Space Policy and the Republican Debate

A couple of interesting accounts of the brief space policy debate within the GOP prez debate last night from Jeff Foust and Rand Simberg. Both point out Newt Gingrich's longtime background in innovative space policy and also the context of the current space policy debate.

I think it was great to see a serious space question actually enter a major political debate. It was frustrating that CNN moderator John King was so eager to move on to other topics that he cut off Mitt Romney part way through his response and may have cut off responses from some of the other candidates who had not yet weighed in.

A New American Revolution

My pace of blogging has slowed down recently (not for lack of material in current events), but tonight I can do a little while monitoring the Republican presidential debate on CNN (where one questioner actually instigated a short debate on the subject of space policy).

Andrew Klaven describes how the new revolution is taking place on the field of information.

Like the original minutemen, the current media fighters for liberty are a ragtag and eccentric bunch. Breitbart’s pugnacious, Beck’s emotional, Coulter’s ferocious and Limbaugh is approximately as brash and unapologetic as an atom bomb. The MSM - fronted by anchors as dapper and haughty and "civilized" as the British of 1776 - have sought to use these character traits to demonize the right’s messengers without ever confronting their message. They have tried to turn the very names of these media revolutionaries into obscenities in order to discourage anyone who might be tempted to give their arguments a chance.

It is particularly heartening that the media frenzy over the release of Sarah Palin's e-mails during her tenure as Alaska Governor only wound up making her look a lot better than the media itself.

Mrs Palin as a person has become so remote that it is hard to assess how much, if any, of that widely-held caricature has a basis in truth. The email release could mark the end of a chapter of what conservatives have termed "Palin Derangement Syndrome". Her enemies in the media appear to have overplayed their hand.

NewSpace Business Plan Competition

The Space Frontier Foundation (SFF) announced today that additional prize money to be awarded to the top three businesses competing in its 2011 NewSpace Business Plan Competition. More details here.

Endeavour Home; Atlantis at Pad

Photo credit: NASA/Kevin O'Connell


Photo credit: NASA/Terry Zaperach

Space Shuttle Endeavour returned home for the final time early this morning at Kennedy Space Center (KSC) while its sister ship Atlantis was being rolled out to the launch pad for the final Shuttle mission.