NASA

Another NASA administrator candidate (not)

While the White House may not have settled on its pick to be NASA administrator, a libertarian group is prepared if, by some freakish turn of events, it came to power. The group announced today that its pick to “run” NASA would be Jim Davidson. Read on for why “run” is in quotes:

Davidson has been a space enthusiast since 1968, active in the private space migration movement since 1977, and involved in many start-up space ventures since 1986. He has worked with NASA contractors, astronauts, and Russia’s space industry. He has long held the view that NASA should be eliminated and its assets returned to the private sector.

NASA delenda est, indeed.

[Note: the original post indicated this was a Libertarian Party initiative. It is not, as Mr. Knapp notes in the comments. We regret the error.]

27 comments to Another NASA administrator candidate (not)

  • Some corrections:

    1) The Libertarian Shadow Cabinet is NOT a project of the Libertarian Party. It is a non-partisan/cross-partisan libertarian project.

    2) Jim Davidson is not a member of the Libertarian Party. He’s a member (and former chair) of another libertarian political party, the Boston Tea Party.

    Best regards,
    Tom Knapp
    creator of the Libertarian Shadow Cabinet project

  • GWSA

    Jim Davidson used to threaten to beat people up who disagreed with him. His aim in life is to destroy NASA i.e.”NASA delenda est”. He got in trouble with the law years ago for running some lottery scam. Now he sells gold. Yea, he’d make a great NASA Administrator.

  • Lil' Annie

    Wow! A comment from “GWSA”! Who knew that George Abbey reads and comments on the space gossip blogs!

    Dish some more dirt, George!

  • Mark R. Whittington

    Jim is an entertaining dude without question, Even so he never threatened to beat me up.

  • Well, that’s an interesting claim, certainly. Since threatening to beat people up is not something I have done, and since it is actionable as assault, I would certainly be curious to see GWSA’s evidence on this point.

    There was a case in 1991 regarding a space related sweepstakes. In the agreed injunction that the Harris County district attorney signed in May 1991, they stipulated that the project was a sweepstakes and could not be a lottery. They also dropped the criminal charge. This project was to put an American on the space station Mir, which was widely regarded (New York Times front page, four days in a row) as a significant development in space tourism.

    Presently, I buy gold. I don’t sell any. Of course, you might be deliberately confusing what I do and what companies I’ve been involved with do.

    I don’t think the Beltway qualifies as an orbit. But it is a great slogan. After all, what could be more narcissistic than the political space movement. “Got to keep the lunars on the path.”

  • It probably occurs to others that the comments by GWSA are entirely ad hominem and do not address any of my arguments for eliminating NASA. Nor does GWSA seem to feel obligated to offer any justification for continuing to spend tens of billions of dollars in the next few years so that, as Tom Lehrer once said, NASA can put “some clown on the Moon.”

    I should point out that this Spacepolitics.com site has, for some unfathomable reason, linked the text “NASA delenda est” in their article on my appointment to the shadow cabinet to an essay I wrote 14 years ago. It was first published in 1995 in The Libertarian Enterprise. The pointer above goes to my archive of the essay on the HoustonSpaceSociety.org site. Here is the essay as it originally appeared.
    http://www.ncc-1776.org/tle1995/le951210.html

    Nevertheless, it seems bizarre, or at least ineffective, for Spacepolitics.com not to have noticed the much more up to date essay on the same topic posted at ShadowCabinet.us.
    http://shadowcabinet.us/?p=153

    In it, I give a number of reasons why NASA is not only superfluous to the opening of the space frontier and a thriving human economy beyond Earth, but also why it is a deadly impediment to free enterprise activities in space. I recognise that the sort of person GWSA is would only dwell on attacking the individual. But it might be amusing to see some Space Politics types examine the actual reasoning, analyse the actual arguments. You know, engage in a reasoned discussion of the issues.

    It probably isn’t any good for NASA’s budget for people to do so. Thus, I don’t anticipate seeing any such discussion here. Sycophants and the pigs with their noses in the trough don’t usually bother with reasoning. Oink-oink, little ones. Mind Farmer Brown, he seems to have a taste for bacon.

  • Mark Whittington, as I live and breathe. Please forgive the oversight! lol

  • Jim, your online rants, insults, and bizarre political beliefs serve only to spoil the otherwise diverse and courteous discussion that goes on at spacepolitics.com

    I suppose you’ll soon get all upset – just as you used to do – and start to threaten people here as well.

    Please go back to your gold scam or whatever it is you sell door to door and leave the rest of us alone.

  • CRD

    GWSA,

    There is nothing bizarre about seeing NASA as a corrupt organization. Having been inside (and otherwise “near”) NASA for the past 20 years, I can recount a culture that wastes money and drives as many dollars as possible into NASA centers, regardless of non-government capabilities.

    Anyone who has seen the inner workings of NASA knows this to be the case.

    CRD

  • Mark R. Whittington

    Jim, that’s alright. (snicker)

  • Jyoung

    who is the bigger troll—Robert Oler or Jim Davidson? Hard to tell.

  • John Cunningham

    …if only NASA hadn’t waged a political war to kill the SSTO program a decade or more ago, perhaps we wouldn’t now be facing a manned spaceflight gap…I hope Bezos and others can pull something off, ’cause NASA dropped the ball.

  • Vladislaw

    “NASA is not even competent to provide consistent, safe access to space, but has, on three separate occasions, slaughtered the entire crew complement of one of its Apollo capsules and two of its shuttles.”

    In the 50 years of space flight MILLIONS have died on the roadways, half by drunk drivers, if your issue is safety for humanity, the automakers and dept of transportation is a better place to use words like “slaughter”.

    “I have always wanted to go live on the Moon. I have wanted to build hotels on the Moon.”

    How many hotels have you built on earth? How many space structures have you built? What are your qualifications for building lunar hotels?

    “These dreams are deliberately and actively prevented by NASA policies, and by the implementation of its corrupt allocation of contracts, its attacks on competitors in the private sector, and its determination never to find and punish specific acts of negligence nor criminal corruption.”

    Could you please cite examples of what are the deliberate policies NASA has enacted (not congress) that has prevented you.
    Please cite examples of corrupt allocation of contracts.
    Please cite examples of attacks on competitors.
    Please cite examples of criminal corruption.

    “However, even the most cursory examination of NASA as it actually performs shows that it is deliberately corrupt in every activity, violently and brutally coercive in its treatment of every private enterprise activity,”

    Could you please cite examples where NASA is deliberately corrupt in EVERY activity? Not just SOME activities, not in just MOST activities, but that they are corrupt in EVERY activity?
    Could you please cite examples where NASA is violently coercive?
    Could you please cite examples where NASA is brutally coercive?

    “Dozens of existing space tourism companies, many of them here in the United States, are eager to develop and in many cases have tested manned spaceflight capabilities.”

    If there are dozens of space tourism companies testing spaceflight why are you not also launching and testing? In one line you say everyone is being prevented from doing exactly what you then say everyone IS already doing. If access to space is so cheap and easy, what have the north koreans, Iran, Japan, Europe, Brazil, India, not already been launching 30 years ago? Has NASA prevented the rest of the world also?

    Now Jim before you go on a rant about my pro NASA sympathies, know first I have written against several congressionally mandated NASA policies. I do not believe NASA should be building launch vehicles but should be buying seats on commercial providers. But I do not agree with you that NASA is the devil incarnate and inflammatory words never helps a reasoned arguement.

  • MrEarl

    This whole question of the next NASA administrator has brought out the worst, and craziest, parts of the space community.
    For me, watching all this lunacy go down the past few months, reinforces my view that the most effective NASA administrator would be someone with no connection to NASA or the space community what-so ever. NASA needs someone along the lines of James Webb, a political operative who knows how to get things done inside the orbit of the beltway.

  • SpaceMan

    This whole question of the next NASA administrator has brought out the worst, and craziest, parts of the space community.

    Well at least we know where they are & who they are. Slight satisfaction I know.

  • John Cunningham

    “NASA needs someone along the lines of James Webb, a political operative who knows how to get things done inside the orbit of the beltway.”

    Why?? To what purpose? To simply continue existing as is? What is the vision, the core mission of NASA today? Is it Earth Sciences (why doesn’t NOAA handle that)? Supporting astronomy? Doing deep space missions? Doing spaceflight R&D? Operating a space station? Perhaps if this key question were to be addressed first, then an argument over who is best to implement against that vision would be more appropriate.

  • Dorothy Gale

    The TEMERITY of those rabble rousing crazies, SHOUTING OUT to the world that the emperor is wearing no clothes, shocking the sensibilities of the prudent and responsible munchkins, who would prefer to live in silence.

    Pay no attention to the rocket behind the curtain.

  • MrEarl

    Thank you Dorothy for proving my point.

  • Frank Baum

    Thank you Dorothy

    Tell us all more about that wonderful Ares I rocket Mr. Earl.

    If you only had a brain … and some courage.

  • MrEarl

    Well “Frank”, my comments have nothing to do with architecture or mission. Realistically, decisions about that can not be reasonably made until an administrator is named and approved by the senate. All your TEMERITY and SHOUTING OUT just make you and your ilk look foolish. Rational people tend to discount your arguments no matter how much merit they may have.

  • Wizard O'z

    Realistically, decisions about that can not be reasonably made until an administrator is named and approved by the senate

    So you have no brains, nor courage.

  • GWSA on April 12th, again nothing but ad hominem attacks. Also GWSA has failed to show any evidence that I’ve ever threatened anybody, so we can assume this was a false accusation. If GWSA’s comments are an example of elevated, high brow, intellectual discussion, this ought to be a fun site. How very droll.

    I don’t sell anything door to door. However, I do find it amusing that GWSA thinks there is something wrong, and evil, about people having private property and selling things. No doubt we would all be better off as bureau-rats working for one giant bureau. Shades of 1984.

  • CRD – thanks. “Can I get a witness?” It seems one can get plenty of witnesses to NASA and contractor corruption.

  • Vladislaw, thank you very much for bothering to engage on some of the issues. I appreciate your willingness to discuss ideas.

    You wrote, “In the 50 years of space flight MILLIONS have died on the roadways, half by drunk drivers, if your issue is safety for humanity, the automakers and dept of transportation is a better place to use words like “slaughter”.”

    My issue was confined to access to space on a low cost and reliable basis. I do agree that the cartel operating in restraint of trade in the auto industry is reprehensible, and apparently not profitable at present. I would eliminate the very large number of tariffs and subsidies, such as the 100% tariff on imported pickup trucks, and see what the auto industry could produce. But, of course, an unfettered free market in autos would result in many more companies producing different kinds of vehicles. I don’t know if you’d be comfortable with that sort of diversity.

    In an essay I wrote in 1996, I discussed the likelihood that an unregulated transportation industry without the numerous subsidies for roads and autos, would likely result in more people flying. Moller still hasn’t been able to get the FAA to certify or license his air car design after, what, thirty years? People confined to two dimensions are going to have more accidents than vehicles free to move in three dimensions. The sky is very big.

    You ask:
    “How many hotels have you built on earth? How many space structures have you built? What are your qualifications for building lunar hotels?”

    In 1896, how many airplanes had Wilbur and Orville Wright built? If you want to see a formal business plan for building lunar hotels, I’ll get back to you when I’m looking to capitalise such a business.

    “Please cite examples of corrupt allocation of contracts.
    Please cite examples of attacks on competitors.
    Please cite examples of criminal corruption.”

    You should have no trouble finding dozens to hundreds of each. A case in point, however, of corrupt allocation of contracts: the no-bid assignment of the visitor center at Johnson Space Center to be run by the Manned Spaceflight Education Foundation which, at the time the contract was let was run by the director of public relations at JSC. You can look it up.

    You can ask CRD for particulars on corruption within NASA and the contractor community.

    Nearly every private business enterprise that has ever had its business plan reviewed by so-called experts at NASA has lost its investors. NASA scum always despise private enterprise.

    In the early days of Space Services Incorporated of America, all the efforts SSIA made to launch satellites were undercut by NASA which, at the time, was willing to give away launches on the shuttle in order to prevent Hannah and Slayton from getting any business. The one exception, roughly 1984 timeframe, was Celestis. So, of course, SSIA agreed to launch ashes into space, and NASA flacks began mocking the company that wanted to launch “ashtronauts.”

    As I recall, SSIA cooperated on a competitive bid for the Landsat commercialisation deal, with outfits like Ball Aerospace. But the deal went to one of the standard defense contractors.

    You seem to have difficulty believing in aerospace contractor corruption. Yet, just a few years ago, the Department of Defense admitted that it could not account for a trillion dollars it had spent. You are just kidding about this cite examples thing, right?

    “If there are dozens of space tourism companies testing spaceflight why are you not also launching and testing?”

    Why should I? There are plenty of opportunities to watch from the sidelines as company after company throws itself at the impediments. Someday one or two might break through, after which there will be many opportunities.

    “In one line you say everyone is being prevented from doing exactly what you then say everyone IS already doing.”

    No, I don’t say that. You don’t seem to bother to read carefully. What I am saying is that, e.g., Richard Branson was denied an entry visa to look at the designs of his Spaceship Two because he’s a foreign national. Talk to Gary Hudson about the impediments placed in the way of Rotary Rocket. You could try talking to Gerald Bull or George Koopman, but, alas, they are among those who didn’t live through the process of government opposition to their dreams of spaceflight.

    What I’m saying is that in the absence of political and legal impediments, it is clear that many companies are capable of providing spaceflight capabilities. It isn’t clear that any of them, other than corrupt evil baby-killing defense contractors are going to be allowed to provide such capabilities.

    “If access to space is so cheap and easy, what have the north koreans, Iran, Japan, Europe, Brazil, India, not already been launching 30 years ago?”

    You might want to look into a thing called the non-proliferation of missile technology treaty. There are significant impediments to the export of technologies that are classified as “trafficking in arms.” Look up ITAR. Of course, my friends in the cypherpunk community have been making fun of ITAR rules governing crypto for decades now.

    “Has NASA prevented the rest of the world also?”

    Not universally. But there have been a number of very bizarre incidents. For example, when I resigned in 1990 from the National Space Society, its McDonnell Douglas guy had just arranged for a law firm to draft a 1974 Trade Act dumping complaint against China for selling a Long March rocket to launch an Arabsat. You know how much the NSS hated the idea of cheap access to space.

    “I do not believe NASA should be building launch vehicles but should be buying seats on commercial providers.”

    Fabulous. I think you don’t go far enough. It is widely known and understood that I go too far.

    “But I do not agree with you that NASA is the devil incarnate and inflammatory words never helps a reasoned arguement.”

    It depends on your objective. My objective is to move the debate a long way toward NASA being much less involved in impeding and preventing the human settlement of space. I don’t think our work in getting the space act amended in 1988 to have NASA actually work for the human settlement of space made any difference. They pretend to report every once in a while on what they are condescending to do in that area, but we are no closer to an economically viable human civilisation beyond Earth than we were in 1988.

    Meanwhile, Space Industries was never allowed to build and launch the Industrial Space Facility. External Tanks Corp was never allowed to modify any external tanks or launch them. Geostar was run out of business by the Navy’s global positioning satellite system. I could go on and on for pages.

    It took Cato the Elder a very long time, ending every speech in the Roman Senate with the words “Carthago delenda est” to incite a sufficiency of Punic wars to eliminate Carthage. Should he have been more temperate and moderate? Not from a Roman point of view. If one overlooks the burnt sacrifice of small children, the Carthaginians seem to have had a healthy penchant for ocean exploration and a vigorous trading empire. The world would be a different place if Carthage had not been destroyed. Then again, if the Romans had never invaded Syracusa, Archimedes might have gotten the word out about calculus around 2,000 years before Newton and Leibniz. Ya never know.

  • By the way, Vladislaw, you might want to study some of the history of space flight. I know, actual homework, it is so tedious. But, all the facts are online.

    “north koreans, Iran, Japan, Europe, Brazil, India, not already been launching 30 years ago”

    Europe. Arianespace was founded in 1980, so not quite 30 years ago. (Then again, their precursor organisation put the first Ariane rocket up in December 1979.) But Britain is a country in Europe. The British were launching in 1969 to 1971, so 40 years ago. Check out the Prospero satellite, for example. Russia is a country in Europe. You might have heard about them launching the very first satellite, Sputnik, in 1957. That was 52 years ago. They also put Yuri Gagarin into space, though guys like Jim Oberg think not in orbit, back in 1961.

    You may have heard of the European Launcher Development Organisation which built a Europa rocket for launch in 1967. A distinguished record of launch failures seems to have followed.

    India did launch its first Satellite Launch Vehicle in 1979. ISRO. You can look it up.

    Japan launched its first satellite, the Osumi, in 1970. Institute of Space and Astronautical Science. You could… look it up.

    Brazil began work on rocket launches in 1964. They have developed their own satellites, one of which was launched in 1998 by an Orbital Sciences Pegasus, and others by China Long March rockets.

    You might want to take a close look at the various impediments, international sanctions, and treaties which make it difficult for Iran and North Korea to get rocket technology. But you probably support such sanctions and regimes, regardless of who gets hurt.

    You may also wish to examine the very long history of Japanese, Canadian, European, and Russian attempts to cooperate with NASA on various projects, including the space station. The list of treaty obligations the USA has violated with Native American Indians is only slightly longer than the number of space projects they have failed to complete their end of. It is a rather tawdry record.

    For example, whatever happened to the Solar Polar Orbiter?

  • So, to summarise, yes, apparently space access is cheap and easy, and countries like Japan, India, and Europe were launching 30 years, or more, ago.

    The British Interplanetary Society designed a lunar landing mission in the 1930s. The technologies used by Apollo followed some similar patterns. And Werner von Braun lifted a huge amount of technology from Robert Goddard patents from before WW2. This rocketry stuff is very old and very well understood technology. Really backward countries like Soviet Russia were able to put satellites into orbit 52 years ago. It isn’t technologically difficult. It isn’t all that dangerous, especially if one uses the same design as the Soviets did, with incremental development.

    The impediments to human spaceflight and the settlement of the Solar system are not technical. I suspect that they aren’t economic, either. The main impediments seem to be legal, political, and bureaucratic.

    Which is why, moreover, it is my view that NASA must be destroyed. NASA delenda est. QED.

  • Vladislaw

    Jim,

    You wrote “NASA delenda est” as the temporary Administrator of NASA, I contend that you are then considered an authority on space issues. As such, writing as an authority on space asking you a background question is more then approptiate, rather then if you are writing a simple opinion.

    You ask:
    “How many hotels have you built on earth? How many space structures have you built? What are your qualifications for building lunar hotels?”

    In 1896, how many airplanes had Wilbur and Orville Wright built? If you want to see a formal business plan for building lunar hotels, I’ll get back to you when I’m looking to capitalise such a business.

    Here I was not asking about the 100 year old history of flight but I was asking you, as an authority, what experience you had. As you didn’t answer what I actually asked you I am left guessing.

    The subject was your essay, and in the essay it was manned flight that was said to be cheap to achieve. I am aware of the launches made by India and Japan, but it was my understanding it was manned flight not rocket launches in general. None of the countries I had listed had achieved independant human space flight.. So to say they have made satellite launches is apples and oranges when it was manned flight as the central topic.

    The reason I asked for citiations was because your essay was filled with accusations but no citiations. It is not up to the reader to “have no trouble finding dozens to hundreds” of them, the onus is the person making the accusations to present them as their evidence, not for the reader to try and find them for you to prove your claims.

    “You seem to have difficulty believing in aerospace contractor corruption”

    I do believe there is corruption at all levels of government, I believe I can safely say there has been corruption since humanity learned how to write it down and record it. But again, this isn’t about me, it is about your essay and uncited claims.

    I do know about troubles with Rotary Rocket, from Interview with Gary Hudson in 2003 to a long list of others. But again, it isn’t about me and what I know or don’t know. It is about the author of an essay, acting as an authority, to provide clear citations to claims. You have to assume your reader does not follow the issues close enough and so citations are a must with every claim laid out.

    As a regular ranter about the follies of NASA, congress and the exec. branch it surprises me the take you making of this. NASA is an agency that cannot do anything without a purse of coins. That purse comes from congress along with all of it’s mandates.

    you said:
    “I have always wanted to go live on the Moon. I have wanted to build hotels on the Moon.”

    So I asked you why you are not trying to build your own launch system and you answered:

    “Why should I? ”

    Because you want to goto the moon?

    In another answer you said I do not read carefully enough and you say:

    “No, I don’t say that. You don’t seem to bother to read carefully. What I am saying is that, e.g., Richard Branson was denied an entry visa to look at the designs of his Spaceship Two because he’s a foreign national. Talk to Gary Hudson about the impediments placed in the way of Rotary Rocket. You could try talking to Gerald Bull or George Koopman, but, alas, they are among those who didn’t live through the process of government opposition to their dreams of spaceflight.”

    Well I DID read “NASA delenda est” very carefully and NONE of what you just said was contained in that essay. So maybe you should read my questions closer and provide those citations IN the essay, rather then claim I am not reading the essay close enough and missed those.

    You may also be surprised that I do agree with a lot of what is wrong with individuals inside NASA and congress and exec branch when it comes to spaceflight. But just as guns don’t kill people the person pulling the trigger does, NASA, as an agency doesn’t kill people, decisions made by individuals inside NASA do. There are a lot of good people working for NASA and to say every single one is a murderous villian concscieously trying to slaughter everyone that gets on a shuttle everytime is .. over the top.

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