Ed Ellegood is covering a Space Club speech by Bill Posey:
Rep. Posey said commercial space providers are our best hope for getting U.S. astronauts back into orbit.
Rep. Posey again spoke of space as a military “high ground” that the U.S. seems to be giving up to adversaries in China and Russia.
Overheard: Sen. Mikulski (D-MD) wants to cut NASA’s commercial spaceflight investments in order to save the Webb Telescope.
Overheard: Sen. Mikulski, meanwhile, is supporting an earmark to develop a processing facility at Wallops for use by Orbital’s Taurus-2.
There’s going to be an ugly battle over NASA appropriations in the Senate this fall.
Mikulski may want to be seen preserving the Webb telescope project for now, but the Webb telescope jobs are going to get slashed eventually, either because the program gets canceled or because the telescope gets launched. They can only milk that development program for so long, and then it gets handed over to some astronomers, almost all of whom will be out-of-state or foreign. Heck, astronomers probably don’t even vote because they’re asleep when the polls are open (space astronomers excepted).
If the #1 rule is that space is not important, then a space telescope that almost nobody has ever heard of is really unimportant. I’m betting she’ll bend, especially for a token amount to keep the Webb on life support.
I hope there is a big debate, hopefully not an ugly battle.
Hope for the debate, expect the ugly battle.
I really believe we are beyond the point where it matters. Awards have already been made that will contribute to the next stage. We can expect, that regardless of the debate some things are going to be funded and private companies will be in a position to bid on them. Ready or not, the future is coming.
God Bless the gentle lady from Maryland. Sadly, this is the type of things people inside Washington do routinely. Kill the programs that work and are making progress while providing bailout earmarks to programs that under perform expectations and blow out their budget.
JWST is 600% over budget and growing.
Respectfully,
Andrew Gasser
TEA Party in Space
I still don’t buy any hype about China and Russia “winning” in space – at least in the short to medium term.
Neither of them can afford to do much there – and they’ve only talked big about it for public relations or internal political reasons (holy Space Race, Batman!)…
(People who take seriously Chinese claims about schedules for anything space-related continue to baffle me.)
Neither of them can afford to do much there
Kind of misses the point. They are among those that are halfway to anywhere. It’s hard to see anybody that has figured out the economics that will drive us forward in space (it’s not the science.) The secret is, it’s not top down (because no near term existential threat appears to exist.) The winners will be those that realize the bottom up nature of space economics. This has very little to nothing to do with current economic status. Certain societies have an advantage because of mindset… but at this point, anybody could take the lead.
Space tweets – is that the next phase of SETI?
Mikulski and her party leadership aren’t too hot on earthbound free enterprise, so I don’t expect much support from those types on commercial space ventures.
Free enterprise doesn’t require universal support. Limiting interference is usually all that’s needed. The most important aspect of space is that nobody has jurisdiction. Jurisdiction will be assumed by those that want to control. That is what needs to be refuted on all fronts.
Ownership and contracts support freedom. Handing your freedom over to others in any form of government beyond mutual self defense is what leads to problems. Even accepting the strings attached to military defense is a danger.
Having governments recognize the rights of individuals would be nice (crazy talk.)
OTOH, Tax the hell out of those space cadets. Who the hell do they think they are looking for frontiers! We’re from the government. You need our help, like it or not.
The Chinese appear to be making steady progress, http://spaceports.blogspot.com/2011/08/china-prepares-long-march-2f-for.html
Which will happen first, the return of Americans launching Americans to space or the Chinese building their own mini-space station?
You can’t win if you don’t play but you can still lose.