{"id":5829,"date":"2013-12-26T07:58:46","date_gmt":"2013-12-26T07:58:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hobbyspace.com\/Blog\/?p=5829"},"modified":"2013-12-26T07:58:46","modified_gmt":"2013-12-26T07:58:46","slug":"space-policy-roundup-dec-26-13","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hobbyspace.com\/Blog\/?p=5829","title":{"rendered":"Space policy roundup – Dec.26.13"},"content":{"rendered":"

*\u00a0Rick Boozer<\/a>\u00a0urges grassroots support for NASA’s Commercial Crew Program :\u00a0U.S Citizens: Demand Maximum Support of NASA\u2019s Commercial Crew Program – Astro Maven<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Commercial Crew has the potential to do for American human spaceflight what Commercial Cargo is already doing for the American satellite launch industry. Making manned spaceflight much cheaper will lead to more human business activity in space, helping our nation\u2019s economy to thrive. The three companies developing spacecraft under this program are Boeing, Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC) and SpaceX. These companies will offer individuals, industries and friendly governments lower cost access to space that other countries would find difficult to match. Indeed, the German government is already funding a study of the practicality of using SNC\u2019s Dreamchaser spacecraft for its human spaceflight operations. See: https:\/\/www.ohb-system.de\/press-releases-…<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

*\u00a0Joel Achenbach<\/a>\u00a0continues his in-depth series on space policy with an article about the funding woes of NASA’s planetary science and astrophysics programs:\u00a0Space scientists fear a new era of cost limits on big NASA missions, just as the universe is getting exponentially more interesting – The Washington Post<\/a><\/p>\n

Achenbach dismisses the impact of the NewSpace industry on space science because, ”\u00a0Knowledge is powerful, but not always profitable”. However, that misses the point of NewSpace, which is to lower the costs significantly for launching to space and for doing things in space. Lower costs will obviously benefit space science. As Stewart Money explains, if NASA switches its unmanned spacecraft launches to a SpaceX Falcon 9, the agency would save enough on a single launch to cover, for example, the costs of continuing the Cassini mission for a year:\u00a0More \u201cInSight\u201d into Launch Costs – Innerspace.net<\/a>\u00a0(I linked to a Google cached copy because Stewart’s blog<\/a> was down at the moment).<\/p>\n

More space policy\/politics related links:<\/p>\n