The first meeting of the President’s Commission on Implementation of United States Space Exploration Policy (aka the “Aldridge Commission”) has been scheduled for this coming Wednesday, February 11, in Washington, according to a notice published in Thursday’s Federal Register. (See also an HTMLized version at SpaceRef.com.) The meeting is scheduled for between 9am and 5pm at the NTSB’s conference center in L’Enfant Plaza in downtown Washington. The meeting is open to the public. The agenda makes it appear that this meeting will be little more than an introduction, with topics such as “Overview of Commission Charter and Goals” and “Review of accomplishments of previous commissions”.
The timing of this meeting is a little unfortunate. Not only is it scheduled on short notice (as noted in the register notice), it’s taking place the same day as both a major defense conference (AIAA Defense 2004) and a major commercial space transportation conference (FAA/AST Forecast Conference), both also in DC. This will tend to stretch things a little thin in the Washington space community on Wednesday. However, I would be surprised if one would miss out on much by not attending this opening session of the commission.
