And it’s still not enough sometimes. Companies implode in accounting scandals, people who are already filthy rich backdate stock options so they can get even richer. Meanwhile, the plebs are often underpaid and have to deal with outsourcing and downward pressures on wages and the loss of health benefits if they get laid off.

Although the problems have been across the board, the IT sector has suffered a lot of these problems. I’m not meaning to inpune anyone in particular here. Just a general comment.

(A note of clarification: all other things being equal, I think that’s proven a good thing. I’m much more concerned about attempts to overturn the “death taxes.” If you want your Republic or Democracy to last a long time, you need to limit the concentration of wealth and the development of an aristocricy, and I would argue that the best way to do that is make each generation start with a more-or-less equal chance at success — by making the transfer of wealth to the next generation relatively difficult.)

— Donald

The hippie liberal in me sympathizes with these concerns and hopes dearly that the pendulum will swing the other way after Bush.

With regards to the source of the wealth of the new spacepreneurs, with the exception of Bigelow, I’d argue that their wealth is more due to the IT revolution and the internet bubble (Bezos, Carmack, Musk, et.) than federal tax policy.

FWIW…

On the other hand, there is another side to,

Anonymous: the federal budget will face increasingly unfavorable demographics in our country and I think NASA will get pinched no matter who is in the White House.

That’s true. However, much as I think the increasing polarization of the nation’s wealth into a smaller and smaller group of hands is bad for the long term future of our Republic, it has resulted in a largish number of individuals who grew up reading Heinlein and now have the wealth to do something about it. Tax and spending policy since the 1970s, by encouraging the ever more rapid development of an aristocracy, probably has greatly reduced the length of time this nation will remain a Republic. However, it has also made possible SpaceX, et al. You win some and you lose some. . . .

— Donald

Go back and read Dragonfly, you find Bush (the First) announcing the Mir-shuttle program during an election year as a Russian-US summit with little on the agenda loomed. And you also have a pretty dramatic scene in a limo with a NASA advance team member trying to tell Goldin and a WH guy that the Russian space program was in really bad shape and they should proceed cautiously lest they put Americans unnecessarily in harms way. The WH official ripped into him, telling him it was going to get done regardless while Goldin sat silently, doing nothing to defend the poor guy in an untenable situation. This despite the fact that the flights wouldn’t start until weill after the election.

I didn’t say I agreed with my friend. It may have been a somewhat cynical statement as this person reviewed what was going on with VSE at the time (already bad getting worse almost by the day). I do think it was a serious attempt to deal with an unsustainable shuttle program. But, as with many other things, Bush (aka POTUS or, as some call him, POTATO HEAD) didn’t really think everything through (funding, long-term support, other priorities like the war costs and tax cuts) before launching it. And he’s let things go over the years.

Mr. Messier,

Could you please expand what you think the “political benefits” were that “faded”? How many votes do you think he got in the 2004 election, considering that he killed the Shuttle?

I see little or no “political benefits” for VSE. I think Bush thought the VSE was the right thing to do — that the nation had to retire the Shuttle after Columbia. IMO (for what its worth), if it had not been for the Columbia accident, and considering 9/11, Bush may not have invested any real time thinking about space policy, or publicly speaking about it.

– Al

That’s too jaded, even for the Bush II White House.

I want to get rid of the Bushies as much as anyone. But the VSE was an honest attempt by the Bush Administration to fix a very sick NASA human space flight program by: getting rid of Shuttle; undertaking an actual human space exploration effort that is worth the risks of human space flight; sizing and scheduling that effort so that it was budgetarily sustainable; and enhancing its sustainability with a research context (habitable environments beyond Earth), related robotic science missions, and commercial elements. Unfortunately, all that was under O’Keefe and before Griffin and ESAS.

I understand from folks that were in the room with the POTUS when the plan was presented to him that he got it — that the Moon was to be used as a stepping stone to a multiplicity of other targets (Mars, Martian moons, NEOs, large deep space telescopes requiring human interaction, etc.). Unfortunately, Griffin and ESAS have turned the VSE into an unsustainable, SEI-like effort that appears very unlikely to return humans to the Moon, nevertheless set the stage for other human exploration targets.

And, as you note, underfunded budget proposals and a lack of oversight from the White House since the VSE’s rollout have not helped. The POTUS doesn’t need to talk about the VSE publicly, but his staff need to ensure that NASA’s implementation plans are budgetarily sound and that White House budget proposals meet prior VSE promises.

My 2 cents… FWIW…

As you mentioned, Bush hasn’t been willing to support this properly in private. Inadequate funding. Inadequate oversight. Budgeting that has run up a massive debt. Ineptitude all around.

He’s in a helluva position now that he’s massively unpopularly (largely his own fault) and a lame duck. But, if the recent war funding vote is any indication (another $120 BILLION just for this year), Bush is stubborn enough that he can get what he wants out of Congress. He could forge a bi-partisan consenus if he really cared.

A friend of mine who’s pretty knowledgeable about these things once told me that he thought the whole program was largely a publicity stunt to capitalize on the Mars rover landings and make Bush look for the upcoming election. I think that goes too far, but Bush did begin to lose interest once he was re-elected and the initial political benefits faded.