Category Archives: Space

Space

Frank Sietzen

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I don’t always agree with Frank, but he’s a good guy, and I was very saddened to hear that he’s had a stroke, but is recovering. This is very tough for him, because I think he’s still waiting for a kidney as well. I want to wish him the best and a rapid recovery.

Political Commentary, Space

No Space Pork!

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The Institute for Liberty, which seems to have gone on the warpath against the House NASA authorization bill, held a press conference on the Hill yesterday. Apparently, they’ve been stirring things up in Gabbie Giffords’ and Alan Grayson’s districts, with a lot of constituent letters.

“The bill is worse than a sham,” said Andrew Langer, President of IFL. “It is a travesty of incredible proportions. Despite the advice of Nobel Prize winners and Buzz Aldrin, Congressman Giffords is continuing to support worthless programs at NASA, programs that have not gotten us any closer to our goals in space, while continuing to outsource our manned space flights to Russia!”

I wonder if they’ve been coordinating with Citizens Against Government Waste?

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Space, War Commentary

The Latest Lies

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I rarely link to Mark Whittington any more, because I see no need to give him the traffic for which he seems to troll, but I’ll make an exception in this case, because it’s so blatant and stupid:

Rand Simberg, like many commercial space advocates, has attacked the Iran Nonproliferation Act (now including Syria and North Korea) as being ineffective and harming commercial space operations.

I have never “attacked,” or even criticized INKSNA, nor do I know anyone else in the commercial space community who has, so he is either making this up out of whole cloth, or he doesn’t understand the difference between INKSNA and ITAR. I guess the latter interpretation is more likely, and more charitable, since he understands little about space and technology policy in general.

[Afternoon update]

Mark has updated his post to continue his fantasies about me:

I suspect that he will play Clinton-like word games by saying not “attacked” but rather “expressed reservations” or “was dubious about” or even “mildly amused by.” Since it seems so important to him, I’ll give him that.

I have done none of the above. I have rarely, if ever, discussed INKSNA prior to that piece yesterday. He needs to adjust his meds, either up or down.

Political Commentary, Space

The Congressional NASA Battle

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Henry Vanderbilt has the latest:

HR.5781 is not on the House calendar for this week. Our sources tell us that at least in part due to a significant number of constituent calls late last week, the House Leadership probably (no guarantees, of course) won’t put HR.5781 on the calendar this session (at least not in its current form). We hear that negotiations with Senate Authorizers continue, with the outcome (if any) now more likely to be based on the Senate bill. So, the battle is going well — to everyone who made a contact so far, thanks! But the battle over this NASA Authorization continues. We need to keep the pressure on, with the general message being, NASA Exploration R&D (including Commercial Crew and Cargo) is a good thing to fund, while NASA in-house booster developments (see numbers in the Generic reason below) are very likely to be massive wastes of scarce funds. Those of you who’ve already contacted your Representative might want to contact your Senators now too. Those of you who haven’t yet made a contact, why not? More when we know more.

For much more background detail, see Space Access Update #117 and Space Access Update #118.

Let’s keep the pressure up.

[Update a while later]

OK, Henry notes in comments that there’s an even more recent link, which also includes this:

We generally avoid taking partisan positions, as tending to be a distraction from our overall goal of cheap access. We will occasionally mention partisan matters that are actually relevant to our goals. Representative Dana Rohrabacher (R CA) is a long-time member of the House Science Committee who on space matters over the years has pushed in what we think is the right direction considerably more often than not. Notably so in this year’s NASA funding fight, where he’s been on the correct side of some very muddled party lines, standing up for sound NASA policy over local partisan pork.

We understand he’s interested in becoming Chair of the Science Committee in the event the Republicans become the majority party in the House. We think that he would make a good Chairman for our purposes. He has a new website that is among other things concerned with helping him campaign for that post within his party. We’re passing word along so that if you’re so inclined, you can take a look and decide for yourself whether to help.

Having Dana as head of the Science Committee would be great news for those of us seeking a more enlightened space policy.

Business, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Space

Good Space Reporting

It’s so rare, I want to applaud it when it occurs. There’s a story at the WaPo that has a good summary of what’s going on in space policy, though I think that the headline is a little understated. It might have been nice to get a little more elaboration on this, though:

The House bill awaiting action would give twice as much money to Russia for transporting astronauts and cargo to the space station as it would give to U.S. companies working to build that capacity.

Insanity. And it doesn’t even mention the fact that this undermines the non-proliferation regime, due to the need to continually waive the requirements for INKSNA (a subject on which I’ll have more tomorrow).