It is, perhaps, a little surprising that nearly a week after the White House announced that it would conduct an independent review of NASA’s human spaceflight plans, few additional details about that review have been announced. Beyond the chairman, Norm Augustine, the other members of the panel haven’t been announced, nor any additional details about that review beyond what Augustine conveyed in a brief telecon with reporters last Friday. With only about 90 days to perform their work, one assumes those details will be forthcoming very soon.
In the meantime, though, the lack of detail has allowed people to make their own, widely varying guesses about what the panel will conclude. Sen. Bill Nelson said that he expects the panel to endorse the current Constellation architecture. “Then if the president will get behind pushing that, we can speed up development of the new rocket,” Nelson said, according to WDBO radio. Robert Lightfoot, acting director of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, told the Huntsville Times that it will be “a very fair study”. Curiously, he adds that not only will Marshall have a member on Augustine’s panel, “all the centers will” (which makes you wonder how independent this panel is, if correct.) On the other hand, in an essay in this week’s issue of The Space Review, Michael Huang fears the worst for human spaceflight given Augustine’s work on his 1990 commission, which emphasized space science over human spaceflight.
And from the Department of Bad Timing, Aviation Week published an interview with Augustine, but with nothing about the panel he would be chairing. Presumably the interview took place prior to Augustine’s appointment to run the panel, with no opportunity to follow up before publication.
Michael Huang’s column in Space Review is nothing short of fear-mongering based on his own political allegiances. As someone else put it, “It is an Obama hit job.” He has already drawn up the conclusions that President Obama is using the review to kill manned spaceflight. Frankly, this is the second meager column that he has written offering little more than a bunch of clichéd suppositions that liberals and President Obama just naturally hate any kind of human exploration.
Hm. And your response, Gary, is perhaps covering up problems based upon your own clearly stated political allegiance. Sorry, but I don’t think a commentator whose name links to Daily Kos can be trusted to be fair regarding criticisms of Obama.
Blue,
You are welcome to think otherwise, but
1. The last 2 paragraphs demonstrate the hit job nature, because it all goes back to that first education proposal delayed some funding. Many thing have changed, but thats still clinged to by those who see Obama as “evil.” Jim Muncy, who lets be fair, is hardly the bleeding heart liberal, has defended the review, as have other people, as damn necessary. Hell, Rand Simberg’s recent piece indicited NASA and its plans much more than anything Obama has said.
2. Just because someone has political leanings in favor of Obama, doesn’t mean they agree with him all the time (regardless what someone like Glenn Beck says). Go look at Dkos, and you’ll see what I mean.
@Blue
And yet I am a liberal, progressive Democrat who supports the Vision for Space Exploration and the Constellation program, an unpopular program among many of my fellow liberals as well as a number of Republicans. I do not bring up partisan politics when discussing the merits of the ESAS or Constellation. Nor do I inject politics when we talk about CxP versus EELV or Direct. So clearly, my political allegiances does not always influence my views. What Michael Huang has written is obviously partisan and what is worse he really has no evidence to support his views. Rand Simberg is very partisan as well, but he does make good points about the space program even when I don’t necessarily agree with him.
Heh! This is true
And yet I am a liberal, progressive Democrat who supports the Vision for Space Exploration and the Constellation program, an unpopular program among many of my fellow liberals as well as a number of Republicans.
Being a Direct fan-boy myself I often needle Gary over his continued attachment to Ares V
As for the Michael Huang piece, I see little evidence for his supposed conclusions but if in early September 2009 the Administration does announce a plan to end US human spaceflight, you can count on me to protest that decision.
Political partisanship arguments distract everyone from the task at hand. They are not constructive, rather destructive. Those who do that do not have the interest of our national space program at heart. They only care about themselves and their self importance. Politically partisan driven arguments are irreconcilable and therefore useless.
Rand Simberg is very partisan as well
Just out of curiosity, I’m dying to know just what party it is that I’m a partisan of?
I will be right there next to Bill protesting if any decision was made to cancel human spaceflight. Even if he is wrong about Ares V!
@Rand Simberg
I know what party you aren’t part of and that is the Democratic Party.
I should add, Gary, that while I haven’t seen anything that I would necessarily consider partisan from you on space topics (other than defending Obama, which is certainly your right), it isn’t conducive to the discussion to use Kos as your own URL in commenting in a policy group. Markos doesn’t need the hits, and all it does is draw exactly the kind of comment that you just did, and create a distraction from the space discussion. If you had your own “progressive” space diary there, as Ferris does, it would be different matter.
I know what party you aren’t part of and that is the Democratic Party.
Well, you’ve got that right. I outgrew that in high school, about the time we quit going to the moon (that was a coincidence, though, not a cause).
But that makes me an anti-partisan, not a partisan…
@Rand Simberg
My apologies, here is an updated URL that links my page on DKos.
Ah, so that’s you. Why the nym? Or why aren’t you using it here, as you do on NASA Watch?
Why the nym?
One of the reasons I ask is, cuz I thought from the “Nella” that you were a girl…
Or are you, and is “Gary” the nym?
On the Internet, no one can tell you’re a dog, or your gender…
@Rand Simberg
Lol! When I first signed onto Daily Kos which was the first daily blog I ever joined everybody on there has a unique blog name for different reasons. So I came up with Nella Selim which is the reverse of my middle and last name. Simple and unique. Easy to Google. I also posted my email address on my DKos page so it was obvious what was my real name. When I joined other blogs I continued to use my Dkos name as a way of uniquely identifying my comments and keeping track of them. Well, then Keith Cowing over at NASA Watch outed me a couple of times after we traded a few barbs. So I simply switched to my real name. It is funny that people automatically assume that Nella must be a woman.
Well, sorry, Nella, but that’s the way the language rolls…
You might have had a better chance if you’d named yourself “Nello…”
You know, the masculine thing, and all.
Anyway, glad to know you, Gary.
But when you signed up for a Kos diary, was GaryNiles unavailable?
To me, these arbitrary rules are the reason to get a blog of your own, and not be part of a “community…” What does being part of Kos really buy you? Be your own man….err…woman…errrrr…whatever….
Same advice to Ferris, by the way…
And I like you both, even when we disagree on space policy, or policy in general.
I would also add, as an old man’s “get off my lawn” comment, that “diary” is a dumb name for what people at Kos do. It’s like Markos is trying to establish some kind of proprietary “progressive” brand on the Internet.
They’re blogs.
Deal.
On the other hand, I’m not a blogger. I’m (in the tradition of Lileks) a “bloggist.”
Rand – when I was considering how to start, my decision to go witha community blog was based on 2 points
1 – A community blog gives you better odds of more people seeing it
2 – this is particularly true if you are after the attention of a particular community.
When I started, there wasn’t much being talked about with regards to space within the liberal blog-o-sphere. Starting my own blog would most likely get labeled a space blog, and been seen by space people, but not by liberals, progressives and members of the Democratic party.
Hope that explains my reasons.
When I started, there wasn’t much being talked about with regards to space within the liberal blog-o-sphere. Starting my own blog would most likely get labeled a space blog, and been seen by space people, but not by liberals, progressives and members of the Democratic party.
Not to argue with you about the rationale, but how has that worked out?
I’ll tell you, for one, that I’d have been more likely to link to you if you weren’t a subblog under Kos. It didn’t stop me from linking, but it did raise the bar…
Of course, you’re also more likely to get links if you post more often, regardless of the URL.
Not to argue with you about the rationale, but how has that worked out?
I would suggest that it has worked out pretty good. My piece in the Space Review earlier this year gives much more detail. But I do think it worked out well
I realize you would be more likely to link to me if I was elsewhere, as might be the case with other people. But as you were already part of the space community, and you weren’t a liberal, you weren’t the target audience.
As for posting more often – I would like to, but I want my pieces to be quality, and not just quickie stuff (which I could do if it was my own blog, yes I know), and time is not always my friend.
It is something I am trying to remedy
I realize you would be more likely to link to me if I was elsewhere, as might be the case with other people.
Actually, it’s not at all a factor in whether or not I link to you. I just think you’d be more distinctive if you weren’t just another of thousands of Kos “diaries.”
Actually, it’s not at all a factor in whether or not I link to you. I just think you’d be more distinctive if you weren’t just another of thousands of Kos “diaries.â€
Interesting, as I see things quite the opposite – being more distinctive also means that you have to work much harder to get traffic to see your points.
Again, for me, it all came down to how to engage the non-space or amatuer space people – a community blog gets you more eyes.
a community blog gets you more eyes.
Why? How? What would bring them to your particular blog, among the thousand of other Kos “diaries”?
@Rand Simberg
Ferris makes an excellent case for community blogging. If we were to just have our own blogs then we would only attract others who were interested in space. Essentially we would be preaching to the choir. If we want to convince more people that space is relevant and that becoming a spacefaring society is a worthwhile endeavor for humanity, then we have to go where there are larger numbers of people who may not necessarily be interested in space and NASA but would be willing to read the posts. Since one of our fellow bloggers has been posting regularly on Dkos, interest in space seems to have risen. Also, in the last month several space and NASA related stories have made the recommended list which gives the story a higher profile on DKos. I recently posted on NASA Watch the results of a poll from one of those posts that showed that three quarters of the readers supported human space exploration. That result is very encouraging and says that being part of a community blog is a smart policy.
You still haven’t explained how being part of a community blog gets you more eyeballs, even within that community.
Many people log onto the Dkos homepage every day – we know they have over a hundred thosand active bloggers – combined that with lurkers, and so forth, many people are looking at the Dkos front page.
When you post something, your title is on the front page, for some amount of time. This means your title is seen by all those people who are looking at the front page. Now granted, all they see is a title, but sometimes that will get their attention, and its easy for them to get into it and read your post – A great example could be seen by some of my more creative title (which usually came up during the election), like “Does Barack Obama plan to gut human spaceflight?” and “Does Barack Obama’s space debate = Cheney’s energy taskforce?” (you can imagine the responses I got for the 2nd one, but it brought in a lot of readers).
OTOH, for someone to go to transterrestrial mussings, or space politics, they have to KNOW the URL for both of them, or they have to search for them – say what you want about Dkos politics, but at least when it comes to the web page itself, its big enough that major television shows reference it (ala Bill O’Reily and Keith Olbermann).
In short – the homepage of Dkos is heavily trafficed throughout the day (thousands at least, more like hundreds of thousands or even millions), my title for my post will appear on the homepage for some part of the day, therefore, my title by itself will at least be seen by many people per day. And that means they have to at least consider whether they want to click it and read it, or not.
In short – the homepage of Dkos is heavily trafficed throughout the day (thousands at least, more like hundreds of thousands or even millions), my title for my post will appear on the homepage for some part of the day, therefore, my title by itself will at least be seen by many people per day. And that means they have to at least consider whether they want to click it and read it, or not.
So, how does that translate into page views?
Ultimately, how many people see your stuff is a result of its quality and how many others link to it, and that’s pretty independent of whether or not you’re part of a “community.”
Ultimately, how many people see your stuff is a result of its quality and how many others link to it, and that’s pretty independent of whether or not you’re part of a “community.â€
Actually, no,its not. Because, you see, by being a part of the community, the dkos front page, with its thosands of people looking at it, has linked to my blog.
If you have to choose between 1 link with thosands of people checking it, or 5 links with 10 people who might see it, well, I’ll take the first.
And its not like posting at Dkos precludes people from linking to it – they still can. After all, you did
As for the quality of writing, I must say I remain suprised at what will bring people in, and what they don’t read.