On March 6 and 7th, 2011, a group of UM students visited Washington DC to attend the Space Frontier Foundation's "Keep The Promise" lobbying event, where they encouraged congressmen to support commercial space. This is a three-part series discussing their experiences.
Experience 1:
By Patrick Zubrickas
This past week I was in Washington D.C., where I participated in a lobbying event co-organized by the Space Frontier Foundation and the Commercial Spaceflight Federation. It was a particularly insightful experience for me, because firstly, I had not been outside the Midwest before, and secondly, because I did not realize how significant of a role lobbying, and politics in general, can play in the development of space. This particular event, titled Keep the Promise, was created to gain support for a few specific items: funding for the Commercial Crew Development program, funding for the Commercial Reusable Suborbital Research (CRuSR) program, and a change in current law to allow NASA to reform its programs and policies.
In case you are unfamiliar, Commercial Crew is a program that would give aid to private aerospace companies in order to stimulate the development of private transportation systems that would allow the transportation of cargo and personnel in low Earth orbit. The CRusR program is a comparatively small program that, as its name suggests, funds research that can take advantage of sub-orbital vehicles. Sub-orbital vehicles are exciting to researchers, because they can reach parts of the atmosphere that have not yet been extensively studied. They can also create micro-gravity environments for several minutes, which can be a very useful environment for studying cells.
As for the actual lobbying, most meetings went well. I was lucky enough to be partnered with co-founder of the Space Frontier Foundation, Bob Werb. We had several meetings throughout the day with congressional staffers. The meetings involved sitting down with a staffer and informing them on the topics we were supporting. In general, the CRuSR program received the most support as it is relatively low cost and provides many educational opportunities. The Commercial Crew program also had the support of several of the congressmen. One argument against it, however, was the belief that the private industry was not yet ready for such a large operation. However, we believe that with the funding we were asking for, such a thing can happen in just 3-5 years. Lastly, support for a change in NASA’s programs was nearly unanimous, as most people have now realized that their current programs have failed and need to be thrown away in favor of new ones.
All in all it was a great experience that I would recommend anyone to try, if they are passionate enough about space exploration. Something that I noticed was the interest some of the staffers had for space. It was great to see that there is still a widespread interest in space, even if it has shifted away from NASA and towards private companies. My thanks to the Space Frontier Foundation and the Commercial Spaceflight Federation for funding the event and providing myself and the others who attended such an educational experience!