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Despite the flurry of publicity regarding the latest reports that the President will announce a new major space policy next week, the White House is not officially offering specific details. Press Secretary Scott McClellan was quoted by the New York Times (among others) as saying: “The president directed his administration to do a comprehensive review of our space policy, including our priorities and the future of the program, and the president will have more to say on it next week.” According to reports initially published by Reuters and UPI, President Bush will make a major space policy announcement next week that will commit the nation to resuming human exploration of the Moon. (For the full details, read those articles, or get a one-paragraph summary I wrote for spacetoday.net.) If this is correct (and that remains to be seen—remember the hubbub last month about the impending policy announcement that never came?) it could indeed be one of the biggest moments in the history of NASA. Some comments and questions:
Many questions, few answers… for now. Late last week Rep. Ralph Hall, a veteran Congressman from Texas, announced that he was switching from the Democratic to the Republican party. (Hall claimed that he made the switch because Republicans had “zeroed out” his district’s appropriations in the budget, although more cynical people note that Republican redistricting in Texas would have made it much harder for him to be reelected as a Democrat.) Hall had been the ranking minority member—top Democrat—on the House Science Committee, and often worked closely with Republican chairman Sherwood Boehlert on a number of space policy issues, including an effort to delay the Orbital Space Plane. Hall will be replaced as ranking minority member by Bart Gordon, a Tennessee Democrat who had been the ranking Democrat on the space subcommittee. Who will take over that position, or if Gordon will hold that job as well as Hall’s old position, hasn’t been announced. There has been some speculation that Hall could become chairman of the space subcommittee, since Rohrabacher stayed on the job post-Columbia, after internal House term limits should have forced him out, because of a lack of other members interested in the post. This should all sort itself out shortly after Congress reconvenes after MLK Jr. Day. The White House is offering no updates on the status of its space policy overhaul. In a press briefing Tuesday, Press Secretary Scott McClellan said, “The President is strongly committed to the exploration of space.” However, when asked how the review was going, McClellan would only say “The review has been moving forward, and I have no additional update at this time.” Nothing else has come out of the White House recently about the review, although current speculation focuses on something at either the State of the Union address in late January, or in association with the first anniversary of the Columbia accident on February 1. (Keep in mind the latter date coincides with the Super Bowl, which means that any announcement then could be drowned out by the focus on the game.) |
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