The Obama Administration and the Space Business

January marks the inauguration of President Barack Obama and offers a good moment to review what the space policy of the new administration likely will be.
Clearly, any incoming president would be constrained by the massive deficit created during the Bush administration. Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the bailout of the financial services industry (and perhaps the automotive industry), and the decaying network of roads, bridges, tunnels, power grids and other infrastructure all demand allocation of increasingly scarce resources. Space policy probably would be placed on the back burner by any president facing similar circumstances and without a motivating theme like the Cold War.
Obama has made limited policy pronouncements on space and shows little sign of being specifically interested in space access, exploration or technology for their own sakes. His principal statement to date came in a January 2008 pamphlet entitled “Barack Obama’s Plan for American Leadership in Space.” In it, he demonstrated a conventional view. He favors completing the International Space Station (it may be too big to fail) and bringing the next-generation Ares/Orion launch and transfer vehicles on line as quickly as possible to minimize U.S. dependence on other countries for human space access following the planned retirement of the space shuttle in 2010. Any return to the moon or a manned Mars project is off the radar screen. Beyond that, Obama’s campaign expressed generalized support for space robotic exploration missions and educational purposes. He has emphasized the importance of bolstering science and math education.
However, the U.S. government accounts for fully half of all global satellite and space expenditure, and that is unlikely to change under the new administration. Many policy initiatives that Obama may want to push in spite of fiscal constraints are space-dependent and bode well for both direct government procurement and spending in the commercial industry. National security surveillance programs, conventional defense, climate change, other scientific research and extreme weather forecasting figure heavily among these initiatives.
The paired examples of man-made and natural catastrophes, the Sept. 11 attacks and Hurricane Katrina, and particularly the perception that the Bush administration was undone more by Katrina than by Iraq, will haunt the Obama administration. As a candidate, he fiercely attacked the Bush administration on both, and it can be assumed that he will not want to be susceptible to the same criticisms he made. There will be highly visible reversals of Bush policies, such as closing Guantanamo Bay and issuing formal executive orders prohibiting extreme interrogation techniques. 
However, funding of direct government and commercial space-supported emergency response systems and first responder support will continue. Patriot Act and U.S. Department of Homeland Security-based surveillance programs can be expected to continue, with direct government satellite procurement and outsourcing to commercial providers of Earth imaging, interoperable and hybrid satellite-terrestrial network communications, and weather forecasting also benefiting. During the campaign, Obama identified nuclear proliferation and the dispersal of fissile materials as among the greatest threats faced by the United States; his space policy reiterates both the priority and the critical role of space-based surveillance in countering these threats.
Despite the promise to draw down troops in Iraq by 2011, a substantial counter-terrorism and non-combat U.S. military and civilian contractor presence there will continue for the foreseeable future. Force strength in the Afghanistan-Pakistan theater, as it likely will come to be known, is likely to increase as troop numbers in Iraq decline. Teleport operators and space-borne voice, data and video networking operators and providers will continue to be the recipients of substantial U.S. government spending for military operational and personal use.
Finally, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and its Congressional oversight bodies, the Senate and House Commerce committees, will have Democratic majorities. The Republican majority on the FCC during the Bush administration generally took a pro-incumbent provider, pro-consolidation policy line in both merger review and regulatory policy implementation. Under a new Democratic majority, a more critical review of mergers perceived to limit consumer choice, such as in providers of pay television service or broadcast “voices” available in any given community, may be expected.