Space Politics

There is a “hearing” scheduled for tomorrow on Capitol Hill about one of the most popular contentious space issues, placing weapons in space. Only this is not your ordinary hearing. Rather than involve a House or Senate committee, the “e-Parliament” (which sounds like a late 90s dot-bomb but is actually an organization that claims to […]

There are a couple of articles with policy implications in this week’s issue of The Space Review. First, I report on a recent panel that grappled with the question “Why are space stations so hard?” As you might expect, panelists mentioned a combination of technical and management issues, from the difficulty of trying to test […]

A couple articles of note from this week’s issue of The Space Review:

I wrote an essay about the short- and long-term impacts of Hurricane Katrina on NASA. Of particular concern (beyond the obvious, significant humanitarian relief work) is how much of an additional delay this will cause for the shuttle program, which before the […]

As you might expect in the doldrums of August, there wasn’t much news on the space policy front last week; good news for me while I spent the week on vacation. A few items of note:

NASA is looking for more money in its FY2007 budget proposal for the Mars Scout program, an effort to […]

One of the biggest complaints in the space business community, particularly among entrepreneurs, is the headaches created by export control regulations, specifically International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR). There is an existence proof now, however, demonstrating that these hurdles can be overcome: SPACE.com reports that the State Department has issued an agreement—presumably a technical assistance […]