Space Forum / Space Policy / January 2004

Wow, what a site! What does OSHA say about this?
Did Dennis Tito secure a spot on his Russian space tourist trip using your
site?
Rand Simberg, the Don King of commercial space travel.

With the new space initaitive, what will happen to NASA's aeronautical
r&d? The agency has been heavily involved in improving general
aviation lately. I suspect that much of the GenAV and Commercial
Aircraft R&D will be shifted to the FAA and the military aeronautical

Hey folks,
I watched the President's speech yesterday with a mixture of "OK, less
speech sir; more substance" and "Yowza!".
I could go on for days about the points and counterpoints this speech

Bush announced the US would return to the moon until 2020.
If Bush would really mean it, he would...
- set a target date which is not 2020. He would set a target, at least a
 intermedeate target of 2008, right for the election of his handpicked

I am looking for a list of the the Discovery proposals especially those that
where for Moon missions.
My guess is a lot of these that where turned down are now going to come back
and be approved over the next few years.

Juding from http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/54873main_budget_chart_14jan04.pdf
The cost to complete the ISS (for the US) is about $60B, this includes
the Space Shuttle and ISS transport budgets as their only reason to
continue is to support the ISS.

I've been looking desperately to find a transcript or video of O'Keefe's
briefing at 4:30 PST today.  I did manage to find the budget chart he
had on stage (http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/54873main_budget_chart_14jan04.pdf),
but no transcript, not at nasa.gov nor at c-span.org.

Given that we are returning to the Moon and hopefully going on to
Mars, we may eventually need a Saturn V-class booster.  If so, it
might make sense to revive the Russian Energia.
Energia-derived hardware is in use today by Lockheed, in the form of

I dont know much about the research done on this dark matter... all I know
its elusive, there is indirect evidence of it, and its what holds galaxies
together... is it possible that this dark matter could be like a white dwarf
except completely cooled down so its one big chunk of ...

http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,61915,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_7
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,108404,00.html
Well, the latter's more a Q&A form, but the gist is the same.
*****

Lileks blogged on the initiative today (he's in favor of it) -- a good
column (as usual for him):
http://www.lileks.com/bleats/archive/04/0104/011504.html
A sample:

For any major space effort to survive long enough to come to fruition there
needs to be some sort of clear rationale diving it forward. For Apollo, there
was the humiliation of being beaten into space by the Communists. In the
political struggle betwwen capitalism and communism such ...

Scientists closely monitoring Yellowstone
Recent eruptions, 200 degree ground temperatures, bulging magma and 84
degree water
temperatures prompt heightened srutiny of park's geothermal activity

Anne Applebaum of the Washington Post manages to embaress herself with a
screed against space exploration:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A60593-2004Jan6.html
I especially liked this point: