WSJ Op-Ed calls for scrapping SLS

Space Politics

In an essay in Monday’s issue of the Wall Street Journal, Robert Walker and Charles Miller make a pitch to President Obama: complete the job he started in his first term in handing over space transportation entirely in the private sector. “Just as the government does not design or build automobiles, ships, trains or airplanes, NASA should not be designing, building or launching rockets to go to low Earth orbit,” they argue. 

Specifically, they want the President to kill the Space Launch System, the heavy-lift rocket that emerged from the 2010 compromise about the administration’s policy, saying that those launches should be turned over to the private sector. 

Read the summary, HERE.

Bolden commissions "Plan-A" (v.2.0)

Nicholas Patrick during configuration of the newly installed cupola in February [NASA].

Ed. Note: By Friday, March 5 General Bolden was spinning the following and other stories relating to a 'Plan B' and referred to additions or changes made by Congress to the administration's proposed national space policy as Plan A, "version 2.0." Mark Matthews of the Orlando Sentinel picks up on that Follow-Up, Friday HERE.

Andy Pasztor
Wall Street Journal

NASA chief Charles Bolden has asked senior managers to draw up an alternate plan for the space agency after members of Congress indicated they wanted to reject a White House proposal to hire private companies to ferry U.S. astronauts into orbit and beyond.

In an internal National Aeronautics and Space Administration memo viewed by The Wall Street Journal, Mr. Bolden ordered officials to map out "what a potential compromise might look like" to satisfy critics on Capitol Hill. By calling for an alternative plan, Mr. Bolden threatened to undercut White House efforts to get its proposed NASA budget through Congress.

The White House is seeking to cancel major existing programs intended to build a new generation of government spacecraft and rockets to carry astronauts into space.

Read the full article HERE.

The New Race for the Moon

A lot of nations are looking to repeat Apollo's feat.

By Michio Kaku
Wall Street Journal

Last Thursday, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) sent two probes to the moon in search of a possible site for a manned lunar station. Both China and the U.S. have announced that they plan to send manned missions to the moon around 2020. India and Japan are not far behind, launching their own unmanned probes to the moon and laying out their timetables for sending men there.

Will we see a pileup on the moon around 2020?

Read the article HERE.