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Space Policy: a Comparative Study of the George W. Bush and Barack Obama Administrations

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Space Policy: a Comparative Study of the George W. Bush and Barack Obama Administrations Space Policy: A Comparative Study of the George W. Bush and Barack Obama Administrations by Trevor Brown A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty of Auburn University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Auburn, Alabama December 12, 2015 Approved by Jill Crystal, Chair, Professor of Political Science James Hansen, Co-chair, Professor of History Mitchell Brown, Associate Professor of Political Science James Nathan, Professor of Political Science Abstract This dissertation is a comparative study between the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations’ space policies. The work employs qualitative techniques, such as interviews and archival analysis, to elucidate and explicate the factors behind the policy decisions that these administrations considered in their policy formulations for the medium of space. A special focus is placed on the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) policy of the Bush administration, and the Commercial Crew Development (CCDev) policy of the Obama administration. Both policies expand and enlarge American industry’s role in the national space effort by relying on commercial space operators to transport astronauts and cargo to the International Space Station in low Earth orbit (LEO). However, with the CCDev program the Obama administration cancelled Constellation, a spacecraft that was to be government developed and operated by NASA, in favor of an industry-government partnership with Space X and Boeing for space transportation services to LEO. This represented a radical policy departure from the Bush administration which initiated the development of Constellation. The work also touches on the Obama administration’s policy decision to shift NASA’s focus away from human missions returning to the Moon in favor of new missions involving asteroids. In addition to the commercial and civil aspects of the national space effort the dissertation also places a special emphasis on national security issues in space that the Bush and Obama administrations were faced with. In particular the work analyzes the growing role of the private sector in military space operations with such things as the collection of imagery and bandwidth for communications and data. The work also explores other security issues in space such as future ii satellite architectures, space situational awareness, space debris removal, transparency and confidence building measures, arms control measures, and a code of conduct in space. iii Table of Contents Chapter 1: Introduction……………………………………………………………….1 Chapter 2: Literature Review………………………………………………………....11 Chapter 3: Methods…………………………………………………………………...42 Chapter 4: The International Environment……………………………………………57 Chapter 5: Presidential Decision Making……………………………………………..73 Chapter 6: Privatization……………….………………………………………………88 Chapter 7: Public-Private Partnerships………………………………………………..106 Chapter 8: Civil Policy………………………………………………………………...125 Chapter 9: Variables for Civil Policy………………………………………………….153 Chapter 10: Security Policy……………………………………………………………172 Chapter 11: Variables for Security Policy……………………………………………..185 Chapter 12: Issues in Security Policy………………………………………………….202 Chapter 13: Congressional Testimony…………………………………………………227 Chapter 14: Conclusion—The Track Record of the COTS Partners…………………..241 iv List of Tables Table 3.1: Bush Officials………………………………………………………………………49 Table 3.2: Obama Officials…………………………………………………………………….49 Table 3.3: Bush Primary Source Documents…………………………………………………..52 Table 3.4: Obama Primary Source Documents………………………………………………...53 v Space Policy When the Obama administration came into office in 2009, it made the decision to sustain the national space effort at a level commensurate with the past, and to do so by partially privatizing NASA’s activities and to rely increasingly on commercial providers of satellite data for national security needs (Digital Globe 2014). This was a meaningful adjustment to the policies of the previous administration. This dissertation will explain the reasons for this decision. Accordingly the research question is: What are the political, economic, and security factors accounting for the Obama administration’s policy to partially privatize the national space effort? With the privatization policy the US government agreed to provide a measure of financing to private companies to undertake to develop spacecraft to ferry NASA’s astronauts to space, known as the Commercial Crew Development program, rather than committing NASA to the development of its own spacecraft, known as Constellation, which would have been a far more expensive proposition. Once the private spacecraft were ready NASA would purchase space on them for its missions. By infusing these companies with funds the government sought to energize them, thereby multiplying the effects of dwindling resources and the overall power of the national space effort. Indeed, the ongoing effects of these arrangements may be the key to maintaining the vibrancy of the American national space effort. In addition, a central feature of the Bush administration’s space policy was utilizing a derivative of Constellation for a human return to the Moon. However, the Obama administration cancelled the Moon mission and instead directed NASA to conduct a mission to an asteroid, and then later to redirect an asteroid to cislunar space. 1 The first hypothesized reason for the policy decision to partially privatize the national space effort is that the recession of 2008 served to place extraordinary pressure on the federal budget of the United States. This made it very difficult to fund NASA’s and the Pentagon’s budgets for space at the optimum levels. However, the data reveals that the financial crisis of 2008 had little to no effect on the Obama administration’s decision to cancel Constellation and proceed with Commercial Crew. What is more, according to the data the 2008 financial crisis appears to have had little effect on policy for the civil and military space programs more broadly. It appears that the Obama administration believed that NASA was funded adequately but doing the wrong mission. The second hypothesized reason for the policy decision to cancel Constellation and proceed with Commercial Crew was the existence of a private sector effort in space that was growing in competence which enabled the Obama administration to increasingly rely on them in the development of policy. The data confirms this hypothesis. According to the data, if Space X had never launched a rocket there would be no Commercial Crew Development program. The third reason was that the Obama administration perceived that there would be greater efficiencies in the procurement processes for space assets by partially privatizing the national space effort. The fourth reason was that the Obama administration perceived that there would be greater efficiencies in space operations by partially privatizing the national space effort. The data confirm these hypotheses. According to the data, the Obama administration hoped that the private sector could bring greater efficiencies to space procurement processes and space operations. 2 The primary reason why the Obama administration’s policy differed from the Bush administration’s policy—why the Obama administration cancelled the Constellation program and shifted NASA’s direction away from a return to the Moon in favor of a mission to an asteroid—is because the Obama administration loathed the Bush administration so much that they were intent on pursuing different space programs. They wanted to cancel the Bush administration’s space program. They were intent on doing the opposite of what the Bush administration had undertaken. All of the policymakers in these administrations that were interviewed confirm this dynamic, which came as somewhat of a surprise to the research effort. Another factor that explains why the policy decisions of the Obama administration differed from those of the Bush administration was growing private sector competence. Peter Marquez, who was on the national security council in both administrations, explained that if Space X had never launched a rocket there would have been no Commercial Crew Development (CCDev) program. Accordingly, the Constellation program was initiated in 2005 before Space X launched its first rocket in 2006. Space X was increasingly demonstrating competence for space pursuits which signaled to the Obama administration that they could rely on companies such as Space X in the development of space policy. Another factor that explains why the policy decision to cancel Constellation and proceed with CCDev was made by the Obama administration was because the Bush and Obama administrations did not value space in the same way. According to the data from an interviewee at the time that the Obama administration canceled Constellation they appropriated money for a high speed rail initiative in Tampa, FL for the exact same amount of money that would have been required for Constellation. The Obama administration believed that 3 other policy areas, such as domestic economic initiatives for infrastructure, were more important than the space program. Background At the outset of national forays into the medium of space at the beginning of the Cold War it was initially recognized that given the nature of space as a common zone it became exceedingly difficult to regulate sovereign areas of space as had been done with territorial waters and airspace (Johnson-Freese 2009). This is largely due to the astrophysical
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