This is not a NASA Website. You might learn something. It's YOUR space agency. Get involved. Take it back. Make it work - for YOU.
TrumpSpace

White House Releases "America First National Space Strategy"

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
March 24, 2018
Filed under
White House Releases "America First National Space Strategy"

President Donald J. Trump is Unveiling an America First National Space Strategy
“AMERICA FIRST AMONG THE STARS: President Trump’s National Space Strategy works within his broader national security policy by putting America’s interests first.
– The Trump administration’s National Space Strategy prioritizes American interests first and foremost, ensuring a strategy that will make America strong, competitive, and great.
– The new strategy emphasizes dynamic and cooperative interplay between the national security, commercial, and civil space sectors.
— The United States will partner with the commercial sector to ensure that American companies remain world leaders in space technology.
– The new strategy ensures that international agreements put the interests of American people, workers, and businesses first.
– The National Space Strategy prioritizes regulatory reforms that will unshackle American industry and ensure we remain the leading global provider of space services and technology.”

NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.

34 responses to “White House Releases "America First National Space Strategy"”

  1. Johnhouboltsmyspiritanimal says:
    0
    0

    Transform to more resilient space architectures: We will accelerate the transformation of our space architecture to enhance resiliency, defenses, and our ability to reconstitute impaired capabilities.

    Well that leaves SLS and Orion out.

    • ThomasLMatula says:
      0
      0

      Not surprising as that is targeted more at military space and civilian systems like comsats and remote sensing the nation is dependent on. If NASA doesn’t go to Moon and Mars it is sad, but it won’t damage the economy or endanger national security.

      It does require ULA to up its game on military space to the SpaceX and fits with DARPA space funding focus.

    • Bill Housley says:
      0
      0

      Not necessarily. This language seems to me to support both for now.

  2. fcrary says:
    0
    0

    Ok. But that’s a bit vague. For example, does “ensure[ing] that international agreements put the interests of American people, workers, and businesses first” mean any international involvement with the lunar gateway thing will be off the critical path and international partners will be very clearly junior partners? As far as I can tell, this press release talks entirely about what the Trump administration thinks this new strategy will accomplish, and doesn’t say anything about what the new strategy actually is.

    • SouthwestExGOP says:
      0
      0

      We have seen a press release and not the actual document – so this is more than a bit vague. So yes this is what they hope to ensure and not at all how they want to do it. And the enormous risk is that this will put the American worker last and not first – last to benefit from space exploration.

    • ThomasLMatula says:
      0
      0

      Good policy statements should allow some flexibility in interpretation. In terms of the ISS the different members beside Russia are clearly “junior” as is often the case with robotic missions so it’s not really that different other policies. What it does is just state the oblivious.

      LOP-G with clearly be the same as ISS since only the U.S. has systems under development to build and reach it’s orbit with adequate payload. As for the “Moon Village” ESA is proposing, it is clear they expect the US to take lead in funding even though the combined GDP of its members is larger than the US GDP. If ESA expects to be an equal partner they should expect to spend the same on it as they want NASA to spend.

      • Michael Spencer says:
        0
        0

        There are several ways to assess the value of this ‘Moon Village’, and to compute relative contributions. Money is one.

      • fcrary says:
        0
        0

        Flexible is one thing, but being policy statements need some content. They have to flow into something concrete, as in “We will accomplish this goal by doing X.” Statements like that should be separate from the policy statement, so you have the flexibility to change them without changing the policy. But the policy still needs to be specific enough to constrain the following implementation plan.

        In terms of international cooperation, Orion is one example where the program isn’t clearly “America First.” The ESA is on the critical path, since they’re building the Service Module for EM-1. Being on the critical path makes them more than a junior partner. I wonder what that means for the EM-2 and later Service Modules.

      • tutiger87 says:
        0
        0

        You think this is a good policy statement?

  3. SouthwestExGOP says:
    0
    0

    First, we are getting slogans and not policy (as fcrary says in his comment). The U.S. already partners with the commercial sector but how would this ensure anything? Will we transfer technology to them or get it from them? There are so many questions that this raises.

    This does sound like a more nationalistic approach – will that discourage our many international partners? In Shuttle and ISS we saw vibrant teams where our partners provided ideas, talented people, hardware, etc etc etc. Will they continue to do that – and help us “put the interests of the American people” first?

    Sounds like the international community might just go work with Russia and China, to get mutual benefit.

    • fcrary says:
      0
      0

      I’ve never worked with them, but I understand the Russian and Chinese space programs also have a somewhat nationalistic approach. It isn’t clear if this new “America First” strategy would be more nationalistic than they already are. That hasn’t ruled out collaboration, it’s more a basis for negotiating who does what, what is paid for by someone else versus supplied as a contribution.

      If you look closely, sometimes the US probably has gone too far in terms of international cooperation. The InSight mission (the Discovery mission due to be launched in May) was criticized for being a NASA mission, where JPL would build and operate a spacecraft, to place mostly European instruments on Mars. The American contribution to the science payload really is fairly limited. That caused NASA to change the rules for future Discovery missions and limit international contributions to the payload to one third of the cost. In a sense, that new rule is an example of a pre-Trump, “America First” policy which hasn’t noticeably hurt international cooperation.

      • SouthwestExGOP says:
        0
        0

        I have worked a LOT with Russians – on Shuttle/Mir, ISS, etc and they have always been more nationalistic than cooperative. They have always been eager to get as much as possible out of cooperation. Working with people who have worked with both – for instance Hans Schlegel, people are very eager to work with the U.S. and eager to stay away from Russia. The book DragonFly was very enlightening.

        Now are we going to tell our allies to go work with Russia?? I hope not.

      • Spaceronin says:
        0
        0

        FWIW I believe that the InSight mission is a legacy of the EXO Mars effort. If you recall NASA unilaterally pulled the plug on that one ( and a few others including LISA) due to JWST eating the budget. This had many consequences on the European side of things as contracts had already been signed on the basis of the NASA participation and vision for mars: One example was they had to go to the Russians as partners to fill holes left by NASA another was that they had to source launches for missions that are still carrying NASA payloads. This sort of policy language is not really helping.

        • fcrary says:
          0
          0

          I don’t think the timing works for InSight and ExoMars. The US didn’t bail on ExoMars until early 2012, and the initilal InSight proposal was submitted in 2010.

          NASA dropped out of LISA in 2011, at the same time as they canceled their half of the Europa Jupiter System Mission. That ended up really annoying the Europeans. EJSM was supposed to be a NASA Europa orbiter operating in parallel with an ESA Ganymede orbiter. ESA had to majorly restructure their mission, and turn it into the current JUpiter ICy moons Explorer (JUICE). Then, in 2015, NASA announced that they had changed their minds (well, a certain congressman changed their minds for them), and the US would be doing a Europa mission. But the timing was different and probably wouldn’t operate in conjunction with JUICE. Quite a few scientists in Europe (and the UK) really felt like we were jerking them around.

          • Spaceronin says:
            0
            0

            The whole shared Mars strategy was more than a decade in the making. So InSight probably did fall into it. The unilateral undoing of that strategy was indeed later. That was my point. As a result of that unmaking ESA are also left hauling NASA payloads to Mars. The whole thing is a mess but it is swings and roundabouts: InSight gets sent there and almost all the incoming generation of ESA Mars missions are, at the very least, carrying NASA repeaters for the rovers or also instruments. None of which are directly relevant to the specific ESA mission objectives. In fact LISA Pathfinder also hauled NASA tech to space even though NASA had bailed on LISA. It even preferentially disembarked its own comparable tech, ensuring the US tech earned that ever valuable sobriquet “flown”.

      • the guy with the cat says:
        0
        0

        Were the rules changed before or after InSight’s primary payload caused a 2-year launch slip? A serious question, no sarcasm implied.

        • fcrary says:
          0
          0

          The rules were changed before the problem with the seismometer. There were a bunch of complaints about the Discovery 12 rules, by no means limited to international involvement. After the 2012 selection of Insight, NASA put out a call for white papers on proposed changes. Some of those suggestions, including limits in international involvement on the payload, were incorporated into the 2014 call for proposals which led to Discovery 13 and 14 (Lucy and Psyche.) Even rumors about the InSight problem didn’t start circulating until mid 2015 and nothing was publicly announced until December, 2015.

  4. Shaw_Bob says:
    0
    0

    Why should Europe, or the other potential partners of the USA in space, actually trust the USA to deliver? There is a long history of the US letting partners down or simply withdrawing from agreements, and both the volatility of Trump and the lack of actual Dollars won’t make the US any more credible.

    • Michael Spencer says:
      0
      0

      Yep.

      One of the (most?) unfortunate effects of rabid partisanship is the insistence on trash talking the previous administration and any accomplishments.

      From there, rationalizing radical shifts are simple. And, from that perspective, obvious

      • John Thomas says:
        0
        0

        You talking about Obama trashing Bush or Trump bashing Obama?

        • SpaceHoosier says:
          0
          0

          Rabid partisanship is displayed from both sides of the aisle and sadly, has now become common place with each successive administration.

        • Vladislaw says:
          0
          0

          The republican party since Truman and the conservative southern democrats left the democratic party and formed the dixiecrats and the republican party has been soaking of the deplorables ever since..

  5. Bill Housley says:
    0
    0

    It says military, commercial, and civil space.

    I’m stuck on the word “civil”. What is “civil space”.

    • Paul451 says:
      0
      0

      What is “civil space”.

      Old Space. They used the same break-up in the committee panels. “Civil” (then “Civilian”) space had Boeing/LM/ARJ/etc. While “Commercial” space had SpaceX/BO/etc.

    • Natalie Clark says:
      0
      0

      From John Hopkins webpage:
      The Civil Space Mission Area makes critical contributions to the missions of its major sponsor, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), to meet the challenges of space science. We conduct research and space exploration, and we develop and apply space science, engineering, and technology, including the production of one-of-a-kind spacecraft, instruments, and subsystems. We focus primarily on the science discipline of space physics and planetary science. Through our programs, we’re acquiring new knowledge as a result of scientific research and exploration, developing practical applications of new knowledge for societal benefits, and creating new paradigms for space mission implementation.

    • fcrary says:
      0
      0

      “Civil” is a very badly chosen adjective to mean “non-military or national security government” space. It might be derived from “civilian”, since NASA is frequently described as the US civilian space program.

  6. Homer Hickam says:
    0
    0

    “You will enter the continent of Europe and, in conjunction with the other United Nations, undertake operations aimed at the heart of Germany and the destruction of her armed forces.” Until you see some equivalent of this directive to General Eisenhower during World War II from the federal government, Homer’s number one axiom for space remains intact, i.e. “The United States federal government has essentially zero interest in human spaceflight.”

    • mfwright says:
      0
      0

      This comment reminds me on CSPAN2 BookTV where Benn Steil talked about how the Marshall Plan worked where similar efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq have not. Mainly because US provided security (to prevent communists and Soviets from taking over) otherwise businesses will not invest. And to bring Germany back to producing goods for Europe (instead of a handout, we have them take ownership). Not sure this parallels with a global space plan but I wonder. Though Gen. Marshall had his name on that plan (there were other key players) maybe those in command had skills to make it happen. Like Eisenhower where most effort was keeping several nations (parties) organized to the same goals.

  7. sunman42 says:
    0
    0

    Strong and competitive are good, no argument there. But “great” is in the eye of the beholder. In my book, a great spacefaring nation in the 21st century aims for great things by partnering with international partners whenever possible.

    • Michael Spencer says:
      0
      0

      You (and I) are on the wrong side on this one. Although the current digression into nationalism will be short-lived, effects will take decades to repair.

      • ThomasLMatula says:
        0
        0

        The key to remember is that its competition that creates technological progress in the long run while cooperation creates stagnation. China was one single empire so innovations advanced slowly if at all because of a lack of competition. By contrast, because Europe used to be a group of nations in competition technology advanced rapidly which is why they ended up dominating the world.

        But then just look at the pace of advancement in space during the space race of the 1960’s versus the post Apollo Soyuz Test Project that marked the end of the space race. Its only advancing now because there is a private space race underway.

        I prefer progress to stagnation anytime.

        • Vladislaw says:
          0
          0

          Innovations advanced slowly? .. do you mean in modern times under communism or over it’s entire history?

  8. Saturn1300 says:
    0
    0

    “AMERICA FIRST AMONG THE STARS Well, Pres. have said go to the Moon, Mars and beyond. I guess the next Gun Old Party(GOP) Pres. will trump Trump and say go to the next Galaxy. This sounds like fake news. Something the St. Pete Russia group would come up to cause dissension.

  9. rb1957 says:
    0
    0

    1) IMHO “America First” does not bode well for international partnerships.
    2) lots of words, not much direction … not like Kennedy in Congress.