Presidential candidate John Edwards offered perhaps the strongest Democratic endorsement of Bush’s space initiative on Sunday. During an interview on CNN Late Edition (scroll about one-third the way down the page), Wolf Blitzer asked Edwards about the plan:
BLITZER: Do you support the president’s decision to send a person back to the moon and perhaps beyond, to Mars?
EDWARDS: Well, I think it makes sense. Space exploration makes sense. I think that we saw what happened during the Kennedy administration and thereafter, how it inspired lots of generations of young people to be interested in science, math, technology, which I think is important.
But the president has to be able to do two things at once. And what he’s doing is diverting attention from the problems that we have here at home.
Edwards then went on to talk about health care, and never came back to the issue of the Bush space plan before the interview ended. While not exactly a ringing endorsement, it is a stronger response than the “I support space exploration, but…” response from most other Democrats. It’s also a more coherent response than what Edwards said a week earlier on Face the Nation.
Sooner or later (but before November) some Democrat is going to figure out that if we cancelled all future orbiter flights right NOW;
and re-allocated the $35 billion being spent on STS between now and program termination to an unmanned Shuttle C or B variant, we could finish ISS by 2010 or maybe 2011 (and not merely core complete); and
have an operational shuttle C system capable of accepting the new CEV system as a piggyback passenger.
Add a few billion to the Bush budget numbers to accelerate CEV flight readiness and permanently ground the orbiter today transfering the $35 billion STS budget to shuttle C and a Democrat could adopt a program calling for a lunar landing years before we will return to the Moon under the Bush plan.
That’s probably right, from a purely technical and financial point of view. But if a Democrat said that, the Republicans would somehow spin it to be a threat to the entire economy of northeast Florida (Karl Rove is good at that kind of thing). The Democrats know this, and they’re not going to risk losing Florida’s 25 electoral votes.
Until the voting public shows that it is as concerned about the future of human space travel as it is about human medical care, politicians will continue to avoid talking in depth about space. Folks ,like me, who support space tracel, need to do a better job of winning over everyone else.
What the advocates of space exploration need is a truly organized and motivated political force to voice their views. Groups like the Planetary Society, the National Space Society and the Mars Society are fine and all, but until they learn to play political hardball (like, say, the NRA or the AARP) they will remain effectively powerless in the realms of politics.
To get a mule to move, you need to use sticks and carrots. You cannot simply wispher in the mule’s ear that it might be a good idea to move. He’s a mule, and he doesn’t care.
Anaxagoras writes:
“That’s probably right, from a purely technical and financial point of view. But if a Democrat said that, the Republicans would somehow spin it to be a threat to the entire economy of northeast Florida (Karl Rove is good at that kind of thing). The Democrats know this, and they’re not going to risk losing Florida’s 25 electoral votes.”
When 2010 arrives all those same people will be unemployed anyway since Delta IV/Atlas V will apparently become America’s booster. Therefore, sell the shuttle C program as long term job security for Florida’s Space Coast and Michoud, Louisiana.
Anaxagoras writes: “What the advocates of space exploration need is a truly organized and motivated political force to voice their views. Groups like the Planetary Society, the National Space Society and the Mars Society are fine and all, but until they learn to play political hardball (like, say, the NRA or the AARP) they will remain effectively powerless in the realms of politics.”
The problem is that the NRA and AARP can play “hardball” because they represent a large number of motivated voters: several million each, compared to well under 200,000 combined for TPS, NSS, and Mars Society. You can’t expect these space organizations to have the same degree of clout as much larger organizations, although they can be effective in smaller, more focused ways.
Jeff,
You’re quite right about the lack of numbers being a huge factor. So, a good place to start would be an aggressive campaign to increase their membership. But even now, there are many things space advocancy groups can do which they aren’t doing- at least not much of.
Since most space groups are non-profit organizations, they are barred by law from engaging in direct political activity. They can tell their members to “write your congressman” and so forth, but they cannot advise their members who to vote for or who to vote against. Nor can they contribute money to the election campaigns of political figures who favor their view of things. And they also cannot run their own media ads calling on people to vote for or against particular politicians.
While there has been some success by space advocancy groups in airing their views to Congress, this will always have a minimal effect on the political process so long as members of Congress don’t consider their space policy positions are effecting their ability to be re-elected.
Back to John Edwards’ comments on a human mission to Mars. I am tired of the Democratic rhetoric that goes something like this: “Bush’s Moon-Mars plan diverts attention away from concerns here on Earth.” This position is stupid. Whatever changes take place with the government’s spending on civil space activities (few folks consider that the Department of Defense spends more on space than NASA), the impact on the average American’s pocketbook will be so lost in the noise as to be fuuny. Folks should raise a stink about real problems like inadequate funding for primary education, medical insurance and HMOs, the social security fiasco, and several other things before concerning themselves too much with the level of spending on civil space programs.
The truth is, very few elected officials think about space beyond the occasional sound bite. When asked, most of these fools immediately think spending on space is elitist and wasteful. They are fools for so many reasons beyond their stand on space, but that’s for another forum…