Concerns about Ares 1

A GAO report released yesterday raises some concerns about the development of the Ares 1. The report doesn’t focus on specific technical issues that have been rumored to exist with the Ares 1, but instead with more general concerns: “knowledge gaps” in various technical, managerial, and financial areas; a lack of stability in Ares 1 […]

A missed opportunity

Last night provided a rare opportunity for presidential candidates to address space policy issues on a national stage. Too bad that most everyone involved fumbled the chance.

In the CNN/YouTube Republican debate in St. Petersburg, Florida, the questions came from short videos from the public, similar to a Democratic debate earlier this year. And one […]

Long-term planning

An article in Wednesday’ edition of the Capitol Hill newspaper The Hill dropped a hint about the long-term plans for one of the few staunch space advocates in the Senate. In the article about shuffling of the Republican leadership in the Senate in the wake of Trent Lott’s surprise retirement, the article notes that Sen. […]

Mare Wobegon

We interrupt the ongoing debate about the space policies (such as they may be) of the various presidential candidates for another space policy development: what the Democratic Senate candidates in Minnesota think about space. Earlier this month in Prior Lake, Minnesota, four candidates, including one nationally-known figure, Al Franken, participated in a debate that included, […]

Galileo deal reached

While people in the US were doing their Black Friday shopping for Christmas, EU budget ministers did a little shopping of their own, reaching a deal to pay for the Galileo satellite navigation system through the use of surplus agricultural subsidies. Germany, which had been opposed to the proposal when it was announced this fall, […]

Does the China card create a winning hand?

In the last couple of months some advocates of the US space program, including NASA administrator Mike Griffin, have been racheting up the rhetoric about the US in danger of being beaten back to the Moon by China. Unless the President and Congress commit more resources to NASA to close The Gap and accelerate other […]

Ignorance is no obstacle to punditry

The rWashington Post article today about presidential candidates positions, such as they may be, on space policy got a little attention in the blogosphere (muted, perhaps, because it was the day after Thanksgiving). One person who picked up on it was Steve Benen of The Carpetbagger Report who was thankful that space policy discussion was […]

Sentinel: close the gap, because of the Russians

An editorial today in the Orlando Sentinel argues that the US needs to close “the gap” between the shuttle and Orion by increasing NASA’s budget to accelerate Orion. Interestingly, despite Orlando’s proximity to the Space Coast, the editorial doesn’t make the argument primarily out of concerns of any economic displacement in the area that would […]

Reviewing the candidates’ space positions (or lack thereof)

Today’s Washington Post reviews what the 2008 presidential candidates have said about space and finds that (to no one’s surprise who reads this blog regularly) they have said very little. The article uses as a hook Barack Obama’s announcement earlier this week that he would delay NASA’s Constellation program for five years to fund part […]

A bit more on Obama’s Constellation cut

An article in today’s USA Today includes a quote from Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama explaining, in part, why he chose to cut money from NASA’s Constellation program to pay for his education plan:

To pay for his education program, Obama would eliminate tax-deductibility of CEO pay by corporations and delay NASA’s program to return […]