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House caucus created to fight for state's space industry
The Daily News
By Tom Bassing | August 27, 2016
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Texas lawmakers this month formed a caucus aimed at keeping NASA funding from falling out of orbit.

The Texas Space Congressional Caucus is especially relevant to the Clear Lake area, where the Johnson Space Center has been an economic driver and key engine for employment since it opened in 1963.

An estimated 14,000 people — civil servants and private contractors — today work at the center, which also has spawned many companies in associated industries.

Several members of the U.S. House of Representatives’ Texas delegation this month formed the caucus, now chaired by Reps. Brian Babin, chairman of the House Space Subcommittee, and John Culberson, who chairs the House Appropriations Committee’s Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice and Science, which oversees NASA.

“Space is a very hazardous environment with weightlessness, high levels of radiation and the fact that it’s a vacuum,” Babin said.

“Well, the political environment for space can be hazardous, too. The main purpose of the Texas Space Congressional Caucus is to make that political environment a little less hazardous.”

Supporting industry

Babin’s sprawling congressional district encompasses the Johnson Space Center and is home to numerous affiliated companies, including Webster-based Ad Astra Rocket Company, which was born inside the center’s fence.

“Congressman Babin has visited our company on several occasions,” Jared Squire, Ad Astra’s senior vice president of research, said. NASA in 2005 spun off the company, which now is privately held but still focused on developing advanced plasma rocket propulsion technology.

While the caucus’s principal aim is to protect funding for the Johnson Space Center, it also is looking to support ancillary companies such as Ad Astra.

“We have received indications that the caucus will support our efforts,” Squire said. “We appreciate that support.”

Advanced propulsion

Ad Astra is involved in building and testing plasma engines in a sizable vacuum chamber inside its facilities to run experiments in an environment that mimics outer space.

The company is funded through NASA’s NextSTEP initiative — shorthand for Next Space Technologies for Exploration Partnerships — which, among other things, supports new aerospace propulsion systems, including plasma rocket engines.

NASA last year awarded three, three-year NextSTEP advanced propulsion grants. They went to Ad Astra, a contract worth $9 million over the three years; Sacramento, Calif.-based Aerojet Rocketdyne Inc.; and MSNW LLC, headquartered in Redmond, Wash.

A bipartisan effort

Babin’s caucus is adamant about supporting and protecting funding mechanisms such as NextSTEP, which he said had been less than a priority in the Oval Office under President Obama.

“We’ve seen a lack of direction coming out of our current administration the last eight years,” Babin said. “Rep. Culberson and I wanted to establish a strong, bipartisan — and I emphasize bipartisan — caucus to advocate for and protect the capabilities of the Johnson Space Center and our space industry and to see to it that funding is robust for ongoing space-exploration efforts.

“I’m going to pat my colleagues on the back, both Democrats and Republicans; they’ve fought back to restore funding that the administration attempted to strip away from the space program to a level that gives us certainty when it comes to space exploration.

“It’s incumbent upon us as legislators from Texas to protect this key industry.”

The Texas Space Congressional Caucus, which was formed Aug. 11 at a meeting in Houston attended by space-industry executives, has five members and is recruiting others.

“Our goal is to have all of Texas’ 36 congressional districts on board,” Babin said.

‘Space City’

Houston, the nation’s fourth-largest metropolitan area, has long derived aspects of its identity from the space program.

“Houston is known as Space City,” Babin said. “We have the Houston Rockets and the Houston Astros, and we have the Johnson Space Center.”

Construction of the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center, originally known as the Manned Spacecraft Center, began in 1962 in response to President John F. Kennedy’s call for the nation “to commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth.”

The center opened in September 1963, and on Feb. 19, 1973, President Richard M. Nixon signed into law a Senate Resolution naming the facility in honor of the late president, who was born and died in Stonewall, Texas.

In 1958, as Senate majority leader, Johnson had sponsored the legislation that created NASA the year after the Soviet Union set off alarms in Washington with the successful launch of sputnik, history’s first artificial satellite.

Is it worth it?

After that seemingly existential challenge, funds were plentiful.

In the decades since, however, such fiscal support has varied from one administration to another.

“People ask, ‘do we really need to keep spending billions and billions of dollars on our space program?’ The answer is, ‘absolutely,’” Babin said.

“The budget for our space program is less than one-half of 1 percent of our nation’s overall budget. We get a lot of bang for our buck. The technology that has been spun off from our manned space program is evident throughout people’s homes, and our investment in space creates good, high-paying jobs across the space industry.”

National security cited

There also is a security component to the program, Babin said.

“The space program is important from a national security vantage point,” he said. “It’s the old military adage: Whoever holds the high ground controls the ground. We must be diligent to maintain our lead.

“It is essential that we remain the pre-eminent nation in the world when it comes to space exploration. There are other countries that would like to be. China’s one, Russia’s another. Right now, we’re having to rely on Russia to fly our crews to the International Space Station. We pay $70 million a ticket directly to the Russians to put our astronauts on their rockets to get them to our space station.

“That’s absolutely unacceptable, and that’s one reason why we formed the caucus: We as a nation have to support our manned space-exploration program.

“It’s absolutely imperative.”