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.

A dispatch from an alternate reality:

I know you all have seen the public discourse regarding Ares and Orion and shuttle, and understandably such discourse can temper our resolve to push forward — if we let it. But, let’s review the bidding. First, we should remind ourselves, as we saw in intimate detail at last summer’s Lunar Capability Concept Review (arguably the finest such review the team has yet executed), that the Ares I/Ares V/Orion/Altair transportation system is highly integrated and keenly designed to open the lunar frontier to us in the years to come. Our driving requirements of going anywhere on the Moon, staying twice as long as Apollo in a sortie mode, sending twice as many crew members, and enabling their return at any time, must remain at the forefront of any consideration to alter the nation’s exploration launch architecture. I assure each of you that we are doing all we can to communicate this key aspect of our baseline plan — it is about much more than launching Orion to LEO (Low Earth Orbit).

And where did those (trivial) requirements come from?

We don’t know, because the agency continues to refuse to show its work.

But it’s pretty pathetic that forty years after Apollo, it thinks it the height of ambition to spend tens of billions of dollars on a system that, even in the unlikely event that it works as currently designed, within budget and schedule, will only do twice the number of crew for twice the duration for billions of dollars per flight. Such a paltry goal simply isn’t worth the money, even if we ignore all the design and management issues. If NASA doesn’t want to get serious about space, then it should stop wasting the taxpayers’ money, and let someone else have it who is.