First meeting of the reborn National Space Council, Oct. 5, 2017

UPDATED To include comments from former NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine. WASHINGTON: A new White House executive order appears to route all future national security space policy decisions through the National Security Council (NSC), in a move numerous experts and former officials say may signal a Biden administration decision to abandon the National Space Council.

During the Trump administration, the re-vitalized National Space Council led by Vice President Mike Pence was prolific: issuing seven Space Policy Directives on issues ranging from commercial space traffic management (SPD-3) to protection of GPS (SPD-7).

While the new language in unclear, bets are weighing in that the Biden administration reverts to the model used by the Obama administration, which gave the NSC the lead for natsec space, and the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) the lead for civil space policy. Many experts and former officials say the most likely scenario is not for Biden to formally undo the National Space Council, but just to let it go dormant, as it was between 1993 and 2017.

In part, this is because neither Biden nor Vice President Kamala Harris have shown much  interest in space policy. That was brought home by White House spokesperson Jen Psaki’s joke on Wednesday that Biden cared about Space Force as much as he cared about Air Force One’s paint job — a joke that backfired and caused the White House to furiously backpedal yesterday to say that Space Force has the president’s full support.

“I mean, apparently they just learned that there is a branch of the military called the Space Force,” one expert snarked.

UPDATE BEGINS. “It’s hard to know right now what direction they’re ultimately going to go,” said former NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine in a phone call today. “But there will be there will need to be an organizational kind of function to keep everybody heading the same direction.” UPDATE ENDS.

Bridenstine, who now works for the private equity firm Acorn that specializes in aerospace investment, added that in his opinion the National Space Council was “extremely successful” at ensuring a whole of government approach to space policy.

“The value of the National Space Council was that it was looking broadly across all the space enterprise,” he said. On the other hand, he noted, “we have seen space be successful before the National Space Council.”

The new executive order primarily is aimed at organizing the NSC, but it also notes:

“This document is one in a series of National Security Memoranda that, along with National Security Study Memoranda, shall replace National Security Presidential Memoranda and Space Policy Directives as instruments for communicating Presidential decisions about national security policies of the United States.”

That phrase, says one former administration official, “seems to suggest that national security space is firmly in the NSC” rather than in the VP’s office or the National Space Council. However, the source added, it’s “always a little murky since the ‘property lines’ are constantly shifting given NSC Director and VP power.”

“It is not quite clear what this portends for the National Space Council,” said Brian Weeden, head of program planning at the Secure World Foundation, echoing the sentiments of a number of space insiders. “It does seem like they are going with the NSC, as they mention NSMs will be used for national security and space policy documents, but it’s not entirely clear.”

“While this executive order may indeed mark the beginning of the end of the National Space Council, at least for this administration, it also marks the beginning of senior White House staff finally having time to focus on the implementation of space-focused policies at the interagency level, rather than only being focused on setting the stage for the next meeting of principals at each subsequent National Space Council meeting,” Erin Neal, founding partner of Velocity Government Relations, said in an email.

On the other hand, cautioned Todd Harrison, director of the Aerospace Project at the Center for Security and International Studies (CSIS), the memo isn’t clearly a repudiation of the National Space Council either.

“I don’t think this is a clear indication one way or the other about the fate of the National Space Council,” he said. “It does not explicitly say they are eliminating it or keeping it. It only says that they won’t be issuing Space Policy Directives any more—those will now be called National Security Memoranda. I would wait to see an explicit decision about the National Space Council.”

Weeden explained that “both the George W. Bush and Obama admins used the NSC process and documents for their space policy decisions, but had either NSC or OSTP as the lead agency.”

During the Obama administration, when Biden was VP, the NSC had the lead for natsec space and OSTP had the lead for civil and commercial space.

“The Obama era situation of one NSC space guy and one OSTP space person was clearly inadequate,” said another former administration space official. “Routine operations require 4-5 people. They can be in different offices, but that’s the minimum staffing level needed to cover civil, commercial, national security, and international issues well.”

Further complicating matters, the source explained, the memo “makes the OSTP Director a part of the NSC as opposed to the President’s Science Advisor.” This raises a number of questions. “The OSTP position is Senate-confirmed, so what happens when he’s asked to testify about NSC matters? What happens when OSTP deals with space matters that are not part of the NSC? (e.g. planetary protection, lunar heritage sites).”

Indeed, other experts noted that given the boom in commercial space, OSTP — which after all is a science organization — simply might not be the right place for coordinating commercial space policy.

Further, as a number of sources have noted, there is 2021 budget money already allocated as a line-item for the National Space Council. It is unclear whether those funds could be shifted to another organization if the council is left to die.

“What happens to the funds that were authorized and appropriated by Congress for the NSpC?,” the former space official wondered.