A quick, but imperfect, end to the FY07 budget process

Just before Congress adjourned last week, both houses passed a stopgap funding bill to keep most federal agencies, including NASA, funded at 2006 levels through February 15, leaving it to the next Congress to pass the pile of appropriations bills that the 109th Congress did not complete. Now the incoming chairmen of the House and […]

Boehlert’s farewell request

The 109th Congress has adjourned, and in less than a month Congressman Sherwood Boehlert, the outgoing chairman of the House Science Committee, will be retired. However, he’s not completely done with his work on the Hill. On Monday he released a letter he sent last week to OMB Director Rob Portman with some requests for […]

TPS is still sending out an SOS

In his blog at wired.com, noted sci-fi “cyperpunk” author Bruce Sterling reprints an email alert he apparently received earlier this week from The Planetary Society. “NASA Science Situation More Dire Than We Thought!” reads the subject line of the message, which begins with this statement: “The disastrous anti-science, anti-exploration agenda being foisted on NASA and […]

Official comments on the national space policy

More than two months after the Bush Administration released the new national space policy, an administration official will give an on-the-record speech about the policy. Robert Joseph, Under Secretary for Arms Control and International Security at the State Department, will speak about the policy at a Marshall Institute event Wednesday afternoon. Joseph “will discuss the […]

Griffin: Blame Nixon

Remember when NASA administrator Mike Griffin got into a bit of hot water when he told USA Today that the shuttle program had not put NASA on “the right path”? Griffin, apparently chastened to some degree by the reaction, clarified his remarks in a memo a short time later. However, in today’s New York Times […]

Congress punts the budget

Both houses of Congress passed a continuing budget resolution late last night to keep much of the federal budget, including NASA, funded through February 15. (A Reuters article in particular noted NASA as one of the many agencies included in the stopgap measure; a NASA spokesman said that even without the bill’s passage “The poor […]

Gordon, Hall take top Science Committee posts

As expected, House Democrats have named Congressman Bart Gordon (D-TN) chairman of the House Science Committee for the 100th Congress, starting in January. Gordon had been the ranking Democrat on the committee the last three years and was all but assumed to be chairman when the Democrats won a majority of the House in the […]

Moon base policy commentary

I have to admit that I was a little surprised at the level of media attention NASA’s lunar exploration announcement Monday received, since it had been clear since the beginning of the Vision that part of the overall plan included establishing a base of some kind on the Moon. That coverage included front-page articles by […]

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 […]

Yet another review of the national space policy

It’s been almost exactly two months since the Bush Administration released the new national space policy, and people are still commenting on it. Yesterday the Council on Foreign Relations published a short synopsis on the idea of American “space supremacy” many see at the core of the new policy. The piece is primarily a review […]