More delays for ULA

The Wall Street Journal [subscription required] reports today that it appears highly unlikely that Boeing and Lockheed Martin will get all the regulatory approvals it needs to move ahead with the formation of the United Launch Alliance by the end of the year. When the ULA was announced in May, Boeing and Lockheed believed that […]

Pushing a Mars prize

Those who have TimesSelect subscriptions may want to read John Tierney’s column in Tuesday’s issue. (Or, if you’re cheap like me, buy the dead tree edition for a buck and turn to page A31.) Tierney starts off with a discussion of Virgin Galactic and space tourism, and then segues into a discussion of prizes as […]

Space law on The Space Show

Tonight’s episode of The Space Show, a radio/podcast program, is devoted to a panel discussion on space law topics, in particular space property rights. The guests on the show are Jim Dunstan, Rosanna Sattler, Berin Szoka, and Wayne White, all lawyers with significant expertise on space law topics. The program airs live at 10 pm […]

Beware stereotypes

On Friday Women in Aerospace (WIA) hosted a breakfast honoring NASA’s senior female leadership, including Mary Cleve, Lynn Cline, Shana Dale, Angela Phillips Diaz, and Lisa Porter. The speakers primarily discussed their careers at the agency, with little discussion on policy topics. (Someone asked about concerns about the lack of women on the new NASA […]

Space incentives in Florida

The Florida state legislature is set to convene a special session this week, primarily to take on state Medicaid reform. However, some legislators hope to squeeze some other issues on the agenda, including incentives for the state’s space industry. The proposal, by Rep. Bob Allen, a Republican from the Space Coast region of the state, […]

Shuttle, history, and exploration reviews

A few articles in this week’s issue of The Space Review have some policy relevance:

Taylor Dinerman examines the future of the shuttle program, which currently has 19 missions (18 ISS flights and a Hubble repair mission) on its notional manifest through 2010. There are a number of tradeoffs that could reduce that number, although […]

International space policy roundup

Some notes about what’s going on outside the US on space policy topics:

Space News [subscription required] highlights an unexpected comment by a French official: research minister Francois Goulard said in a speech earlier this week that France “would have no autonomous space policy” outside of ESA. The comment apparently took many by surprise, given […]

Planning ahead

If you’re one of those people who already have a 2006 calendar and are making plans for next year (while the rest of us try and figure out what’s on the schedule for today), you should take note of some dates for Congressional lobbying activity. ProSpace announced this week that it has set the dates […]