As looks exceedingly likely, who would replace him as chairman of the house appropriations committee for NASA?

If he goes down as part of a big GOP sweep that restores them to a majority, then presumably it would be Frank Wolf, who might be favorably disposed to commercial, given that Wallops is in his state, though not his district. Culberson taking over would be a disaster, given some of the ignorant comments he’s been making about the new plan.

But if Mollohan loses, but the Dems retain control, who would replace him? I hope it wouldn’t be Chaka Fatah, but I think he’s the most senior member, other than Obey (whose seat is also shaky). None of them have much NASA in their districts, other than Schiff (JPL).

Anyway, none of this would be as big a problem as Dick Shelby replacing Barbara Mikulski, from the standpoint of getting something useful out of NASA.

But if anyone has better insight than me (probably not hard), please chime in.

G. Ryan Faith has a good overview of the differences between the original VSE and the new plan, and the problems it (and really, any) government space program will have in maintaining political momentum. Which is why it’s important to transition to a commercial program as soon as possible.

[Update a few minutes later]

I agree with Faith that the new plan is actually much closer to the original VSE (particularly as regards to the Aldridge recommendations) than it became with the misbegotten ESAS/Constellation. The only really significant difference is the lack of moon first as an explicit goal. But that goal had become meaningless anyway under Constellation, because all of the technologies that would have potentially made it useful to go to the moon had been defunded to feed Ares/Orion. As he notes, if we can keep this on track, there will be plenty of time to once again make the argument for lunar return, long before we go anywhere else. If we establish logistics nodes at the Lagrange points for departures and returns from deep space, the moon will look ever more compelling.

The Ares folks are reportedly defying the White House.

The problem, of course, is that they still have their budget, and they have allies in Congress. I feel sorry for them, because they’ve put a lot of effort in this, and don’t want to see it go for naught, and they’re caught in the middle of a war between the White House and the Hill, or at least a few key people on the Hill, and it’s a non-partisan battle. Unfortunately, if Congress doesn’t get a budget out this year (which seems likely to me) and does a continuing resolution, this could go on for many more months, wasting a lot more money and time, and delaying the start of anything useful in a new direction. And a Republican Congress next year could shut down or redirect the whole mess. Newt and Bob Walker and Dana are going to have to stay on the hustings to try to get their fellow elephants not to screw things up.

[Update a few minutes later]

This does nothing except increase the pressure on SpaceX for a successful Falcon 9 launch, of course. The political stakes are unfairly high for them.