Space and energy highlighted by candidates — week of 10 August 2008

The week started with energy remaining the top issue between the two candidates, and ended with the John McCain campaign focusing on events in Georgia, while Congress reconsiders NASA’s relationship with Russia. Barack Obama took a vacation as the Olympics drowned out most political coverage. On Tuesday McCain released a new space policy document that calls for using the International Space Station as a laboratory. Both candidates pledged not to politicize science if they reach the White House.

Energy crisis? In a speech late on Friday in Jackson, Ohio , McCain called upon Congress to act. “In the face of a severe energy crisis, the Congress decides to go on a five-week vacation. When I’m president of the United States, I will call the Congress back into session and tell them to act and not to leave town, to take their vacation or their pay raise until they address this energy crisis,” he said.

The call echoed a current energy talking point of the Republican Party, which held an “out of session” debate on energy in the House of Representatives with bemused members of the public.

McCain claimed Obama opposes both storage and reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel: “He opposes offshore drilling immediately, and he’s out of touch.”

The speech did not refer to moves last week by Obama and the bipartisan “gang of 10" senators to compromise on offshore drilling, on the understanding of increased investment into renewable energy. The compromise legalization, however, is under threat from conservative Republicans as more Democrats sign on to the proposal.

McCain’s speech was also slightly incorrect, said Obama’s campaign headquarters, in that Obama does believe in nuclear waste storage, but he wants safety and security issues addressed first.

Calls that the US is in an energy crisis quieted during the week as the price of oil dropped to $114 for a barrel of crude and as the US dollar strengthened against other currencies. The topic is likely to become a bigger issue during the winter when consumers discover the high price of heating oil.

McCain’s Senate votes became an issue to New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman who pointed out that McCain didn’t attend a crucial vote on July 30 for S. 3335 that would have extended the investment tax credits for installing solar energy and the production tax credits for building wind turbines and other energy-efficiency systems. The renewable energy bill was defeated for the eighth time.

“In fact, John McCain has a perfect record on this renewable energy legislation. He has missed all eight votes over the last year — which effectively counts as a no vote each time. Once, he was even in the Senate and wouldn’t leave his office to vote,” says Friedman. “Barack Obama did not vote on July 30 either but he did vote on three previous occasions in favor of the solar and wind credits.”

Clean CoalOne of the few areas of job growth in Ohio over the last five years has been in the coal industry, so it was no surprise that in a speech in Lima, Ohio, McCain said that the future of energy was through the development of and investment in clean coal technology. “We can invest money in acquiring that technology, developing it, and creating thousands of jobs here in the heartland of America,” he said.

Obama attacks McCain’s recordWhile McCain was in Ohio, Obama was giving a speech in Elkhart, Indiana . “Our dangerous dependence on foreign oil has been thirty years in the making, and was caused by the failure of politicians in Washington to think long-term about the future of the country. What Senator McCain neglected to mention was that during those thirty years, he was in Washington for twenty-six of them.” Obama called for a million hybrids to be on the road in six years:

“But the truth is, [off-shore drilling] won’t seriously reduce our energy dependence in the long-term. We simply cannot pretend, as Senator McCain does, that we can drill our way out of this problem. Breaking our oil addiction will take nothing less than a complete transformation of our economy. It will take an all-hands-on-deck effort from America--effort from our scientists and entrepreneurs; from businesses and from every American citizen.”

“There are three major steps I’ll take to achieve this goal. First, we’ll commit ourselves to getting one million 150 mile-per-gallon plug-in hybrid cars on our roads within six years. And we’ll make sure that the cars of tomorrow are built not just in Japan or China, but right here in the United States of America. Second, we’ll double the amount of our energy that comes from renewable sources by the end of my first term. That means investing in renewables like wind and solar power, and we’ll also invest in the next generation biofuels. Third, I will call on businesses, government, and the American people to meet the goal of reducing our demand for electricity 15% by the end of the next decade. This is by far the fastest, easiest, and cheapest way to reduce our energy consumption -- and it will save us $130 billion on our energy bills.”

“I won’t pretend these goals aren’t ambitious. They are. I won’t pretend we can achieve them without cost, or without sacrifice, or without the contribution of almost every American citizen. We can’t.”

“In just a few years, we can watch cars that run on plug-in batteries come off our assembly lines. We can see shuttered factories open their doors to manufacturers that sell wind turbines and solar panels that will power our homes and our businesses. We can watch as millions of new jobs with good pay and good benefits are created for American workers, and we can take pride as the technologies, and discoveries, and industries of the future flourish in the United States of America. We can lead the world, secure our nation, and leave our children a planet that is safer and cleaner and healthier than the one we inherited.”

Yucca MountainOn Saturday, the Obama campaign started airing television advertisements in Nevada that criticized John McCain for favoring the Yucca Mountain repository while not wanting any nuclear waste in his own home state. McCain’s energy plan calls for 45 new nuclear reactors to be built over the coming decades, but does not clearly state what would happen to the nuclear waste generated by the new plants. Once opened, waste from the existing 103 reactors in the US will quickly fill the Yucca Mountain repository.

NASA woes and McCain’s space policyThe sudden attention on Russia’s incursion into Georgia highlighted that when the space shuttle retires in 2010, NASA will be relying on Russia to supply the International Space Station (ISS) . Congress is in the process of providing NASA a waiver to a 2000 law forbidding government contracts with nations that help Iran and North Korea with their nuclear programs, as Russia has done. NASA administrator Michael Griffin was hoping that the waiver would be passed by 30 September, when Griffin has to inform the Russian’s how many Soyuz spacecraft NASA will need. It takes three years to build a Soyuz spacecraft and, with more delays to NASA’s replacement to the shuttle, Ares I, the agency is running out of supply options to the ISS.

As NASA hasn’t set a price with the Russians, the shorter the timeline to the shuttle’s retirement, the higher the price Russia could charge for the supply missions. The chances that the waiver could pass looks slim says Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL.), which means the issue will likely end up on the desk of the next president.

Meanwhile, in Space Review, Ferris Valyn discusses Obama’s recent call for re-establishing the National Aeronautics and Space Council (NASC) . Valyn believes that this proposal “has the potential to have a major positive impact on space policy.”

On Tuesday McCain released a two page space policy document that calls for

• Ensure that space exploration is top priority and that the U.S. remains a leader;
• Commit to funding the NASA Constellation program to ensure it has the resources it needs to begin a new era of human space exploration
• Review and explore all options to ensure US access to space by minimizing the gap between the termination of the Space Shuttle and the availability of its replacement vehicle
• Ensure the national space workforce is maintained and fully utilized; complete construction of the ISS National Laboratory
• Seek to maximize the research capability and commercialization possibilities of the ISS National Laboratory
• Maintain infrastructure investments in Earth-monitoring satellites and support systems
• Seek to maintain the nation’s space infrastructure
• Prevent wasteful earmarks from diverting precious resources from critical scientific research
• Ensure adequate investments in aeronautics research.

How these policies would be implemented, and the cost involved, are not discussed in the document.

Paul Guinnessy