Actually, Senator Leahy is reasonably well connected, and favors the anti-pork get-it-done nature of Obama’s 2011 proposal for NASA’s budget and direction.

Where many don’t get it, Leahy does.

Elon did manage to give Wassermann-Schultz $1,000…I’m sure that will go a long way after she watched Grayson and Kosmas get blown out of the water during a full Republican sweep of FL in the last mid-term.

But last February, Elon did gave Mikulski $4,800. Unfortunately, Elon’s donation paled after Orbital’s MD office got a Anti-Deficiency letter from NASA last April. And it looked even weaker after the MD Democratic Senator got more from a dinner in Huntsville, AL sponsored by…wait for it…Alabama Republican Richard Shelby. Now that is bipartisanship!

Notice that Elon also supported VT Dem. Leahy. Guess he hopes Leahy will be able to counter Mikulski, Inouye, Feinstein, Landreiu, Cochran, Shelby, Hutchison, Alexander and Murkowsky on space funding. We’ll see how that goes.

Adams is arguably clueless about how Congress works, too, if she really thought she’d get a seat on the appropriations committee as a freshman.

Based on campaign contributions, Musk has plenty of “friends” in Congress:

http://www.campaignmoney.com/political/contributions/elon-musk.asp?cycle=10

SpaceX probably has more.

“Aside from him the forces backing a more traditional NASA are strong.”

If the “forces backing” a “traditional NASA” were strong, then they would have defeated the 2010 NASA Authorizatoin Bill that terminated Ares I, funded commercial crew, accelerated HLV, and invested in exploration technology. Instead, the bill passed the House by a margin of nearly 3-1.