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The proposed cancellation of NASA’s Constellation manned spacecraft program could foster a stronger bond between the civilian space agency and the Air Force, a senior service official said this week. “This is going to drive us to work together,” Air Force Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Howie Chandler at an April 28 Air Force Association breakfast in Arlington, VA, when asked if cancellation of Constellation could impact the Air Force. “I think you’ll see us start to do that even more than we have in the past.” To that end, the Air Force is participating in a forum to discuss...

The so-called “Great Debate” at the National Space Society’s (NSS) International Space and Development Conference (ISDC) in Chicago on Saturday afternoon featuring Mars Society founder Robert Zubrin and former Apollo astronaut Rusty Schweickart was something of a dud, in part because it wasn’t that much of a debate: after ten-minute opening statements by Zubrin (who opposes the agency’s proposed plans) and Schweickart (who supports them), the floor was turned over to the audience, some of whom asked questions of the two, and others who simply expressed their opinions. Conference organizers explained that the event wasn’t intended to be a debate...

U.S. Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-West Virginia, has joined the call for an investigation. U.S. Sen. George LeMieux, R-Florida, today asked that NASA’s inspector general investigate the recent reassignment of Jeff Hanley, who on Wednesday lost his position as head of NASA’s Constellation moon program (earlier story here). Hanley has defended Constellation, even as the White House wants to cancel key parts of the program to make way for a new strategy that would replace the space shuttle with commercial rockets to ferry astronauts to the International Space Station. “This is yet another example of NASA taking actions to cancel the...

Sen. Russ Feingold is trying to sneak into legislation that would expand the definition of "children" under a program called CHAMPVA from people age 23 or below to age 26 and below a ban on spending money to return astronauts to the Moon. The text of the legislation can be found in S. 3356, which has been referred to the Committee on Veterans Affairs and has no cosponsors as of this moment:

WASHINGTON — Backers of NASA's Constellation program scored a significant victory Thursday by winning the Senate Appropriations Committee's support to block the Obama administration from terminating any part of the $108 billion back-to-the-moon program before October. And they did it by piggy-backing the restriction onto a must-pass wartime supplemental budget package involving combat dollars for Afghanistan. Up until Thursday, the battle over NASA has largely been a political war of words — and this is the first time that a congressional committee has responded directly to President Barack Obama's NASA proposal since February, when the president declared the Constellation program...

There are two pro-NASA rallies scheduled for tonight in League City. The county Democratic Party and labor union groups host one, while the other is put together by a coalition of conservative groups including members of the local Tea Party groups and Glenn Beck 912 Project members. The subject is a hot button issue because of President Barack Obama’s proposed budget that includes the dismantling of the Constellation program and its return to the moon before trips to Mars missions. At first blush you would think it’s great that two groups with differing political views would come together for a...

Competitiveness: The president spent Tax Day reassuring Florida voters that money will keep flowing to NASA. But in space as well as on Earth, we'll be an unexceptional nation. In space, no one can hear you scheme. President Obama's speech at the Kennedy Space Center will never be confused with President Kennedy's clarion call in 1961 to send an American to the moon within a decade. Rather it was an admission that we will now boldly go where no one wants to go.

Every spring, for over two decades, the Space Access Society has been sponsoring an annual conference in Phoenix, Ariz., providing a venue for those trying to reduce the cost of getting into space to meet, discuss, and plan prospects for achieving that to-date-unattainable goal. It's one of the most interesting space conferences of the year, and perhaps unique in its mix of mainstream industry professionals, representatives from the newer industry upstarts, amateur rocket builders, and interested lay people, in a casual atmosphere designed to promote interaction among all these communities. In the early years, it primarily featured view graphs of...

Keith Yost, writing in the MIT Tech, has perhaps inadvertently revealed the real motivation behind the Obama space plan. Keith Yost likes the Obama new approach to space, but not for the reasons that most supporters articulate. Most supporters of Obamaspace maintain that the cancellation of the Constellation space exploration program will actually lead to more, better, and cheaper space exploration at some indeterminate time in the future. The idea is that the research and development program proposed under Obamaspace will lead to "game changing" technology that will open up new ways to explore space that some future President will...

During World War II in the Pacific, many native tribes were astounded by their first contact with an advanced technological civilization, when the Americans would come in, clear a strip in the jungle, set up a control tower and loud giant silver birds would appear from the sky bearing canned food, trinkets, fuel and other supplies. After the war, the Americans went away for the most part, but the memories remained. Many of the natives, changed forever by the experience, decided to replicate it. They cleared their own strips, built control towers of thatch and palm, and waited for the...

Former Apollo astronauts have expressed dismay at President Barack Obama's decision to cancel the Nasa programme that was intended to return mankind to the Moon. Eugene Cernan, the last man to set foot on the Moon, and Jim Lovell, commander of the ill-fated Apollo 13 mission said they were disappointed by the decision to cancel Nasa's Constellation Moon programme. Mr Lovell warned the decision would have "catastrophic consequences" for US space exploration. The pair spoke to the BBC at a private event held at the Royal Soceity in London on Friday evening. They were joined by the first man on...

When the Obama administration first announced that there would be a Space Summit in Florida, the purpose of which was to explain the new Obama space policy, it was met with some degree of skepticism and even cynicism.

Recently President Obama canceled Project Constellation that would return Americans to the Moon by 2020. Some maintain that Constellation was over budget, behind schedule and needed cancellation. What if we had approached another project the same way? Amalgamated Press. January 26th, 1944. General George C. Marshall today announced that the planned invasion of Europe has been canceled. There have long been rumors of cost overruns and other problems plaguing the planned invasion, which was designated 'Operation Overlord', which General Marshall referred to in his announcement and subsequent press conference.

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

NASA, in response to President Obama's proposal to cancel the Constellation space exploration program, may be moving to wind down Constellation related work and cancel some contracts. NASA may be in violation of federal law by doing so.

Industry advocates are voicing concern with U.S. President Barack Obama’s decision to cancel NASA’s Moon-bound Constellation program and the threat it poses to America’s aerospace work force and U.S. strategic missile arsenals, but Defense Department officials said the two agencies are forging a plan to sustain the nation’s solid-rocket motor industrial base. Rep. Rob Bishop (R-Utah) is among those railing against Obama’s proposal to scrap NASA’s plan to replace its space shuttle fleet with new rockets and spacecraft in favor of relying on commercial crew taxis to get astronauts to the international space station and back. “This is not money-saving....

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."

NASA's Constellation programme, which was going to fly manned capsules to the International Space Station in (maybe) 2015, to the moon in (maybe) 2020, and to Mars someday, is dead. Some people are mourning it. I'm not.

Opposition to President Obama's bid to cancel the Constellation return to the Moon program has started to manifest itself among purveyors of popular culture. It has even inspired its first work of literature.

During World War II in the Pacific, many native tribes were astounded by their first contact with an advanced technological civilization, when the Americans would come in, clear a strip in the jungle, set up a control tower and loud giant silver birds would appear from the sky bearing canned food, trinkets, fuel and other supplies. After the war, the Americans went away for the most part, but the memories remained. Many of the natives, changed forever by the experience, decided to replicate it. They cleared their own strips, built control towers of thatch and palm, and waited for the...