Few details about the meeting itself were disclosed. In a blog post, the White House discussed the Apollo 11 mission as well as NASA’s future plans, ranging from commercial crew to the Space Launch System and long-term plans to send humans to Mars. In a separate statement, President Obama said he used the meeting with the Apollo 11 crew “to thank them for serving as advocates, role models, and educators who’ve inspired generations of Americans – myself included – to dream bigger and reach higher.”

The meeting was not without some controversy, though. At a press briefing later Tuesday, reporters complained that the president’s meeting with the Apollo 11 crew was private, with no media allowed to observe. CBS’s Major Garrett told press secretary Josh Earnest that he planned “to lodge a formal complaint about the Apollo 11 event” on behalf of the White House Correspondents Association because of that lack of access.

Other reporters at the press conference used the anniversary to quiz Earnest about US-Russian relations in space, including comments by former NASA administrator Mike Griffin that the US is in a “hostage situation” with the Russians since they control crew access to the International Space Station. Earnest said little about that, other than the Us continues to cooperate with Russia in space and other arenas despite the Ukraine crisis.

At the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX), chairman of the House Science Committee, penned an op-ed about space exploration for The Hill earlier this week. “There are also those who ridicule space exploration. Waste of time. Little green men. Not a priority,” he writes. “We should not let them discourage us.”

Smith did get some criticism of the administration’s space policy into the piece, rueing the cancellation of the Constellation program and complaining about “costly distractions” to the space program, including what he perceived to be an overemphasis on Earth science at NASA. “The Obama administration continues to advocate increasing climate change funding at NASA at the expense of other priorities such as space exploration. There are 18 federal agencies that fund climate change research, but only one does space exploration.”

Smith’s Democratic counterpart, Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX), also issued a statement about the 45th anniversary with Rep. Donna Edwards (D-MD), ranking member of the space subcommittee. “NASA is critical to our nation and its economic strength, and there is no more fitting way to honor Apollo 11 than to resume our commitment to human exploration of deep space that we proved possible 45 years ago,” Edwards said in the statement. “Our bipartisan NASA Authorization Act of 2014 gets us started, and I look forward to continuing the mission.”

“Such an endeavor [of human space exploration] will inspire our young people, spur technological innovation, and strengthen our geopolitical standing,” said Johnson. “I urge my colleagues in Congress and in the Administration to make that program a reality.”

“Requiring private spaceflight contractors to calculate this additional, irrelevant set of numbers would consume thousands of man hours to calculate the complex, esoteric cost-plus system,” argues the Times in its editorial, referring to the “certified cost and pricing data” those companies would have to provide NASA for commercial crew and cargo contracts. Several commercial space advocacy groups have spoken out against the language in the CJS report requiring that information.

The Times editorial also includes a dig at the Space Launch System (SLS). “Launching this ‘Rocket to Nowhere’ will cost taxpayers at least a half-billion dollars every time it lifts off — if it ever does,” the editorial argues. “It’s only fair, and in the long run more efficient, that private firms get a fair opportunity to compete for America’s space business.”

Tuesday morning, the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) issued its Statement of Administration Policy (SAP) on the Senate CJS appropriations bill. “The Administration appreciates the Committee’s support for the Commercial Crew program,” it states in the NASA section of the SAP, “but has concerns about language that would seek to apply accounting requirements unsuitable for a firm, fixed-price acquisition, likely increasing the program’s cost and potentially delaying its schedule.”

The SAP also addresses a couple of other issues with the CJS bill. The administration is “concerned,” it states, about the reduced funding for NASA’s Space Technology program, which gets $580 million versus the administration’s request of $705 million. It also criticizes the Senate for specifying that any future Europa mission use the SLS as the baseline launch vehicle, and warns that the Senate’s “proposed approach to a follow-on Landsat mission is not feasible within the bill’s proposed cost cap of $650 million.”

As the full House started consideration of the bill, the White House released its Statement of Administration Policy (SAP), outlining the issues it has with the bill. For NASA, it highlighted two areas that received less funding in the bill than in the administration’s request: commercial crew and space technology. “The Administration appreciates the Committee’s support for NASA, but is disappointed the bill does not provide the full funding request for the Commercial Crew Program,” the SAP stated, warning that the lower funding level threatens the goal of beginning astronaut transportation to the ISS by 2017. “The Administration also encourages the Congress to support competition in the program, which is important to lowering risk and reducing prices in the long term,” it adds, referring to report language that calls for NASA to downselect to a single company in the next round of the program, later this year.

The SAP also briefly discusses the space technology program, which was cut by $85 million from the administration’s request. “Space Technology is important to reducing the cost and increasing the capability of NASA, other Government, and commercial space activities.”

“Impacts of an RD-180 loss are significant, and near term (FY14 – FY17) options to mitigate them are limited,” the RD-180 Study Group, sometimes called the Mitchell Report after its chair, retired Air Force H. J. “Mitch” Mitchell, stated in a summary presentation not formally released yet by the Defense Department but widely passed around the space industry this week. The report noted that there are 38 Atlas V missions on the manifest (presumably including the NROL-33 that launched this morning) but only 16 RD-180 engines stockpiled in the US.

The report estimated impacts of the loss of the RD-180 at between $2.5 and 5 billion, depending on when Atlas V launches ended and how payloads were transferred to Delta IV vehicles. That transfer would result in both additional expense and delays, the report summary noted, since United Launch Alliance “cannot ramp up Delta production fast enough” to avoid delays of, on average, 2 to 3.5 years. A new entrant (unnamed in some of the summary’s slides but clearly SpaceX) would not be able to pick up the slack, either, the summary noted. In a scenario where no more RD-180s are available, the summary states the “need to reassess” EELV competition and acquisition strategies.

The committee offered several recommendations, including accelerating purchases of RD-180 engines from Russia, but did not recommend starting domestic co-production of the engine: “Doable but does not improve the current situation,” the summary stated. It instead recommended, regardless of the availability of the RD-180, development of a new large liquid oxygen/hydrocarbon engine. That work should be led by a joint Air Force/NASA program office, the summary stated, and “could be available” by fiscal year 2022.

The report, a White House official said Wednesday, will factor into the administration’s discussions regarding the future of the RD-180 and development of a new engine, but no immediate decisions are forthcoming. “All those results just came in last week, and we’re going through them, both with DOD and with NASA,” Richard DalBello, assistant director for space and aeronautics at the Office of Science and Technology Policy, in a luncheon speech Wednesday at the 30th Space Symposium in Colorado Springs. “We’re going to be doing an assessment of where we’re going to go, but right now no decisions have been made.”

DalBello, like Gen. William Shelton on Tuesday, also sought to play down the comments by Rogozin. “There’s been a lot of hyperbole and there’s been a lot of breathless writing on this topic,” he said. “Go read the words of what the men are actually saying and I think you’ll find it’s a little bit calmer.”

DalBello specifically recommended that people read the transcript of Rogozin’s May 13th remarks. Those words, though, may not be that reassuring to some. “I would like to confirm the statement made by [Roscosmos chief] Mr. [Oleg] Ostapenko and to say that, indeed, we will proceed from the fact that we can no longer deliver these engines to the United States, and that we can no longer maintain and repair previously shipped engines, unless we receive guarantees that our engines are used only for launching civilian payloads,” Rogozin said in the official English-language transcript. “We need these guarantees. It would be strange if Russian money and brains were used for launching military payloads that would help in various unclear space projects.”

At first glance, this would appear to pose an issue for the commercial satellite industry, particularly US-built satellites or satellites with US-built components, slated for export to Russia for launch. Commercial satellites and related components remain on the US Munitions List, and while pending reforms would remove most of those satellites and components from the list, those reforms won’t take effect until late this year (180 days after publication of the final revised export rule, expected in May.) Since late March, the State Department has put a hold on license applications for the export of “defense articles and defense services” to Russia, according to the DDTC website, a decision that is holding up the export of several commercial satellites, Space News reported late last week.

Yet, the State Department’s decision on Monday, as severe as it may sound, could actually clear the way for those satellites’ export for launch. If the satellites are not deemed to “contribute to Russia’s military capabilities,” then the State Department could then go ahead and approve them for launch, freeing them from their current legal limbo. The announcement provided no additional details on what licenses would be denied.

In a conference call with reporters Monday, an unidentified “senior administration official” said those applications involving technology needed by the Russian “defense industrial complex” would be denied. “We are now in the process of going through them,” the official said of the current licenses and applications, “and really scrutinizing them to see which ones involve technology that the Russian defense industrial complex is in need of, and those are the ones that will be denied.” Since the satellites being exported to Russia are effectively just “passing through” the country for launch, and not being used directly by the Russian military, it would appear to provide a loophole to allow those satellites to be exported—provided the State Department chooses to interpret it in this manner.

Outside the US, one country has already cancelled plans to launch a satellite on a Russian vehicle because of the crisis. Late last week, the Canadian government said it would not launch its M3MSat on a Soyuz rocket this summer, citing “the current events in the Ukraine.” M3MSat is a small satellite that was one of several payloads on the Soyuz. Two other Canadian-built smallsats that were also slated to launch on that rocket have also been removed from that mission. The Canadian government said it would seek alternative launch arrangement for those satellites, but may forfeit the funds paid to Russia for the now-canceled launch.

This week, government officials have the strongest indication to date that they’re willing to change the resolution limits. Speaking at the Geoint conference in Tampa on Tuesday, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said that the intelligence community had reached “consensus” on supporting DigitalGlobe’s call for revised resolution regulations. “The intelligence community supports a measure that would allow industry to provider higher-resolution commercial satellite imagery,” he told Aviation Week.

Those comments were confirmed later at the conference by Letitia Long, director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA). However, the process to change those resolution limits requires consultation with several other agencies outside of the intelligence community as well as the White House. She didn’t know when a final decision would come, Space News reported, but the company is hoping for a decision before the August launch of its WorldView-3 satellite, which is designed to produce imagery with resolutions as sharp as 0.31 meters.

It’s unclear if the change in resolution limits would be tied to a review of the overall national commercial remote sensing policy, which does not explicitly include any resolution limits. That policy was last updated 11 years ago, in April 2003; the administration has been gradually performing reviews and updates of “sectoral” space policies, like the national space transportation policy updated last November.

“We urge you to chart and clearly state a vision and timeline for the nation in deep space exploration,” the letter requests of the President. The letter stops short, though, of calling for a specific direction, such as a human return to the Moon or acceleration of NASA’s existing long-term plans to send humans to Mars by the mid-2030s. Instead, the letter focuses on the technological and educational benefits of investment in space exploration. “We look forward to working with the Administration to strengthen human spaceflight exploration in our budget commitment,” the letter concludes. “Working together, we can chart a course for space exploration worthy of our great nation.”

The letter is signed by 30 members of the House, 14 Republicans and 16 Democrats, with Reps. Steven Palazzo (R-MS), chairman of the House Science Committee’s space subcommittee, and Donna Edwards (D-MD), ranking member of that subcommittee, as the lead signers. Other signatories to the letter include Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX), chairman of the full House Science Committee. Notably absent, though, are the committee’s ranking member, Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX), chairman emeritus Ralph Hall (R-TX), and vice-chairman Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA). The chairman and ranking member of the House Appropriations Committee subcommittee that funds NASA, Reps. Frank Wolf (R-VA) and Chaka Fattah (D-PA), are also absent from the letter.

Interestingly, the press release jointly issued by Palazzo and Edwards emphasizes support for the Space Launch System (SLS) and Orion programs at NASA, although neither are mentioned by name in the body of the letter. (A reader notes that they are mentioned in the subject of the letter: “Re: NASA Space Launch System and Orion”.) The letter, they state, is “in support of NASA’s Space Launch System and Orion as part of prioritizing human space exploration within NASA’s budgets,” although there’s only a reference in the letter’s opening sentence to support for “a safe, focused and expeditious return of American astronauts to deep space exploration on an American rocket launched from American soil.” Palazzo, in his statement in the joint press release, says he will do “everything in my power to restore that focus to NASA’s budgets as we revisit these matters in the NASA Authorization Act later this year.”