The latest issue (#53) of the Astronautical Evolution newsletter by Stephen Ashworth has been released:

• New record year in manned spaceflight
• …but how sustainable will it be?
• Two cheers for the British Space Agency
• Latest on Space.co.uk

Stephen has some interesting comments on the formation of a UK Space Agency which I generally agree with, such as the following:

"What we should have is a British Space *Enterprise and Development* Agency (BSEDA), which focuses on implementing our current space policy.  It needs to model itself after NACA (supporting entrepreneurial and socially useful activities in space), not NASA (which dreams up massive exploration plans for which the rest of society has little appetite)."

which meshes with my own comments previously:

"As I think I've said before, I kind of have mixed feelings about this. In the sense that it shows an increased political priority for space policy, it's potentially a good thing, but I don't want to see another bloated bureaucratic monster like NASA. An agile, responsive agency working on key enabling technologies in the DARPA model would be better, I think."

"I also don't want it to be called BNSC, because of the longtime confusion with the NSC in Leicester. I kind of like the name SEDA for Space Exploration and Development Agency -- because we'll go places, and build stuff when we get there."