A former president and a former Senate majority leader both hailed Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama’s stance on space policy this week. Former president Bill Clinton, speaking in Florida, called Obama’s space policy a sign of the candidate’s ability to “an eye on the future”, according to the Orlando Sentinel:
“He has a plan to support the space industry, which I think is important not just to Florida but to America. This is a very big deal,” said Clinton during his speech in Orlando. “We have a vested interest in staying on the frontiers of technological change and many of the answers to our environmental and other challenges will be found by continuing the push into space.
“Every president has to tend to the present, but keep an eye on the future even when it may not be so popular to do so. The last thing we ought to do is to reverse our investments in medical research and development and other kind of scientific research and into the space program. We need to keep pushing America into the future. That’s how we’re going to bring the economy back. That’s how we’re going to become energy independent.”
Meanwhile, former senator Tom Daschle, a national co-chair of the Obama campaign, touched upon space policy briefly during an interview with the Alamogordo (N.M.) Daily News:
Finally, Daschle said Obama has long believed the importance of space cannot be overestimated.
“We need the research, progress and the investment to provide worldwide leadership,” Daschle said. “Obama believes that we need space exploration out of necessity.”
Of course, several months ago, when Obama’s policy was less certain and appeared to involve a five-year delay in Constellation, it wasn’t at all clear that Obama viewed space exploration—at least as envisioned by many space advocates—as a “necessity”.
The steps needed toward the change of the roadwork of science will have to be swift and perseverant. As Obama become the victor against americas rage the necessary steps to take have long begun. The dissolution of america, execution of all women and strictest censorship, censure and removal of science and all it prevails being the first steps, there is also the removal of staples such as references from their social lingerings and intermingling with scientific thought and with women. Any such illegalities as these will be dealt with swiftly. The stages for the reidentification and repopulace of america will also become the priority in the initial moments following Obamas victory.
OBAMA 08
“The dissolution of america, execution of all women and strictest censorship, censure and removal of science and all it prevails being the first steps, there is also the removal of staples such as references from their social lingerings and intermingling with scientific thought and with women.”
Whatever you’re on, I want some. Last I checked everything you just mentioned is the common charge by extremely paranoid people about the Republicans. The charges are completely and totally nuts in that context as it is. They are even more laughable when levelled at the Democrats who generally support science and are nearly always ahead on women’s rights topics. Given the complete detachment with reality you seem to have, I’m not even sure why I’m responding. Even ‘Obama’s a covert Muslim’ chain emails have a little (very little) more grounding in reality.
Aremis
While I am a democrat I’m not sure how much impact is really to be had from these two individuals. The left has been infamous in recent decades for underfunding NASA so it’s hard to really take this seriously. I do think Obama has a solid policy now and I do have faith he’ll stick to it if he has any budgetary breathing room at all. Frankly I think he, as a freshman senator, has more credibility on the subject than either of the other two. This is expecially illustrated by the confused and wandering NASA days with Clinton. At least we can expect that if Obama does follow through with the plans he’ll actually fund it.
Aremis
For the sake of honesty, let’s remember here that the candidate who first stressed the importance of space and funding NASA in this campaign was Hillary Clinton. Perhaps after the campaign dust falls to ground, we should we should find a way to acknowledge this. A thank you note in the from of a Space Review article maybe?
Of course apolexy would probably cart off half the site’s readership…. assuming the election returns hadn’t done so already….
-mike (registered Republican) shupp
Aremis Asling said “The left has been infamous in recent decades for underfunding NASA”
Just a quick note here on reality.
The last almost 8 years have been purely Republican and painfully anti-science. I don’t think there can be any meaningful dispute of that. That’s because we had a Republican President and for the first 6 years a Republican Congress willing to go along with anything he wanted. Then 2 years ago, the Democrats took (so-called) control of Congress by gaining a simple majority in both houses.
Now for the reality check. And just to be fair, this applies EQUALLY to both parties, Democrats and Republicans.
A simple majority in Congress gets the majority party anything it wants, so long as the President is of the same party, as in the case of the first 6 years of the Bush presidency. The Republican majority in Congress pretty had its way in anything it wanted. But if the President is NOT of the same party as the Congressional majority, like the last 2 years of the Bush presidency, then the majority party in Congress cannot get anything done if their majority is just a “simple†majority, because the President can, and in the case of GW Bush, often does, veto the majority legislation. In that case it is misleading in the extreme to blame the Congressional majority for inaction when in fact many things were sent to the President only to have them vetoed. To override the veto, a simple majority, like in the last 2 years, isn’t good enough. It takes what’s called a “super†majority, a 2/3 majority, not a simple majority, to override a Presidential majority. For the last 2 years, the majority in Congress has been a simple majority, and not a super majority. So effectively, this was still a Republican Congress because of the ever present, very real threat, of a Presidential veto of anything that smelled like “Democratâ€.
As regards previous administrations and previous decades, the same situation has prevailed several times, with the roles reversed, with a Republican controlled Congress and a Democrat in the White House, sometimes with and sometimes without a super majority. So statements like “The left has been infamous in recent decades for under-funding NASA†need to be examined carefully, because it’s not as simple as that. A statement like that can only have validity on its face if the Congress and the White House are both controlled by the same party. That condition, while it has been occasionally present, occupies a minority of the period of time covered in the writer’s comment.
Classic Bill Clinton. During his Administration, NASA was told to “live within its means” and then, in an interview with the NYTimes as he is leaving the White House, President Clinton says that he should have given more to NASA. So, he was against sufficient NASA funding before he was for it.
And Tom Daschle, where in the world was he when NASA funding was being debated in the Senate? Certainly not pushing Clinton to properly fund NASA, that’s for sure.
At least Senator Obama was more honest than these two in his disregard for NASA when his campaign published a policy statement on November 20, 2007 that, in the very last paragraph, stated Constellation would be cut 85% for 5 years to pay for his education initiative. OK, let me get this…cut, really eviscerate, Constellation, firing thousands of NASA engineers and other civil servants, to pay for kids to get a better education, with some of them needing that education because Dad or Mom, who once had a good paying professional job at NASA, is unemployed thanks to Obama. Now that’s inexperience at work.
Then the very senior Senator Nelson finally kicks some sense into the very Junior Senator from Illinois and gets Obama, after a dramatic road to Damascus sort of conversion–I mean, we’re talking about a 180° turn here–to be a strong supporter of Space on August 3, 2008. So, like Clinton, Obama was against Space before he was for it.
At least it only took Obama 9 months to get where Clinton took 8 years and where Daschle, at least when he was Senate Majority Leader, never got.
But wait, even after that change position, Obama has lagged McCain on Space matters, leaving it to McCain to show leadership on such issues as halting Shuttle retirement and continuing Shuttle flights after 2010. It took Senator Obama nearly an additional month to figure out what John McCain put down on paper on August 28th that, yes, in light of Russia’s incursion into Georgia, that maybe we shouldn’t depend solely upon Russia for our manned access to Space but instead keep the Shuttle flying.
And here’s the real problem. When Obama switched sides on August 3rd, the meltdown of Wall Street had not occurred and a $700B package had not been voted on. With such new-found, shallow roots in his support for Space, the worry should be whether now-President Obama might use the excuse of other funding priorities to fall-back on his commitment to NASA that he made in August. And if he does, then we will have those in the Space community who voted for Senator Obama to be President literally hoisted up on their own petards, landing eventually in the unemployment line.
Good thing Senator Obama has a jobs program as part of his platform…come on, folks! You know it deep down. John McCain is right on Space and has been since day one while Obama was wrong before he was right.
I tried to make a bipartisan point that blanket statements rarely reflect reality on the ground and advised caution in treatment of such statements, by both sides, and you turn it into a rant for John McCain. Hmmm. Not what I expected from you Jim.
As to your point about the Wall Street bailout, I dare say that the reality of that will affect either candidate once the White House is secured. NASA is not sacrosanct.
And anyone, anyone at all, who picks their candidate based on their stance on space policy alone, EXCEPT as a tie-breaker, is sticking their head in the sand. This is an exceptionally important election and the 2 candidates offer us 2 divergent paths to the future with completely different consequences for each of us. There are many different issues at stake here that are NOT related to space policy in any way, shape or form that will affect us and the world we live in for the rest of our lives, in addition to our children and grandchildren. We simply must make our selection based on the entire spectrum of issues and which candidate is the best fit to each of us individually as to our core beliefs. As important as space policy is to each of us (we wouldn’t be here otherwise), none of us can afford to be a single issue voter. There is far too much at stake.
“Classic Bill Clinton. During his Administration, NASA was told to ‘live within its means'”
Reference? When and where did Clinton say this?
And since when is it a bad thing to tell a federal department or agency that it has to manage the programs and activities that the Congress and President assign to it within the budgets that Congress and President appropriate for it?
It’s pretty darn obvious fiscal responsibility… corporate managers, state and local governments, households, heck, even children have to live within their budgets, allowances, and other “means”.
Are you saying that, if elected, the McCain campaign will not hold NASA to any level of fiscal responsibility? That NASA will be allowed to disregard the law and spend taxpayer money at whatever levels it wants, regardless of what the Congress and White House enact?
“So, he was against sufficient NASA funding before he was for it.”
Why do you think that NASA’s budget was insufficient during the Clinton years? What programs or activities assigned by Congress and the White House to NASA were shortchanged or unexecutable because of budget shortfalls? References?
“And Tom Daschle, where in the world was he when NASA funding was being debated in the Senate? Certainly not pushing Clinton to properly fund NASA, that’s for sure.”
Republicans led Congress for six of the eight years of Clinton’s term. (The Gingrich-led Republican revolution/Contract with America occurred in 1994.) When it comes to budgets, the President can only propose. It’s up to Congress whether to agree with, increase, or decrease the President’s proposed funding levels for NASA. If you think NASA’s budget was too small during the Clinton years, then Republican Congressional decisions are just as, if not more, to blame than Clinton White House decisions.
Daschle was in the minority during those six years. McCain’s party, however, was in power during those six years. So where was McCain? When and where did Senator McCain stand up for higher NASA budgets when the Republican Party held the power of the purse during the Clinton years?
“So, like Clinton, Obama was against Space before he was for it.”
Reference? When and where did Clinton (or Obama) say that they were “against Space [sic]”?
“But wait, even after that change position, Obama has lagged McCain on Space matters, leaving it to McCain to show leadership on such issues as halting Shuttle retirement and continuing Shuttle flights after 2010.”
Three points here:
1) Because Shuttle can’t act as a lifeboat but Soyuz can, it’s Soyuz extension, not Shuttle extension, that’s critical to maintaining the U.S. presence on ISS. And regarding Soyuz, Obama was the first (and I think only) candidate to argue for an extension of INKSNA so NASA could continue to purchase Soyuzes and keep ISS continuously manned with U.S. astronauts. See Mr. Foust’s earlier post here (add http://www.)
spacepolitics.com/2008/09/23/senator-obama-endorses-inksna-waiver-extension/
To my knowledge, McCain has been silent on INKSNA, but thankfully, the extension has passed and been signed into law anyway.
2) Even if Shuttle extension was important, Obama arguably led on that as he was the first to call for an additional Shuttle mission to deploy AMS. See (add http://www.):
washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/18/AR2008081802171_pf.html
Obama’s space policy release with the Shuttle AMS flight was on August 18-19. The Senate letter to the White House with McCain’s signature on it arguing for Shuttle extension is dated August 25. I’ll be the first to admit that a week hardly makes a difference, but we should not claim that a candidate is “first” on something when the dates clearly show that they were not.
(As an aside, I personally think that holding out the possibility of Shuttle extension, for AMS, ISS, or anything else, is a stupid move for either candidate, technically and budgetarily, but that’s another thread.)
3) And even if Obama wasn’t first on INKSA and Shuttle extensions, at least his civil space policy is consistent with his other policy positions. It’s been months, but we still don’t have a McCain civil space policy that is consistent with his promise of an across-the-board discretionary funding freeze in FY 2010. See Mr. Foust’s earlier posts here (add http://www.):
spacepolitics.com/2008/09/20/no-flexibility-in-mccain-budget-freeze/
spacepolitics.com/2008/07/07/would-nasa-face-a-brac-under-president-mccain/
It’s only 30-odd days before the election, and as a voter interested in civil space issues, I still don’t know if McCain will hold the NASA budget flat in FY 2010, make a one-time $2 billion increase in FY 2010 (as McCain promised in Florida), or permanently boost NASA’s budget by the $3-4 billion per year necessary to extend Shuttle operations. Which is it?
And didn’t you promise to get us an official answer from the campaign on this more than a month ago?
Instead of wasting time trying to bash the civil space record of a former President who’s not even in the running, I’d suggest that a Presidential campaign representative’s time is better spent clearing up his candidate’s contradictory positions so that the electorate can at least have a clue as to what the candidate stands for.
FWIW…
anonymous.space, you never cease to amaze. First, this is a Space advocacy site, so…yeah, we have to consider that for some a candidate’s support for Space might be critical whether or not to vote for that candidate. You may think that’s silly, but you’re but one vote. And perhaps it’s not so wise to call what some consider a critically important issue less than such.
History lesson–common knowledge about NASA funding during the Clinton Administration if you followed Space funding then. Or do you not remember “Faster, Better, Cheaper”?. If you don’t remember those times, the dramatic reduction that was Space Station Freedom into ISS and the bringing in the Russians so that the Station could be, but wasn’t, made cheaper, James Oberg’s book, Red Star in Orbit is a great read. Check it out. Your dislike for Clinton and Gore will only grow.
The only candidate who has a documented, a very well documented, history of contradictory statements on his support for a strong manned Space program is Obama. First there was his education policy statement on 20 Nov. 2007 that read in its last paragraph that he planned to end Constellation–that is, after all, what a 85% cut for over 5 years will do to a program. But realizing late in the game that this would end his chances for winning Florida, he switched on August 3rd. Which part of this 180° turn is not a switch?
Yes, I know. Senate Minority Leaders have so little power that Daschle, despite being the senior Senator for South Dakota, had little or no power in a closely matched Senate. I mean, that’s why Mitch McConnell is so unable to affect Senate legislation these days, right? Btw, I couldn’t find one article, speech, etc. where Daschle said, wrote, etc. that NASA should get a funding boost during the period he served in the U.S. Senate. Help me out here, if you like.
AMS would not halt Shuttle retirement for reconsideration of such retirement of the Shuttle program by the next President. So, in the grand debate of whether or not to continue with Shuttle to preserve our independent manned access to Space, the AMS flight is not an issue. AMS important? Yes. To the issue of continuing Shuttle to Orion/Ares IOC? No.
I didn’t write that Shuttle could serve as a lifeboat. Nobody has written that. Everyone knows it can’t be. Why bring that up? It’s not part of any discussion I’ve heard at NASA, Boeing, USA, or elsewhere.
The issue that is being floated around is to continue on with the status quo antebellum and appropriating for NASA sufficient funding to pay for that additional cost. And there’s only one candidate who has so far led on that issue, by first asking the President to cease retirement efforts of the Shuttle, and it was John McCain beginning in late August. It took Senator Obama weeks more than Senator McCain to get to the point of questioning the retirement of the Shuttle. Why? Could it be that he still just doesn’t get Space? Or the importance of maintaining America’s independent means of manned access to Space? Perhaps, unlike Senator McCain, who href=”http://blogs.orlandosentinel.com/news_space_thewritestuff/2008/08/mccain-hears-pl.html”>does consider manned Space access a national security issue, Senator Obama does not? We don’t know because Senator Obama hasn’t elaborated on that issue. Again, why not?
Ugg…wish we had the ability to edit or see in “Preview” mode.
Here goes again on that last paragraph, I hope as I hesitantly hit the “Submit” button…
The issue that is being floated around is to continue on with the status quo antebellum and appropriating for NASA sufficient funding to pay for that additional cost. And there’s only one candidate who has so far led on that issue, by first asking the President to cease retirement efforts of the Shuttle, and it was John McCain beginning in late August. It took Senator Obama weeks more than Senator McCain to get to the point of questioning the retirement of the Shuttle. Why? Could it be that he still just doesn’t get Space? Or the importance of maintaining America’s independent means of manned access to Space? Perhaps, unlike Senator McCain, who does consider manned Space access a national security issue, Senator Obama does not? We don’t know because Senator Obama hasn’t elaborated on that issue. Again, why not?
Never mind…
McCain quote on manned access to Space as a national security issue.
http://blogs.orlandosentinel.com/news_space_thewritestuff/2008/08/mccain-hears-pl.html
Didn’t McCain favorably mention Citizens Against Government Waste in the first debate with Obama? Here are the 2 big recommendations from CAGW for NASA in its “prime cuts”:
http://www.cagw.org/site/FrameSet?style=User&url=http://publications.cagw.org/prime/primecuts.php3
– Cancel the shuttle program and additional assembly of the international space station.
– Delay NASA’s Constellation Program by five years.
“for some a candidate’s support for Space might be critical whether or not to vote for that candidate. You may think that’s silly, but you’re but one vote. And perhaps it’s not so wise to call what some consider a critically important issue less than such.”
Where did I say that civil space issues are not critical for some voters or silly? I even wrote that I’m “a voter interested in civil space issues.”
You’re confusing me with Chuck2200 who, earlier in the thread, wrote, “And anyone, anyone at all, who picks their candidate based on their stance on space policy alone, EXCEPT as a tie-breaker, is sticking their head in the sand.”
Don’t put other posters’ words in my mouth. If you’re incapable of keeping the identity of different posters straight, then don’t bother posting.
“History lesson–common knowledge about NASA funding during the Clinton Administration if you followed Space funding then.”
What “common knowledge about NASA funding during the Clinton Administration”? Your sentence is incomplete and makes no sense.
Please write coherently. If you can’t complete a sentence, then don’t bother posting.
“Or do you not remember “Faster, Better, Cheaperâ€?. If you don’t remember those times, the dramatic reduction that was Space Station Freedom into ISS and the bringing in the Russians so that the Station could be, but wasn’t, made cheaper”
Faster-better-cheaper was a Dan Goldin initiative for NASA’s robotic programs. It had nothing to do with the Clinton White House, the Space Station, or any other human space flight program at NASA.
Moreover, Space Station Freedom was over budget by many billions of dollars at the end of the Bush I White House. That’s why the Clinton White House undertook a blue-ribbon commissioned redesign of Space Station Freedom — not to cut costs, but to bring the Space Station budget under control after Bush I.
And the Clinton White House didn’t bring the Russians into the program until later, and it wasn’t to save costs — it was to keep Russian aerospace engineers employed on a peaceful program instead of having their expertise migrate to hostile countries like Iran.
If you’re going to pretend to give history lessons about the civil space program, then at least try to get one of your facts straight. If you can’t do that, then don’t bother posting here.
“The only candidate who has a documented, a very well documented, history of contradictory statements on his support for a strong manned Space program is Obama.”
Obama has changed positions on NASA funding, but at least we know which position he’s changed to.
McCain is still talking out of both sides of his mouth. Out of one side of his mouth, McCain talks about various NASA budget increases ($2 billion in FY 2010, $2 billion every year, Shuttle extension requiring $3-4 billion every year). Then out of the other side of his mouth, McCain reiterates that he’s going to freeze the budget of all the non-defense discretionary agencies, of which NASA is one.
McCain can’t have it both ways — a budget can’t be frozen and increased at the same time. The McCain campaign still hasn’t resolved this contradiction as recently as 16 days ago, as evidenced by Mr. Foust’s post here:
http://www.spacepolitics.com/2008/09/20/no-flexibility-in-mccain-budget-freeze/
So which is it? Again, you were claiming to be McCain’s space representative in Florida and promised to get us a straight answer on this in prior threads. Where is it?
“Senate Minority Leaders have so little power that Daschle… that’s why Mitch McConnell is so unable to affect”
Daschle and McConnell aren’t running for the Presidency, and I doubt they even have civil space platforms. Clinton was President two administrations ago. None of these guys have any relevance to the current Presidential race or very little relevance to civil space issues. What is your obsession with them? Are you here to straighten out the conflicted positions of your candidate? Or are you just here to vainly smear the record of prior civil space policymakers with false facts and garbled sentences?
“I didn’t write that Shuttle could serve as a lifeboat… Why bring that up?”
Because it makes Shuttle extension useless. After assembly complete, the ISS has no need for Shuttle if Soyuz is providing crew transport functions as part and parcel of its crew rescue functions. Why pound the table for a $4-5 billion crew transport vehicle that can only stay docked at the ISS for a couple weeks at a time, when its crew transport functions are duplicated by the much cheaper and critical-path Soyuz? If NASA can still buy Soyuzes (and they can now that the INKSNA waiver has passed), what function does Shuttle serve that’s worth $4-5 billion per year in taxpayer dollars ($20-25 billion through 2015, plus Shuttle recertification), especially in an era of $700 billion-plus rescue packages for the economy?
“there’s only one candidate who has so far led on that issue, by first asking the President to cease retirement efforts of the Shuttle, and it was John McCain beginning in late August.”
This statement is just factually wrong.
On July 18-19, 2008, Obama released a civil space policy that, among other things, called for an additional Shuttle flight, including a $2 billion increase to NASA’s budget to fund that flight. See here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/18/AR2008081802171_pf.html
It took another week for McCain to sign a Senate letter, dated July 25, 2008, asking the President to stop actions that would preclude Shuttle retirement. See here (add http://):
mccain.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Files.View&FileStore_id=7e6d7fad-ee55-44a8-be6f-93d2619a8a8b
Again, a week’s difference matters little. But we shouldn’t claim that McCain (or any other candidate) is first on on Shuttle extension (or anything else) when dated documents clearly show that to be false.
These are simple timelines — you should be able to get at least one date right. If you can’t do that, then don’t bother posting.
“Perhaps, unlike Senator McCain, who does consider manned Space access a national security issue,”
McCain never said that “manned Space [sic] access” is a national security issue. In the Orlando Sentinel article, McCain only said that “access to space is a national security issue.”
Human space access plays no national security role — it delivers no reconnaissance, intelligence, arms treaty verification, signals, communications, or any other function useful to the military. If McCain (or any other candidate) actually said that, they’d be stupid to state such.
But access to space certainly is a national security issue, and in his actual words, McCain is right about that. If the military cannot launch satellites to perform reconnaissance, intelligence, arms treaty verification, signals, communications, and other necessary functions, then U.S. national security is put at grave risk. But the Space Shuttle, and every other human space flight program at NASA, has had nothing to do with launching military satellites since the 1980s.
Please quote candidates accurately. If you can’t do that, then don’t bother posting here.
Sheesh…
A little history on space in the Clinton era follows. I’m not going to dig up citations, mainly because this is a blog commentary and I’m working from memory. Hopefully, I’ll be forgiven the imprecise nature of my comments and folks with more time will correct the factual errors.
Bill Clinton whacked the daylights out of the NASA budget. It’s currently about 20% less in real terms than it was in 1992. Bush basically arrested the negative budget trends, but he didn’t really reverse them. The following link should take you to a chart Griffin used with AvWeek that summarizes the budget over the years. http://aviationweek.typepad.com/.shared/image.html?/photos/uncategorized/2007/03/15/figure1.gif
Clinton inherited a space station design that cost too much. Frankly, it was outrageous that NASA spent as much money as it did without ever bending metal. Blame that on anyone you want. Reagan, Bush, Truly, a Democratic Congress, NASA, the aerospace industry, etc. Makes no difference to me. The redesign was intended to get the station back in a budget box. Good idea.
Then, before the ink was barely dry on the first redesign, he invited the Russians in, which through all his good financial work out the window since it helped drive costs right back up. Several justifications were offered and the hearing record is pretty clear.
1. Aim Russian aerospace scientists and engineers at peaceful markets, rather than having them sell their stuff to Iran et. al., as Anonymous stated. Of course, that didn’t work, seeing as how the Iran Nonproliferaiton Act was necessary, resulted in a cut off of funds, and still requires a waiver in order to continue buying things from the Russians. If the Russians were behaving, the act wouldn’t constrain NASA in the first place. So, all we did was send the Russians to the bank to cash our checks when they cashed the Iranian checks. Still, it was a good idea in theory.
2. Save money. The outcome on this one is debatable. In addition to the cash we sent the Russians, we altered the station’s orbit to accomodate the Russians and then modified the shuttle to reach the orbit. All of that cost us money. We ended up taking over a significant portion of the logistics mission to Mir as well. At $500m a shuttle flight, that was no small expense to us and an avoided cost to the Russians. This, of course, came on top of the $400m check we wrote them for the privilege of visiting Mir.
3. Save time. The redesigned station was supposed to get to orbit faster because the Russians could allegedly deliver propulsion and crew habit much faster than we could. (Anyone recall the FGB and Service Module fights?) That, of course, flopped when the Russians couldn’t deliver, despite even more payments to the Russians to extend the Shuttle-Mir program. That said, we should recall that the U.S. elements weren’t on schedule either, so it wouldn’t be fair to blame the Russians entirely for the delays. We would likely have still been late without them.
4. Learn about station ops. This was a really, really, good idea, although pursued in the most expensive manner we could imagine. Unbelievably, NASA was slow to begin documenting Russian lessons learned and hadn’t bothered to spend much time with its own Skylab lessons learned. So, it’s not clear to me that this was a real reason, as opposed to one made up for public consumption.
Now, the Clinton Admin probably saved the station by inviting the Russians in, since it gave them better arguments to use on a Democratic Congress that otherwise would likely have canceled the program in 1993. Historians will debate whether the outcome validated the strategy, but it made sense to some at the time. He also had to promise a flat budget and capped ISS around $2.1b/yr. Of course, development programs spend in S-curves, so the cap put NASA between a rock and a hard place. It couldn’t spend money early on to solve design problems as they occured, so it deferred problems until later in the program when, of course, they were more expensive to solve. Just as with the Russians, though, the cap was helpful in keeping the program sold. So, blame the nature of representative gov’t for that stinker.
During the 6 years that Congress was controlled by the GOP, Congress increased funding over and above Clinton’s request 5 years, cutting it only once. Still, it clearly wasn’t enough to accomplish everything that was on NASA’s plate or overcome the general cuts that the Clinton Admin imposed. By the end, the increases probably didn’t cover the earmarks, resulting in a net decline to NASA’s budget. Arguably, we saw a series of important programs fail, in part, due to underfunding and the creative approaches NASA came up with to try and overcome those budget shortfalls. These would notably include the X-33, X-34, and X-37/CRV. (During the 6 years that the GOP controlled both the WH and Congress, NASA’s budget stabilized and even had a few upticks. In the Dems first year in charge of Congress last year, they flaked on the approps bill, passed a CR, and cut NASA roughly $500m. It wasn’t, as they say, personal. NASA just got caught up in transitional politics.)
Ok, fast forward to the end of the Clinton Admin. The Bush transition team comes in and, IIRC, is presented by NASA with a bill for $5b over and above the 5-year runout for ISS. Bush says no, live within your means, and NASA reluctantly starts eliminating content from the program. Now you start to see some self discipline. It also helped that the program was past the largest development hump. Then, it all went to pot when we lost Columbia, return to flight cost more than was anticipated, and Katrina hit, all of which meant increased costs with no new resources. Toss in a few normal development challenges and another high-level decision to pursue flat funding, instead of the S-curve, and it’s starting to look a lot like Bush 43 is making a lot of the same poor programatic decisions that Clinton did. The ultimate proof that space, truly, is a nonpartisan issue.
Mr. Hillhouse,
Did you get any of the answers that you promised over a month ago for any of the space policy questions I listed?
http://www.spacepolitics.com/2008/08/27/obamas-general-space-policy-advisors/
Once I have some more difinitive answers, they will be posted here if this site will allow.
We are waiting.
Do you have anything that proves you are more connected to the McCain campaign than the average Joe Sixpack who gets their news from the internet.
BTW, I will remind you that one of your answers was “McCain has said in public, namely that NASA is special to the U.S. and that the proposed freeze on discretionary spending never included NASA.”
I reported at the time the specific statement on the McCain website that made it clear that the freeze applied to ALL agencies, excepting DoD and Veterans.
http://www.johnmccain.com/Issues/JobsforAmerica/reform.htm
“A one-year spending pause. Freeze non-defense, non-veterans discretionary spending for a year and use those savings for deficit reduction.”
Since then:
1) McCain has repeated his intention to freeze spending in a national televised debate on September 26. McCain made it clear that this commitment applied to ALL spending except defense and veterans.
2) The Republican National Committee has attacked Obama for “liberal spending” for being willing to spend an extra $2 Billion on NASA.
Thus, the RNC attacks Obama for being a liberal spender because he wants to give NASA an extra $2 Billion, and you attack Obama because you don’t believe he wants to be a liberal spender on NASA.
So, who is right? The RNC or Jim Hillhouse?
How about Sarah Palin — who clearly is a change agent — and a budget cutter. What chance do you think she will advocate for more money for NASA?
McCain and Palin are both clearly fiscal conservatives on spending. Everybody knows this, except you it appears. Yet you continue to deny what is clearly evident — that McCain will probably freeze NASA’s budget (as well as those of many many other federal agencies.)
I am not saying this is a bad idea. I think we need to put the brakes on federal spending. Meanwhile, you ignore the one real potential positive for space policy, which you could play up. McCain could bring some needed “reform” and “change” to NASA. McCain has been promising change … but somehow you ignore this.
When McCain said at the Republican Convention:
“…let me just offer an advance warning to the old, big-spending, do-nothing, me first, country second crowd: Change is coming.
Are you now going to clarify that McCain did not mean to include NASA in this statement?
“We need to change the way government does almost everything” … are you going to now say McCain excluded NASA when he made this statement?
When McCain more recently talked about imposing fixed prize contracting, are you now going say that McCain did not mean to include NASA in this statement?
Your double-talk is completely nauseating.
I much prefer a straight-shooter like Newt. And Senator McCain.
You spin so much you don’t know what direction you are going in. You do Senator McCain a disservice.
FWIW,
– Al
Eric,
Thanks for the recap. A few thoughts and questions.
STERNER:Aim Russian aerospace scientists and engineers at peaceful markets, rather than having them sell their stuff to Iran et. al., as Anonymous stated. Of course, that didn’t work, seeing as how the Iran Nonproliferaiton Act was necessary, resulted in a cut off of funds, and still requires a waiver in order to continue buying things from the Russians. If the Russians were behaving, the act wouldn’t constrain NASA in the first place.
First, a question — was the Democratic theory that it would *reduce* proliferation, or that it would *eliminate* proliferation?
If the latter, that it would “eliminate” proliferation, they clearly failed.
But if their theory was that it would “reduce” proliferation, then we have a problem. The problem being that we really do not know what would have happened, in the alternate reality, if we had not brought the Russians into a partnership. It is impossible to compare two different realities, when we only know how one of them turned out.
It is possible it made little or no difference. It is also possible that it made a significant difference. Unless somebody comes forward with hard data, we just don’t know. We will probably never know.
STERNER: 3. Save time. The redesigned station was supposed to get to orbit faster because the Russians could allegedly deliver propulsion and crew habit much faster than we could. (Anyone recall the FGB and Service Module fights?) That, of course, flopped when the Russians couldn’t deliver, despite even more payments to the Russians to extend the Shuttle-Mir program.
There is something important here to add.
My recollection is that the FGB (the first module) was on time and budget, while the Service Module (the second module) was way behind schedule.
The difference?
The FGB was bought via a contract between Boeing and Krunichev. It was a straight-forward business deal, and it worked very well.
The Service Module was a contract between NASA and the Russian Federal Space Agency (FSA). The work had to be done by RSC Energia, but the Russian FSA was in between the source of the money (NASA) and the source of the work (Energia). My recollection was that the money went from NASA to the FSA, but much of the money did not make it RSC Energia. The FSA needed money (in an era of cheap oil) so it kept much of cash and basically mandated that Energia do the work, but did not give them all the money necessary to do it on time. The result is that Energia fell behind schedule.
Now, did this constitute fraud? I don’t know, because I have never seen the contract between NASA and the FSA. For all I know, this behavior was permissible under the NASA-FSA agreement. In which case, it constitutes incompetence on NASA’s part. (Eric, it is possible that you know the answer to this one.)
I also recall that it came out that NASA had fallen behind on the U.S. portions of ISS, and were pleased that the Russians were taking the beating instead of them. (A true Machiavellian might suggest that NASA wanted the Russians to fall behind to cover up NASA’s internal schedule failures. But I believe in the old rule of thumb that you should not ascribe to malice that which can be explained by incompetence.)
Lesson? Business-to-business contract work well … government-to-government contracts often do not.
Russian *companies* tend to be very good at completing their work on time and schedule … when you pay them.
FWIW,
– Al
Al:
Good points. In re proliferation, it’s true you can’t prove that the Russians wouldn’t have been worse if we hadn’t paid them. I honestly don’t recall exactly how the Clinton folks framed it. I suspect it was something along the lines of “give them an incentive not to proliferate” and was relatively silent on any specific metrics of success that they anticipated. I doubt they thought it would be 100% successful, since nobody in their right mind would have thought so. You’re probably right that we’ll never know, barring some magic opening of Russian intel files that tells us a lot more about who was trying to buy know-how from the design bureaus. (BTW, one has to ask if we were paying the right people in Russia. Arguably, there were more likely proliferation candidates than Energia.)
I think the more interesting questions are: 1) how much proliferation can you accept? 2) does it make sense to pay people to pursue their own self-interest? 3) would we have been better off paying them to move capability to Huntsville, where they could have stayed in the German barracks?
My short answers are:
1. Precious little.
2. If you have to pay them to pursue their own self-interest, then they don’t share your view of their self-interest and are motivated primarily by greed. In that event, you can’t pay them enough to convince them not to pursue additional paydays.
3. Yes, or something like it. The Russian aerospace industry needed to consolidate. Instead, by propping it up, we aided a Russian decision to keep too many bureaus on life support w/o adequate funding. So, they all had incentives to proliferate in order to meet the payroll. IIRC, Putin actually put a stop to this by consolidating and closing some bureaus. I suspect he had enough sense…and maliciousness…not to let a bunch of unemployed aerospace engineers leave the country en masse, but I can’t prove it.
On the FGB and SM, I agree with you on the lessons learned, although I think the nature of the bureaus and some of the personalities also had something to do with the problems. Nobody got along with Semenov, which made it difficult for folks to tell whether he had real problems or was just looking for better leverage on Koptev and Goldin. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle. I suspect he wasted a lot of funds trying to preserve as much of his infrastructure as possible; he didn’t have Lockheed and the Proton as sugar daddies. Jim Muncy may have a different perspective if he’s reading this. I thikn he had better experiences in a different context.
FWIW, I did read the agreements between NASA and RSA way back when. I can’t remember too many of the specifics, but do recall concluding we had signed a series of colossally bad deals that would’ve gotten people fired had they been signed between NASA and an American contractor. NASA’s out was that it was an agreement between two sovereign governments. True, but that was a dumb argument since such agreements don’t often involve one-way transfers of funding. NASA basically got the worst of both worlds. We couldn’t exercise contractor authority over RSA because they represented a sovereign government and we couldn’t withdraw from the agremeent because we needed the contractor. Not fraud, just really stupid policymaking.