Astronauts, Business Owners, and Space Leaders Agree: Obama Vision for Space Exploration Ensures a Brighter Future
Barack Obama Press Release

Sunday night’s successful SpaceX launch marks another extraordinary new milestone in space. It also provides an opportunity to assess the significant advances we’ve seen in just four years on Florida’s Space Coast.

When President Obama came into office, he inherited a human spaceflight program in crisis. The previous Administration’s decision to retire the Space Shuttle by 2010 was exacerbated by the lack of a viable follow-on program. In 2009, an independent commission concluded that the program to replace the Shuttle suffered such significant underinvestment and was so behind schedule that the first crewed flight to the International Space Station (ISS) would not occur until more than a year after the ISS was planned to be deorbited into the ocean.

(more…)

SECURING U.S. LEADERSHIP IN SPACE
Romney-Ryan White Paper
September 22, 2012

Introduction

America’s space program is a strategic national asset crucial to both our security and our economy. The space capabilities of the United States and its allies create strategic military and intelligence advantages that must be maintained. U.S. satellite networks facilitate communications, navigation, remote sensing, and environmental monitoring that support the global economic infrastructure and protect the safety and security of people around the world. It is almost impossible from the modern vantage point to even imagine growing the world’s food, moving its people and cargo, operating its markets, or keeping its peace without operating effectively far above its surface.

(more…)

Mitt Romney. (Credit: Gage Skidmore)

BOSTON (Mitt Romney PR) — Today, Mitt Romney released his plan for Securing U.S. Leadership In Space. As Paul Ryan travels to Orlando, Florida, today, he will outline the space priorities for a Romney-Ryan administration.

America’s space program is an integral element of national prestige and power that protects our citizens and allies while inspiring future generations.  It is an engine of technological innovation and economic vitality.  Rebuilding NASA, restoring U.S. leadership, and creating new opportunities for space commerce will be hard work, but Mitt Romney will strive to rebuild an institution worthy of our aspirations and capable once again of leading the world toward new frontiers.

(more…)

Mitt Romney. (Credit: Gage Skidmore)

By Douglas Messier
Parabolic Arc Managing Editor

NASA’s budget is facing deep cuts in January from two sources: sequestration and Mitt Romney.

If President Obama and Congress cannot work out a deal, sequestration will cut NASA’s budget by 8 percent or $1.458 billion in early January, according to a new report issued by the White House.

Meanwhile, Romney has promised if elected to send a bill to Congress on his first day in office, Jan. 20, that would slash non-security discretionary spending across the board. If the measure approved, it would result in a reduction of nearly $900 million from the space agency’s budget.

(more…)

The Democratic National Platform contains a single mention about civil space policy: President Obama has charted a new mission for NASA to lead us to a future that builds on America’s legacy of innovation and exploration. It’s a bit disappointing that the Democrats didn’t choose to spotlight NASA’s new direction and its accomplishments. This was an opportunity to rebut Mitt Romney’s charges that the space agency is floundering because it […]

ScienceDebate.org posed 14 questions to President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney.  The twelfth question related to space policy. The answers are after the break. You can read all the questions and answers here.

12. Space. The United States is currently in a major discussion over our national goals in space. What should America’s space exploration and utilization goals be in the 21st century and what steps should the government take to help achieve them?

Mitt Romney. (Credit: Gage Skidmore)

(more…)

Mitt Romney. (Credit: Gage Skidmore)

By Douglas Messier
Parabolic Arc Managing Editor

Last night was a rather eventful one in Tampa, Florida. Clint Eastwood spent about 11 minutes berating an empty chair, startling everyone watching in the arena and on TV. There were two questions on everyone’s minds: what had that poor chair had done to deserve that,and why had Eastwood spent 82 years hiding his brilliant improvisational skills. (Clint, hit the comedy clubs! Or do a Rat Pack style show with Mickey Rooney, Jerry Seinfeld and Betty White. That would be such an awesome train wreck!)

Clint is always hard act to follow, no more so than on Thursday night. But, Mitt Romney gave it the old boarding school try. In his acceptance speech last night, the Republican Presidential nominee paid tribute to Neil Armstrong and America’s can-do spirit:

I was born in the middle of the century in the middle of the country, a classic baby boomer. It was a time when Americans were returning from war and eager to work. To be an American was to assume that all things were possible. When President Kennedy challenged Americans to go to the moon, the question wasn’t whether we’d get there, it was only when we’d get there.

(more…)

NYACK, N.Y. (SFF PR) — Today, the Republican Party released its 2012 platform, which included a provision entitled “America’s Future in Space: Continuing This Quest.” The non-partisan Space Frontier Foundation issued the following statement in response:

NASA seems to be one Big Government program many Republicans love. The GOP platform criticizes the federal government as “bloated, antiquated and unresponsive to taxpayers” but has nothing but hackneyed praise for NASA, and doesn’t even mention the increasing role of the private sector.  The authors of this platform must imagine they still live in the Cold War of the 1960s, when only governments launched payloads and people into space.

(more…)

Mitt Romney. (Credit: Gage Skidmore)

The Republican Platform — a document that lays out what the party stands for in the upcoming Presidential election — includes a brief passage on the nation’s space program. The section is largely focused on NASA and the need to maintain American leadership in this area for the purposes of competitiveness, technological progress, and national security. There is no mention of commercial space nor any specific proposals on programs and initiatives. Nor does it contain any criticism of the Obama Administration.

This vagueness is largely in line with Mitt Romney’s approach to space, which has been to attack the Obama Administration as disastrous while offering no specifics on what he would change.

Read the space section below.

(more…)

Rep. Paul Ryan

In an interview with WPTV in Florida, Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan was asked about defense and the space program. His answer was more focused on the former (spend more!) than the latter (“robust”), providing few clues about what he and presidential candidate Mitt Romney would do with NASA if elected. Ryan refused to answer a question about NASA’s commercial space efforts.

Excerpts below.

Countering critics who perceived him and Romney as weak on national security and foreign policy, Ryan said Romney would propose to strengthen defense spending if elected.

Ryan, who voted against the 2008 and 2010 NASA Authorization Acts, said he believed in a “robust space program.”

(more…)