Sen. Lampson? Number 1 target Lampson?

The Houston Chronicle reported this morning that Congressman Nick Lampson (D-TX) is considering a run for the US Senate in 2008 against incumbent Republican John Cornyn. Lampson, who won the seat previously held by former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (and which includes NASA JSC) is said to be considering the Senate run despite low […]

Rename NASA Dryden for Armstrong?

That’s the proposal of Congressman Ken Calvert (R-CA), who is drafting legislation that would name the NASA research center at Edwards Air Force Base in California after Neil Armstrong, the Los Angeles Daily News reported Sunday. The name is fitting, since Armstrong worked there for several years in the 1950s and 1960s, flying the X-15 […]

One-percent solutions and other problems

In this week’s issue of The Space Review, Eric Hedman argues that the best solution to NASA’s current problems implementing the Vision for Space Exploration is to increase its budget so that it accounts for a full one percent of the federal budget, compared to its current level of about 0.6 percent. The idea isn’t […]

Is Mike Griffin in trouble? Probably not.

A couple of developments last week certainly were not helpful to the image of NASA and administrator Mike Griffin. On Friday the Washington Post reported that Congressman Brad Miller claimed that NASA destroyed evidence when it reportedly destroyed a videotape of a meeting between Griffin and embattled inspector general Robert Cobb. This development came a […]

A couple notes about comments

This blog uses an automated system to catch comment spam before it can be posted. It works very well, but on occasion can be a little overzealous. If you submit a comment and it doesn’t show up, send me a note and I’ll see if it got caught for some reason by the spam filter, […]

Another milspace review

It seems a little cottage industry is forming in the area of reviews of US military space programs. The Defense Department is planning an outside review of its military space programs, the Wall Street Journal (subscription required) reported today. The panel, the article notes, will be the third such review in five years. This panel, […]

Griffin-Shelby spat update

The Huntsville Times reports that NASA will keep the robotic lunar exploration office at MSFC open while it reevaluates its plan to close the office. A temporary victory, at the very least, for Sen. Richard Shelby and other allies of the office. However, even if the office remains open in the long term, there are […]

More complaints about NASA funding

The Commerce, Justice, and Science subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee held a hearing yesterday that included some discussion of NASA funding (you can be excused if you didn’t hear about it, since there were no details about the hearing released on the subcommittee’s web site). One person who did testify was Planetary Society executive […]

The consequences of NASA’s ISS resupply contract

About a week and a half ago I noted here that some were concerned with NASA’s decision earlier this month to sign a contract with Roskosmos for ISS resupply through 2011, including both Progress cargo and Soyuz crew missions. Their concern was with mixed messages or a lack of confidence that NASA appeared to be […]

The Griffin-Shelby spat continues

The Huntsville Times reports that Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) and NASA administrator are still at odds over plans to close the robotic lunar exploration office at MSFC, a dispute that had Shelby saying earlier in the week that he was counting down the days until Griffin left office. Shelby told the newspaper Thursday, regarding Griffin:

[…]