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Yesterday’s successful landing of Atlantis at the Kennedy Space Center marked the end of the 30-year space shuttle program and the beginning of a period of some uncertainty for NASA’s human spaceflight program. That milestone would appear to be another opportunity for critics of the Obama Administration’s space policy in Congress and elsewhere to voice [...] Florida Senate president Mike Haridopolos, who is also seeking the Republican nomination to run against US Senator Bill Nelson in 2012, called for more support from the federal government for Florida’s space industry in a curious op-ed in the Orlando Sentinel on Wednesday. Haridopolos laments the impending layoff of 1,900 workers at the Kennedy Space [...] Space industry supporters, backed by two former astronauts, held their annual Space Day in the Florida Legislature on Wednesday, seeking support for legislation to make the state more competitive for space businesses. This includes securing $10 million in funding for Space Florida as well as passing legislation to provide tax credits for spaceflight projects. The [...] NASA administrator Charles Bolden spoke this week at the AIAA Aerospace Sciences Meeting in Orlando (the first speech by the administrator whose prepared text was posted on the NASA web site since a statement about the rescue of Chilean miners in mid-October). Much of Bolden’s speech was looking back at the shuttle program, but he [...] The Orlando Sentinel’s article about the continued funding of Ares 1 despite being effectively canceled in the NASA authorization act has gotten fairly wide coverage during a slow news week, with Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) getting much of the blame because of his provision in the FY2010 appropriations bill, still in force during the ongoing [...] The impending retirement of the space shuttle program—now no sooner than mid-2011 assuming STS-135 is added to the manifest—has been feared by local and state officials because of the thousands of layoffs that will result and the concomitant impact on the region’s economy. For example, state senator Mike Haridopolos, who represents the Space Coast and [...] In a hotly-contested Republican primary for the 24th Congressional District in Florida, state representative Sandy Adams declared victory late last night, just 560 votes ahead of the second-place finisher. Adams will face Suzanne Kosmas, who easily won the Democratic primary in her bid for reelection to the district that includes NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. In [...] “No asteroids need apply — U.S. space policy is on a collision course with itself,” is the lede of a Washington Post editorial Sunday about the current space policy debate. The editorial’s key concern is that the White House’s proposal tries to do too much in human spaceflight with not enough money, and is thus [...] What does the NASA Advisory Council (NAC) have in common with Congress? They’re both growing impatient with NASA for details on the agency’s commercial crew plans. The NAC’s commercial space subcommittee “expressed dissatisfaction with some of the information they have received from NASA managers on the agency’s approach” for commercial crew, Aviation Week reported. The [...] |
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