Statement from the President on the National Space Policy
WASHINGTON, DC (White House PR) — The new National Space Policy is my plan for how the executive branch will advance United States interests in space for the benefit of the American people. By charting a clear course for United States space activities, this policy reaffirms our leadership in the space domain and our status as the world’s foremost spacefaring nation.
This policy represents a whole-of-government approach that recognizes space as a national imperative. After years of drift, my Administration revived the United States space enterprise to once again unleash our unmatched pioneering potential.
In particular, I am proud that my Administration oversaw the restoration of our capability to transport American astronauts to space on American rockets from American soil. Through our Artemis program, the United States is working hand-in-hand with commercial and international partners to return to the Moon—this time to stay—and prepare for the next great American adventure, the giant leap to Mars.
Moving forward, the United States will proudly encourage and facilitate the continued growth of an American commercial space sector that generates new markets and promotes entrepreneurship while furthering core United States interests.
The National Space Policy also directs the United States to continue to adapt its national security strategy to defeat aggression and protect national interests in space. As part of this effort, the newly created sixth branch of our Armed Forces, the Space Force, will enhance the capabilities of our Armed Forces to protect our freedom of operation in, from, and to space.
Under this new policy, the United States will advance our national interests in space and lead a new era of permanent human presence in space on the Moon, Mars, and beyond.
To view the National Space Policy, click here.
58 responses to “Statement from the President on the National Space Policy”
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I hope there is no drastic reset of space policy under the new Biden Administration.
The nation needs to focus on leveraging commercial assets to create a permanent presence on the Moon and Mars. The USSF has been needed for a while to provide better support for the space assets our economy and national security is based on.
Assuming there would be a Biden administration, Space Force is probably safe but is likely to find it more difficult to get that light and lively acquisition system it wants to build up and running. A Biden administration would be an establishmentarian administration in most ways except where aggrandizing the Democratic Party and wrecking the Constitution is concerned so all extant iron rice bowls would be safe.
Space settlement would be back-burnered again and returned to the rudderless and desultory state it found itself in during the Obama administration. The one gain likely to remain would be the abandonment of Obama’s “been there, done that” policy anent the Moon. All deep space destinations would stay on the table but with no urgency attached to any particular one of them. There would not even be a pretense of anything having to do with manned deep space happening Real Soon Now.
The one thoroughly unintentional upside to all this could be the effective severing of NASA priorities – it will no longer have any to speak of – from those of SpaceX. That will allow SpaceX to back-burner anything specifically Artemis-related and devote even more resources to SH-Starship and Starlink. The big potential downside anent SpaceX is that the Red Guards faction of the Democratic Party might decide to take a high-profile interest in it. That would be double-plus ungood.
Well there is always the Indonesian option for SpaceX. Yes, there is ITAR to deal with, but money finds solutions to those types of barriers. ?
However, based on VP Biden’s transition team, I suspect he is going to throw the radicals under the bus now that they served their purpose.
Assuming he actually takes power, he and the Dem “regulars” may well try. I don’t think that is likely to work very well. He might find Nancy Pelosi to have some advice about how easy Party radicals are(n’t) to deal with – she’s had two hard years of relevant experience, none of it good.
Hopefully, both Pelosi and McConnell are gone from leadership positions. I would love to see the 2 major parties come together and agree that neither of these 2 are allowed into ANY leadership position.
I would be on board with that
I’d still like my weekend of erotic abandon with Carmen Electra too. I just don’t think either of us is going to get our wishes.
If the Dems cheat their way to two more Senate seats from GA – as seems increasingly likely – McConnell hands over to Schumer. Trump voters in KY will then see him out of office entirely the next time he runs.
Pelosi might be thumbs-downed by her own caucus, but could still be saved if enough Republicans vote for her. And they might – she’s been very good for the Republicans this cycle. Arguing against that is the Republicans’ long-time – and well-deserved – reputation as the Stupid Party.
Another, and more likely, scenario under which Pelosi keeps the Speakership is that of even anti-Pelosi Dems failing to agree on anyone to succeed her. Democrats are quite faction-riven these days and “better the Devil you know than the Devil you don’t” might still carry the day for her. After the roughing up she’s taken at the hands of The Squad and other rebellious factions these past two years, it’s not like she has all that much effective power left anyway. The last time a Speaker got beaten up this badly by his own caucus was “Uncle Joe” Cannon over a century ago.
More broadly, you can forget about the Republicans and Democrats coming together just now. If, as I suspect will happen, a new nationalist-populist party quickly forms, the Rep and Dem leaderships and elected caucuses may come together in a last-ditch attempt to save the corrupt status quo establishment, but, by then, I suspect it will do them no good.
I suspect that Indonesia is not about space launches, but about using Starship for cargo.
I suspect otherwise. It could be a move to try dragging the country forcibly into the 21st century that doesn’t involve also selling the nation to the Chinese in the process. In that case, it would be more directly comparable to what the current UAE leadership is trying to do there.
that there will be a Biden administration has been obvious to all since a few days after the election. by this time tomorrow it will be well law 🙂
Actually not. The Congress still has to affirm the Electoral College vote count on Jan. 6. If that doesn’t happen, Biden is probably toast.
As cowardly as the GOP have been under trump, I doubt that enough GOP will do such a thing.
I do too. But until they actually don’t do what they plainly ought to, the Trump administration is still Shrodinger’s Cat. The box gets opened Jan. 6.
what is amazing is is that duheagle is all well and good with a few people overriding millions…so much for the will of the people
lol reality is a hard thing to face in trump world
I’ll face the prospect of a Biden administration when there is no longer any doubt such a calamity is inevitable. That ain’t yet.
LOL Pompeo had his superspreader event and out of many many hundreds invited 70ish showed up. the band melts away
I’m guessing that Biden…or Harris…would love to be known as the president who landed the first woman on the moon. And, if that astronaut should happen to be Anne McClain, that would also be the first lesbian on the Moon. Win Win.
stupid thing is, that all of the women doing that, really do not care for those kinds of accolades. They simply want to be in space, and accomplish what their personal goals.
Right. But Dem politicians love to play the sexual identity card.
Sadly, they both have their GD dog whistles.
I think you mean virtue signals, not dog whistles.
Everything else being equal, you’d probably be right. Two open questions are how much he’d want that and by when?
And then there’s the matter of everything not being equal. From a strictly intersectional politics standpoint, there is a war brewing between lesbians and trans women. The trans women seem to be getting the better of it thus far and there are no trans women astronauts. So if, as I suspect will be the case, Biden tries to placate the factions of his “coalition” who are the most obstreperous, that isn’t likely to do either Artemis or McClain any good.
there has to be. the current civilian human spaceflight program is 1) non sustainable due to cost and 2) has no real direction and 3) does not seem to be phased at all by new technologies emerging
The worst costs sustained by NASA today, all are a legacy of decisions made during the Obama administration. The SLS, Orion, ISS, all are what NASA has to use, because of decisions made ten years ago.
Do you suppose a retread from the Obama administration is about to admit his team was wrong back then and change course today? Or will he double down on the mistakes of the past?
I suspect he would rather see NASA flounder than admit his team screwed up.
First SLS/Orion was forced on O by CONgress as part of a deal to get GOP to back private manned space, CCXdev. For that, you can thank Shelby, nearly all of the GOP, along with a few Dems.
But, how do you figure ISS? Before we go to the moon, we need ppl to be trained in LEO.
And I suspect that Biden would LOVE to see SLS/Orion KILLED quickly. But the GOP would scream bloody murder.
President Bush scheduled the end of the ISS program for 2016 (as well as the 2010 end of the Space Shuttle program). That termination was supposed to free up funds that NASA could use for deep space exploration instead. ISS absorbs about 30-40% of the total NASA spending on manned spaceflight.
https://www.marsnews.live/w…
In 2010 Obama countermanded the end of the ISS. So now NASA is stuck with ISS and its costs seemingly forever.
The Sacred Cow Space Shuttle ended about on schedule, but there was the new shining Sacred White Elephant Space Station ready to take the place of STS in keeping the pork flowing. Congress loves that.
There was no way that NASA was going to walk away from the ISS. Just as NASA kept the Shuttle flying until the Columbia Accident made it very clear it needed to be retired, the ISS will stay in orbit until a key system failure forces it to be abandoned. No politician will dare suggest it’s time to “throw away” a $100 billion plus tax payer “investment”. That is what is different between legacy Space and SpaceX.
No, it will stay in orbit UNTIL something else replaces it.
That is why we need to get private space stations going NOW.
the Biden administration would easily kill SLS and Orion in my view. its not something that the Dems wanted
The Dems just reaffirmed their support for SLS with House Resolution 5666. Why would Biden contradict them?
https://www.congress.gov/bi…
(4) A Space Launch System for the purpose of providing heavy-lift capability to carry out the Moon to Mars Program. The Administrator shall complete development of the Space Launch System and the Space Launch System variant enabled by an Exploration Upper Stage, pursuant to section 302 of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Authorization Act of 2010. The Administrator shall take steps to develop the Block 2 variant to provide the full range of launch capability and performance available to the United States for the Administration’s crewed and robotic exploration of deep space. The Administrator shall complete the development and testing of the Exploration Upper Stage for the Space Launch System.
The SLS/Orion will survive until Elon Musk sends humans around the Moon in the “Dear Moon” mission. Then it will disappear after Congress hold hearings to find out how it was “deceived” by the experts into funding it. Once Congress finds some scapegoats to blame they will be able to dump it. (Of course Congress will be blameless as always.?)
The SLS is such an obvious scandal, that a smart politician would be plotting today how he could take best advantage of the circumstances when the scandal breaks wide open into public consciousness.
Heck, a smart politician would be making some noises about SLS already so that he might be well positioned to lead the pack when the hunt for scalps begins.
Now that the election is over and they don’t need Boeing and Lockheed campaign contributions they may do so. Also they now have President Trump to blame for it.?
Blame Trump? Pray tell how does that track?
The crisis will come to a head around 2024, years AFTER an endorsement of SLS by Biden in 2021-2022 or so. So Biden was Vice President during the adaption and endorsement of SLS by the Obama administration during 2010. Biden was Vice President as the Obama administration ran the SLS project billions over budget and years behind schedule from 2010-2017. And Biden will be President when the project finally blows up in his face as a major public financial scandal.
Could some politician blame Trump? Credibly? That would be some trick.
Credibly doesn’t come into it, you just blame whoever it’s easiest to blame. If you are Democratic you blame Republicans, if you are Republican you blame Democratic politicians. Since President Trump didn’t/couldn’t kill it SLS/Orion is his, until the next election. That is the nature of politics. ??
SLS will survive until some administration maybe this one, wants to do something in space. otherwise it is the best spaceprogram possible…its spends money and does not fly
Correct on 1/2, but how do you figure #3?
We now have 1 company doing private manned launches.
We have 2 more coming next year. Well, HOPEFULLY, 1 more next year, along with a cargo launcher that was designed from gitgo to be manned launcher.
What is missing is DESTINATIONS and FUNDING for these crafts.
The ONLY way to make that happen is to put up multiple space stations and then market to other nations/businesses/individuals to use these.
And the private space stations are needed for training. Before any person goes to the moon, they really need to be trained in LEO on a space station, and ISS is not going to cut it.
sorry I think that I was not clear. the space policy of going back to the Moon does not seem to be phased at all by the new technologies emerging
In a sane world…if we were going to send people to and from the moon the cornerstone of the policy would be to promote with federal ddollars (trying to avoid the word subsidize) the new technologies emerging at private companies. hence money would be spent on Falcon heavy launch vehicles instead of SLS for example
that is the only thing that makes a lunar human effort worthwhile…ie pumping federal money into established products (SpaceX, OSC, SNC etc) that can be expanded in short order to do lunar missions…and in the process “promote” those companies expanding those and other products to continue private pushs into space.
I think that the private space staiton thiing wont happen without the feds as a “anchor customer” so just do it. say to two or three companies. “this is the pot of money you get if you fly something that we can rent space oin and this is the time frame”
ISS should not be thought of as a specific station but as a place in orbit with multiple stations in a “village” (trying to avoid alpha town references)
The ISS orbit is not all that suitable for such a “village”. It’s too low and too inclined, legacies of the limitations of the Space Shuttle and the need to have Russia in the mix. A 30 degree orbit at around 1,000 to 1,200 km would work better for a space industrial base. It’s a near eastern launch from the U.S., is high enough you don’t to to constantly reboost, and provides pathways to higher orbits, the Moon and Mars that avoid the worst of the Van Allen Belts.
ISS has a lot of disadvantages but they are all outmassed by the one that is obvious. it is there
there are no private non ISS related stations in the serious planning stage…that market does not exist
It doesn’t exist yet. Once there is a reasonably clear timeframe for the start of service by high-capacity passenger-carrier Starships with interior fitments optimized for relatively short trips to and from LEO, I think that situation will change quite rapidly. I figure that will happen by mid-decade at the latest.
But, it CAN, if done right.
how would you do it? Robert
That would depend upon what the “industry” is that is to be served. If said industry is tourism, a higher-inclination orbit than even the ISS’s 51 degrees might prove best as it would afford straight-down looks at far more of Earth’s surface than would a more equatorial orbit.
Or just a Starship that is fitted out to carry the tourists who want the view.
The “village” idea is a good one, though there could be more than one such “village” with differing orbital elements. The key to any such arrangement, though, is not government subdsidy or even government funding for initial establshment but the availability of passenger-carrying Starships to make crew/guest rotations affordable. A single Starship could carry relief crew/guest complements up, and their predecessors back down, for numerous small stations on the same mission and fill out the rest of the seats with passengers just looking to enjoy a short-term orbital jaunt or be guests, themselves, at a very large LEO resort station. The process of rendezvous and docking with successive space stations – conceivably of quite varying sizes – would certainly be a significant element of interest even for passengers who are just day-trippers in orbit.
Multiple small space stations won’t happen organically until Starship is operational as a passenger carrier because the costs of small-capacity crew vehicles like Dragon 2 are still too high. Starship will bring the costs of individual rides to LEO down hugely, but only it if flies at a high load factor.
Affordable LEO space tourism could account for a lot of that load factor. But passengers being dropped off/picked up at one or more space stations could also be a significant contributor to keeping Starship seats full.
The most practical arrangement would be for all such stations to be flying in loose formation at the same orbital altitude and inclination but that is not an absolute requirement. Using Starship for crew rotation, though, is/i> I think, required to make the economics of small space stations workable.
you have no idea what starship cost to operate are. it is not possible to know there is no finished design.
it wont be anywhere near what you are thinking it will be. if Dragon is 60 million per seat…if…it might be 40.. maybe
We need SOME reset. We have private launchers, but really need to get private space stations/base habitats going. We need its own industry fired up to not only train in LEO, but be around the moon/mars, as well as based on their surface.
True, we need all that. But getting the government – especially one presided over by Joe Biden – involved is the last thing we need to do. We are at a point where a lot of what you and I both want looks as though it will happen only if the government stays mostly out of the way.
I’m good with doing a proper COTS style program for the habitat.
What NASA did with Axiom/Bigelow was total BS.
BTW, considering that Obama/Biden are the ones that pushed CCXdev, I suspect that we will see plenty of private space. In addition, there is no doubt that Musk will be on the moon in 1-2 years. At that point, what is Biden/CONgress going to do? Simply ignore it?
Nope.
Biden has spent his entire career stooging for established interests. The only part of “private space” he’s likely to back are the Three Amigos of legacy aerospace – Boeing, LockMart and NorGrum. Blue Origin would likely join that scurvy crew as well. Biden will do their bidding because they’re the ones who will pay him.
LOL.
Yeah. That’s annoying. It reminds me of Obama taking credit for the Trump economy. Politicians…
hmmmm
Understanding the Boss can make work a little easier.