Unpaid lobby goes to bat for NASA
By STEWART M. POWELL
Copyright 2010 Houston Chronicle
May 21, 2010, 11:26PM
WASHINGTON — Rice University doctoral candidate Laurie Carrillo flew to Washington, D.C., on her own dime to stump for NASA, one of 152 students and other unpaid citizens who have taken up the call to save space agency programs by knocking on the doors of Capitol Hill.
“Maybe 20 percent of the people are still neutral, sort of wait-and-see. But their antenna are up, and I think that’s really heartening,” said the native of San Antonio who began her distinguished academic career at Rice with a $48,000 scholarship from NASA headquarters.
Frank Centinello, 27, a resident of Buffalo, N.Y., and a doctorate student in aerospace at MIT, is another of the so-called citizen lobbyists from 30 states.
“I don’t see this as fighting for my livelihood so much as fighting for planetary science and human space exploration,” said Centinello, who was with a delegation that visited his home state congressman, Rep. Brian Higgins, D-N.Y.
The two doctoral candidates and 30 other students served as the vanguard in a canvassing operation across Capitol Hill by business leaders and local government officials that was quarterbacked by the Bay Area Houston Economic Partnership.
The effort by Citizens for Space Exploration relied upon students and business people across the country to gain access to lawmakers or staff members as teams visited 355 of the 535 House and Senate offices this week.
“I haven’t met any opposition yet. But I’m kind of looking forward to that, actually, because it would make for a more interesting discussion,” said Centinello.
The onslaught is one more maneuver by pro-NASA organizations and lawmakers to turn back the Obama administration’s proposal to end the $108 billion back-to-the-moon program.
Some show support
Carrillo, a resident of Webster, took time off from a job at NASA and visited lawmakers from Texas, Missouri, Oregon and Connecticut who offered her their support for continued space exploration, starting with a return to the moon, she said.
She told one member of Congress that her grade-school passion for math became the cornerstone of a career at Houston’s Johnson Space Center, where the 34-year-old whiz handled key aspects of Shuttle Discovery’s last mission to the International Space Station. She is seeking her doctorate in mechanical engineering.
The canvassing, much like door-to-door campaigns for members of Congress, gathered intelligence on lawmakers’ sentiments on the future of manned space exploration.
The insights will come in handy as the House and Senate prepare to decide whether to protect aspects of NASA’s Constellation program from proposed White House budget cuts, whether to designate NASA a national security asset and whether to extend shuttle operations for two more years to provide deliveries to the space station.
The updates are “a great asset” in the drive to save the Constellation program so crucial to Florida’s Kennedy Space Center and Houston’s Johnson Space Center, Rep. Bill Posey, R-Fla., told the group at a rally at the outset of the campaign.
“The information that you find out from our colleagues — where they stand on the issues, what their concerns are — that will help us sort out who to target and go after,” Posey said.
The effort was orchestrated by Bob Mitchell, president of the Bay Area Houston Economic Partnership.
“Now we know where members stand,” Mitchell said. “We’re confident the information will help us fashion a compromise with the White House that will win back a majority of the Constellation program.”
The campaign included face-to-face meetings with supportive Texas lawmakers and updates on legislative strategy from Rep. Gene Green, D-Houston; Rep. Pete Olson, R-Sugar Land, whose district includes JSC; and Rep. John Culberson, R-Houston, a lifelong space enthusiast.
“These kinds of visits can have an impact,” said Norman Ornstein, a congressional scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. “Members (of Congress) are very sensitive to genuine opinion and very sensitive to things that have an impact on their district.”
Cornyn on ‘showing up’
Other Texans in the group included Joe Mayer, senior manager of the Orion Project for Lockheed Martin in Houston, Houston-area real estate developer Robert Douglas, and Seabrook economic development corporation head Ernie Davis.
Texas Republican Sen. John Cornyn praised the effort, telling canvassers that their congressmen and senators “need to hear directly from you.”
“There is just no substitute, as Woody Allen said, for showing up. Eighty percent of success in life is showing up,” he added.
