Now, if they pulled some of their ideas from Clinton’s policy, thats entirely possible. However, it wasn’t Garver who was actually doing the writing – and thats what I want to know.

Excellent point!

Ferris: We all know (or at least strongly suspect even if she hasn’t said it straight up) that Lori Garver helped Senator Clinton develop the policy – do we have any idea who might be providing advising to Senator Obama?

My guess is that, indirectly, it’s Ms. Garver, since Mr. Obama only came up with a plan when cricized for not having one, and that plan in many ways duplicates the one originated by Ms. Clinton. I suspect that there was little original thought involved.

Go: Kennedy was an anomaly. He supported space for military reasons

While I don’t disagree with this, Mr. Clinton’s Administration (probably because of Al Gore) also supported space, largely for international and military reasons. Mr. Gore saw the Space Station as a way to help incorporate the Russians into the global community, helping to avoid future conflict (which may or may not have worked, but, admittedly, the picture’s not looking good right now; even so, the attempt was cheap at the price), and Mr. Gore also sees space as important for environmental and ideological reasons, the latter not unfamiliar to many of us contributing to this site.

You are correct that spaceflight is supported in different ways by both parties, and that the reasons for their support are very different, but I think a complete picture shows that Democrats are rather more pro-space than they are usually given credit for. Lori Garver, for instance, always seems to have an important job amongst the Democrats.

— Donald

Maybe I’m old fashioned, or just old, but I’m of the school that you should never base your entire vote on any one issue — the nation is too complex and there are too may issues that are vital to our future. There are few issues that are more important to me than human spaceflight, but I would never vote for, say, Mr. Bush, just because he is for human spaceflight. Nor would I vote against him, just because of his position on spaceflight.

Two obvious examples are the greatest threats to the VSE faces today, both of which are caused by Administration actions (or lack of action) unrelated to spaceflight. The more important is the Iraq war, which has eaten up all of the money that might have been spent on an increased budget for NASA. The second is this Administration’s larger inability to pay attention to, and follow through on, complex issues, resulting in this case in the lack of attention to the VSE since it was proposed.

No matter how vital, human spaceflight is part of a larger picture. And, some significant part of that picture must fall to some degree unmeasurable-in-advance into place for our human spaceflight goals to succeed.

— Donald

I’d like to see that relationship strengthened in the education section of the policy statement with concrete steps that link the space policy to education. This should be done in such a way that both space and educational goals are met.

For example, Spaceref often has articles and posts press releases about student competitions like TARC. Significantly greater support for such space-related student competitions could help both space and education goals. If the rewards for the winners are in the form of scholarships, education is helped even more.

More ambitious competitions like Centennial Challenges can work the same way, but helping space and education on a bigger scale. These would typically improve significant space goals and help education at the level of university academic departments, including talented undergraduate and graduate students. They also normally come with associated events and learning activities for younger students. Strong support in this area would allow Obama to cement the space-education link in his policy.

Increasing support for university participation in space-related science activities is an obvious traditional way to help space and education support each other. This can be done in science data analysis, expansion of suborbital rocket use, smallsats, Earth-based telescope installation, and the like. Obama’s education section doesn’t mention this, but I think it should.

Another obvious way to support space is to directly increase funding for scholarships in space-specific academic disciplines like aerospace engineering, astronomy, planetary science, various Earth sciences that rely substantially on space data (oceanography, atmospheric science, geography/GIS, etc), space law, space policy, etc.

Obama could have supported space, education, and commerce all at the same time in this section, too. One way to do this is to fund increased use of suborbital vehicles and smallsats by teachers and students. Such access could be part of the reward in competitions like those I mentioned above. It could also be done separately. An example of how this could be done is the “Teachers in Space” proposal to fund flying 500 of the best math and science teachers on suborbital space rides (1 per Congressional district, plus more for disadvantaged communities). The inspirational value for the teachers and their students (especially if they do something education on their ride) could be huge. The incentive to the suborbital space companies to provide services could also be very significant to our space access goals. Similar programs could be made for Zero-G rides and others. Another possibility is a program to give teachers and students much more unmanned access to space (orbital or suborbital) via experiments. This could be done on existing rockets. It could also be done in a way that gives incentives to develop future cheap suborbital rockets to fly experiments or serve as first stages for smallsat launches.

This sounds like a huge grab-bag, but in fact even if all of it were implemented it wouldn’t need to be very expensive, and it wouldn’t need to use so many paragraphs in Obama’s policy statement.

Mark,

Do you listen? (I know this is not the first time you have been corrected on this issue.)

While it is true that the Bush Administration created COTS, the only reason they could did so was because the Bush Administration killed its predecessor, the Alternate Access to Station (AAS) program, which was created by the Clinton Administration. There was no particular reason they killed AAS — other than the fact that Sean O’Keefe (Dick Cheney’s man) did not care enough about it to stop the NASA bureaucracy from doing so. Mike Griffin even testified to the Republican Congress about what an awful decision this was by the Republican-led NASA, under a Republican White House.

Beyond two random outliers (e.g., Dana Rohrabacher, Mike Griffin), right now the two parties in Congress are effectively equivalent in their level of support for commercial space.

The Republicans have occasionally created some nice “rhetoric” on commercial space in the past, but they fall VERY short in their implementation.

Neither party, as a party, is satisfactory in its commitment to commercial space. Both can (and should) do better.

Are you satisfied with Republican party performance on commercial space? If so, please explain why.

A real space policy expert could (and would) do so.

– Al

Not true. They could submit their own question.

If you wanted more votes, you should have submitted a question that more people could vote for.

It is also a “Have you beat your wife lately” kind of question. I suspect you will lose many votes just because of this.

– Al

I have submitted a question for the Republican and Democratic debates that are happening in Los Angeles on January 30th. The way that this debate works is that people submit and vote for the questions that they like online, and the candidates are asked the ones with the most votes. Please foreword this message on to everyone you think would act on this. I asked:

“NASA can and should send humans to Mars in the short term. Will you support a manned mission to Mars, or will you keep NASA’s hands tied by not giving them this mission that is worthy of the $16 billion they spend each year?”

People can find It by searching for “NASA” in the “Social Issues” section of both the Republic and Democratic voting sections at http://dyn.politico.com/debate/#%23

Even if you don’t agree with the premise of the question, the only way of to promote spaceflight effectively is getting this into the national discussion. Thank you!

John Benac