Congress « Space Politics

Hutchison: Progress failure underscores need for SLS

By Jeff Foust on 2011 August 25 at 6:06 am ET

Yesterday Rep. Dana Rohrabacher reacted to the loss of a Progress cargo spacecraft by requesting an “emergency transfer of funding” to NASA’s Commercial Crew Development program to provide the US with its own means to access the station. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison also issued a statement in response to the launch failure, and like Rep. […]

Rohrabacher calls for “emergency” funding for CCDev in light of Progress failure

By Jeff Foust on 2011 August 24 at 5:52 pm ET

Earlier today a Soyuz rocket carrying a Progress spacecraft lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, the 44th such cargo spacecraft launched by Russia in the ISS era. Unlike the previous 43, though, this one failed to reach orbit: an apparent failure in the Soyuz’s third stage caused the loss of the Progress as […]

What will be caught in Webb’s budgetary web?

By Jeff Foust on 2011 August 23 at 6:31 am ET

On Monday Aviation Week and Nature reported on the latest cost estimate for building and operating the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST): $8.7 billion. That includes the costs to build and launch the telescope, as well as five years of science operations. That new total figure should not be surprising: last month Rep. Frank Wolf […]

Happy birthday, Charlie. Now where’s that SLS study?

By Jeff Foust on 2011 August 19 at 5:36 pm ET

Today is NASA administrator Charles Bolden’s 65th birthday: he was born in Columbia, South Carolina, on August 19, 1946. So what did Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) get him for his birthday? A press release about the status of studies for the Space Launch System (SLS). According to Hutchison, the independent cost study for the […]

Another round of belt tightening

By Jeff Foust on 2011 August 19 at 6:15 am ET

While work on fiscal year 2012 budgets is slowly making progress in Congress, federal agencies are already working on their planned 2013 budgets, preparing submissions to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). Those agencies, including NASA, are now being given guidance from the White House to be ready to trim their budgets. In a […]

SLS: Senators’ Letters about SLS

By Jeff Foust on 2011 August 17 at 6:20 am ET

Earlier this month came word that a draft letter was circulating on Capitol Hill, reportedly linked to Utah’s congressional delegation, calling on the administration to publish its design for the Space Launch System (SLS) heavy-lift launch vehicle and ensure it makes use of solid rocket motors. The advocacy group Tea Party in Space (TPIS) recently […]

All about jobs

By Jeff Foust on 2011 August 17 at 5:43 am ET

With NASA transitioning into the post-shuttle era, and doing so in a turbulent economy, it’s no surprise that there’s concern about jobs and job losses, and not just in Houston or Florida’s Space Coast. Up to 600 jobs in Huntsville could be eliminated in the next two months, the Huntsville Times reported late last week, […]

Holdren: White House still supports NASA policy; another presidential speech coming?

By Jeff Foust on 2011 August 13 at 11:18 am ET

Last’s week meeting of the NASA Advisory Council at NASA Ames featured a presentation by John Holdren, director of the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). His talk, and the Q&A session afterward, covered general issues associated with science policy and NASA. That included the message that the administration was still committed […]

Posey wants clearer vision, supports commercial spaceflight

By Jeff Foust on 2011 August 10 at 8:20 am ET

In a speech on Florida’s Space Coast yesterday, Congressman Bill Posey (R-FL) warned that NASA’s human spaceflight program needed a “clear mission” in order to retain its funding in the coming years. “Absent a clear mission, human spaceflight, I’m afraid, will be very vulnerable,” he said, according to Florida Today’s account of his speech. (The […]

Conservative criticism of NASA spending

By Jeff Foust on 2011 August 7 at 2:24 pm ET

With concerns about overall federal spending higher than at any time in recent history, fiscal conservatives are taking a closer look at NASA spending, as evidenced by a couple of recent releases–although, at least in one case, their logic is muddled, at best.

Last week Tea Party in Space (TPIS) issued a press release in […]

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