Tag: policy
Houston-area schools brace for impact of NASA layoffs
Houston-area schools brace for impact of NASA layoffs.
Federal spending is out of control and NASA’s gonna get what it wants?
You think NASA’s going get money this year or next? Or ever? In one graph (see below), this article shows how completely out of control federal spending has become, beginning in 2007, with no end in sight. Key quote:
Until this skyrocketing spending growth is arrested and reversed, we suspect that government spending has become disconnected from the ability of any American household to support it.
Kibo prices too high for business
The Japanese effort to rent out their Kibo module on ISS for research has stalled, mainly because private businesses apparently consider the prices too high.
NASA budget stalled until lame duck session
It appears that the NASA budget deadlock will remain stalled, at least until lame duck session after the November 2nd election.
Photo gallery of Discovery’s last rollout
A photo gallery showing the space shuttle Discovery’s last rollout from the VAB to the launchpad on Monday.
A look at the Washington Post’s take on the space war
The Washington Post today includes an excellent article outlining quite succinctly the mess that’s resulted from the space war between the House, the Senate, and the administration over NASA’s manned program. Key quote:
In an effort to restore a NASA consensus and fund future human space travel, negotiators from the House and Senate have been meeting frequently in recent weeks. Participants say, however, that the sides are dug in and that stalemate is a real possibility.
As I have been saying for months, don’t expect anything good to come from Congress, even if they come up with a compromise. Obama and NASA under Bolden did a very bad job selling their ideas to Congress, and Congress returned the favor by rejecting those ideas and instead coming up with two different plans, both of which serve their own parochial interests rather than the nation’s. The result is a micromanaged mishmosh that won’t get anything done, while wasting huges sums of cash that the federal government does not have.
Lawmakers Curb Spending on Defense Weather Satellites
Congress cuts the budget on a proposed military weather satellite system.
Another summary of the space war
The space war continues. Here is another article outlining the political state of war between the House, Senate, and administration over NASA’s future. Don’t expect anything good to come out of these political shenigans.
Europe to the Moon
The Space War, in a nutshell
Bumped, with update below
This Christian Science Monitor article gives a nice summary of the present state of war between the President, the House, and the Senate over NASA’s future.
All in all, things do not look good. With so much disagreement, whatever Congress and the President eventually agree to is going to be a mess, accomplishing little while spending gobs of money that the federal government simply no longer has. The result will almost certainly be a failed NASA program, an inability of the United States government to get astronauts into orbit, and an enormous waste of resources.
The one shining light in all this is that we still have a unrelenting need to get into space, not merely to supply the International Space Station but to also compete with other nations. It is my belief that this need — and the potential profits to be made from it — is going to compel private companies to build their own rockets and capsules for getting humans and cargo into space. And I think they will do it whether or not the federal government can get its act together.
Thus, though the U.S. might find itself a bystander in the space race for the next decade or so, in the end we will have a vibrant, competing aerospace industry, capable of dominating the exploration of the solar system for generations to come.
So buck up, space cadets. The near term future might be grim, but the long term possibilities remain endless.
Update: This announcement today from Boeing and Space Adventures illustrates my above point perfectly. For decades Boeing has been a lazy company, living off the government dole while doing little to capture market share in the competitive market. Now that the dole of government is possibly going away, however, the company at last appears to be coming alive. Instead of waiting for a deal with NASA, Boeing has been going ahead with its CST-100 manned capsule, figuring it can make money anyway by selling this product to both private and government customers.
NASA extends Boeing’s station operations contract
NASA has now officially extended Boeing’s contract to operate the International Space Station through 2015.
ISS’s life expectancy
Engineers are reviewing the life expectancy of the International Space Station, in light of the desire of politicians to keep it operating through the 2020s. Intriguing quote:
Airlines and airplane contractors commonly inspect aircraft for such fractures, but with the space station out of reach more than 200 miles up, engineers rely on complex models to predict their growth in orbit.
shuttle variation alive?
The space war over NASA continues. The Orlando Sentinel has an article today selling the merits of the Team Direct concept that would use most of the shuttle hardware to replace it.
Our Debt Is More Than All the Money in the World
There is a lobbying push among a lot of space activists to get the House NASA authorization bill changed so that more money is spent for commercial space. Unfortunately for these activists, reality is about to strike (almost certainly on November 2). Also see this story: Our debt is more than all the money in the world.
With a new Congress almost certainly dominated by individuals who want to shrink the size of government, I doubt anyone in the space industry is going to get much of what they want in the coming years.
The last journey of Discovery begins
The last journey of the space shuttle Discovery begins.
Mike Griffin speaks out again
The space war continues. Mike Griffin gave a speech today where he once again attacked the Obama administration’s proposals for NASA.
Shuttle launchpad to close
Launchpad 39B, where 53 shuttle launches took place, is about to be torn down.
Award denied cosmonaut
A Russian astronaut has been twice denied a routine but financially important honor after returning from space, and the Russian astronaut corps might strike over it.
Bart Gordon responds to Nobel laureates
The space war continues: On Friday the chairman of the House committee of Science and Technology responded negatively to the letter by 30 Nobel laureates demanding the House revise its budget authorization for NASA and accept the Obama administration’s plans for the agency. Two key quotes from Gordon’s response:
The hard reality is that the Administration has sent an unexecutable budget request to Congress, and now we have to make tough choise to the nation can have a sustainable and balance [sic] NASA program.
Reluctantly, the Committee came to the conclusion that the president’s new human space flight program, much like the current Constellation program, was unexecutable under the current budget projections and other NASA priorities we all agree must be addressed.