Save Opportunity & Lunar Reconnaisance Orbiter

Please call Congress to save Opportunity and the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO). They need YOUR support as the President's budget request has zero money for both amazing missions. Opportunity costs just $14 million a year to keep alive and exploring Mars.

Oppy is entering a fascinating area of very old rocks and will be providing incredible new science. She must not be shut down to save a tiny fraction of the budget. The same goes for the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter which is also returning valuable science for a few pennies of the NASA budget.

Please call your Senators and Congressman and specify Opportunity and LRO must be specifically included in the budget. Call the Capitol switchboard at 202-224-3121. Target members of the Space Subcommittees and Appropriations Committees as well as your own Members.

Read the Planetary Society's excellent analysis, which shows how these two missions passed with high ratings in NASA's Planetary Science Senior Review:
http://www.planetary.org/blogs/casey-dreier/2015/0315-is-opportunity-a-mission-whose-time-has-passed.html

While these small sums do not require cuts elsewhere, were that the case, it would be better to delay or reduce funding for non-----space projects like the expensive new Central Campus and HQ buildings at KSC which will involve demolishing the historic Apollo-era buildings. Save constructing new buildings for a time when we have money to spare.

Join the Space Exploration Alliance's Legislative Blitz

You are invited to join the Mars Society, the Planetary Society, the National Space Society, ExploreMars and other major space advocacy groups in participating in the 2015 Space Exploration Alliance Legislative (SEA) Blitz in Washington, D.C. from February 22-24.

Invite your friends and come join space advocates from around the country to let Congress know that there is strong constituent support for an ambitious space program. You will find this experience to be exciting and rewarding. There will be an information/training session on Sunday, February 22nd, and Congressional visits on Monday, February 23rd and Tuesday, February 24th.

Register Here:
http://www.spaceexplorationalliance.org/blitz/
More info:
https://www.facebook.com/events/686839654763566/

If you cannot make it to the event please call your Congressman and Senators on February 23 or 24 and tell them you support space exploration and want space to be a national priority.

• Commentary: The Coalition to Save Manned Space Exploration endorses and participates in the SEA Blitz. We encourage every space advocate to take a couple days to go to DC and join the effort to educate Members and staff on the importance of having a bold and growing space program. Space has wide but very shallow support in Congress. Witness the declining (in real dollars) of the NASA budget at the time when China and other nations are dramatically increasing their investments.
  
  Neil deGrasse Tyson has popularized the call for at least 1% for space so we can actually establish bases on the moon and Mars. We should not be content to watch as our budget gets cut and the decisions are which program to cut to spare another, rather than how to best achieve the goals we want and how to accomplish them in years and not decades.
  
  During the SEA Legislative "Blitz," you will have the opportunity to talk to Members of Congress and their staff who are from "non-space" states and districts. They may not be aware of the tremendous benefits the space program has brought to their state or district. As examples; farmers' crop yields rely upon satellite mapping and modern weather forecasts regardless of whether there is space industry in their region, and senior citizens across the country live longer thanks to medical advances developed by the space program. Every state and district therefore really is a "space state and district!"
  
  Beyond the myriad economic, exploration and other direct benefits of the space program, or even our greater goals of colonizing space; there's an often overlooked strategic component: If the US does not continue our historic leadership in space (that means a US human presence on both the moon and Mars), we may well end up with the tyrannies on the world controlling space and denying us access in varying ways.
  
  Space so ruled would be highly unfriendly to commercial space ventures, and if we are to believe China would not exert such control, then they are setting a very poor example in trying to seize the international waters of the South and East China Seas and the islands and territorial waters which belong to other nations in that region.
  
  Space will not automatically remain open to everyone in today's increasingly dangerous world.

New NASA Congressional Committee Chairmen

Many of the 114th Congress Committee and Subcommittee Chairmen of interest for NASA and space have now been selected. 

Senate: Thad Cochran (R-MS) is the new Chairman of the Appropriations Committee, and Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) is the Ranking Member. 

John Thune (R-SD) is the new Chairman of the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee, and Bill Nelson (D-FL) is the Ranking Member. Ted Cruz (R-TX) chairs the Subcommittee on Space, Science and Competitiveness.

On the House side, the Appropriations Committee chairman remains Hal Rogers (R-KY) and the Ranking Member is Nita Lowey (D-NY). John Culberson (R-TX) replaces great space advocate Frank Wolf.

Lamar Smith (R-TX) remains the Chairman of the Science, Space and Technology Committee.

Sequestration will Have Large Impact on NASA

http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=43367

Sequestration will have a significant impact on NASA Programs with up to 8.5% of the budget lost with across the board cuts.  Congressman Steve Stockman whose district which includes  Johnson Space Center  stated while visiting Mission Control that Obama’s proposed sequester would be disastrous for NASA, which is already his punching bag,” said Stockman. “Not only can you increase NASA funding while balancing the budget, cutting spending, cutting taxes and reducing the debt, it’s the fiscally responsible thing to do. Every dollar spent on NASA produces real value for our economy and our defense.”  “NASA funding fulfills one of the few legitimate functions of government. Friday’s destructive explosion over Russia of a meteor we never saw, and the near-hit by an asteroid, should be a warning to Obama against further cuts to NASA,” said Stockman. “Cuts to NASA jeopardize our safety and security.”

Furthermore, a letter written by NASA administrator to Senator Barbara A. Mikulski which was published on Space Ref.com was in response to the impacts and seriousness of these cuts to NASA Programs.  Our response articulates impacts of sequestration relative to the President's FY 2013 budget request for NASA of $17,711.4 million in direct discretionary funding. NASA estimates that a March 1 sequester applied to the annualized levels in the current FY 2013 Continuing Appropriations Resolution (Section 101, P.L. 112-175) would reduce the total NASA funding level to $16,984.7 million in direct discretionary funding, or $726.7 million less than the President's FY 2013 budget request, and $894.1 million less than the annualized levels in the current FY 2013 Continuing Appropriations Resolution.  The letter continues to breakdown where large cuts will take place with Commercial Crew programs taking the largest cuts.  A $227.8 million sequester impact on Construction and Environmental Compliance and Restoration (CECR)  would have negative impacts of infastructure needed for NASA's Space Launch System (SLS), Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle,  Launch Services, Rocket Propulsion Test, 21st Century Launch Complex, Commercial Crew and Cargo, and Space Communications and Navigation (SCaN) programs.

Links to Story:

http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=43367

http://stockman.house.gov/media-center/press-releases/stockman-to-visit-jsc-outline-plans-to-stop-sequester-and-boost-nasa

Space X 2 Launch Set for March 1

                                                SpaceX 2 Launch Set for March 1
                           http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/structure/launch/index.html



Space X  Dragon Capsule

NASA and its international partners are targeting Friday, March 1, for the next cargo resupply flight to the International Space Station by Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX). Launch is scheduled for 10:10 a.m. EST from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

SpaceX's Dragon capsule will be filled with about 1,200 pounds of supplies for the space station crew and experiments being conducted aboard the orbiting laboratory.

Christmas at the Moon with Apollo 8

44 years ago on Christmas Eve, Apollo 8 was the first to orbit the moon.

As lunar sunrise approached, the astronauts gave their Christmas message, including reading portions of Genesis. Watch this 2 minute video, and imagine you are in 1968 and part of the largest (at the time) TV audience in history, hearing America's astronauts at the moon. You are seeing the moon through the window of the Apollo capsule. Let there be light!

Credit NASA

Let's not let missions to the moon remain only in the history books, but return to the moon in this decade so we can learn how to live on Mars--then let's go to Mars!

Harrison Schmitt: The Strategic Importance of Exploration to America

The Strategic Importance of Exploration to America by Apollo 17 Astronaut and Former Senator Schmitt 

Apollo 17 astronaut Harrison H. Schmitt next to a huge, split lunar boulder. 

Credit: NASA/Eugene Cernan

Major national milestones have occurred with the recent passing of Neil Armstrong, the first man to step on the Moon, and this month’s 40th Anniversary of Apollo 17, America’s last mission of exploration to that small planet. They provide an opportunity to examine how great ventures play a strategic role in the growth and survival of the United States. 

At critical times, America’s national leadership, including Congress under its treaty and funding powers, has actively recognized the strategic importance to the "common Defence" of major geographic expansion, exploration or technological development. The 1803 purchase of the Louisiana Territory from France, initiated by President Thomas Jefferson, constituted the first of these fortunate undertakings by a new nation. Jefferson, a scientist himself, dispatched the Corps of Discovery Expedition under the command of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark to explore these new holdings. In addition to thwarting the ambitions of other global powers, this exploration began the assimilation of Western resources and opportunities into the future of the country.

President James Polk and Congress followed Jefferson’s lead with the 1845 annexation of Texas and the 1846-48 acquisitions of California and the New Mexico and Oregon Territories. Polk’s remarkable accomplishments in a single term effectively completed the geographic definition of what would become the 48 contiguous States of the United States of America. The final southern boundary in Arizona and New Mexico came soon after with the Gadsden Purchase in 1853-54 under President Franklin Pierce. The early exploration of these rich lands fell to the engineers and scientists of the Army Corps of Topographical Engineers. Attached to Army expeditions traveling through the American West and Southwest, explorers such as John C. Fremont and William H. Emory documented the natural resource and agricultural value of Polk’s decisions. All Americans hoping to improve their lives and those of their families now had more opportunities to do so through settlement and economic growth.

Then, in the midst of the challenge of preserving the Union, President Abraham Lincoln showed Americans that he also understood the strategic importance of national expansion and development. In 1862, Lincoln initiated the building of the Transcontinental Railroad and the accompanying transcontinental telegraph, adding geographic, economic and political strength to the Northern cause. As Lincoln originally intended, the Golden Spike that formally joined the Central and Union Pacific Railroads forever tied together the culture, economics, and agricultural and mineral resources of the country. Following Lincoln's assassination and before the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad, President Andrew Johnson supported Lincoln's Secretary of State, William Seward, in the purchase of Alaska from Russia in 1867. Seward's opportunistic foresight has long paid dividends both in natural resources and strategic defense.

As in the case of the Transcontinental Railroad, the necessities of national defense and the expansion of trade and commerce led President Theodore Roosevelt to take actions that led to the construction of the Panama Canal. Even though the Canal did not directly involve the continental United States, Roosevelt had recognized the strategic importance of moving naval units and commercial shipping quickly between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. As the demands of two World Wars demonstrated, this clairvoyance paid great dividends in preserving democracy throughout the globe. It also stimulated the development of many new technological capabilities, such as large earth-moving machines and electric motors that contributed to the growth of the American economy and the well-being of people throughout the world.

In the 1950s, the oceans again drew the attention of Presidents and the Congress. Harry S. Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower, with congressional acceptance of their recommendations, began and expanded the Nuclear Navy starting with the USS Nautilus. These initiatives recognized the potential of nuclear submarines and their missiles, hidden in the vastness of the oceans, to deter the aggressive ambitions of the Soviet Union.

Finally, also in the post-World War period, national security drove America’s most recent expansion, this time away from the global confines of Earth and into space. The six landings on the Moon in the 1960s and 70s grew out of the realization by both President Eisenhower and President John F. Kennedy that space would be a critical arena of Cold War competition between freedom and socialism.

A year and a half before President Kennedy would set the Nation on a course to the Moon, Eisenhower directed NASA to begin the development of what became the Saturn V Moon rocket. Without a jump-start on development of the Saturn V, my generation could not have met Kennedy’s goal of “landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to Earth” before the end of the decade of the 1960s. Such a delay would have emboldened the Soviet Union to continue to press forward with its own Moon landing program.

Critical threats coincided with the initiatives taken by American leaders through the centuries. No less critical national and international threats exist today. The current strategic interests of the United States require its political leadership to recognize the imperative of regaining the lead in deep space exploration if American global influence is to remain relevant here on Earth. Deep space exists as the continuing geographic frontier for Americans and, indeed for humankind.

*****

Harrison H. Schmitt is a former United States Senator from New Mexico as well as the 12th man to set foot on the Moon as the Lunar Module Pilot and scientist-geologist on the 1972 Apollo 17 Mission. He currently is an aerospace and private enterprise consultant and a member of the New Committee of Correspondence.  Visit his website: http://americasuncommonsense.com