Washington, D.C. – The Space Frontier Foundation is proud to announce the 2015 Citizens’ Space Agenda, which will be the goal of the March Storm, scheduled for March 15-19 in Washington, D.C. With the March Storm event, the Foundation is planning to organize more than 200 congressional meetings for private citizens who travel to our nation’s capital “on their own time and on their own dime.”

The 2015 Citizens’ Space Agenda includes:

Establish “Settlement” as an Official Purpose of our Nation’s Space Enterprise

The Foundation has drafted legislation to amend the original National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958 to specify that encouraging and supporting “space settlement” and “development” are part of NASA’s official mission.

Cheap Access To Space (CATS)

Cheap Access To Space (CATS) is the critical, must-have capability to enable opening the space frontier to all people. With CATS, we will grow a trillion-dollar space economy, connect the entire world with affordable broadband internet, enable thousands of people to travel to and from space each year, open up the solar system to human exploration, development, and settlement, and strengthen U.S. national security.

The #1 challenge for CATS today is not technology, but closing the business case. Many American companies have the ability to build fully-reusable spaceplanes with today’s technology. But these companies cannot justify the risky investment based on existing markets and flight rates. The Foundation will advance legislation to authorize a multi-billion-dollar CATS Prize to help close the business case, using an innovative method that does not require up-front funding.

Don’t Over-Regulate Commercial Human Spaceflight

In 2004 Congress enacted the Commercial Space Launch Amendments Act to create an “informed consent” regime that limits federal safety regulation for involved parties to demonstrated issues, while fully protecting the general public. This streamlined environment expires on October 1, 2015, and the Foundation will advocate for its long-term extension. 

A “No Gap” Transition to Commercial Space Stations

The Foundation will promote a new strategy for accelerating the growth of commercial space stations, both in Earth orbit and beyond. The life of the International Space Station (ISS) has been extended through 2024 and NASA has announced that ISS will be the last government-developed station in low Earth orbit (LEO). NASA will transition to buying commercial station services after ISS is retired. But many questions remain, and may foretell a gap in continuous American presence in Earth orbit after ISS, just as we currently suffer a gap in American human space launch. 

In addition, while international cooperation and collaboration is useful and valuable to our civil space program, the Foundation believes it is time for America to eliminate our critical dependence on Vladimir Putin at the ISS. Our continuing dependence on Russia to operate ISS gives Putin foreign policy leverage in an unstable era. We will propose, and advocate for, legislation mandating rapid development of commercially-owned and -operated station modules by 2020, to eliminate our dependence on Russia.

Commercial Crew and Cargo

On-going competition and operational redundancy is critical to fully utilizing the ISS National Laboratory to enable future Mars exploration. We will advocate for full funding for both Commercial Crew and the ISS Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) programs.

We invite all pro-space American citizens over 18 years of age to register now and joining with us to fight for a Citizen’s Space Agenda! The minimum required attendance is the training on Sunday, March 15th plus at least one day on Capitol Hill.

Link to Register – Sign up for March Storm 2015 Here 

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