Yet Another Pointless NSpC Users’ Advisory Group Meeting

Keith’s note: According to NASA “The next meeting of the National Space Council (NSpC) Users’ Advisory Group (UAG) is scheduled for December 1, 2023, 11:00am – 2:00pm EST. This meeting will be virtual-only, via dial-in and WebEx. Access information links for both virtual video and audio lines will be posted in advance on this website.“ This meeting was supposed to happen on 4 August 2023 but they rescheduled it – no reason given. It then took them 4 months to figure out what they wanted to do and reschedule it. It sure doesn’t sound like there is a lot of priority attached to this meeting in the NSpC or the Vice President’s office. As we all know by now all of the topics that are discussed by the UAG have already been decided – in advance – by the NSpC staff. The same thing happened in the previous Administration so at least they are being consistent. All the UAG does in these meetings is a short photo op (in this case a screen grab opportunity) and have the members say words prepared by their staff about the things that have already been decided/enacted. This gives the impression that experts deliberated about whatever their words say they did. And then someone checks a box because they did another one of those FACA advisory meeting things we do here in Washington. Here is the agenda. Will they talk about SLS delays/overruns or Mars Sample Return woes? There does not seem to be room in a 3 hour telecon with a jammed agenda like this. Meanwhile if you want to actually ask the NSpC what all this is about they still do not have any way to contact actual NSpC staff on their official website which is 3 paragraphs on a generic White House webpage. If you have nothing better to do then here are prior rants posts about the whole NSpC/UAG space advisory rabbit hole to look at.