Following a polite, but factual slap-down by NASA in its response to Congressional inquiries into whether or not SpaceX has received preferential treatment in how an accident review board is being managed, one might have that though the issue was out to rest. As Lee Corso will most assuredly say on ESPN every Saturday morning […]
Following the SpaceX CRS-7 failure on June 28th, it was only a matter of time before Congress injected itself into the accident investigation efforts. If it were only a matter of being good stewards of taxpayer dollars, there would be little reason to draw attention to the issue and even less to complain. When the […]
InnerSpace Opinion “He who pays the piper, calls the tune.” On Wednesday, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden sent a letter to Congress informing America’s elected representatives that due to consistent under-funding of the Commercial Crew program since its inception, his agency would be forking over an additional $490 million to Russia to pay for Soyuz crew […]
Yet another positive aspect of NASA’s highly successful New Horizons probe is the fact that it is focusing attention on one of the biggest gaps in fulfilling some of the space agency’s long term plans; the lack of a coherent policy regarding space nuclear power. New Horizons, like Cassini at Saturn and the Curiosity rover […]
When the SpaceX Falcon 9 boosting the NASA CRS-7 payload exploded in the air over Cape Canaveral on June 28th, one of the first sympathetic tweets came from United Launch Alliance CEO Tory Bruno. It seemed sincere enough, and a refreshing moment of class in what has otherwise been a bitter battle between ULA and […]
Last week, a Senate Appropriations Committee “marked up” the FY 2016 Commerce-Justice-Science (CJS) bill which funds among other things, NASA. For supporters of several NASA programs, including Commercial Crew, it was a simply put, a very bad day. Despite repeated impassioned pleas from NASA Administrator Charles Bolden to fully fund Commercial Crew at the requested […]
NASA announced late yesterday that it has issued the first task orders for crew rotation flights under its Commercial Crew program. The order went to Boeing, but as the press release included below makes clear, that does not necessarily mean the first flight will go to Boeing as well. In parsing previous statements, the agency […]
Yesterday, a House Appropriations subcommittee approved a draft NASA FY 2016 funding bill. As expected, the bill was set at the same overall funding level as that offered up by the Administration, at $18.592 billion. To that extent, the bill is non-controversial, but that is also about as far as it goes. Once again, the […]
President Obama at the Kennedy Space Center / April 15th 2010. Image Credit : NASA The following is Part I in a multi-part series looking back at changes in American space policy put forward by President fiove years ago. Wednesday, April 15th was perhaps not the best of days for many Americans. While for those […]
In the afterglow of a spectacularly successful initial test flight of the first, partially completed Orion spacecraft, it would have been gratifying to learn that for the first time, Congress has elected to fully fund the both the Space Launch System and NASA’s Commercial Crew program. Once again that is not the case, and America’s […]
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