James Addison Baker III is an American attorney, statesman, and political figure. He served as White House Chief of Staff and United States Secretary of the Treasury under President Ronald Reagan, and as U.S. Secretary of State and White House Chief of Staff under President George H. W. Bush.
Paul Henry O'Neill was an American economist and government official who served as the 72nd United States secretary of the treasury for part of President George W. Bush's first term, from January 2001 to December 2002. He was fired in December 2002 for his public disagreement with the administration. Prior to his term as secretary of the treasury, O'Neill was chairman and CEO of industrial giant Alcoa and chairman of the RAND Corporation.
The Rogers Commission Report was created by a Presidential Commission charged with investigating the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster during its 10th mission, STS-51-L. The report, released and submitted to President Ronald Reagan on 9 June 1986, both determined the cause of the disaster that took place 73 seconds after liftoff, and urged NASA to improve and install new safety features on the shuttles and in its organizational handling of future missions.
Frederick Hamilton "Rick" Hauck is a retired captain in the United States Navy, a former fighter pilot and NASA astronaut. He piloted Space Shuttle mission STS-7 and commanded STS-51-A and STS-26.
James Chipman Fletcher served as the 4th and 7th Administrator of NASA, first from April 27, 1971 to May 1, 1977, under President Richard M. Nixon, and again from May 12, 1986 to April 8, 1989, under President Ronald Reagan. As such, he was responsible for the early planning of the Space Shuttle program, and later for its recovery and return to flight after the Space Shuttle Challenger accident. Prior to this, he was president of the University of Utah from 1964 to 1971.
William French Smith II was an American lawyer. He was the 74th United States Attorney General.
Joseph "Joe" Wright is an American businessman. From 1988 to 1989, he worked in the United States government as the Director of the Office of Management and Budget for president Ronald Reagan.
Martin Stuart Feldstein was an American economist. He was the George F. Baker Professor of Economics at Harvard University and the president emeritus of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). He served as president and chief executive officer of the NBER from 1978 to 2008. From 1982 to 1984, Feldstein served as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers and as chief economic advisor to President Ronald Reagan. Feldstein was also a member of the Washington-based financial advisory body the Group of Thirty from 2003.
James Horace Burnley IV is an American politician and lawyer. He served as the United States Secretary of Transportation from 1987 until 1989, during the administration of President Ronald Reagan. He is a partner at Venable LLP in Washington, D.C.
The Coalition for Deep Space Exploration is a United States space advocacy organization for space industry businesses and non-profit groups supporting continued government investment in space exploration.
William Robert Graham is an American physicist who was chairman of President Reagan's General Advisory Committee on Arms Control from 1982 to 1985, a deputy administrator and acting administrator of NASA during 1985 and 1986, and director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and concurrently science adviser to President Reagan from 1986 to 1989. He then served as an executive in national security-related companies.
Peter Richard Orszag is the CEO of Financial Advisory at Lazard. Before June 2019, he was the firm's Head of North American M&A and Global Co-Head of Healthcare.
Criticism of the Space Shuttle program stemmed from claims that NASA's Shuttle program failed to achieve its promised cost and utility goals, as well as design, cost, management, and safety issues. Fundamentally, it failed in the goal of reducing the cost of space access. Space Shuttle incremental per-pound launch costs ultimately turned out to be considerably higher than those of expendable launchers. By 2011, the incremental cost per flight of the Space Shuttle was estimated at $450 million, or $18,000 per kilogram to low Earth orbit (LEO). In contrast, the comparable Proton launch vehicle is said to cost as little as $110 million, or around $5,000 per kilogram to LEO, despite not being reusable.
J. Robinson (Robin) West is the founder and chairman of PFC Energy. He has advised chief executives of leading international oil and gas companies and national oil companies on corporate strategy, portfolio management, acquisitions, divestitures, and investor relations. Before founding PFC Energy in 1984, West served in the Reagan Administration as assistant secretary of the interior for policy, budget and administration (1981–83), with responsibility for U.S. offshore oil policy. Robin conceived and implemented the five-year outer continental shelf (OCS) leasing schedule and managed the $14 billion per year OCS policy, the largest non-financial auction in the world at that time.
The National Space Council is a body within the Executive Office of the President of the United States created in 1989 during the George H. W. Bush administration, disbanded in 1993, and reestablished in June 2017 by the Donald Trump administration. It is a modified version of the earlier National Aeronautics and Space Council (1958–1973).
George Pratt Shultz was an American economist, diplomat, and businessman. He served in various positions under three different Republican presidents and is one of only two people to have held four different Cabinet-level posts. Shultz played a major role in shaping the foreign policy of the Ronald Reagan administration. From 1974 to 1982, he was an executive of the Bechtel Group, an engineering and services company.
The Advisory Committee on the Future of the United States Space Program, commonly known as the Augustine Committee, was a 1990 space policy group requested by Vice President Dan Quayle, chairman of the National Space Council. The objective of the committee was to evaluate the long-term future of NASA and the United States civilian space program. The committee's final report recommended that the space program should comprise five activities—space science, Earth science, human spaceflight, space technology and space transportation—with space science as the highest priority for funding. It also proposed an unmanned launch vehicle to replace some Space Shuttle launches, and a scaled-back redesign of space station Freedom.
Faith Amy Ryan Whittlesey was a Pennsylvania Republican politician and White House Senior Staff member notable for her effort to communicate Ronald Reagan's entire policy agenda to U.S. opinion leaders and for bringing together for the first time in the Reagan White House evangelical, Catholic, and other conservative religious groups who opposed legalized abortion and were concerned about moral and cultural decline and the break-up of the family. These groups became a significant component of the Reagan coalition as they grew more politically self-conscious in the 1980s. She organized the White House Central American Outreach Group at the direction of Chief of Staff James Baker to provide information about Reagan's anti-communist policies in the region and was an active supporter of Reagan's defense buildup and the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI).
The space policy of the United States includes both the making of space policy through the legislative process, and the implementation of that policy in the United States' civilian and military space programs through regulatory agencies. The early history of United States space policy is linked to the US–Soviet Space Race of the 1960s, which gave way to the Space Shuttle program. There is a current debate on the post-Space Shuttle future of the civilian space program (NASA).
Vernon Leslie Grose is an American author, professor, aerospace engineer, air disaster analyst, risk management expert, and former member of the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB). In 1969, he was appointed to NASA's Safety Advisory Group for Space Flight. In 1974, he was honored with NASA's Silver Snoopy Award, presented by Brigadier General Thomas P. Stafford, veteran astronaut of the Gemini 6A, Gemini 9A, and Apollo 10 space programs.
