Jeff Foust // A stroll down "Abbey Lane"

Jeff Foust // A stroll down Abbey Lane

The Space Review // Monday, July 11, 2005

http://www.thespacereview.com/article/407/1

There are many things that are in short supply in Washington these days:
open seats on the Metro subway system; power hitting by the city's new
baseball team, the Nationals; and, perhaps most of all, common sense. What's
never in short supply, though, are opinions, including opinions about space
policy issues. With the appropriations process for 2006 already well
underway and dueling efforts by the House and Senate to produce an
authorization bill for NASA, people are finding plenty to say about the
space agency and its plans for the future.

One of the latest efforts to influence space policy is in the form of a
report published last month by the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based American
Academy of Arts and Sciences. Their report, "United States Space Policy:
Challenges and Opportunities", was written by George Abbey, former director
of NASA's Johnson Space Center, and Neal Lane, former director of the White
House's Office of Science and Technology Policy under President Clinton.
(Keeping with the long-standing tradition of naming panels and reports after
their chairs or lead authors, this article will hereafter refer to the
report as the "Abbey-Lane" report, or simply Abbey-Lane, with all apologies
to the Beatles' "Abbey Road" album.) The Abbey-Lane report, the academy
noted in a press release, identified "threats to the nation's long-term
scientific interests in space" as well as other threats to "the long-term
viability of the U.S. commercial satellite industry."

The report got some brief attention in the media, including a mention in
the New York Times, but has had little effect yet on the current overall
space policy debate, in part because many feel Abbey and Lane are
discredited to some degree given their roles in previous administration.
(Interestingly, Lane served at least briefly last year as an advisor on
space issues to Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison-a Republican from Texas-a tie
whose effects may become clear later in this article.) However, do the
claims made in the report have any substance? A careful review of the report
reveals a number of flaws in the data and methodology they use to back up
their claims, as well as some biases that go beyond simple partisan
politics. Despite those problems, though, there are a few good
recommendations in this report worth considering as part of the overall
space policy debate.