A slight change in NASA’s budget announcement plans

NASA issued Sunday evening a press release revising its budget rollout plans. Gone is the press conference at NASA Headquarters at 3 pm EST. Instead, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden and CFO Beth Robinson will participate in a teleconference at 12:30 pm EST. Also, NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver will be a participant of an OSTP […]

It’s silly season

We don’t know any more details about the NASA FY2011 budget proposal, or its planned changes to NASA’s human spaceflight program, than we did a couple days ago, when unnamed officials offered some details about the plan. That hasn’t stopped, though, some people, including some members of Congress, from weighing in with varying degrees of […]

So who will support the new NASA exploration plan?

While NASA’s revised human spaceflight plans won’t be released in detail until Monday’s budget announcement, what has been announced has been enough to generate some strong, almost visceral reactions from members of Congress. For example, yesterday afternoon Rep. Suzanne Kosmas (D-FL) dismissed what has been revealed about those plans as “simply unacceptable” in a press […]

More reaction to potential NASA changes

Yesterday’s Orlando Sentinel article about plans to cancel Constellation was remarkable: while it didn’t say anything that was that surprising (the cancellation of Ares 1, development of commercial crew transportation providers, and a shift to a “Flexible Path” architecture all had been rumored to be in the works for weeks), the article was influential enough […]

A quick reaction

As many people suspected, the president did not mention space policy or NASA specifically during his State of the Union speech tonight. (The closest item relevant to space policy was a passing reference to “reform export controls consistent with national security”, an always-hot topic for the commercial space industry.) Less than an hour after he […]

Bolden’s intriguing comments

While the rumors, speculation, and debate about NASA’s future direction has exploded in the last few days, NASA administrator Charles Bolden has been out of the country, attending the Ilan Ramon International Space Conference in Israel and holding other meetings there. He did speak with the press there and provided some interesting comments about the […]

Reports: NASA to get extra funding, extend ISS, cancel Ares

The Orlando Sentinel and Florida Today got some confirmation late today about the White House’s plans for NASA. In a telecon, an unnamed NASA official and unnamed administration official, along with former astronaut and Augustine committee member Sally Ride, provided these details:

NASA would get an average of $1.3 billion a year in additional funding […]

Posey: reported Obama plan “a giant leap backwards”

Although the only details about what might (or might not) be in the White House’s new space exploration have come through assorted media reports, that hasn’t stopped one member of Congress from sounding the alarm, and loudly. Congressman Bill Posey (R-FL), a leading advocate for extending the shuttle, issued a statement today criticizing the plan […]

SOTU, the budget freeze, and Mollohan

Will President Obama mention space in tonight’s State of the Union address? Space advocates are hopeful yet doubtful NASA will get a shoutout in the address. “I don’t know that he’s going to talk about NASA in the State of the Union,” Sen. Bill Nelson tells Florida Today. The two representatives who serve Florida’s Space […]

The moon is “dead”

The lede of today’s Orlando Sentinel article is blunt: “NASA’s plans to return astronauts to the moon are dead.” So, it claims, are the Ares 1 and 5 rockets, which will not be funded in the FY2011 budget proposal to be released on Monday. “There will be no lunar landers, no moon bases, no Constellation […]