It’s title is “a bill to reauthorize and restructure the National Aeronautics and Space Administration”.

Sponsors: McCain, Brownback, Hutchison, Allen

That means it has backing from the full spectrum of (GOP) space views on the Commerce Committee:

reformer, visionary, JSC defender, and aeronautics defender.

NASA Ponders Shuttle Flight Without Two Key Changes

NASA is considering whether it can return its space shuttles to flight without making two safety improvements that have so far proved to be high hurdles for agency engineers, top officials said on Friday. After the space shuttle Columbia disintegrated over Texas last year and killed.

NASA engineers are working on a repair kit that could fix a large hole in a shuttle wing’s leading edge. They are also trying to build a boom to inspect the orbiter’s underside.

The tasks have proved challenging, so the space agency is considering whether it can launch the shuttles without those two upgrades.

http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsArticle.jhtml?type=scienceNews&storyID=5461206&section=news

In the book Space, The Dormant Frontier, Joan Johnson-Freese stated towards the end of the book that profit slowly was taking precedence over politics in driving space activity, and it was inevitable. And the prize commentary is very encouraging; I hope we see much more of it.

Trans Orbital has a spacecraft nearly ready to go to lunar orbit this fall, I wonder if it qualifies as a “non-government”, private sector managed robotic missions to the moon in three years qualifies. By my reckoning, I think it does.

And most importantly, If I had a chance to exert my property rights in space via a mechanism that gives me title to and asteroid, or part of the moon, and this property right is a real thing, not an artificial construct to make someone else rich, that would be the best thing that happens for space settlement/development in the first decade of the Twenty First Century, in my opinion.

I just hope the Oligarchy and the Demopublicans, and Republicrats will allow this to happen. They have a very bad, entrenched habit of strangling new things in their cradles, particularly where threats to their control and power over life on earth, commerce, industry, etc, they now have, emerge. Space is a very big threat to geocentric oligarchy, and I can only hope the Space Community comes together to support with no compromise anything and everything that gets real hardware that is Frontier Enabling into space, and establishes space property rights.

“Off The Shelf” To Orbit Doesn’t Exist

http://www.rocketmanblog.com/2004/02/off_the_shelf_t.html

I certainly share the frustration with others that we seem to be plodding along and getting very little done, but on the other hand we appear to be moving slowly in the right direction conceptually – recognizing that the commercial sector will ultimately represent the bulk of space activities in the future. We will likely not see this day come to pass in our lifetimes, but we will witness the first grappling hooks sail over the wall separating the Earth from the great black yonder.

Well, the very same report recommends for NASA to get out of the operations. Make your own conclusions.

Officials shun KSC- university concept
Converting Kennedy Space Center into a university-run research facility won’t work, Florida lawmakers said Thursday
the only NASA center where humans are launched into space.

http://www.floridatoday.com/news/space/stories/2004b/spacestoryN0618NASAREPORT.htm

Upon reading it again, I realize that he actually hopes to be doing something MORE exciting than this. Still, I hope someone follows up with this idea.