Campaign '08

Space policy and the campaigns: recent developments

A few recent items of note about space and the presidential campaigns:

In today’s issue of The Space Review, I examine the recent statements on space policy made by Democratic candidate Barack Obama regarding Constellation and other issues. This is an expansion of a post on the issue I made a week ago immediately after his speech: that while it seemd like a dramatic shift, it was more of a reconciliation of past inconsistent statements he made on the issue, and leaving open a lot of unanswered questions.

Also in The Space Review, Ferris Valyn takes up one point from Obama’s speech: his call for re-establishing the National Aeronautics and Space Council. Valyn believes that a new space council could be in the right position to tackle any number of space-related issues, from ITAR to CATS, and that “Obama’s history as a community organizer lends itself to consensus building” that would be enabled by a council, hence his call for re-creating it. Just how much power and influence such a council would have, though, will go a long ways towards determining how effective it would be, though.

Meanwhile, the Orlando Sentinel reports that the Obama campaign—but not the senator himself—is coming back to the Space Coast for a meeting Tuesday with the region’s Economic Development Commission (EDC) to talk about space issues and their effect on the area economy. Attending on behalf of the campaign with be its Florida policy director, Ian Bassin. The report adds that the EDC is trying to arrange a similar meeting with the campaign of Republican John McCain. “So far there has been no official response from the campaign to the invitation for a similar meeting though some campaign staff said that McCain was keen to meet Florida space experts in person soon.”

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