Friday, October 02, 2009

Augustine committee adds meeting next week

The presidential panel reviewing the future of NASA's human spaceflight program plans to meet next Thursday for a final scoring of options to be presented in a final report.

The public meeting of the so-called Augustine committee, led by former Lockheed Martin Corp. CEO Norm Augustine, will be held by teleconference from 1-2 p.m. Eastern time.

The only agenda item will be to score options presented in this 12-page summary report, which was released Sept. 8 to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.

The summary report says NASA will need an additional $3 billion annually to support a viable human spaceflight program. Recommendations range from continuing the existing plan to develop Constellation program rockets to extending the space shuttle to relying on commercial vehicles.

The committee has stressed that it is offering options to President Obama and NASA, not making formal recommendations.

With the meeting scheduled Thursday, the final report presumably won't be ready for release before the end of the week. A NASA press release says the meeting must be held by Thursday for the final report to support the federal budget process.

Click here for more information on the Review of U.S. Human Space Flight Plans Committee.

Here's the full NASA press release:

AUGUSTINE SPACE FLIGHT COMMITTEE ANNOUNCES ADDITIONAL MEETING

WASHINGTON -- The Review of U.S. Human Space Flight Plans Committee
will hold a public teleconference on Thursday, Oct. 8, from
approximately 1 to 2 p.m. EDT.

The only topic for discussion will be finalization of scoring of
options the committee presented in their summary report on Sept. 8.
This meeting will be held by teleconference only. The teleconference
will be open to the public. The service limit is approximately 300
dial-in callers. Public participants will be in a listen-only mode.

The following numbers are available to hear the teleconference:
Toll-free number: 1-888-373-5705
Other number: 1-719-457-3840
Participant Passcode: 190078

The meeting must be held on this date for the committee's final report
to support the time frame associated with the federal budget process.
For this reason, it is not possible to accommodate the usual full
public notice period. A notice in the Federal Register is expected to
appear on or about Oct. 6.

For committee information, charter, biographies and other data, visit:

http://hsf.nasa.gov

For information about NASA and agency activities, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov

-end-

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

And the final score is...no additional money for the space program, Brevard goes into a depressing, home values are worthless, and we all move to find work.

FjC said...

It seems the real long-term progress in spaceflight is up to the private-space companies (SpaceX, Bigelow, Virgin Galactic, Rocketplane, XCOR etc). Government policies / funding is too unstable / unreliable to take us to the stars...