Comments on: Space and the Alabama primary http://www.spacepolitics.com/2008/02/07/space-and-the-alabama-primary/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=space-and-the-alabama-primary Because sometimes the most important orbit is the Beltway... Wed, 17 Sep 2014 13:35:41 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.0.38 By: Marcel F. Williams http://www.spacepolitics.com/2008/02/07/space-and-the-alabama-primary/#comment-38002 Thu, 14 Feb 2008 21:50:32 +0000 http://www.spacepolitics.com/2008/02/07/space-and-the-alabama-primary/#comment-38002 The Constellation program is a joke. It doesn’t do any of the things that NASA needs in order to establish a permanent human presence on the surface of the moon or Mars. Nor does it build a reusable space transportation system that gives NASA and private industry easy access to orbit and to the rest of the solar system.

Only the Ares heavy lift vehicle serves any useful to pursue, IMO. But even this vehicle shouldn’t take over a decade to build. It took NASA just five years to test launch the first Saturn V vehicle.

]]> By: Donald F. Robertson http://www.spacepolitics.com/2008/02/07/space-and-the-alabama-primary/#comment-37086 Thu, 07 Feb 2008 17:59:02 +0000 http://www.spacepolitics.com/2008/02/07/space-and-the-alabama-primary/#comment-37086 Realist: The funding of space endeavours is a third tier issue for most people in almost any county of the US today. Top tier would have to be the economy and the Iraq war. Second tier issues for the average taxpayer include things like health care, the environment including climate change, trade policy, social security and medicare, educational reforms, etc.

This is an interesting comment, and probably very accurate. Even for me, spaceflight would fit somewhere in the second tier, with Iraq and the economy in the first tier, except to the degree that I think success in spaceflight will affect the long-term future of our economy.

— Donald

]]> By: www.actionforspace.com http://www.spacepolitics.com/2008/02/07/space-and-the-alabama-primary/#comment-37081 Thu, 07 Feb 2008 16:52:51 +0000 http://www.spacepolitics.com/2008/02/07/space-and-the-alabama-primary/#comment-37081 I have tracked people coming to my site from IP addresses associated with the house of representatives. I have also had many people coming to the site who come from google with the phone numbers of the candidates offices in the search strings. I assume that they are trying to figure out where people are getting the number to call from. I don’t know if that is because people are calling after being alerted from my site, but these are some little details that are encouraging me to continue.

]]> By: Realist http://www.spacepolitics.com/2008/02/07/space-and-the-alabama-primary/#comment-37079 Thu, 07 Feb 2008 16:12:33 +0000 http://www.spacepolitics.com/2008/02/07/space-and-the-alabama-primary/#comment-37079 The funding of space endeavours is a third tier issue for most people in almost any county of the US today. Top tier would have to be the economy and the Iraq war. Second tier issues for the average taxpayer include things like health care, the environment including climate change, trade policy, social security and medicare, educational reforms, etc. The candidates have quite different views on this issues. So without exit polling data, you haven’t a chance of discerning the effects on voters of the presidential candidate’s positions on space, particularly when they are all pretty much the same–keep spending on space.

]]> By: Alex Kirk http://www.spacepolitics.com/2008/02/07/space-and-the-alabama-primary/#comment-37075 Thu, 07 Feb 2008 15:50:40 +0000 http://www.spacepolitics.com/2008/02/07/space-and-the-alabama-primary/#comment-37075 The big problem is that it’s incredibly difficult to gague what, if any, impact the space community is having. It’s not like Obama is going to come out and say that he updated his policy because a lot of people contacted him over it. Vote analyses like this one, while interesting, are probably not very useful, because virtually no space supporter is a single-issue voter with space as that issue (kind of tough to do when you don’t know how all of the candidates feel on the subject).

I think that people in the space community need to be patient and continue hammering away at the issue even if there are no tangible results — because the alternative of not reaching out to policymakers is liable to leave us in an even worse position.

]]> By: The People http://www.spacepolitics.com/2008/02/07/space-and-the-alabama-primary/#comment-37066 Thu, 07 Feb 2008 14:10:37 +0000 http://www.spacepolitics.com/2008/02/07/space-and-the-alabama-primary/#comment-37066 Military and DOD issues are of far greater concern to residents in Madison county.

]]> By: www.actionforspace.com http://www.spacepolitics.com/2008/02/07/space-and-the-alabama-primary/#comment-37062 Thu, 07 Feb 2008 13:59:25 +0000 http://www.spacepolitics.com/2008/02/07/space-and-the-alabama-primary/#comment-37062 One issue is weather or not candidates space policies had an effect on the primaries.

Another is if the primaries had an effect on the candidates. Did Mitt visit the Florida EDC because he thought it would help him with the Florida primaries? Did Huckebee and the Clinton campaign give more attention to their space policies because they were campaigning in Huntsville?

Was the Science article correct in linking pressure from the space community on Barack to his “updating” of his policy?

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