Senate doesn’t follow House lead on exploration cuts

The Commerce, Justice, and Science subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee marked up their FY2010 appropriations bill yesterday and appear to have more closely followed the White House’s request than the House did earlier this month. According to the summary, the bill provides $18.68 billion for NASA overall, equal to the administration’s topline request. The […]

Senate committee to take up NASA spending bill

The Senate Appropriations Committee is scheduled to take action this week on an appropriations bill that includes funding for NASA. The Commerce, Justice, and Science (CJS) appropriations committee will markup its version of the bill at 2:30 pm today (138 Dirksen); the full appropriations committee will then deal with the bill tomorrow at 3 pm […]

Thoughts on the Augustine committee meeting

I was at the Augustine committee meeting in DC yesterday, the first public meeting (of four currently planned) to solicit input on the future of NASA’s human spaceflight plans. Since the process is just now underway, it’s hard to draw too many conclusions about the meeting, but I did want to pass along some thoughts […]

Some Augustine committee reading

Today is the first public hearing of the Review of U.S. Human Space Flight Plans Committee (aka the Augustine Committee), to take place at the 400-seat auditorium at the Carnegie Institute in Washington, DC. NASA published the agenda for the meeting yesterday and shows that this meeting will look at both the current status of […]

This week: pass the budget, then talk about it

This week the full House is scheduled to debate and vote on the Commerce, Justice, and Science appropriations bill (HR 2847), beginning as early as today. Also available now is the text of the committee report with some more details about the spending plan. For example, this is how the report explains the creation of […]

An explanation for that COTS “rescission”

The House Appropriations Committee document earlier this week that appeared to show a $113.9 million rescission in NASA’s FY9 budget for COTS got a lot of people up in arms and wondering exactly happened. The committee hasn’t provided any additional information, such as the report to go along with the actual appropriations bill, to clarify […]

Griffin on Bolden, Augustine review

The Associated Press published today an interview with former NASA administrator Mike Griffin, settling into his new position as a professor at the University of Alabama Huntsville. Some highlights, starting with what he thinks of the Review of US Human Space Flight Plans Committee (aka the Augustine committee):

“This review is not, in my […]

Space policy suggestions… from Esquire

If you thought Esquire was only about fashion and women and lifestyles (or supermodels on the cover wearing only the opening lines of a Stephen King story), think again. In an essay on the magazine’s web site, Thomas P.M. Barnett (described as “a top Washington policy expert” although one who focuses more on foreign policy […]

Congressional delegation to witness shuttle launch

If all goes well, the space shuttle Endeavour will lift off Saturday morning on the STS-127 mission to the International Space Station. Among those planning to watch the launch is a bipartisan Congressional delegation led by Rep. Suzanne Kosmas (D-FL). Those members planning to attend the launch with Kosmas are:

Mike Conaway (R-TX-11) Jim Costa […]

ISS commercial resupply rescission?

A reader pointed out this list of programs cut or terminated in the House Appropriations Committee’s version of a FY10 Commerce, Justice, and Science appropriations bill. This list includes not just programs in the FY10 bill but also rescissions in the FY09 appropriations (something easy, at least for me, to overlook). One of the biggest […]