Obama and Bolden Meet. So What Happened?

By Nancy Atkinson - December 17, 2009 at 10:40 AM UTC | Space Policy
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US President Barack Obama's met with NASA administrator Charlie Bolden on Wednesday at the White House. What happened? Not much, as far as anyone can tell. The meeting was short, and no real details have emerged of what might have been discussed or decided. "The two spoke about the Administrator's work at NASA and they also discussed the Augustine Committee's analysis," a White House spokesman told

Florida Today.

"The President confirmed his commitment to human space exploration, and the goal of ensuring that the nation is on a sustainable path to achieving our aspirations in space."

The Hunstville Times

reported that the two also discussed options for how the country might improve its future human spaceflight activities.

So, no announcement on what "path" NASA will take as a result of the Augustine Commission, or if the Constellation program is staying or going.

While earlier this week, there was hope that Wednesday's meeting might result in an announcement of NASA's future, now there are hints that perhaps such an announcement might be part of the State of the Union Address in January, or perhaps a statement regarding the President's decisions on NASA won't come

until sometime in February.

The U.S. Senate approved a budget of $18.7 billion that the President needs to make a decision on. But The Orlando Sentinel reported that also on Wednesday, Bolden told lawmakers and Congressional staff that the White House was now favoring a $1 billion top line increase to NASA's budget in 2011. This would be far better than the 5 percent cut that all agencies, including NASA, were asked by the White House to prepare, but difficult to secure given the current deficit-cutting mindset in Congress.

Space Politics

also reported on that on Wednesday, unfortunately, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said she was not a "big fan" of human spaceflight. "I have not been a big fan of manned expeditions to outer space, in terms of safety and cost," she said. "But people could make the case; technology is always changing." Any additional spending for NASA, she said, would have to be evaluated against other programs, and "a judgment will be made as to what it does in terms of job creation." She added that while human missions to the Moon "would be fine" but appeared to be more skeptical about "personned" missions to Mars.

So for now, we wait. Some more.

Sources:

Florida Today

,

Huntsville Times

,

Space Politics

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson is a space journalist and author with a passion for telling the stories of people involved in space exploration and astronomy. She is currently retired from daily writing, but worked at Universe Today for 20 years as a writer and editor. She also contributed articles to The Planetary Society, Ad Astra (National Space Society), New Scientist and many other online outlets.

Her 2019 book, "Eight Years to the Moon: The History of the Apollo Missions,” shares the untold stories of engineers and scientists who worked behind the scenes to make the Apollo program so successful, despite the daunting odds against it. Her first book “Incredible Stories From Space: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Missions Changing Our View of the Cosmos” (2016) tells the stories of 37 scientists and engineers that work on several current NASA robotic missions to explore the solar system and beyond.

Nancy is also a NASA/JPL Solar System Ambassador, and through this program, she has the opportunity to share her passion of space and astronomy with children and adults through presentations and programs. Nancy's personal website is nancyatkinson.com