White House

More Bush and space

The Washington Post has published the complete transcript of President Bush’s interview with Texas newspaper reporters on Monday. Most of what Bush said about space policy was already captured in the quotes included in the Houston Chronicle and Dallas Morning News. One additional note: Bush said that Andrew Card, his chief of staff, “has been in touch with the administrator, who believes that — the comments tell me, and the administrator says that — that is, the comments in the press — that they can clear this problem up.”

Bush also talked briefly yesterday with the shuttle and station crews (this time using a bigger TV!), although the only person in orbit who directly talked with the President was shuttle commander Eileen Collins. As you might expect, there was little of any substance discussed, although we did learn from the President First Lady Laura Bush, who attended the shuttle launch, “came back all excited about the energy that — there on the East Coast of Florida.” Clearly a major policy development.

12 comments to More Bush and space

  • I don’t mind that Bush got a little tongue-tied. And yes, it is often a waste of time to interview astronauts, but that point has already been discussed. The real problem is that the VSE speech, which was completely prepared in advance, is full of unrealistic statements about space exploration.

    You can take some measure of a president’s judgment in general by looking at his judgment in an issue you know well, for example space policy. Characteristically, the VSE is a long road ahead, but Bush is confident that America will prevail. In another arena that is much more important to Bush than space exploration is, he promised to bring stability and unity to a free Iraq. But he didn’t say how long it will take. Maybe America will bring stability and unity to a free Iraq about when NASA assembles and provisions spacecraft on the moon.

  • Cecil Trotter

    Kuperberg: “The real problem is that the VSE speech, which was completely prepared in advance, is full of unrealistic statements about space exploration.”

    Rather than just make the accusation, you want to provide some facts to back that up?

  • Cecil: We can start with the first goal of the VSE, the wrap-up of the space station. Bush said, “We will finish what we have started, we will meet our obligations to our 15 international partners on this project.” That promise is already falling apart. They won’t finish what they started, and they won’t meet their obligations to international partners. I think that it’s just as well that it won’t happen, but in any case what Bush said just isn’t true.

  • Cecil Trotter

    Kuperberg: “That promise is already falling apart.”

    How so? There are a lot of smart people working on how ISS can be completed in a number of different ways. It may yet fall apart, but you’ve got your “Bush failed/lied” cheering section started a bit soon on that count.

    But at any rate, you stated that the VSE speech was full of “unrealistic statements” as written. In the case of ISS completion for that to be true the speechwriter and speech giver would have to have known at the time of the speech that completing ISS was impossible. No one knew that to be true then, we don’t even know that to be true now.

    Now if changing circumstances (foam CAN”T be fixed etc.) makes it impossible to complete the ISS, that still does not mean the speech was written purposefully with things in it that could not come to be. It only means that unforeseen circumstances prevented that from being done.

  • Greg: “We can start with the first goal of the VSE, the wrap-up of the space station. Bush said, “We will finish what we have started, we will meet our obligations to our 15 international partners on this project.” That promise is already falling apart. They won’t finish what they started, and they won’t meet their obligations to international partners.”

    As you know, I am no friend of the Bush Administration, but your statement here is wildly unfair. At the time it was made, completing the Space Station seemed an achievable goal. It may still be, albeit with major modification. It was also the responsible thing to do. As an all-too-rare example of truly cooperating on an international problem, this decision should be praised, not criticized.

    — Donald

  • Donald: No one at the White House can claim to be blind-sided by further deterioration of the space shuttle program. There were plenty of warnings that it could happen in both the past and the present. But the White House ignored all of that; they expressed faith in NASA, and faith in the year 2010. Faith-based government.

    As international cooperation goes, the space station is the ultimate dysfunctional marriage in which divorce would be a humiliating admission of failure. At a personal level, it happens all the time.

  • Yes, I was not impressed with the president’s comments with the Discovery crew. But then, I’ve never been impressed with president Bush’s comments. The crew deserves better.

  • billg

    >>No one at the White House can claim to be blind-sided by further deterioration of the space shuttle program.

    As usual, your choice of words (“…deterioration…”) makes unwarranted assumptions and deliberately casts your argument in an equally unwarranted favoring light.

    You seem to believe that the success of an effort like ISS should be measured by the degree to which all participants meet all of their original objectives. That’s nonsense. Huge projects with timelines measured in decades are bound to have shifting objectives. Stuff happens and people adjust. There’s no moral or ethical component here (altough your condemnation of NASA and Bush implicitly rest on such on assumption). The ISS is a political creation and a political creature. It will be “completed” when the politicians responsible for it say it is completed. The U.S., in particular, should not hamstring the real exploration and exploitation of space simply to fulfill an imaginary obligation.

    Finally, when you describe the completion of ISS as the initial component of VSE, your engaging in sophistry. ISS plays no real role in the enabling of the VSE.

  • I agree that it is political sophistry to declare the completion of the ISS as the initial component of the VSE. But it is not my sophistry. As Bush said in the VSE speech:

    Today I announce a new plan to explore space and extend a human presence across our solar system. We will begin the effort quickly, using existing programs and personnel. We’ll make steady progress — one mission, one voyage, one landing at a time.

    Our first goal is to complete the International Space Station by 2010.

    The declaration comes directly from Bush.

    I also agree that the ISS is an arbitrary obligation, and so is its completion. And I agree that it is a mistake to lard real exploration with this dying albatross. But again, it’s not my mistake, it’s in the VSE.

    But to give Bush some major credit, he and Griffin do seem resolved to cut the albatross loose in 2010.

  • Nick B.

    The way I see the ISS’s role in the VSE is that, before we can move on with the new stuff, we have to throw the foreign politicians and diplomats a bone and give some sort of closure to the ISS as far as shuttle service is concerned. That’s the impression I’ve gotten from reading Bush’s and Griffin’s remarks. So, it’s not so much an integral part of the VSE in an engineering sense as in a political one.

  • Paul Dietz

    > we have to throw the foreign politicians and diplomats a bone

    Why?

  • Nick B.

    I wasn’t so much agreeing with the reason as trying to explain the justification used by those making the decisions. I’m not terribly crazy about it either.