The Suborbital Institute is planning a two-day lobbying effort on Capitol Hill on February 8 and 9 (immediately before the FAA/AST Forecast Conference in Washington.) The Usenet message describing the event is scant on details; contact Andrew Case for more information.
The last minute passage of the commercial space ammendments caught us somewhat by surprise, so details of our spring agenda are still being worked out. Right now, it looks like ITAR will probably be the lead item. Other items that may be on the agenda include spaceports, education, launch service purchases, and the DoC office of space commercialization.
ITAR is something that has affected me directly in the past. A consortium of universities were using my software for a satellite design methodology project, but they were unable to involve me in any way.
In all honesy I was happy about that because it freed me to pursue my launcher ideas, but I’m pretty sure it detracted from the outcome of their program.
On a similar theme the Arms Control Wonk has been talking about a book which managed to induce the following “endorsement” from General Charles Horner, commander of coalition air forces in Operation Desert Storm:
http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/index.php?id=386
“Code Names scares the hell out of me because Arkin dredged up so many secrets and turned them into a comprehensive tour of our national security efforts around the globe.”
….
“This book shows the dysfunctional aspects of our all too frequent over-classification process that blocks our agencies from working together, hides waste and stifles debate of important issues. Most of all it proves we need to rethink how we protect our secrets in the information age.”
Rethink how we protect our secrets is absolutely right. ITAR, as many foresaw, has been steadily waring down US space competativeness. Its debilitating effect will only increase with time as the US-national skills base continues to shrink.