Going to the Bar to Watch the US Midterm Election on Tuesday Night

          By Chuck Black

The US is wrapping up one of the most consequential US midterm elections on record and the aftershocks are expected to reverberate even across the space industry, at least according to the November 2nd, 2018 issue of "POLITICO Space," the weekly online "must-read briefing on the policies and personalities shaping the second space age."

This blog will be covering the US elections on Tuesday November 6th, 2018 from the main barstool of the Toronto ON based Madison Avenue Pub, which will be hosting several hundred expatriate US citizens who will be watching the activities on the major networks from a dozen or so strategically placed televisions throughout the bar.

As for POLITICO, they say that the new year is "shaping up to be a spaceflight turning point" and the politicians, democrats and republicans, are looking to leverage their positions to influence policy.

Issues include:

• The eventual status of the proposed US "Space Force," a possible new branch of the US armed forces intended to control military operations in outer space. It's a topic also discussed in the October 15, 2018 post, "Blue Origin Joins the US Military Rocket Building Club."

• The new United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), a replacement for the old North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) which, although negotiated to a successful conclusion between the three primary parties, has not been ratified yet by either the Canadian Parliament or the US House of Representatives. 

As outlined in the November 5th, 2018 CBC News post, "How the US midterm elections could shake up Canadian business," some Canadian policy experts say "a Democratic win is not necessarily better for the Canadian economy or Canadian business."

• Which Democrat or Republican representative will become the new head of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology after current chairman Lamar Smith (who is not standing for reelection) retires. 

Screen shots c/o ADMO.

• Whether or not funding should even go to space activities. An example of this would include the series of attack ads from Lizzie Fletcher, a Democrat trying to unseat Rep. John Culberson, the current chair of the House Appropriations Committees' Commerce, Justice and Science Subcommittee, which has jurisdiction over NASA funding. 

The ad accuses Culberson of preferring to spend money "to fund the search for aliens on Jupiter’s icy moon Europa" instead of providing funds for flood protection in his district. 

Fletcher promotes herself as being "Down to Earth, Where We Need Her" and her ads promise that “Lizzie Fletcher will invest in humans, not aliens.”

The action at the Madison begins as soon as the polls close across the US. I'll be showing up around 8pm EST. Feel free to drop by, say hi, tell me your story and buy me a drink.

Especially that last thing.

Chuck Black.

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Chuck Black is the editor of the Commercial Space blog.