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.

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.

Keith’s note: The National Space Council (NSpC) Users’ Advisory Group (UAG) Is meeting on Thursday 23 February from 9:00 am – 1:15 pm EST at the JW Marriott Hotel in Washington, DC. You can watch it live here. If you look at the Agenda you will see that it is filled with UAG members, space insiders, and NASA staff briefing one another in true echo chamber style. There is no scheduled outside input from the real world. There is a mention on the agenda that you can “submit a question, comment, or idea to the UAG, please use the following e-mail: [email protected]“. Just know that any questions you submit will be filtered and screened by lots of government people – so nothing provocative is likely to be asked at the meeting. And any answers you get back after the meeting will be bland and lacking in terms of having any worthwhile content. The UAG could have had real value. Instead it is mostly a pointless dog and pony show. More below.

Keith’s note: The following was just sent by NASA HQ to “National Space Council (NSpC) Users’ Advisory Group (UAG) members (2020-2022)”

Keith’s note: In case you have not noticed, Joe Biden has stopped talking about Moon rocks and Mars Helicopters or NASA. But he does allude to “winning the space race” on occasion (whatever that means half a century later). Alas, the vice president’s office was incapable of finding actual human children with an interest in space here in the DC metro area so her staff hired a bunch of child […]

Extension to the invitation for public nominations for potential service on the National Space Council Users’ Advisory Group “The deadline for NASA to receive all public nominations has been extended to October 29, 2021.” Keith’s update: The original deadline announced on 14 September to submit nominations for the UAG was 27 September 2021. They extended the due date – by an entire month. Is this an issue with the quantity […]

Keith’s note: The usual suspects are telling me that the Biden Administration has decided to keep the National Space Council (NSpC). As to what its real role will be is still TBD. These same usual suspects also wanted to keep the Trump space advisory status quo in place – specifically the NSpC. They even sent the Biden White House a letter saying so (see “Big Aerospace Wants Biden To Keep […]

Keith’s note: If you have been following NASA’s exploration plans for more than 10 minutes you know that there have been a lot of pivots along the way. The chart above (minus my snarky large yellow arrows and captions) is floating around NASA and puts the past few decades of pivots, false starts, and detours in NASA’s exploration plans into context. Notice that even though the whole focus right now […]

Fifth Meeting of the National Space Council March 26 in Huntsville “On Tuesday, March 26, 2019, at 12:00 p.m. CDT, Vice President Mike Pence will chair the fifth meeting of the National Space Council at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama. This meeting will focus on President Trump’s plan to restore American leadership in space and the next steps in implementing his vision to send Americans to […]

Keith’s note: Once again we see an exercise in checking the boxes with regard to the making of space policy. A White House-created committee of experts, hand-selected to focus on a desired ad somewhat pre-determiined outcome, goes through the motions of being interested in what people have to say. They only go to friendly locations where dissent or differences in opinion are unlikely – and consensus can be proclaimed by […]