On the same page

The White House and NASA reacted Friday to reports, such as the Science blog post late Thursday, that decisions had made about NASA’s future during Wednesday’s meeting between NASA administration Bolden and President Obama. Both organizations were clearly reading from the same script:

“The meeting with Bolden was informational, not decisional,” White House spokesman Nick […]

More policy developments

The White House might be waiting for weeks—up until the FY11 budget proposal release in early February—to formally announce it plans for NASA’s future, but details are starting to leak out. Science magazine reports on its ScienceInsider blog this evening that the administration favors scrapping Ares 1 and 5 and instead developing a “simpler” heavy-lift […]

An extra billion for NASA in FY11?

An Orlando Sentinel report about yesterday’s Bolden-Obama meeting includes some new details about separate meetings the NASA administrator had on Capitol Hill earlier yesterday. Bolden reportedly told members and staffers that the White House was “favoring” including a $1 billion increase in the agency’s budget in the FY2011 budget proposal to be released early next […]

Bolden and Obama (and Pelosi, too)

Yesterday’s meeting between NASA administrator Charles Bolden and President Barack Obama didn’t result in any announcements, or, for that matter, any apparent decisions on the future direction of the space agency. “The two spoke about the Administrator’s work at NASA and they also discussed the Augustine Committee’s analysis,” White House spokesman Nicholas Shapiro told Florida […]

Bolden to meet with Obama

The space community is making much of an item in President Obama’s schedule for Wednesday: a 3:05 pm meeting with NASA administrator Charles Bolden in the Oval Office to “discuss the Administrator’s work at NASA and… the Augustine Committee’s analysis.” Does that mean a decision on the future of NASA’s human spaceflight program is imminent?

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Why isn’t there a space council already?

During the 2008 presidential campaign then-candidate Barack Obama pledged to reinstate the National Aeronautics and Space Council (usually just referred to as the National Space Council), a point he made in his space policy white paper:

There is currently no organizational authority in the Federal government with a sufficiently broad mandate to oversee a […]

Richardson speaks out about commercial space again

Yesterday’s rollout of Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo vehicle featured appearances by two sitting governors: Arnold Schwarzenegger of California and Bill Richardson of New Mexico. However, there wasn’t much in the way of politics at the event other than a brief statement by Richardson, echoing something he said over a year ago:

We know that being […]

An impatient space community

A few other notes from Alan Ladwig’s talk Friday at the University of Nebraska space law conference in Washington:

Ladwig acknowledged the uncertainty that many have felt over the last year about the future policy direction of the new administration. “The space community has been a little on edge during the past 11 months, waiting […]

Sharpening the budget cleaver

Space advocates have talked for a long time about winning a substantial budget increase for NASA. That talk has been emboldened in the last few months by the Augustine committee, whose report found that an increase of up to $3 billion a year was “more appropriate” to support human space exploration beyond LEO. Even people […]

Letter writing update

If you recall last week’s post about a bipartisan “Dear Colleagues” letter to drum up support for increasing NASA’s budget, there’s a minor update. According to an updated blog post on NSS.org, the deadline for obtaining additional signatures, which had been November 5th, has been pushed back to November 17th. There’s no reason for the […]