NASA « Space Politics

Senators push NASA for documents

By Jeff Foust on 2011 June 24 at 5:59 am ET

Members of the Senate Commerce Committee, and their staff, have made it clear for months that they have been frustrated with the lack of information they have received from NASA about its plans to implement provisions of the 2010 NASA authorization act, particularly regarding the Space Launch System (SLS) heavy-lift rocket. Last month they formally […]

Albrecht’s policy prescription for NASA

By Jeff Foust on 2011 June 21 at 7:10 am ET

In this week’s issue of The Space Review, I reviewed the new book Falling Back to Earth by Mark Albrecht, who was the executive secretary of the National Space Council during the George H.W. Bush administration and, later, president of International Launch Services. Much of the book, as I note in the review, talks about […]

A (partial) SLS competition in the works?

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

Reports on Thursday indicated that NASA has settled on a design for the Space Launch System (SLS) heavy-lift booster that would be largely shuttle-derived, but would offer some room for competition. According to Aviation Week and NASASpaceFlight.com, the SLS design will be only slightly different from the reference design released in an interim report to […]

Shelby calls for SLS competition

By Jeff Foust on 2011 June 15 at 10:08 pm ET

What does Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) have in common with California’s two Democratic senators? He, like Sens. Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein, is now calling on NASA to hold an open competition for the development of the Space Launch System (SLS). In a letter to NASA administrator Charles Bolden last Friday, Shelby said that while […]

Is Huntsville’s “best friend” for NASA a freshman Democrat?

By Jeff Foust on 2011 June 14 at 7:33 am ET

On Friday Huntsville’s “Second to None” task force, a group of local officials who lobby on space and defense issues, met with a member of Congress. Not the area’s own representative, Mo Brooks (R-AL), but with Rep. Terri Sewell (D-AL) from Birmingham. And afterwards local officials declared her their newest ally in supporting NASA, and […]

President Obama: “I believe in the space program”

By Jeff Foust on 2011 June 9 at 1:15 pm ET

Earlier this week reporter Leon Bibb of Cleveland’s WEWS-TV briefly interviewed President Obama at the White House. About halfway through the wide-ranging ten-minute interview, Bibb asked Obama about the future of NASA, with a particular emphasis on the future of the agency’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland. “With the space shuttle program cutting back now, […]

Briefs: strange space bedfellows, human spaceflight poll, Mars mission budget squeeze

By Jeff Foust on 2011 June 8 at 8:09 am ET

Here’s something you don’t see every day: a Tea Party group saying it’s in agreement with a pair of Democratic senators. Florida-based TEA Party in Space (TPIS), part of the larger Tea Party Patriots coalition, announced Monday that it has “publicly praised” a letter from Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) to NASA […]

Competing heavy lift

By Jeff Foust on 2011 June 5 at 12:35 pm ET

As first reported by Space News last Thursday, California’s two senators have asked NASA to hold an open competition for the development of the Space Launch System (SLS), the heavy-lift vehicle Congress directed NASA to develop in the 2010 NASA authorization act. In their letter to NASA administrator Charles Bolden, Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and […]

Strategies for space settlement and NASA’s survival

By Jeff Foust on 2011 May 31 at 7:32 am ET

One of the more compelling speeches at the National Space Society’s International Space Development Conference (ISDC) in Huntsville, Alabama, earlier this month was by Jeff Greason, president of XCOR Aerospace and a member of 2009’s Augustine Committee that reviewed NASA’s human spaceflight plans. Greason’s speech, the video of which is now available online, focused on […]

Commercial cargo skepticism and support

By Jeff Foust on 2011 May 28 at 11:18 am ET

Thursday’s hearing of the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee’s space subcommittee on NASA’s commercial cargo efforts did not yield much of the way of new insights or surprises about the program. It did, though, provide an opportunity for some members to express their concern about, if not skepticism regarding, the ability of Orbital Sciences […]

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