Comments on: Gore on space policy and commercialization

By: Nemo

Nemo — Thu, 02 Nov 2006 04:00:00 +0000

The Clinton era space policy is nothing to look back fondly upon. A good arguement can be made that it was the slow starvation of NASA under Clinton budgets that lead to the failed Mars probes and the Columbia disaster.

The CAIB made exactly the latter argument in their report.

By: Chance

Chance — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 18:53:00 +0000

“Both Charles Miller and Al Gore are out of touch with reality and what folks like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Richard Branson are doing now if they think space commercialization is 20 years in the future.”

Perhaps they are out of touch, but many proponants of commercialization are overly optimistic of just how fast it will take over.

By: Brad

Brad — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 09:28:57 +0000

By: Jim

Jim — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 03:00:45 +0000

If Gore thinks that space commercialization is where the Internet was in the 1970’s then he feels it has a long, long way to go. Remember is was almost 20 years later, in the early 1990’s that the Internet boom finally occured. Sounds like a anti-space commericalization remark to me if he expects it will take that long to develop.

Both Charles Miller and Al Gore are out of touch with reality and what folks like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Richard Branson are doing now if they think space commercialization is 20 years in the future.

I was around programming in the 1970s and believe me no one was even dreaming about commercialization of the computer network like folks are doing with space now. It would have been laughable…

By: Doug Messier

Doug Messier — Sun, 29 Oct 2006 19:57:43 +0000

The criticism of Gore seems a little harsh here (although not unexpected, given some of the respondents). Things have changed a lot in the last few years since Venture Star went kablooey. It’s not unusual for anyone to change their views about things as conditions change. In fact, it can be refreshing given the current political climate we’re in.

As for Tumlinson’s suggestion, I don’t find Gore’s answer to be all that unreasonable. You’re talking about huge upfront investments before you can begin to ease population and resource constraints on Earth. A lot of funding would be needed for basic infrastruction, probably more than is generally understood. Most of us live in the developed world; we tend to take that infrastructure for granted until it breaks down.

You have to balance opportunity costs there, taking practical steps directly aimed at solving the problems, or building up a massive space infrastructure and settlements that someone may pay off. It’s not as easy as an equation as it might seem.

By: Mike Pucket

Mike Pucket — Sat, 28 Oct 2006 05:48:36 +0000

“Rest assured that 2 years and 2 weeks from now (and possibly just 2 weeks from now), the current direction of VSE will be moot. Science will again reign supreme!”

Rest assured that President McCain will continue to support the VSE at least as strongly as he does in the Senate currently.

By: Michael Mealling

Michael Mealling — Fri, 27 Oct 2006 17:19:44 +0000

Since I was actually there, one of the points that struck me was Gore’s rejection of Rick Tumlinson’s request for help on making the case for space settlement being used to ease the pressure on the Earth’s environment. Gore’s response was very typically of the “we have to fix things here first before we can go live there”. He clarified his “space commercialization” meme from earlier by saying he thought all of the commercial applciations of space were related to responding to the Earth’s environmental crisis with Earth observation missions and ways of giving everyone the “overview effect”.

In other words, Gore’s idea of space commercialization was simply to build more Trianas.

By: Ferris Valyn

Ferris Valyn — Fri, 27 Oct 2006 06:53:44 +0000

A Gore Richardson ticket – thats one I like. (hmm, I may have my next posting for dailykos)

By: Donald F. Robertson

Donald F. Robertson — Thu, 26 Oct 2006 20:46:25 +0000

Jeff: The luncheon speaker was a very high-profile individual and a bit of an unusual choice: former vice president Al Gore

I don’t see why this would be an unusual choice. Mr. Gore has a consistent record of interest in space policy; for better or worse, it was probably he who pushed the political and geopolitical coalitions that allowed the (Republican) Space Station project to survive the (Democratic) Clinton Administration. A Gore Administration probably would have emphasized some kind of space endevor, albeit a government-directed one, but a government space project with small commercial bits tacked on is what we’ve ended up with anyway. Ideally, the Clinton Administration viewed government’s role as to encourage development of new technologies they thought important, and there is no reason to believe a Gore Administration would have changed that.

Many people here may not agree with his views, but he has at least as much right to speak on the subject as anyone here.

— Donald

By: Chris Mann

Chris Mann — Thu, 26 Oct 2006 18:46:18 +0000

Mr Elifritz, I’m calling a ceasefire on the godwin issue. Please accept it.

Back OT. While the X-33 may have been sold to some as a commercial vehicle, it was supposed to be a R&D test bed. Had NASA not killed it prematurely it would have validated a whole host of technologies: Linear aerospike engines, composite LH2 tankage, autonomous flight systems, metallic thermal protection systems, and created a large swath of data on the aerodynamics of large lifting bodies. It’s a shame that it was killed so close to completion.

Getting Venture Star to a mass fraction of 0.9 using current materials was always fantasy, but I’m well convinced that the vehicle could have been made feasible with drop tanks.