Yet Another Do-Nothing UAG Meeting

Keith’s note: A week ago the National Space Council User’s Advisory Group held a meeting. They said that they’d get everything online. It has been a week. All that is online is the agenda. It as a link for the presentations. If you go there you will not see any presentations. There is a link for “National Space Council Users’ Advisory Group: Findings and Recommendations” but it points to a page last updated on 30 July 2020. All that was posted is a video by Buzz Aldrin and a raw video of the meeting at the original livestream link. NASA.gov makes no mention of this anywhere. NASA OIIR which oversees all of this inter- and intra-governmental advisory stuff is clueless as well. There is no mention of this or any other meeting. Nor is there any way to contact an identifiable human (like Chirag Parikh) at the official National Space Council webpage. There is a White House link to a short summary of the photo op all of the UAG members met VP Harris – lots of flowery blather but no substance. Oddly I had a link to Thomas Zurbuchen’s presentation – the one that NASA’s crack AV squad screwed up) which was online moments after the meeting ended – last week. You can catch my UAG coverage on Twitter here. It took the Biden Administration and NASA 2 years to actually assemble this UAG panel for a meeting. It is doubtful that they will accomplish anything more than the Trump Administration’s UAG did – other than dog and pony shows with expensive backdrops. I have seen innumerable pointless advisory panels in my 37 years inside of – and watching – NASA. This UAG is probably the most pointless of them all. If the Administration and NASA do not take the whole “user” aspect of space seriously then why should anyone else? Another 4 years wasted. Just saying.