For some in the space industry, the confirmation hearing they will be paying close attention to on the morning of Nov. 1 will not be the one by the Senate Commerce Committee to consider the nomination of Jim Bridenstine to be NASA administrator.

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Jeff Foust has more than a decade of experience writing about space policy, entrepreneurial ventures and regulatory affairs. In 2001, he established spacetoday.net to aggregate and summarize the day's space-related news stories. In 2003, he started The...