Congress

Congressional shuttle spectators

Among the crowd that witnessed yesterday’s launch of the shuttle Endeavour was a congressional delegation led by House Science Technology chairman Bart Gordon and energy subcommittee chairman Nick Lampson (whose district, of course, includes JSC). Lampson and Gordon told the Houston Chronicle that they arranged for the tour in part to drum up support for an increased NASA budget in a bid to reduce the post-shuttle gap. “Additional funding would help to reduce that gap, and I hope we will be able to do that,” Gordon told the paper.

Will it work? Among the 20-member delegation were two St. Louis-area Congressmen, Russ Carnahan and John Shimkus. Carnahan is a member of the science committee, while Shimkus “lucked out” by getting the last open spot for the trip. Shimkus told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that the trip “will definitely affect his outlook on NASA funding”, saying that the trip made clear that “there’s something important about the human spirit of space exploration”.

25 comments to Congressional shuttle spectators

  • Shimkus told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that the trip “will definitely affect his outlook on NASA funding”, saying that the trip made clear that “there’s something important about the human spirit of space exploration”.

    How did it do that? Shuttle launches are cool, but I don’t see how they demonstrate that they’re important. Unless you’re emoting, rather than thinking, that is.

  • Habitat Hermit

    Good point, however human nature being what it is I think it might simply be the opposite of “out of sight, out of mind”: watching the launch of a big manned rocket gets them thinking about it and hopefully all the related questions too.

    (Gah, so now we’ve ended up describing the good congressmen not only as overly emotional but also as dullards! Why is this hole so deep? ^_^)

  • Jerry in Baltimore

    Watching the Space Shuttle launch no matter how routine is awe inspiring. As routine as air flight is many people still gets a thrill watching planes take off and land at the airport. We need inspired legislators to put our space program back on track. Human societies have an innate need to expand. Our world history has proven that. NASA was created to get us to the Moon within 10 years. Van Braun had planed on landing on Mars by 1980 as part of that plan. Our generation has been robbed of our dreams of being a two planet society.

    Our geologic history has shown we shall be faced with an extinction event sooner than later. It only takes one 5 mile wide asteroid or a rouge comet to end life as we know it like the dinosaurs. Our future as the world leader is quickly coming to an end. If we don’t continue to lead and inspire human kind someone else will. I for one am more afraid of the alternative.

  • Bob Mahoney

    Rand,

    It’s not the launch itself but its effect—yes, the emotional impact—on the spectators that I believe Representative Shimkus was noting as important…every bit as important as the practical benefits of space exploration. I believe that he was touching on the same ideas that Admin. Griffin spoke of in his “real reasons” speech a number of months ago, specifically about those reasons that are so hard to weigh on a financial scale but nonetheless are rooted in who we are as humans. It is these same emotional aspects of our makeup that motivate us to accomplish truly great things.

  • The problem with decisions that are driven by emotion rather than thought is that they aren’t always good decisions, and they may not even have their intended effect.

    We’ve been making emotional decisions about civil space for half a century now. We’ve spent a whale load of money, but not made much progress, at least relative to where we’d be if the money had been spent less emotionally and more intelligently.

  • Gah, so now we’ve ended up describing the good congressmen not only as overly emotional but also as dullards! Why is this hole so deep?

    Hard to avoid when discussing Congress, unfortunately…

  • Bob Mahoney

    On the contrary, I believe that most of the decisions regarding civil space policy that HAVE inhibited progress during the past half century WERE made “intelligently”—in the sense of short-term, pennywise/pound-foolish political-constituency-deluding “intelligence.”

    In the VSE we have a good bit of intelligent thinking, in part undergirded by emotional motivations, but small-thinking folks are disregarding it’s emotional underpinnings and are thereby botching its implementation (or at the very least compromising its potential).

    I agree; decisions made purely on emotion can be dangerous. But cold-hearted, practical intelligence made without emotional underpinnings more often than not yields uninspiring, mundane, small-minded progress…if it yields any progress at all. In the realm of spaceflight, I again would offer that its emotional component is every bit as important as the need for competent long-term thinking.

  • Rand, I hate to “attack” you on this, but this, How did it do that? Shuttle launches are cool, but I don’t see how they demonstrate that they’re important has to be one of the sadest statements I’ve read in a while. Emotions are important in and of themselves. In fact, if you scratched under the logical veneer, I think most of us support spaceflight for emotional reasons. Beyond comsats and the military, there are _no_ non-emotional reasons to justify the amount of money we spend on spaceflight. If we forget that, not only have we lost our way and our future in space, we’ve forgotten what it is to be human. Emotions should never be the only reason we do something (there will be non-emotional reasons for spaceflight in the future, if we make them come true), but they should always play a significant role, and in an inherently rematic activity like exploring the Solar System, they do and should play a very large role.

    Jerry, well put: many people still gets a thrill watching planes take off and land at the airport

    That would include me. I always stand at the windows while waiting for my flight to board.

    Bob: agree; decisions made purely on emotion can be dangerous. But cold-hearted, practical intelligence made without emotional underpinnings more often than not yields uninspiring, mundane, small-minded progress

    Exactly so.

    — Donald

    — Donald

  • canttellya

    In fact, if you scratched under the logical veneer, I think most of us support spaceflight for emotional reasons. Beyond comsats and the military, there are _no_ non-emotional reasons to justify the amount of money we spend on spaceflight.

    Wow. Thank you for admitting that. Government human spaceflight is basically bread-and-circuses.

  • MarkWhittington

    Why is space exploration important?

    Long Answer (Follows a long winded dissertation on the social, economic, national security, and cultural importance of space exploration.)

    Shor Answer: Because it is so very cool.

  • I am a neuro-physiologist and I assert that without emotion, human thought would be impossible.

    My book, Descartes Error asserts the following:

    >>From Publishers Weekly
    Neurologist Damasio’s refutation of the Cartesian idea of the human mind as separate from bodily processes draws on neurochemistry to support his claim that emotions play a central role in human decision making.

  • Rand, I hate to “attack” you on this

    [smiling]

    It’s OK, Donald. I can take it.

    Look, there’s no doubt that there is, and should be, an emotional component to our space policy decisions. But it’s not at all clear that getting someone excited by watching a Shuttle launch is going to lead to good decisions. For instance, it might lead to a decision to continue to fly the Shuttle, just because it’s so awesome, and wouldn’t it be a shame to not be able to watch it any more? Or it might lead to a decision to support Ares because it’s “Shuttle-derived” (never mind the fact that there’s not much Shuttle derivation left in it). Or it might lead to a decision that because the launch of a large vehicle like the Shuttle is impressive, that building smaller, but more cost-effective vehicles is a waste of money, and not a useful goal.

    I repeat–the fact that a Shuttle launch is awesome doesn’t, in and of itself, indicate that Shuttle flights are important. If space is important, we need to understand what’s important about it, and formulate policies that will emphasize those goals. Unfortunately, we’re a long way from that, partly because people who grew up on Saturns and Shuttle have developed a big-rocket fetish, and because the primary basis on which congressional decisions are made are pork, which can be the most emotional basis of all.

  • canttellya: Government human spaceflight is basically bread-and-circuses.

    Not quite. All spaceflight is bread and circuses. Comsats, some applications satellites, and some military spacecraft are the bread. Everything else, human and automated alike, are circuses. They are circuses that some of us value for one reason or another, and that may save us in the future. Here and now, in the sense that they do not directly put bread on the table while costing, at a minimum, hundreds of millions of dollars per circus, they are economically unjustifiable. This is every bit as true of the Mars rovers as it is of the Space Station.

    Mark, for once I entirely agree with you with no reservation whatsoever. Nicely put.

    Rand, okay, I’ll concede that both of us are correct.

    — Donald

  • I have a list of the people who went and links to contact (call and email) them.

    Call the people who were there and encourage them while it is fresh!

  • canttellya

    No Donald, comsats and GPS are NOT bread-and-circuses. Try living without them for a day and watch how many people die or are injured. About 10 years ago, a comsat dropped offline and millions of people couldn’t buy gas because the satellite couldn’t transmit their credit card info. I was one of them.

    Contrast that with going a day without human spaceflight.

  • canttellya, maybe you should read what I wrote. I said comsats, et al, are bread, that is, something essential to staying alive. All the rest are circuses, automated reconnaissance and human spaceflight alike.

    — Donald

  • canttellya

    My mistake.

  • […] Space Politics è in corso una discussione che, pur partendo da un episodio americano, secondo me è di interesse generale. Si tratta di […]

  • I’m very pleased these congress critters got to see a launch, I hope this happens for every launch. It is like hearing a band on the radio vs. going to see a live concert, or watching a car race on TV vs. seeing it in person. The sounds, smells, and the atmosphere of anticipation/excitement are all difficult to put into words or capture on TV.

    It is so nice to read the usual money, money , money; this vs. that discussion. (smell the sarchasm)

    Oh God please let there be a major science breakthrough on ISS. Something of great value would be nice, so that those who feel the need can place a dollar value on human spaceflight, and we can all move on to the moon, mars, and beyond.

    Bread without circuses? Thats not life, it is prison.

  • watchnasatv: Bread without circuses? Thats not life, it is prison

    Well put.

    please let there be a major science breakthrough on ISS

    The Space Station is the first fully-equipped laboratory in the environment that dominates the Universe, as opposed to the (very) special case environment on Earth’s surface. As such, it will be far more astonishing if there are no breakthroughs, than if there are.

    Although few of the scientists here will recognize it as such, there has already been one, in that single most important field of human discovery and endeavor, agriculture — learning to reliably grow plants to reproductive maturity in microgravity. This decades long project, starting on Skylab and Mir, proved far more difficult than was expected. It was finally achieved on the early ISS, and obviously has tremendous moment for the future.

    — Donald

  • Habitat Hermit

    Hmm I apologize if you actually mean it but I don’t believe you’re using the expression “bread and circuses” as anything but shorthand for utility and entertainment however that isn’t what the expression refers to and by using it you’re actually saying something very different (Wikipedia).

  • Habitat Hermit, my degree is in archaeology and I do know the original Roman meaning of the term. Yes, canttellya was using the term correctly, and I was redefining it to suit my purposes, which I thought was implicit in the context I used it in. I apologize for any confusion.

    — Donald

  • […] County–or even how the Mars program–pays the bills. The debate at Space Politics is a lively place to end. Look, there’s no doubt that there is, and should be, an emotional component to our space policy […]

  • Hi all, my opinion is that a polititian, and in general whoever has power enough to decide in such matters, should not wait for his emotions to make him aware of the importance of the space program. He should realize that only with his rational-mind.
    Anyway “passion” is a strong feeling, and if it is needed in order to show the path-to-be-followed, then I’m confident that the so-stimulated-mind will realize that this path nedds to-be-followed.

    Sergio

  • […] That’s the argument made in an article yesterday in the Orlando Sentinel, which makes the case that Lampson’s fight to raise NASA’s budget will help keep jobs at KSC. Lampson, the article notes, wants an extra $3 billion for NASA’s budget to reduce the Shuttle-Constellation gap. To aid those efforts, he organized a meeting between NASA administrator Mike Griffin and a group of fiscally conservative “Blue Dog” Democrats, and also organized a Congressional trip to last month’s shuttle launch. […]

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