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Charles D. Walker (a former commercial astronaut), kicked up something of a fuss recently when he opined in the pages of the Arizona Daily Star that NASA should lead the way in space exploration and not leave everything to the private sector. The reasons he cites are risk and lack of a clear profit motive, particularly related to going to Mars. The commercial space sector should be encouraged to bring down the cost of space travel, particularly by operating a space taxi service to the International Space Station, in his view. But NASA must lead the way in exploration, particularly...

One of the interesting aspects of any modern presidential campaign has been the lack of detailed policy positions from the candidates on NASA and space exploration. The reason for this can be illustrated by what happened to Newt Gingrich when he made an exception and proposed building a moon base when he ran for president in 2012. More of that anon.

2015 ended and 2016 began with the space program on the cusp of tremendous and potentially very positive change. Congress gave NASA a great Christmas present in the form of a $1.3 billion budget increase. The perennial argument between advocates of commercial space and supporters of space exploration was settled. The commercial crew program, designed to build NASA-funded, commercially operated spacecraft that will return crewed space flight capability to the United States was fully funded for the first time. The heavy lift Space Launch System, the center of NASA’s plans to explore deep space, also received lavish amounts of money....

The Commercial Space Launch Act of 2015, recently passed by both the House and Senate, is unique because the legislation covers a subject that is not directly related to space launches and was once the stuff of science fiction. An entire title of the bill covers the subject of mining resources from asteroids and other celestial bodies.

According to a Tuesday piece in Motherboard, Noam Chomsky, a philosopher and political commentator, and Lawrence Krauss, a physicist and cosmologist, had a public dialogue about space exploration. Being both men of the far left, they concluded that space travel should be best left to robots and conducted by governments. The conclusions are the exact opposite of what the prevailing trends are in space policy.

A private rocket NASA is counting on to make robotic cargo flights to the International Space Station achieved a key milestone today (Oct. 1), as its first stage rolled out to its Virginia launchpad for the first time. The first stage of Orbital Sciences' Antares rocket arrived today at its pad at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS), which is located at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in eastern Virginia. The move marks the beginning of on-pad preparations for a series of important trials with Antares that will take place over the next few months, Orbital officials said. The company aims to...

One of the selling points of the Obama space policy is that it proposed to enable a commercial space transportation industry. No longer would NASA build expensive, in-house space ships like the shuttle or the proposed Orion/Ares 1. As it turns out, by "commercial" the Obama administration means something akin to how it has treated the automobile industry, banks, and other sectors of the economy. The government will not only be the principle investor, but it will also be, in the absence of commercial markets for space transportation, the sole customer. This is "commercial" only in the sense that the...

With the triumph of the launch of SpaceX's Falcon 9, the cause of commercial space took a giant leap forward. Unfortunately the voyage to a commercial space future is approach dangerous, shoal ridden political waters.

Part of the Obama space policy that even some of the critics like is the commercialization of space flight. The idea is that NASA would buy seats on commercial space taxis that would take astronauts to and from the International Space Station. The idea is that commercial competition among nascent space companies will lower the cost of space travel, saving NASA money. Not coincidentally using American space taxi services would wean NASA away from dependence on the Russians for space travel, which will start totally as soon as the space shuttle is retired later this year or early the next....

It was the best of timing, it was the worst of timing. It was the best of timing for the FAA’s annual Commercial Space Transportation Conference, normally held in early February in Washington, DC. The schedule meant that the conference took place this year just over a week after the White House released its fiscal year 2011 budget proposal, one that emphasized more than ever before the development of capabilities by the commercial sector to transport cargo, and now crews, to low Earth orbit. It was also the worst of timing from a meteorological standpoint, coinciding with yet another major...

The Economist has a story upon the lofty theme of how Americans can still get to the Moon before the Chinese even if President Obama succeeds in canceling the Constellation return to the Moon program

The Obama space proposal, which seeks to enable a commercial space industry for transportation to and from low Earth orbit while it cancels space exploration beyond LEO, has sparked a kind of civil war among conservatives. Some conservatives hate the proposal because of the retreat from the high frontier and even go so far as to cast doubt on the commercial space aspects. Other conservatives like the commercial space part of the Obama policy and tend to gloss over the cancellation of space exploration or even denigrate the Constellation program as "unworkable" or "unsustainable."

PHOENIX (Reuters) - New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson broke ground on Friday on construction of Spaceport America, the world's first facility built specifically for space-bound commercial customers and fee-paying passengers. The $198 million project, which is being funded by the New Mexico state government, is located on a remote high-desert range near the town of Truth or Consequences.

There's a new federation in the space business - and although it's not a United Federation of Planets, the membership is as diverse as a "Star Trek" crew, with high-profile rivals in the commercial space race sitting down at the same table. "These people are the ultimate competitors - but that's not why they get around the table," Stuart Witt, general manager of the Mojave Spaceport and the treasurer of the Personal Spaceflight Federation, told me today. "They get around the table to talk about, 'How are we going to handle our first accident? What are we going to do...

The public space travel business is picking up suborbital speed thanks to a variety of private rocket groups and their dream machines. Joining the mix is Blue Origin's New Shepard Reusable Launch System. It is financially fueled by an outflow of dollars from the deep pockets of billionaire Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon.com. The Bezos-backed Blue Origin, LLC commercial space outfit has recently turned in a draft environmental assessment (EA) for their West Texas launch site to the Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) Associate Administrator for Commercial Space Transportation (AST) in Washington, D.C. The document is the best glimpse yet of...

WASHINGTON - For two days this week representatives of the California Space Authority took their message to the halls of Congress, informing members of California's congressional delegation of the importance of the state's space industry and how they may act to preserve and promote it. With more than 50 delegates representing interests from across the state, this year's California Space Week was the largest in the eight years the group has presented it, said Executive Director Andrea Seastrand. "This year we have just seen a blossoming," she said. The large gathering caused a few logistical hiccups, but it also demonstrated...

When the Bush administration announced a new mission for NASA in January 2004, many dismissed it as a cynical P.R. ploy. Yet it was the first time a U.S. administration had declared that the country's policy on manned space exploration was to go into space and keep going (see "Toward a New Vision of Manned Spaceflight"). Given that ambition, the "Report of the President's Commission on Implementation of United States Space Exploration Policy" -- also dubbed "A Journey to Inspire, Innovate, and Discover" -- charted an ostensibly reasonable course. It decreed that when construction on the International Space Station finished...

The US Department of Transportation, the country's transport ministry, could be ready to certificate commercial spacecraft by 2008, says transportation secretary Norm Mineta. “This timeline isn’t based on science fiction,” Mineta told delegates yesterday at the Annual Commercial Space Transportation Conference in Washington, DC. “It is a timeline based on the reality of where commercial space is today and where we expect the state of commercial space to be within two short years.” Mineta says the regulator will be ready to approve the flights once tests of craft designed to take passengers into space are completed. Test permits will be...

Got a spare $100 million? And a hankering to witness an Earthrise? Space Adventures Ltd. is offering to help. The Alexandria, Va.-based space tourism company recently announced plans to provide scenic trips around the moon and back, using modified Russian Soyuz spacecraft. In a wrinkle on the old Cold War rivalry, a private sector space race could crop up pitting Russian entrepreneurs against people such as Mojave's Burt Rutan, who has contracted to build a fleet of private industry rocket ships to carry tourists into space. The first moon tourist trek, dubbed DSE-Alpha, could take place as soon as 2008,...

OSHKOSH, Wis. - When will Average Joe Citizen be able to fly into space, to see the black sky and curve of the Earth, and to experience the heady feeling of weightlessness? According to aerospace visionary Burt Rutan, the answer is soon. "I think 15 years from now, every child will know, if he wants to, he can go into space," he said. Rutan discussed his vision of the future of space travel before rapt crowds Tuesday at the Experimental Aircraft Association's AirVenture 2005. Rutan paved the way to make commercial space travel available for the masses with SpaceShipOne, the...