Comments on: Gold medals: yes. Autographs: no. http://www.spacepolitics.com/2009/07/23/gold-medals-yes-autographs-no/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=gold-medals-yes-autographs-no Because sometimes the most important orbit is the Beltway... Wed, 17 Sep 2014 13:35:41 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.0.38 By: Space Politics » Astronauts to get Congressional medals today http://www.spacepolitics.com/2009/07/23/gold-medals-yes-autographs-no/#comment-357686 Wed, 16 Nov 2011 11:34:33 +0000 http://www.spacepolitics.com/?p=2473#comment-357686 […] medals were authorized in legislation passed by Congress back in 2009. As the Orlando Sentinel noted last month, it’s not clear why it took Congress two years to […]

]]> By: John Malkin http://www.spacepolitics.com/2009/07/23/gold-medals-yes-autographs-no/#comment-262474 Thu, 23 Jul 2009 21:27:36 +0000 http://www.spacepolitics.com/?p=2473#comment-262474 Last night I was at the 40th Anniversary of Apollo 11 celebration in Chicago presented by Adler Planetarium. The guests were Buzz Aldrin and Jim Lovell with Buzz signing copies of his books after the evening’s discussion. Buzz said that he would like to see the US in partnership with international partners go to Mars with the first missions to its moons. He didn’t see the value in a moon base or going someplace, we had already gone. Jim Lovell was more for moon first but didn’t go into deep detail. On another note Jim claiming he was pulling Buzz’s chain, Jim’s response to doing Apollo over again — “Let Apollo 10 at least touch down”. It was a very enjoyable evening with Buzz buzzing through autographing about 300 books in 1 ½ hours. The event was sold out. One of the organizers said Charles Bolden was to moderate but pulled out due to his tight schedule. Also they tried to get Neil Armstrong but it’s very tough and he has 7 different criteria to choose which events he attends. I guess Gold medals met them.

]]> By: Charles In Houston http://www.spacepolitics.com/2009/07/23/gold-medals-yes-autographs-no/#comment-262418 Thu, 23 Jul 2009 17:10:13 +0000 http://www.spacepolitics.com/?p=2473#comment-262418 The capricious nature of these Acts shows that it is mostly for bragging rights for the members of Congress. They can send out press releases saying that they awarded a medal – while avoiding the subject of the sorry state of the nation’s space program.

Does the Apollo 11 crew need or want another medal? How did John Glenn’s name get in there? Where is he gonna put another medal of his own? How can you award the Apollo 11 astronauts and not include the rest of the Apollo crews? And then the Gemini and Mercury crews?

If the Congress would spend less self-congratulatory time awarding unwanted medals they might get more work done on the Federal budget. Then again maybe we do want them to keep their hands off as much as possible.

And a part of the motivation for this response was the rare chance to use the word capricious in a post.

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