October « 2006 « Space Politics

Head of COPUOS to speak in DC next week

By Jeff Foust on 2006 October 12 at 6:56 am ET

Gérard Brachet, the new chairman of the UN’s Committee for the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS), will speak about the organization and its aims to support international cooperation in space, this Monday at CSIS headquarters in Washington. COPUOS has kept a fairly low profile in recent years, although there are signs Brachet would like […]

Reaction to the new national space policy

By Jeff Foust on 2006 October 12 at 6:47 am ET

Looking for some insightful commentary and analysis regarding the national space policy released late last week by the Bush Administration? Well, keep looking. There hasn’t been a lot of commentary in general about the document, and what little has been published has focused, not surprisingly, on the portions of the document dealing with security and […]

Air Force, NASA to split some Boeing settlement money

By Jeff Foust on 2006 October 10 at 6:45 am ET

Earlier this year Boeing agreed to pay $615 million to the federal government to settle claims that Boeing used proprietary Lockheed Martin documents during the initial EELv competition in the 1990s. Now the government is figuring out where that money will go, the Wall Street Journal reports. (Subscription required; a free AP article is also […]

Griffin: NASA “lost its way” before VSE

By Jeff Foust on 2006 October 9 at 6:55 am ET

Flight International has […]

New national space policy released

By Jeff Foust on 2006 October 6 at 8:48 pm ET

The White House released late Friday afternoon the new US National Space Policy, a document that completes the years-long review of overall space policy by the Bush Administration. (Interesting, the document states that this policy was formally authorized by President Bush on August 31; there’s no reason why the administration took over a month to […]

COBE and the NASA budget

By Jeff Foust on 2006 October 5 at 7:44 am ET

A New York Times editorial today congratulates NASA for the COBE mission, which netted a Nobel Prize in Physics earlier this week for John Mather of NASA Goddard and George Smoot of UC Berkeley. The editorial notes, though, that COBE was a relatively small Explorer-class spacecraft, the type of mission getting squeezed out in the […]

Couric takes a jab at NASA

By Jeff Foust on 2006 October 5 at 7:33 am ET

CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric discussed NASA yesterday (on the 49th anniversary of Sputnik) in her one-minute “Katie Couric’s Notebook” that airs on some TV and radio stations. (I heard it in the car on the way home last night.) Couric talks up the achievements of the Space Age, including that we have “orbited […]

ULA reaction from Congress

By Jeff Foust on 2006 October 4 at 7:30 am ET

The FTC’s decision yesterday to permit the formation of the United Launch Alliance (ULA) has, unsurprisingly, been widely hailed by members of Alabama’s Congressional delegation. Manufacturing of both Atlas and Delta vehicles will be consolidated in Boeing’s Decatur, Alabama factory, adding perhaps several hundred employees. Congressmen Bud Cramer (D) and Robert Aderholt (R) both congratulated […]

ULA, at last?

By Jeff Foust on 2006 October 3 at 7:40 pm ET

That would finally seem to be the case, 17 months and one day after the joint venture was first announced. The FTC announced today that it would “intervene” in the formation of the ULA, meaning it has created a consent decree that will allow the ULA to come into being under some conditions. Those requirements […]

Bush visits the Space Coast

By Jeff Foust on 2006 October 2 at 7:19 am ET

That’s Gov. Jeb Bush, mind you, who paid a visit to Cape Canaveral last Thursday, Florida Today reports, talking up the economic development potential of Orion at KSC. That’s a topic of much concern in the area, as the shuttle program—which employs thousands—winds down, and Orion to date is only providing KSC with a few […]

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