Garver: NASA can change

A day after members of the House Science and Technology Committee dug in their heels on any potential changes to NASA’s exploration program as proposed by the Augustine committee, NASA’s deputy administrator dropped a strong hint that changes of some kind would be coming to the agency soon. Speaking at the AIAA Space 2009 conference […]

Hearing reminders

In the unlikely event you’ve forgotten, the House Science and Technology Committee is holding a hearing about the Augustine committee’s report today at 2 pm. The hearing will be webcast by the committee and will also be broadcast by NASA TV.

To get a hint as to the tone of the hearing, take a look […]

Congressional reaction to the Augustine report

Last week’s release of the Augustine committee’s sumary report got, as you might expect, some reaction from Capitol Hill, although not as much as you might have expected. While a few members issued formal statements, others, including those who normally speak out on space issues, decided not to, at least for now.

The chairman of […]

Griffin sounds off

Next Tuesday’s scheduled hearing about the Augustine committee report by the House Science and Technology committee took an interesting turn yesterday. Originally the two scheduled witnesses were committee chairman Norm Augustine and NASA admininstrator Charlie Bolden. However, Bolden is no longer scheduled to testify; according to the Orlando Sentinel, Bolden was replaced because the White […]

When will commercial crew be ready?

One of the key elements of the summary report of the Review of US Human Space Flight Plans Committee (aka the Augustine committee) issued yesterday is the role that commercial providers of crew transportation services can play. “As we move from the complex, reusable Shuttle back to a simpler, smaller capsule, it is an appropriate […]

“An unsustainable trajectory”

That’s from the first sentence of the summary report of the Augustine committtee, just posted on the OSTP web site: “The U.S. human spaceflight program appears to be on an unsustainable trajectory.” I haven’t had time yet to review the report, although at first glance it does not appear to be that surprising given the […]

Bolden’s ethics waiver

On Friday afternoon the White House announced that it was publishing the waivers to its stringent ethics policy it had granted to a handful of officials since the beginning of the administration. The ten waivers released Friday include the one granted to Charles Bolden, the new NASA administrator; others include Attorney General Eric Holder and […]

Taking a chance with “the Deciders”

A Florida Today blog post references a video uploaded to YouTube this week about the Augustine committee and its work. The three-and-a-half-minute video is primarily clips from the various committee meetings, interspersed with other clips (Ares 1-X, Shuttle, Apollo moonwalk) and text slides, and without any voiceover:

The video itself is perhaps a bit subtle: […]

What astronauts want

Or former astronauts, at least. Sunday’s Houston Chronicle included an op-ed by 16 former astronauts with their opinions for the Augustine committee and others on what direction national space policy should take. Their summarized conclusions:

We urge this panel, along with the president, Congress and the American people to consider that: Exploration must be […]

More calls for commercialization

Several outlets reported yesterday that the Augustine committee was delaying the completion of its final report, originally planned for the end of August. That’s not surprising if you have been following the updates posted by the committee (officially the Review of US Human Space Flight Plans committee) on its web site: early last week it […]