April 16, 2010

Foundation Urges Support for New NASA Space Plan

Calls Recent Attacks Unfortunate and Misinformed

The Space Frontier Foundation today called for all Americans to support the newspace plan laid out by President Obama, calling a spate of attacks smearing theconcepts unfortunate and obviously misinformed. Citing recent editorials, blogsand media appearances by supporters of the old space program, the Foundationurged all parties to take a fresh look at the proposals laid out byObama in hisApril 15 speechat Kennedy Space Center and get behind the new initiative. Led by a small group of well known astronauts and congress members from areaswhose districts have benefited from programs now shown to bedead end wastesof billions in taxpayer dollars, the attacks have portrayed the new initiative as anassault on NASA and America’s leadership in space

– the Foundation says it isquite the opposite.

“The new vision for NASA is obviously and clearly a huge step forward for theagency and Americans who care about opening space in a real, sustainable andaffordable manner,” said the Foundation’s Chairman Bob Werb. “ I was in Floridawith the president and I know he means it when he says he strongly supports NASA and America’s leadership in space – he also believes in the American people’s ability to participate and create a new space industry.”The Foundation,often a critic of NASA programs and plansas wasteful or counter productive to US space ambitions, finds itself strongly supporting manyof the new changes. It says this is the first administration that has truly committedto the revolutionary changes needed to what has been a moribund space programthat was going nowhere at great cost.A sampling of these include:

•

An increase in the NASA budget of over $6 billion dollars over the nextfive years.

•

A hand off of routine transportation to Low Earth Orbit to commercialcarriers including traditional and NewSpace firms – which enables NASAto focus on exploration rather than transportation and will spur a wholenew commercial space industry in the US.

•

Developing new NASA transportation systems to operate efficiently indeep space – enabling wide scale future explorations of all sorts.

•

Investment in research to enable the use of resources in space

www.spacefrontier.orgWilliamWatsonExecutiveDirector16FirstAvenueNyack,NY109601.800.787.7223