Space Politics

During his speech yesterday at a Women in Aerospace breakfast in Washington, new NASA administrator Mike Griffin brought up the issue of commercial opportunities in the Vision for Space Exploration. Griffin made it clear that he would like to find ways to bring in entrepreneurial ventures into the exploration initiative, he is wary of crafting […]

NASA Watch reports that new administrator Mike Griffin has terminated the agency’s “roadmapping” effort, an agency-wide project to help chart the future of the agency. As the report notes, Griffin said earlier this month that he was disappointed with the pace of the roadmap efforts.

However, according to another source, the roadmapping effort is not […]

There are a couple of articles in this week’s issue of The Space Review that deal with some of the thorny issues of shuttle and station. Dwayne Day examines the plans for the shuttle in its final years, noting that squeezing 28 flights by the end of 2010 may prove difficult, particularly with only three […]

The New York Times reports Monday on how some non-exploration NASA programs, like aircraft flights to monitor tropical clouds, are being threatened by budget changes at the space agency. However, the problem is not just a change in NASA’s priorities given the Vision for Space Exploration (although that is a significant factor), but also the […]

For the longest time (like, about 72 hours) it seemed like no one would speak ill of the Bush Administration’s choice of Mike Griffin as NASA’s next administrator. But this is Washington, so you knew the lovefest couldn’t last forever. In his “ArmsControlWonk” weblog, Jeffrey Lewis, a research fellow at the University of Maryland’s Center […]