Campaign '08, Congress

It’s Lampson vs. Olson

A runoff in Texas District 22 on Tuesday has determined who will oppose Congressman Nick Lampson this fall. Former Senate aide Pete Olson defeated Shelley Sekula Gibbs by a 2-to-1 margin in the Republican runoff, after neither candidate captured a majority in the primary last month. Sekula Gibbs ran against Lampson in 2006 and lost, although she won a separate special election that allowed here to serve out the final weeks of Tom DeLay’s term during the 2006 lame duck session. That district includes NASA JSC, and, according to the AP report, Lampson’s campaign is already using that to take aim at Olson. “Congressman (Nick) Lampson has promoted NASA while his opponent didn’t know the name of the Johnson Space Center in a recent debate,” Anthony Gutierrez, Lampson’s campaign manager, said.

27 comments to It’s Lampson vs. Olson

  • MarkWhittington

    Olson, at least according to his website, would please to disagree with that last statement from the Lampson Campaign.

    “The JSC and NASA are local treasures but national assets. Growing up in Clear Lake, I dreamed of one day becoming an astronaut and marveled at the accomplishments of our Space Program as we reached higher into the Heavens.

    “America must maintain our rightful place as the international leader in space exploration. Unfortunately, NASA is facing a budget shortfall that endangers the ability to develop and launch a new Crew Exploration Vehicle to take the place of the Space Shuttle. The multi-year gap between when the new CEV will be ready and the Shuttle is retired will put our missions in jeopardy and force us to rely on foreign space programs. It is not in the best interest of our country for this situation to exist.

    “I will be a vigorous champion for NASA and unlike the current Congressman, I will not promise to protect NASA funding while voting to cut its critical resources. I will fight for nothing less than full funding of NASA and its programs.”

  • Charles in Houston

    Fellow Policy Mavens –

    Both candidates for District 22 certainly know the Johnson Space Center well and can be counted on to vigorously push for more funding. The tough question that anyone would have to face is: where could you find some money that was just hanging around, waiting for someone who needed it?

    It is easy to say that we should spend more, but we have plenty of deficit spending as it is.

    Probably, our space effort will have to figure out how to live within it’s means. Hmmmm. Maybe use some of those rusty old vehicles like the Delta or Atlas for supporting Space Station and beyond???

  • Charles,

    If we get into the habit of changing our plans every few years, we’ll never get beyond Earth orbit.

  • canttellya

    The plans keep changing because they have political instead of economic foundations. Make money in space instead of depending on money and things will stay more constant.

  • canttellya: Make money in space instead of depending on money and things will stay more constant.

    All debate aside, I think all of us would agree on this. The question is, how do you suggest we do that? More specifically, how do you suggest we raise enough money in space to end up with a colony or two in our lifetimes?

    — Donald

  • canttellya

    All debate aside, I think all of us would agree on this.

    Good. You might not like the next part though.

    The question is, how do you suggest we do that?

    I have no answer. I can define the problem, and the reason why space budgets and plans are bandied about from side-to-side, but I don’t have the answer. But I can tell you what the answer (whatever it may be) must satisfy–it has to make money.

    More specifically, how do you suggest we raise enough money in space to end up with a colony or two in our lifetimes?

    Start out with a lot more money. Seriously. You have to accept the possibility, nay probability, that space colonization will never happen because it will never be profitable.

    Have we colonized the Sahara?

    The bottom of the ocean?

    The Greenland ice cap?

    The tops of the Himalayas?

    You may laugh and shake your head, but every single one of these locations (with the possible exception of the bottom of the ocean) is orders-of-magnitude less difficult to access and colonize than space.

    Accept the probability that space may never be colonized–and if you don’t like that, work to change the fundamentals.

  • canttellia: it has to make money.

    This is demonstrably untrue. The commercial airline industry has yet to make a net profit in going on a century of operation. It is very likely that the deep sea transport industry did not make a net profit for large parts of its multi-thousand year history. Likewise, if you include the cost of roads, it is likely that the automobile industry has never made a net profit. These industries were (and are) supported for “non-profitable” larger social reasons — and, simply, because people want them to exist regardless of their profitability or ability to make money.

    Start out with a lot more money.

    Which is why one approaches the government.

    You have to accept the possibility, nay probability, that space colonization will never happen because it will never be profitable

    I do exept this, but consider it an undesirable outcome (and, if you include human survival for more than a few tens of thousands of years to be worthwhile, a very undesirable outcome), an outcome that I (and many others on this forum) will do what we can to prevent.

    All that said, humanity has gone from a few African rift valleys to colonize much of the world, including uninhabitable areas like the mid-West — an evnironment which, as Anthropologists see things, takes a substantial level of technology (albeit neolithic technology) to survive in — in a short few tens of thousands of years. Thus, I see reason for hope.

    Have we colonized the Sahara?

    Ah, yes. Lots of people inhabit, or at least transit, the Sahara.

    As for the others, not yet, but I expect some of them will happen.

    orders-of-magnitude less difficult to access and colonize than space.

    Maybe. Setting access aside for the moment, is it really harder to live on Mars than it is on, say, the Greenland ice cap or the tops of the Himalayas? I’m not at all sure that it is. Worst case, the problems that must be solved are not all that dissimilar. Access, I grant, is a problem — but probably not that much greater a problem than getting from a land-bound species confined African rift valleys to relatively facile transit over the oceans between continents.

    work to change the fundamentals

    Again, this may be a requirement, but I doubt it. I expect (and hope) that the same forces and techniques that allowed humanity to colonize such areas as the mid-West of a continent on the opposite side of the globe from our origins _during_ the last glaciation of the current ice age will allow us to tackle, say, Mars — especially if, as Rand implied in another thread, we have more going for us in terms of motivation, economic power, and technology.

    — Donald

  • canttellya

    This is demonstrably untrue. The commercial airline industry has yet to make a net profit in going on a century of operation. It is very likely that the deep sea transport industry did not make a net profit for large parts of its multi-thousand year history. Likewise, if you include the cost of roads, it is likely that the automobile industry has never made a net profit. These industries were (and are) supported for “non-profitable” larger social reasons — and, simply, because people want them to exist regardless of their profitability or ability to make money.

    Boy, that attitude will win investors. Whether you’re right or wrong, don’t repeat what you’ve just said to anyone you’re trying to get to invest in your space effort.

    You can skip my door when you come asking for money.

    There’s a blog for space enthusiasts with your attitude:

    http://spacecynic.wordpress.com/

  • canttellya

    Setting access aside for the moment, is it really harder to live on Mars than it is on, say, the Greenland ice cap or the tops of the Himalayas?

    Let’s see here:

    1-g gravity? Mars, no, Greenland yes.
    Breathable oxygen? Mars, no, Greenland, yes.
    Radiation protection? Mars, no, Greenland, yes.
    Easy access to water? Mars, no, Greenland, yes.
    Biological chemicals (CHON)? Mars, some, Greenland, yes.
    Moderate temperature? Mars, no, Greenland, decent.
    Toxic soil? Mars, yes, Greenland, no.

    I’m not at all sure that it is.

    Boy, I am.

    Why do you want to live in space anyway? Mars ain’t the kind of place to raise the kids. In fact it’s cold as hell.

  • I always find these analogs (under the sea, the Sahara, the Gobi, etc.) spurious and hilarious. Ignoring the technical issues, there are two fundamental differences between them and space.

    First, space has no prior claim, and it offers an opportunity to do new social and governance experiments in much the same way as the New World did half a millennium ago, that no place on earth does today. It will be where the new Puritans, and Mormons, and libertarians, and others seeking freedom, both religious and political, will migrate, as the technology evolves to allow them to do so.

    Second, there are no activist groups clamoring to colonize such places, and no millionaires investing money in being able to do so, so clearly, for whatever reason, there is an appeal to space that doesn’t exist with these other locations, and it’s a demand that will be satisfied once there is a critical mass of people with both interest and funding. I don’t expect this to ever happen for the Gobi desert.

  • canttellya

    Again, this may be a requirement, but I doubt it. I expect (and hope) that the same forces and techniques that allowed humanity to colonize such areas as the mid-West of a continent on the opposite side of the globe from our origins _during_ the last glaciation of the current ice age will allow us to tackle, say, Mars — especially if, as Rand implied in another thread, we have more going for us in terms of motivation, economic power, and technology.

    No. All the West needed was water. Mars, the Moon, free space….they need much more than that. The problems are totally different.

  • canttellya

    First, space has no prior claim, and it offers an opportunity to do new social and governance experiments in much the same way as the New World did half a millennium ago, that no place on earth does today. It will be where the new Puritans, and Mormons, and libertarians, and others seeking freedom, both religious and political, will migrate, as the technology evolves to allow them to do so.

    There’s plenty of worthless places on Earth for these dispossessed groups to investigate that are much more appealing and easier to live in than space. Remember, to hold together some type of religious or social experiment, the first requirement is to CONTINUE LIVING. Space makes that difficult.

    Second, there are no activist groups clamoring to colonize such places, and no millionaires investing money in being able to do so, so clearly, for whatever reason, there is an appeal to space that doesn’t exist with these other locations, and it’s a demand that will be satisfied once there is a critical mass of people with both interest and funding. I don’t expect this to ever happen for the Gobi desert.

    Yeah, it’ll probably take a bunch of people dying in space to convince folks that living in space ain’t like the movies–all clean, sanitary, and high-tech. Real living in space, like aboard the ISS, is filthy, confused, lonely, and tedious. You can only look out the window for so long before you want to go home.

  • There’s plenty of worthless places on Earth for these dispossessed groups to investigate that are much more appealing and easier to live in than space.

    It’s only worthless until the government that owns it decides it’s not, which occurs about the same time that a group of settlers settle and try to make their own rules.

    Real living in space, like aboard the ISS, is filthy, confused, lonely, and tedious. You can only look out the window for so long before you want to go home.

    Don’t you have anything relevant to say?

    No one is talking about space settlements that are like living aboard the ISS. If you think that ISS is the best that can be done, you have an even poorer imagination than I thought.

  • canttellya

    Don’t you have anything relevant to say?

    Everything I’ve said is relevant. Don’t you have any responses to my statements other than to tell me how great space will be? I bring up real problems, like gravity, water, radiation, toxicity, not to mention the overarching one: transportation. What’s your fix for these problems? That they’re not much harder than living on Earth? BULL.

    No one is talking about space settlements that are like living aboard the ISS. If you think that ISS is the best that can be done, you have an even poorer imagination than I thought.

    Ah, I can see the glossy vista before your eyes. It probably goes something like this right?

  • cantellya: Whether you’re right or wrong

    I’m right, at least in this area, and that’s all we need to know that it’s possible. No one in their right mind would invest Grandma’s money in spaceflight right now. (They wouldn’t in the airline industry, either, but there seem to be plenty of people out of their right minds.) No new frontier starts out profitable. That’s not why humanity colonizes frontiers.

    1-g gravity? Mars, no, Greenland yes.

    So what? There’s no evidence this is relevant.

    Breathable oxygen? Mars, no, Greenland, yes.

    Split water for O2. No shortage of nitrogen in the Martian atmosphere.

    Radiation protection? Mars, no, Greenland, yes.

    Build a stone house.

    Easy access to water? Mars, no, Greenland, yes.

    I believe we’re landing in a month on a place with water in much the same form as most of Greenland’s. Change this to a Yes.

    Biological chemicals (CHON)? Mars, some, Greenland, yes.

    I’ll settle for some.

    Moderate temperature? Mars, no, Greenland, decent.

    Depending on where you go, temps can be comparable. Extremes are different, but manageable.

    Toxic soil? Mars, yes, Greenland, no.

    Arizona yes, yet we manage to live there. I grant this is the biggest issue, and the only one you’ve raised that is valid.

    Why do you want to live in space anyway?

    I don’t. You can’t easily get me out of my city. But for some strange reason people want to live in Arizona, and I think it’s better for humanity that some do. Eggs in a multiple baskets and all that. . . .

    Rand: First, space has no prior claim, and it offers an opportunity to do new social and governance experiments in much the same way as the New World did half a millennium ago, that no place on earth does today. It will be where the new Puritans, and Mormons, and libertarians, and others seeking freedom, both religious and political, will migrate, as the technology evolves to allow them to do so.

    It is my opinion that this is the single most important reason to do human spaceflight. It’s where the future social, economic, and political experiments will and can occur. The alien environment that cantellya finds so daunting will force them.

    Second, there are no activist groups clamoring to colonize such places, and no millionaires investing money in being able to do so, so clearly, for whatever reason, there is an appeal to space that doesn’t exist with these other locations, and it’s a demand that will be satisfied once there is a critical mass of people with both interest and funding. I don’t expect this to ever happen for the Gobi desert.

    I also agree with this. (Though the Arabs seem to be spending a lot of money making their particular piece of desert a more habitable place.) For some reason, humanity has decided that space has priority over other frontiers, possibly because it is seen (unconsciously) as a bigger challenge.

    All the West needed was water.

    Humanity was designed to live in a climate very similar to central California. A better analogy is the glacial planes of the mid-West. Here, you need a good deal more than water. You also need warmth, which means relatively high-tech fabrics and / or hunting abilities, control of fire, the ability to transport water, and a number of other technological skills. A naked human being would survive just fine in the far West, but would have zero chance in the interior of the continent.\

    There’s plenty of worthless places on Earth for these dispossessed groups to investigate that are much more appealing and easier to live in than space.

    Name one that is not claimed by some military power that can easily defend it’s turf. The advantage of space is it’s infinite. Once you learn how to get to and live there, a global human government becomes literally impossible. There will always be somewhere to run and try something new.

    Cantellyait’ll probably take a bunch of people dying in space to convince folks that living in space ain’t like the movies

    No question. We did not colonize the world without killing anyone. If we aren’t willing to sustain that, we may as well stop wasting our money right now. However, the results of both the Shuttle disasters were the exact opposite of a turn away from space, so I see reason to hope that humanity has still got what it takes to tackle a difficult frontier, even if you and I do not.

    Real living in space, like aboard the ISS, is filthy, confused, lonely, and tedious.

    I agree. Read about conditions on the ships that were used to colonize our world.

    Rand: Hey, I thought we were going for 100% agreement, here, but then you said, No one is talking about space settlements that are like living aboard the ISS. If you think that ISS is the best that can be done, you have an even poorer imagination than I thought.

    If humanity is successfully to colonize the inner Solar System at reasonable cost, Mir is a much more realistic model than the ISS, and even Mir may well seem like the height of luxury. It will be dirty, unsafe, ugly, and dangerous as all hell. Humanity has a long history of tackling just such challenges, and, just because we sitting here safe in the middle of our little empire have forgotten how to do it, does not mean that there won’t be peoples elsewhere and elsewhen who rediscover it. The slowly increasing number of nations capable of human spaceflight, and willing to spend money on it, gives me hope that someone will be ready to take these risks sometime relatively soon.

    As for cantellya, I suppose he or she may be right, but I’d always like our “glossy vista” to exceed our grasp. If we don’t try, we can’t fail and we won’t succeed — we just die.

    — Donald

  • What’s your fix for these problems? That they’re not much harder than living on Earth? BULL.

    No, that they will be solved. Unless you (for whatever irrational reasons) think that our technology has peaked, and will not improve in the future.

    It will be dirty, unsafe, ugly, and dangerous as all hell.

    I agree, but it won’t be like ISS, and I think that there will be a lot more volume (think inflatables).

  • canttellya

    and the only one you’ve raised that is valid.

    They’re all valid, and if you can’t see this, then I’m sorry. You think radiation protection is a stone house (it isn’t) and even if it was what about your crops.

  • canttellya

    Donald, if you don’t want to live in space, then stop advocating spending a bunch of money with little hope of profit (by your own admission) on re-warming O’Neillian dreams of space colonization.

    I’d prefer my tax dollars spent elsewhere.

  • cantellya: I’d prefer my tax dollars spent elsewhere.

    Well, for better or worse, we do live in a Republic and these decisions are made collectively.

    As for the admittedly difficult — far more difficult than most space advacates realize — technological and other issues, I’ll let Rand’s statement speak for me. He is correct and you may not be.

    I don’t want to live in space, but I do want a future for my species, and preferably an exciting one. It’s the same reason I vote for school bonds and donate money to education even though I do not, and never will, have children. The human world is far bigger than just me, and I want it to be there even if I am not.

    — Donald

  • canttellya

    Which of Rand’s many statements do you assert is correct and I am in error?

    I will note, for other readers, that neither Donald nor Rand suggested one innovation for solving the problems I mention that will work. Donald doesn’t think gravity’s a problem, thinks having some of your CHON is enough, thinks that convenient water deposits are just waiting for us, and thinks that a brick house will stop radiation.

    Donald, galactic cosmic radiation is the problem and a study of it will help you understand just what a problem it is.

  • I will note, for other readers, that neither Donald nor Rand suggested one innovation for solving the problems I mention that will work.

    And I will note, for other readers, that there is a vast literature of potential solutions to these problems, of which “Canttellya” is apparently unaware, but that this blog in general, and this post in particular, is not the place to discuss it.

  • canttellya

    Rand, I seriously doubt there’s anything on the subject of space colonization that I have not read. I used to be a very hard-core O’Neillian…so much so that I actually tried to figure out how to make it all work, which led to me to realize just how many basic unsolved problems there were in the field.

    Rather than wave your hands about the answers, point them out.

  • just how many basic unsolved problems there were in the field.

    You seem to confuse “unsolved” with “unsolvable.” They are mostly a matter of engineering development, which won’t happen until we reduce costs of access.

  • Habitat Hermit

    Great to see Donald and Rand making the most important points of them all and plainly the primary reasons why this will happen as soon as it’s possible for free individuals (I believe it has already started; there’s little else to explain many of the current efforts, some like Robert Bigelow even admit outright that the reason is to promote the start of human expansion).

    While I wouldn’t mind living in space if possible/available I subscribe to Donald’s point of view on the much larger importance of someone being able to. Exactly who is secondary; I won’t be jealous of the rich, I’ll thank them for their trail-blazing contribution and try to add to it.

    Canttellya:
    1. O’Neill was great but he’s not the end-all nor are his designs and I don’t think he would want them to be perceived as such either. One can approach the problem from other directions and/or goals like increased radiation protection, nearer-term realization, minimal size of various general designs and so on.

    2. I assume you focused on bremsstrahlung? I know you were talking about Mars but none of the other stuff really applies to habitats and I’ve seen other people who take that position. I simply don’t get why though: if nothing else a solution can be brute-forced. Bremsstrahlung really isn’t an unbeatable death beam.

    3. On practical efforts to get “there” –to a stage at which humanity has started to spread out into space– I don’t believe there’s a silver bullet but I do believe you’re right about profitability in general. However do not completely remove the possibility of various kinds of philanthropy, big and small.

    Rand (and many others along with him) is right about access and not just the human access usually focused upon but small “throwaway cheap” access to test ideas (Masten is targeting this). There are a lot of possibilities that haven’t been explored in detail or at all and which might not require more than a kilo or less to LEO or lower.

  • Cantellya: I just read an interesting quote. Samuel Johnson, the eighteenth century British literary figure, said that the recipe for clear thinking is to first “clear your mind of can’t.” With all due respect, it’s something you might consider.

    — Donald

  • While working on the Presidential trail in Florida, I had a very experienced and successful political consultant, someone who has won a few more elections than the rest of us, literally start to laugh when I explained the need to get our Space message out so that we could secure support on the Space coast. His comment went something along the lines of the last time the Space advocates mattered was in 1960. Another with decades of experience and who helped elect two Presidents chimed in and added this–the Space advocacy community is a joke.

    They are right. And it’s our own fault.

    We Space advocates seem to have more fun fighting each other, VSE, NASA or NASA’s chief rather than putting up a unified front fighting for our Space program in front of Congress and the President. Though we got VSE, now so-called “Space Advocates” are not happy about how Mike Griffin is implementing it, so why not kill it by criticizing VSE to death? We don’t need people working against the Space program; we do a quite sufficient job of that ourselves. Opponents of Space just sit back and enjoy the show. People, we make the Democrats look functional.

    And worse, the melange of Space advocacy groups that is the “pro-Space” community have zero political impact. Do any of us doubt one bit that Kay Bailey-Hutchison or Barbara Mikulsky care one bit what our acronym-laden support groups think? No–they have little money and have not turned one election since…well, 1960. There are too many to have a real impact and that needs to change.

    Perhaps it’s too late. After all, Obama is going to kill our manned program and Space people are talking about things that don’t matter. Why? And why have we let them get away with their distractions?

  • I’ll be interested if the new space PAC can get it’s ball rolling. I know that I’ll contribute. How much money could it scrape up? If that old “save the rabbit” scam garnered so much money, then how much money can “save the space program” get from all the sci-fi fans and space supporters.

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