Several people, including Clark Lindsey and Keith Cowing, have linked to this Onion article:

“It’s always ‘Are the solid rocket boosters functioning at full capacity?’ and ‘Do the liquid oxygen prevalves operate as required?’ with John,” Discovery commander James Reid said. “If it weren’t for that guy, we’d already be in space by now.”

In addition to his insistence on mission coordinates being 100 percent accurate, Wilkins reportedly spends all his time obsessing about Discovery’s general purpose computers, which ignite the main engines and ensure that the craft can safely reach the speed of 18,000 mph.

“Is there anything John doesn’t worry about?” said Michael Dennigan, the shuttle crew’s second-in-command. “This isn’t rocket science—you’d think he’d try to relax a bit.”

Since he was assigned to it last year, Wilkins has aborted the NASA mission for a wide range of seemingly unimportant reasons, including a 4-inch crack in the exterior hull of the ship, the failure of several engine cut-off sensors, and what has been described as “the smallest of possible thunderstorms.”

I didn’t see it, but I understand that the original version actually called out John Shannon by name, but they later changed it to “Wilkins,” perhaps after complaints from PAO (or maybe John himself, though I imagine he’d have a sense of humor about it).

There actually is a grain of truth to this (though not, as far as I know, with John Shannon). I thought that they delayed a launch (that I attended) needlessly a couple years ago (under the Wayne Hale regime), and I have a more extensive discussion of that particular issue here. But as far as I know, John is doing a good job of balancing safety and cost/schedule.

Keith Cowing notes that President Obama read to schoolkids about the moon landings.

It would be nice to think that this is a harbinger for his space policy, but I would note that he’s been in office for two weeks now, and despite all the rumors prior to the inauguration, NASA continues to operate on an acting administrator. Of course, it would actually be unusual for an administration to name a NASA administrator so early. This is because it’s hard to find a candidate who is both capable and willing to do the job. The other reason is that space isn’t important…

(Republican) New Hampshire Senator Judd Gregg has accepted President Obama’s nomination to be the new Secretary of Commerce. Apparently, a deal has been cut to allow this to occur without a change in the balance of power in the Senate, by having the Democrat governor appoint a Republican to replace him.

From a space standpoint, a lot of people in the commercial space community were excited about the Richardson pick, because of his very visible and active support of commercial space and space tourism. As head of the Commerce Department, he could have been helpful to that cause, through the Office of Commercial Space, and perhaps helping ameliorate ITAR and other regulatory issues. But Gregg is a cipher on these issues, so it isn’t clear whether this is good, bad or indifferent for commercial space. It’s probably not a subject to which he’s given much thought. On the other hand, he’s reportedly a smart guy, and perhaps educable if people can get to him early.

George Abbey and Neal Lane have a new white paper on space policy recommendations. I haven’t read it yet, but I expect it to be pretty bad, based on history.

[Update a few minutes later]

OK, I skimmed it. Other than the recommendation to cancel Ares 1, almost everything else is wrong. Certainly turning our backs on missions beyond LEO is, as is a focus on energy and the environment. There are other agencies responsible for this. I was amused by this:

It is distressing to observe the current state of the U.S. space program as the nation moves into a new progressive era with the inauguration of President Barack Obama in January 2009.

Emphasis mine. I don’t think that word means what they think it means.

[Mid-afternoon update]

Like one of the commenters over at NASA Watch, I too am shocked, shocked that John Muratore wants to revive X-38 and come back in a lifting body.

Challenger was destroyed live on television, in front of millions of schoolchildren watching the first teacher go into space. We learned many lessons from that event. Most of them are wrong.

As I noted yesterday, on the Apollo 1 anniversary, I had a piece about the tragic space anniversaries that cluster around the end of January a year ago.