Critics on the left, critics on the right

A short UPI story describes some criticism of the Vision for Space Exploration from both sides of the political spectrum. At a Brookings Institute domestic policy forum Monday, Alice Rivlin, a former OMB director during the Clinton Administration, called the VSE a waste of money, saying “I think we can learn much more about the […]

More editorials

Hmmm… is it a side effect of Thanksgiving turkey leftovers that has resulted in so many newspaper editorial writers turning their attention to NASA? An editorial in Tuesday’s Philadelphia Inquirer [free registration required] discusses NASA’s FY2005 budget. Like the New York Times yesterday, the Inquirer is skeptical about continuing the shuttle and station: “Why continue […]

From the editorial pages

Monday’s New York Times published an editorial on NASA’s budget windfall, calling it “a budgetary coup in a year when most federal programs were ratcheted back to make room for the costly war in Iraq and to alleviate huge deficits.” The editorial does warn, though, that the agency will have to find money to pay […]

Prize legislation stalled

Space News reported last week in its print edition that an effort to pass legislation to expand NASA’s authority to offer prizes has stalled in the Senate. On November 18 Rep. Sherwood Boehlert introduced HR 5385, which authorizes NASA to establish the Centennial Challenges program and allows it to award prizes as large as $1 […]

O’Keefe celebrates, cautiously

NASA Administrator Sean O’Keefe took some time Tuesday to celebrate, in a sense, NASA’s budgetary victory in Congress in talks to employees and a meeting with reporters. O’Keefe noted that the budget was “as strong an endorsement as anyone could have hoped” for the Vision for Space Exploration, the New York Times reported. Florida Today […]

DeLay at JSC and other budget news

Yesterday House Majority Leader Tom DeLay visited NASA’s Johnson Space Center to celebrate winning effectively full funding for the agency in FY05, according to the Houston Chronicle and Galveston Daily News. Perhaps the most interesting comment he made suggests that support for the Vision for Space Exploration is not unanimous within the Bush Administration: “The […]

Analyzing HR 5382

Nathan Horsley, a lawyer with a background in space law, has written a detailed analysis of HR 5382. His conclusion: while there are “functional additions” to and “useful clarifications” of existing laws and regulations in the bill, the legislation is more useful “as a public relations or marketing tool than as a functional change to […]

More on comments

The comments in a previous post led to a debate over the claims made by one person regarding the sales of a recent space policy book. I have since closed the comments for that post after adding a final comment that tried to clarify the issue. However, during the time since those comments were posted […]

McCain and earmarks

One of the banes of the budget process, not just for NASA but other agencies, is the inclusion by some members of Congress of earmarks to aid little-known programs and organizations in their home districts. On NBC’s Meet the Press this morning Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) weighed in against earmarks, using NASA as an example:

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Budget flexibility

Both the House and the Senate passed the omnibus budget bill, HR 4818, yesterday, with the Senate finally passing the bill a little after midnight. (The bill actually won’t be delivered to the President for a few days because of a last-minute glitch with language in the bill regarding Congressional access to tax returns, which […]