A motley crew and a typically misnamed caucus. ‘Advancing Government-Funded Employment in My District Caucus’ would be more accurate. Whitesides, of course, is famous for all of the advancements for humanity in space he achieved while running Virgin Galactic – nearly into the ground. In the great Democratic tradition of electing notable failures to office, he is now a Congressman.

Ivey represents the most Democratic-leaning Congressional district in the US. His constituency is nearly all federal employees. No surprise that those include the headcount at Goddard.

At least your black Congresscritter has a Harvard Law degree. My own black Congresscritter is Maxine Waters. ‘Nuff said.

Evans represents a district that doesn’t quite include ULA’s HQ within its borders, but seems certain to include a lot of its employees. But he’s new to Congress so his influence is negligible at this point.

Bacon is an anti-Trump Republican. He’s also a lame duck, having announced he will not stand for re-election in 2026 – likely because he would have been a prominent target of the Trump administration, the Freedom Caucus and other groups looking to complete the purging of RINOs from the Republican Congressional delegation.

I expect the usual special pleading from this new caucus with little of it having anything much to do with “Humanity in Space.”

https://payloadspace.com/new-caucus-promotes-humanity-boldly-going/

(Rep. Ivey, for what it is worth, is my current representative in Congress. And yes, this district includes Goddard.)

The “non-NASA” contract to Intuitive Machines for its orbital tug is pretty obviously from Space Force and is related to Golden Dome. I’ve been figuring for awhile that such tugs will have a significant role to play in the Golden Dome architecture and this news appears to confirm that surmise.

Yeah. I’d be frankly shocked if this turned out NOT to be the Space Force.

The Space Force is going to be bootstrapping a lot of interesting commercial capabilities in the coming years.

With any luck, it can be wrangled