In his keynote speech at the Return to the Moon conference Friday, Paul Spudis, a lunar scientist and one of the members of the Aldridge Commission, made some insightful comments about the relationship of space policy and presidential politics while talking about the reaction to President Bush’s January 14th speech:
Basically, he’s gotten a lot of abuse, and a lot of ridicule, and a lot of fairly nasty commentary. I find it laughable that some people think this was a political stunt. If it was a political stunt, it was the dumbest political stunt of all time, because the one lesson we should have learned from the first Bush announcement was that space, for a politician, is a political loser. No politician, aside from John Kennedy, has ever made a policy declaration on space and benefited from it politically… Talking about space for a politician is very, very risky, and I for one am not going to take away from President Bush the credit that he deserves, because I honestly believe he felt, fundamentally, that it was the right thing for the country.
While space may be a “political loser”, I don’t know how strong of one it really is. There was some negative reaction to Bush’s announcement, but that was short-lived and largely faded away to a more natural state of apathy after a few weeks, at most. I do agree, though, that Bush did not do this for political gain: as others have pointed out, you don’t go into an election year, with a key state like Florida hanging in the balance, and announce that you plan to terminate a program (the shuttle) that employs thousands of people there for political gain.
Jeff Foust wrote:
“While space may be a ‘political loser,’ I don’t know how strong of one it really is.”
This is an interesting point, but it is possible to argue the opposite–that because of the high negatives associated with the announcement, the administration quickly backed away from it so that it would not become a major political loser.
One of the problems of space being relatively non-partisan is that neither side is likely to see strong benefits to supporting a policy that looks like it might hurt them. So they run away from it quickly. I don’t know if that is what has happened here. I’m talking mostly theoretically about this. But there was a report in the New York Times that mention of the new space policy was removed from the State of the Union Address. Not simply _not added_, but actually _removed._ It was considered “non serious,” and yet steroid use by high school athletes did not get removed. The Washington Post also reported around the same time that the new initiative tested very negatively in an opinion poll that they conducted around that time. They did not report any details, however. But one wonders if the administration was doing similar tracking polls and may have quickly come to the conclusion that this was an issue that they needed to stay away from.
Washington’s chattering class, which includes not only the political columnists, but now all these bloggers with media connections, loves to second-guess absolutely every political decision. They never believe that a decision is made for the publicly stated reasons and always look for an ulterior motive. In the case of the space vision speech in January, many people were unwilling to believe that he was making the speech for the stated reasons and many suspected that it was an electoral year stunt. I didn’t, but I know some otherwise politically-savvy people who did at the time. This habit of second-guessing every decision is one of the things that annoys me about Washington, but it’s so common that there might be little point to worrying about it…
This is why I discount what “Official” Washington and the “Official” press have said about space for years Duane. I don’t trust them any more than I can drop kick Discovery into orbit.They have told outright lies about space for at least three decades, and the infamous (to my mind and others too) trillion dollar cost of VSE confirm in my and others minds that “official” Washington D.C. and “the mainstream press”, cannot be depended upon to tell the truth, much less cheerlead for VSE any more than Lenin would willingly embrace Libertarianism.
This is why I hedge my bets, and not count on one single path to space. This is why I have sent letters urging support for VSE to my two Senators and my House member, sent a letter urging President Bush to speak out in favor of VSE, regardless of polls or the political winds blowing this way or that, and why I support the Alt.Space community providing the muscles and organs for the skeletal framework VSE could provide for infrastructure in cislunar space and the inner solar system both, if it’s done right.
No one plan, program, vehicle, or funding mechanism is going to get us into space en masse or individually. Only different approaches in a trial and error Dynamist approach, with many different vehicles, financing mechanisms,plans, vehicles, programs, and from different orgainzations and types of organizations coming to spontaneous cooperation with what works, will get us into space and supplement VSE, which is as good as it is going to get for the space community to have a common goal, vehicle, plan, and destination as Can Democracies Fly in Space?, and Space: The Dormant Frontier pointed out nearly a decade ago. As Astra per aspera.
For me the real issue is what to do with ISS/STS. And the Bush plan strikes me as very timid on that point.
A plan to retire the orbiter in 2010 is a very safe political play because the employees in FL and LA have been given 6 or 7 years of guaranteed employment. Delay ISS completion to 2012?
How many Florida voters are going to be angry about job losses that far away?
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The costs overruns on orbiter return to flight will consume just about all of any increase NASA may get for FY05 – – if NASA gets any at all.
So how can we start VSE any time soon?
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Ground orbiter NOW.
That would be a daring and visionary space policy.
Bill White wrote:
“Ground orbiter NOW.”
Do that and none of America’s ISS partners will want to cooperate with us again for the next several decades. Is that acceptable?
Dwayne,
Can the orbiter possibly finish ISS by 2010 or before something else breaks? 25 flights in 5 years? Do we extend STS as needed to finish ISS?
What if we spend 5 or 6 years working on ISS and still fail to finish it?
What if an orbiter needs to take refuge at ISS and we cannot get rescue vessels up in time? We lose the orbiter AND we lose the ISS since the life support on ISS will be totally trashed and we lack the heavy lift to repair/replace those modules.
Using the ISS as a safe haven might itself doom ISS as a functional station even if the crew survives.
If we lose one more orbiter, ISS is impossile to finish unless we look to Proton/Shuttle B and if we can do that then, why not now?
Bottom line? Why should we believe STS actually can finish ISS no matter what our intentions are?
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So what do we do?
Finish ISS another way using Proton or Shuttle B.
Attach an Orbital Recoveries style station keeping module to each ISS component and use that module to maintain attitude control and keep station at 51 degrees until a Progress shows up to push the module the last mile to ISS.
Delta IVH might be used for the lighter ISS modules. Shuttle B (Swap SSMEs for RS-68s and add 5 segment SRBs) can lift TWO ISS payloads per shot (and carry additional supplies as well).
Deploy SDV by 2008 and fly 12 shuttle B by 2010 and that is the same as 24 ISS payloads. Shuttle B is a necessary evolutioanry step to Ares since Ares is in fact a shuttle B with a cryogenic upper stage.
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Option Two. Build ISS-2 at 28 degrees using Bigelow’s Transhabs. Attach all ISS partner modules now on the ground to the new station.
Orbiter is NOT used for construction of ISS-2.
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Option Three. Offer the ISS partners a suitable consolation prize. Cancel ISS/STS and go to the Moon much much sooner. Carry along some Japanese, French, Canadian and Russian astronauts free of charge as compensation for ISS cancellation.
Apologize profusely and make Colin Powell earn his pay.
The Bush plan is VERY political. Something had to be done about orbiter after Columbia disaster and the President called for a bold new initiative to go to the Moon, Mars and Beyond but only after he leaves office.
While all of Bill’s open concept thoughts are great. Even if the shuttle is stopped dead as a door nail from further repairs and or upgrades. The stumbling points still are cash flow for development and timeline for deployment. There is no additional money in the budget and if you count the cost of even three shuttle flights of refurbishment as savings it is only on paper. It is quickly absorbed by other operation cost overruns elsewhere within NASA. These same points can be made in regards to the CEV. Much discussion can be found on the Projectconstellation.us/news/ site with thoughts on both the shuttle and of the CEV. These have been on going since the presidential announcement in late January of this year.
More news on the Return to the moon conference.
http://www.space.com/news/moon_vegas_040717.html
Speaking of in the news Plans for Space Station Call for an Expansion of Research from the NYTimes. Not to long ago Nasa was trying to shorten how long it would support the Iss but to lower how many modules out of the remaining to bring up by a shuttle. This was all being done in an effort to recoupe money for the CEV and for the Moon to Mars vision.
The president’s announcement wasn’t a surprise and I think the timing was because fixing our space program was one of his priorities. It seems the general media was the first to suggest it was a political move and than the democrats picked up on that and ran with it. I find it difficult to filter out the junk from media reports about subjects in which I have knowledge and it’s impossible to know the truth behind a subject from the general media that you know little. There are many new media outlets that are very focus on one subject and the facts around it. Everyone quotes the media from time to time including the media itself and it’s a roll of the dice on its validity.
Growing up, I would get a magazine called Countdown which I loved because it was published by someone who really had a love for human spaceflight. Dixon P. Otto, thank you for a great magazine wherever you are today.
“Do that and none of America’s ISS partners will want to cooperate with us again for the next several decades. Is that acceptable?”
Not just acceptable, but desirable. But that’s just me…
An article about a recent poll on space exploration shows that space exploration isn’t a drag on the President but rather the President is a drag on a new vision.
http://www.space.com/news/space_poll_040719.html
“Do that and none of America’s ISS partners will want to cooperate with us again for the next several decades. Is that acceptable?”
Not just acceptable, but desirable. But that’s just me…
Rand, need I ask your opinion on tihs?
http://www.space.com/news/igy_space_040719.html
Antartica as a model for lunar exploration? Apparently a new poll says 70% or more of Americans agree we need to go beyond LEO. That part is not political.
But what we do when we get there. Now that will be political.
I personally don’t trust Kofi Annan, and his gang of UN goons one whit. I wouldn’t personally mind if we either modified the Outer Space Treaty, or decided it was outmoded, and not in the interest of private property rights in space. And staking a claim out in the solar system is something I favor and support by any proper means necessary.
I also am a political pragmatist, and tend to do favor not what’s (perceived to be) wrong, nor what’s (perceived to be) right, but do favor what works in the real world.
I am reading and researching Wayne White’s work on space property rights, then onto Alan Wasser’s works, and so on till I finish all current thinking on space property rights. When I have reviewed all of the information, I will have much more to say about it. Until then, I merely state I believe in private property rights in space, and believe they are integral to doing anything significant in space development and settlement.
Finally, the STS/Station combination were born back in the Twentieth Century, and reflect Twentieth Century thinking. It might be wise to acknowledge this, try and make the best use of the well over one hundred billion dollar investment in these two systems, do what we can with them, then cut our losses, and move on.