Lobbying « Space Politics

SEA: in search of timelines and destinations

By Jeff Foust on 2010 February 19 at 8:32 pm ET

The Space Exploration Alliance (SEA) will be conducting its annual legislative blitz next week on Capitol Hill, with plans to meet with over 100 congressional offices. In a press release the organization siad their general goal is to “strengthen” the White House’s plan for NASA. “While the new space plan has some extremely worthy goals, […]

Planetary Society webcast about the new NASA plan

By Jeff Foust on 2010 February 18 at 1:31 am ET

If you’re curious to learn more about why The Planetary Society is supporting NASA’s new direction, the society is planning an interactive webcast on Thursday at 2pm EST featuring executive director Lou Friedman and vice president Bill Nye. From a press release about the upcoming webcast: “The Planetary Society believes that the new NASA plan […]

Where the advocates stand

By Jeff Foust on 2010 February 14 at 5:47 pm ET

Although last week’s “Snowmageddon” forced the Space Frontier Foundation to cancel its lobbying event, “Take Back Space 2010″ (a wise move given the blizzard that hit a few days later), other lobbying efforts are still on track for the coming weeks. The Space Exploration Alliance is hosting its 2010 Legislative Blitz next week, with training […]

Alabama, Constellation’s lead defender

By Jeff Foust on 2010 February 12 at 8:10 pm ET

Much has been made today of the announcement of the “Second to None” group in Huntsville, created by the city’s mayor, Tommy Battle, and led by former congressman Bud Cramer. The group is designed to help the region’s Congressional delegation “understand how ending Constellation would affect the Tennessee Valley”. Cramer, though, appeared to be taking […]

Lobbying for the Program of Record and Flexible Path

By Jeff Foust on 2009 December 15 at 6:48 am ET

‘Tis the seasonâ€¦ for lobbying, that is, regardless if you’re a proponent of the current “Program of Record” or the alternative “Flexible Path” option from the Augustine committee report. Boeing Space Exploration is encouraging its employees to voice their support for the current program, establishing a web site where they can fill out a form […]

Shelby ratchets up the rhetoric

By Jeff Foust on 2009 December 14 at 11:00 pm ET

The debate over the Augustine committee’s work went to a new level this afternoon when a senator alleged that the committee was “tainted” by lobbyists for the commercial space industry. Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) issued a statement Monday accompanied by a letter to NASA inspector general Paul Martin. The key paragraph of Shelby’s letter:

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Dysfunctional advocacy

By Jeff Foust on 2009 November 23 at 12:58 pm ET

In today’s issue of The Space Review I summarize some of the recent lobbying efforts, and the problems associated with them, that I’ve discussed here in the last week or so, including the dueling March Storms, the SaveNASA effort, and Save Space’s letter-writing campaign. A couple of items in the article that I had not […]

SEA, ProSpace set plans for lobbying blitzes

By Jeff Foust on 2009 November 19 at 6:49 am ET

If your idea of space advocacy can’t be contained to 140-character tweets, you’re in luck: a couple of organizations have set plans for grassroots lobbying efforts on Capitol Hill early next year. The Space Exploration Alliance has announced plans for its 2010 Legislative Blitz, scheduled for February 21-23. (Some of the language on the web […]

Watch out, @whitehouse: tweeps want to #saveNASA

By Jeff Foust on 2009 November 19 at 6:40 am ET

It seems some NASA supporters took the news about a potential across-the-board budget cut in FY2011 (which may or may not happen, and may or may not include NASA) pretty hard: on the microblogging service Twitter, the news generated a flurry of tweets in the last day or so, all tagged with the search term […]

Save Space claims it’s met its goal

By Jeff Foust on 2009 November 18 at 1:15 pm ET

In late September Save Space kicked off its efforts to get half a million letters in support of the space program delivered to the White House by the end of October. By late October, though, that goal looked doubtful: the metrics they had provided (in terms of web traffic and Facebook fans) appeared to fall […]

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