* Ken Calvert, California - was the chairman of the space subcommittee
* Roscoe G. Bartlett, Maryland
* Vernon J. Ehlers, Michigan - one of the two physicists in Congress, and he won't let you forget it, but generally a nice guy who's really passionate about science.
* Frank D. Lucas, Oklahoma
* Judy Biggert, Illinois - former chair of the energy subcommittee
* Jo Bonner, Alabama
* Tom Feeney, Florida
* Bob Inglis, South Carolina
* Michael T. McCaul, Texas
* W. Todd Akin, Missouri
* Randy Neugebauer, Texas
* Mario Diaz-Balart, Florida

Returning from previous Congresses:
* F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., Wisconsin - he's been in Congress since 1978 and even served as Chairman of the Science Committee from 1997-2000.

New members:
* Phil Gingrey, Georgia - Entering his third term, he is a pro-life OB-GYN with an undergraduate degree in chemistry.
* Brian P. Bilbray, California - served in Congress from 1994-2001 and returned in 2006, he is interested in energy and environmental issues.
* Adrian Smith, Nebraska - A newbie with no bio posted yet.

The Republicans also have one vacancy still to be filled.

As far as Committee staff, I noticed that Dahlia Sokolov, one of my fellow fellows, and former officemate, successfully made the leap from Republican staff to Dem staff. She'll be working with the Research Subcommittee, on oversight of research and education programs at the National Science Foundation. Yay Dahlia!

Subcommittee chairs were supposed to be named this week, but so far, no word on that front.

More news on NASA's 07 budget

Well, it's not looking good for science. This article in Aviation Week talks about the funding situation and Griffin's priorities for making up the 1/2 billion in shortfalls due to the continuing resolution situation.

"We will find what we believe are the lowest priority half-billion dollars in content, and we'll extract it, across the agency," he says, stressing that does not mean programs at the core of the redirected U.S. space program as defined by President Bush almost three years ago.

"I will do everything I can to keep Orion and Ares I on schedule," he says. "That will be right behind keeping shuttle and station on track, and then after that we'll fill up the bucket with our other priorities."

None of this is surprising of course, and Griffin really has no choice, there just is not enough money to go around. The important thing is that the money we have for science is spent wisely. Griffin's plan, as he's said many times in the past is to target "...a fairly new, lower priority effort where not a lot of money has already been invested, and by stopping it now you can react and not have to spend future money that you know you're not going to get." This, in the abstract, is the right plan, but reality is never quite so simple.

The truth is that from the day he took over, Griffin has already been facing an impossible task, expected to accomplish too much with too little. Unfortunately, the continuing resolution issue has seriously compounded his problems this year. I wish him luck.

Going Metric on the Moon - update

So NASA apparently made the official announcement yesterday that we are definitely going metric on the Moon. Space.com also has some comments on the topic.

What does the continuing resolution mean for NASA?

For those of you that don't follow the congressional budget on a regular basis, you may not be aware, but last year's Congress failed to do their job, passing budgets only for Homeland Security and the military, the rest of the budget bills were punted for the next Congress to deal with. This is not that unusual, Congress often has trouble completing all the budgets before the end of the year. Some year's (like 2005) they end up lumping everything together into one huge "omnibus" bill that no one has time to read or evaluate, but everyone votes for because they want to go home. Other years they pass a "continuing resolution," or CR, that sort of puts everything on hold until after the holidays, keeping all the budgets at last year's levels until things are sorted out. That's what's happened this year, but the CR expires on Feb 15th and the new congress has decided to do something somewhat unusual, they are just going to extend it until the end of the year, effectively skipping over the 2007 budget so they can get to work on the 2008 budget.

The way a CR works is that it requires that funding be held at either 2006 levels or the level of the President's 2007 request, which ever is lower. This basically maintains the status quo and keeps spending levels down, which in theory doesn't sound so terrible. The problem here is that beyond the simply inflationary increase that we are missing, NASA and most non-NIH sciences were due to get a pretty hefty bump this year thanks to the Vision for Space Exploration and all the Competitiveness Inititive stuff.

This article in the NYTimes gives a pretty good summary of what the current budget delays means for science research and talks about some of the specific projects that are being threatened. There are only two sentences about NASA: "Missions at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration are also threatened, with $100 million in cuts. Paul Hertz, the chief scientist at NASA’s science mission directorate, said potential victims included programs to explore Mars, astrophysics and space weather." I'm not sure where exactly that $100M figure comes from, I assume that's only from SMD (the Science Mission Directorate), not all of NASA, I'm pretty sure the total NASA shortfall is quite a bit more than that, not even including the extra $1B that the Senate was trying to get added to the '07 budget.

My fear is that NASA will compound these science shortfalls by stealing even more from SMD to feed the ESMD Monster (the new Vision stuff). This sort of budgeting is not just a short term problem that can be fixed next year. The truth is that many of NASA's finest scientists are in "soft money" positions. They rely largely or entirely on grant money to feed and clothe themselves. Those grants are becoming harder and harder to get as R&A (research and analysis) funds are drying up. If they don't get grants, they leave the field, and chances are, they aren't coming back. I see up and coming scientists (myself included) realizing that spending more time writing proposals than doing science and constantly worrying about where the next paycheck is going to come from is not really the lifestyle we were looking for when we signed up.

Going Metric on the Moon

It was announced last month at the 2nd Exploration Conference in Houston that we are going to use metric units on the Moon. This was a big announcement, a decision that was not made easily or lightly, one that will have far reaching ramifications.

Surprised? If you are a scientist, you are probably shocked to hear that NASA is not already using SI units. If you are an engineer, you're probably not at all surprised. And if you are neither, you probably don't think much about units unless you're in Europe and trying to figure out what outfit to wear if the daily high is 23 degrees C.

The Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act of 1988 actually requires (with certain exceptions) all Federal Agencies to use the metric system in their procurement, grants and other business-related activities by the end of 1992 (that's 15 years ago!), and yet NASA is still measuring things in feet and inches much of the time. This act, which ammended the Metric Conversion Act of 1975, was yet another attempt by the Federal government to coax America towards Metrication by leading by example. Unfortunately, it turns out that NASA and it's contractors are just as resistant to change as the rest of the American people.

What is wrong with us? We all know the metric system is better. As a scientist, I use the SI units all the time and yet, if someone asks how tall I am - I'm 5'4", if you want that in meters, I need to get out a calculator. I remember the big push towards metric when I was a kid; my brother and I even had this great board game (Metricat10n) that taught us all the SI prefixes. But it all kinda fizzled out didn't it?

For NASA, one of the issues is the mixing of the two systems. Some things are done in metric, some are still in English units. That can lead to serious problems like the highly publicized and embarrassing loss of the Mars Climate Orbiter in 1998 where NASA and most of the contractors worked in metric units but one contractor, Lockheed Martin, provided data in pound force seconds instead of newton seconds. Oops.

I was not party to the discussions leading up to last month's big decision about the Moon, but the rumors I heard suggested that several of NASA major contractors were strongly against metric. Switching is too expensive. Period. If forced, they would do it, but they would only make changes "on the back end" - i.e. they would do everything in English units and then add a line of code at the end that would convert the values into SI. Extra lines of code, of course, add extra risk, something NASA really hates.

I'm very happy that NASA has decided to stick to their guns on this one. I hope the changes are not just cosmetic, I hope they really push the contractors to do more than add code. The transistion may be difficult, but it will be worth it in the long run, it will ultimately be safer, and more efficient, for us, and for our international partners (if we're serious about having them), and for the poor astronaut who only has to carry one set of wrenches when he heads out the airlock to fix that stupid solar panel again.