Space Politics

Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL) told the Huntsville Times this week that some hard decisions are coming for federal spending, including cuts in defense spending. “I think national defense is probably going to lose some ground,” he told the paper’s editorial board, although he wasn’t sure how it would affect agencies and companies in Huntsville. One […]

When the Obama Administration released its FY2011 budget one year ago Tuesday, the proposal called for spending $6 billion over five years on commercial crew development. After the extended debate on the subject the near-term spending on the program was trimmed in the authorization bill to $1.3 billion in 2011-2013, compared to $3.3 billion over […]

Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL) is one of NASA’s biggest advocates in Congress, and has a long track record on space policy. It’s not a surprise, then, that his office released Wednesday a six-minute video (below) of Nelson talking about space exploration, timed to the 25th anniversary of the Challenger accident this week. Most of the […]

Lost in yesterday’s hubbub about the State of the Union address was the introduction of legislation to radically cut spending by new Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY). Paul’s plan would cut $500 billion in discretionary spending in FY2011 (which is already well underway, although without final appropriations bills) by making major cuts in most agencies and […]

In an editorial Saturday, the Orlando Sentinel complains that Congress is “making a mess of the U.S. space program.” The editorial complains about the lack of Congressional action to remove a provision from last year’s appropriations bill that now requires NASA to spend money on Constellation programs effectively canceled in the new authorization act, as […]