July 23 News Items

NASA and the Next Administration (Source: Space Review)
It has long been a complaint of space advocates that presidential candidates spend little or no time discussing their space policy positions—if, in fact, they have bothered to develop any positions on the subject. Space is near the bottom of the list of topics of interest to the electorate in general, and one that is not a swing issue for all but a small handful of voters. It is also rarely a partisan issue, making it difficult for space policy to become more ammunition in the continuous battles between Republicans and Democrats. Thus, even in the current campaign—which is shaping up to be the longest and perhaps the most contentious in US history—there’s scant attention paid to space. Visit http://www.thespacereview.com/article/917/1 to view the article.

The State of the RLV Industry, 2007 (Source: Space Review)
At the Space Frontier Foundation’s recent NewSpace 2007 Conference in Arlington, Virginia, they spent one day covering “spaceplanes”. This gave some of the industry a chance to show what they were up to. Sadly, it mostly showed that the US government was not ready to fund an all-out reusable launch vehicle (RLV) effort, though neither NASA nor the Defense Department are willing to give up on the idea entirely. Visit http://www.thespacereview.com/article/915/1 to view the article.