During his testimony before the Aldridge Commission on Monday afternoon, George Whitesides, the new executive director of the National Space Society, noted that there would be an announcement on Friday about a new coalition of advocacy organizations that will work together to support the new exploration initiative. He didn’t offer any additional details, but it sounds like this effort I noted here last month. As the comments to that post note, the Planetary Society kicked off its own “Aim for Mars” public outreach/activism effort earlier this week, although it’s not clear this effort, or the society itself, will be part of this broader coalition.
Meanwhile, the National Keep It Sold organization is in Washington this week to lobby to support human space programs in general and the new exploration initiative in particular. This organization has been around for more than a decade, and is most active around the NASA field centers most closely linked to spaceflight (KSC, JSC, MSFC, and Stennis). It also has one of the quirkiest names—keep what sold, exactly? Florida Today reports the organization is going to change that by unveiling a new name this week: Citizens for Space Exploration.
The website of “National Keep It Sold” looks a bit out-of-date. I thought the Space Launch Initiative (Orbital Space Plane and Next Generation Launch Technology) was scrapped after the Vision for Space Exploration (Crew Exploration Vehicle) was released.