Talk:Space policy of the United States

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Untitled[edit]

Hi, I am working on this article for a project in school. It is still in the works so any suggestions or comments would be great to help me along! Ander2em (talk) 19:48, 22 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Hi! I made this article earlier this month, and I'm actually a Campus Ambassador for another class in Boston, so I'm happy to see your contributions! One suggestion I do have is that since this article is about United States space policy, it would be good to emphasize the aspects of international space law as they pertain to the United States specifically. For example, what was the United States' position during the negotiation of these treaties, what was the domestic political discussion when they were ratified, and are there recent debates on their effect on the United States? You also might want to look at the articles Space policy and Space law, which treat the subject more broadly and are not specific to the policy of one country. Happy editing! Antony–22 (talk⁄contribs) 02:43, 23 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Wow! I just took a look at those links...thank you for pointing those out. I do need to tailor my information more towards the US! Ander2em (talk) 19:47, 24 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Role of Congress in policy[edit]

I don't think the article's summary of the process is quite accurate:

"In the United States, space policy is made by the President of the United States and the United States Congress through the legislative process. ... In the United States Congress, civilian space policy is mainly made by the House Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics and the Senate Subcommittee on Science and Space, ..."

The responsibility of making policy resides in the Executive branch (POTUS), while Congress' legislative role is to establish funding for federal activities, and in support of this, they oversee NASA and the space activities of the Department of Defense. This is the way federal power is defined in the Constitution, and should be "Civics 101" to all grade school students. JustinTime55 (talk) 14:40, 24 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

No, Congress' oversight is not limited to funding, and funding is part of policy anyway. Many of the high-level policy issues are included in legislation by Congress (just look at the text of the 2010 NASA Authorization Act) although the details get worked out within the NASA bureaucracy. Antony–22 (talk⁄contribs) 21:38, 24 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for responding. Yes, the policy loop is not complete until Congress acts, and a law is passed which both authorizes spending and states the policy. But let me explain that I take the phrase "to make policy" in the sense of "deciding what the government intends to do", and I believe that to be the layman's common understanding. That is the responsibility of the Executive branch. In light of that, I believe the simple statement "policy is made by the Executive and the Congress" is misleading in that it implies they both do the same thing.
Take your 2010 act example; you surely don't think that the House Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics and the Senate Subcommittee on Science and Space created the policy as stated in the bill out of thin air (based on the "NASA bureaucracy's" input)? That was done in the Executive (NASA working with the President), who then submitted it to Congress, who did its due diligence by taking testimony from NASA, and wrote the final policy (which probably involves some negotiation with the White House). Of course, a savvy President works with OMB beforehand, and has his finger on the Congress' political pulse, and won't submit anything he thinks Congress will perceive as too grandiose (read: expensive), unless there are extenuating historical circumstances (e.g. the Space Race in 1961, when Kennedy proposed the Apollo program).
I would amend my above statement as follows: "The responsibility of drafting policy resides in the Executive branch (POTUS), while Congress' legislative role is to approve and establish funding for federal activities, and in support of this, they oversee NASA and the space activities of the Department of Defense." Would you object if I adjusted the article slightly to reflect this? JustinTime55 (talk) 14:58, 25 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I see what you mean. I agree that the article should explain the different roles that Congress and the executive branch have in space policy. It shouldn't give the impression that Congress simply rubber-stamps whatever policies the executive branch presents to it; I'm not enough of an expert to know the details but my impression is that there can be some back-and-forth there. Antony–22 (talk⁄contribs) 01:48, 1 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Space programs in the budget[edit]

NASA's budget as percentage of federal total, from 1958 to 2012

One obvious flaw in the pie chart presented is that it does not really show the percentage of total (civilian and military) space spending, because the military portion is buried in the large Defense piece (the lion's share). The prose also hints that certain civilian parts are hidden in the funding for "other regulatory agencies involved with space issues." We need to know what part of the defense budget goes to all space activities to get a true picture. JustinTime55 (talk) 18:00, 27 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Also, a reality check: why does this pie chart say NASA's share of the 2011 budget is 7.43% when the Budget of NASA page gives a table and graph (right) which says it's only 0.51%??? It was never higher than 4.41%, even at its 1966 peak during the Apollo program years. Somebody's figures are wrong. JustinTime55 (talk) 18:13, 27 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, I see the denominator is "research and development budget", not total federal budget. But this will still be confusing to the readers, who are probably more interested in percentage of the total. We also don't capture here the fact that it changes over time, which will probably be of more interest. We should maybe think about changing this. JustinTime55 (talk) 18:25, 27 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

External links modified[edit]

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Translations[edit]

This article should be translated into various important languages, including German, Spanish, French, etc. -- Horst-schlaemma (talk) 10:43, 20 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Wiki Education assignment: Introduction to Policy Analysis[edit]

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 28 March 2022 and 30 May 2022. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Przemysl15 (article contribs).

Various points about the article[edit]

I have some questions about this article and would like to take a look at some serious touchup.

First of all, the Trump administration section has a notice about needing to be updated, and has been that way since December 2020 despite the section having been edited after the date of the update notice. The article the section is linked to has been regularly updated. What particularly needs to be updated? If nothing, can the banner be removed?

Following from that, if we have a page for the the Space policy of the Donald Trump, Barack Obama, and George W Bush administrations, surely all the other sections meet WP:NOTE requirements for their own articles? Could we create an entire page just on the History of space policy of the United States? I would imagine that a page just on the history AND pages for each presidential administration all would meet notability requirements.

Additionally, why is the section on the Budget of NASA so short? Could we expand that further to include more information from the Budget of NASA article, such as the graph that was discussed here 7 years ago?

The International Law section also could connect to the Space Law article, is there any reason this was not done? It is mentioned in the very first post on the talk page, and seems to have some broad similarities to that article. If we were to connect the two, would a simple link for the existing text suffice, or would it be preferably to work more information from the Space law article into this one?

Lastly, there is next to nothing on the page about civilian space programs and the United States' relationship with its space policy as the private sector has developed, beyond passing mentions inside the History section. Should this information simply be expanded upon in the History section or given an entirely new section itself? It seems to be nominally within the scope of the article.

Thanks, Przemysl15 (talk) 21:05, 25 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia Ambassador Program course assignment[edit]

This article is the subject of an educational assignment at James Madison University supported by WikiProject United States Public Policy and the Wikipedia Ambassador Program during the 2011 Spring term. Further details are available on the course page.

The above message was substituted from {{WAP assignment}} by PrimeBOT (talk) on 16:35, 2 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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