SpaceAdvocate.com goes live

Last month I noted here that the Coalition for Space Exploration had created a web site to help support the political activities of space supporters. It turns out the site had not yet been officially opened for business (although it was being shown to the public at the X Prize Cup in New Mexico in October), but as of yesterday SpaceAdvocate.com was officially launched at the Space Exploration Conference in Houston.

I did notice a few changes to the site from the last time a checked a month ago. There’s a legislative update page that lists any “action alerts” and pending legislation. Since we’re at the tail end of the current Congress, there’s not much in the way of either right now. Oddly, one of the bills they do list in the “current legislation” section is HR 3250, the NASA Authorization Act of 2005. That bill was superseded by other legislation that was eventually enacted, so there’s no reason to list it here.

There are also a couple of puzzling things here that may just be kinks that have to be worked out of the system. On many pages, like the legislative update page mentioned above, there’s a logo with the words “Capwiz XCdemo (won’t send messages)”. I’m assuming that’s a vestige of a test phase of the site that should now be removed; it’s also on the user registration page (where you can sign up for email updates), but when I signed up this morning I did receive a confirmation email in response. The legislation update page also has a link to a “Federal Action Alert” that is a very generic form used for composing messages to members of Congress. How generic? The pulldown menu for “Issue Area” doesn’t include any space topics, or even simply “space” itself.