Sorry, no, it just shows my knowledge of history. And you lack of knowledge of ideologies.

Your viewpoint is almost like saying “When Castro was washing dishes in Washington, we could have headed off the Cuban revolution had he been taken into custody”

What a moronic analogy. It was quite clear at the time how dangerous bin Laden was.

Rand Simberg wrote @ December 3rd, 2009 at 12:52 pm

The irony is that apparently the closest we have got to killing OBL, was when Clinton tossed the cruise missiles at him.

No, Clinton had, and turned down, an opportunity to take him into custody…

Rand your rants on off topic post not withstanding I’ll bite just this once because what you have said is completly out of context and shows your right wing ideology.

First I noted that the closest anyone got to killing OBL was Clinton. That is a fact. We almost got him in Afland and the right wing went mostly nuts when Clinton tossed the cruise missiles.

Then you bring up the Sudan thing.

Your statement is illustrative of right wing thinking. AT best when there was this discussion between Sudan and the US with SAudi ARabia about OBL…and it was never a clear cut offer…this was when OBL was not wanted for anything in the US.

Plus it would have required a viewpoint from Clinton that no one really had on OBL in that time frame.

Your viewpoint is almost like saying “When Castro was washing dishes in Washington, we could have headed off the Cuban revolution had he been taken into custody”

I know what you believe, and thats your right…but it is not conducive with the facts. and that is my point on this.

BTW you are a charlatan for complaining about off topic post and being the one who veers so frequently off topic.

Robert G. Oler

Now maybe you think that Orion/Ares will be available before the end of ISS or that CCDev or COTS-D will succeed then of course my argument above (regardless of the soft power idea) is moot…

Oh well…

Which is why your view is nuts, at least with respect to me. But we’ve come to expect that from you. I am not “right wing.”

The irony is that apparently the closest we have got to killing OBL, was when Clinton tossed the cruise missiles at him.

No, Clinton had, and turned down, an opportunity to take him into custody.

Off topic…(on topic is next)

I dont blame Bush for 9/11. Gore (who I think would have been a far better president, but we will never know of course, even assuming the challenges remain the same) probably would have had 9/11 happen on his watch…and in my view the right wing (Rand/Whittington/and the national players) would have said the EXACT opposite of what they said in defending Bush…Even if Gore had done everything that Bush did.

My “gripe” with the right (and left) wing is that their assessment of facts is colored completly by their political bent. To say again. If Gore had been POTUS and everything had played out exactly as it did with Bush, including the folks who came “to the ranch” and gave the briefing…the folks who with Bush say “he was only in office 9 months” would have been saying “it was all Gore’s fault”.

Having said that. It is fair completly fair to say that Bush dealt with the run up to 9/11 and the workings of his administration in much the same way as he dealt with everything else…ie he and his genius saw it through their predetermined ideology. You cannot go watch Wolfie testifying about the number of troops needed to garrison Iraq post
Saddam fall, compare it to what Shinseki said and say Wolfie was either stupid or was not trying to snow the American public. As it turned out almost everything that they did in their administration was seen through ideology and was wrong.

The irony is that apparently the closest we have got to killing OBL, was when Clinton tossed the cruise missiles at him. Something folks like Mark Whittington just went ape over.

(as an aside, I voted for McCain but no one has been more doubting of Obama’s afland policy then I…see my facebook page).

On topic

“So was it really any cheaper than going it alone? ” I dont think such a study would tell much…because I dont think that NASA could have built ISS or Freedom for that matter. I dont think that they could for the same reason I dont think Ares/Constellation will ever get built. or more correctly get built for a price we can afford.

From 1984 to the time ISS was on stage, the entire history of the station was one design floundering after another. They (NASA) never could put together a design that was practical for the money available…If ISS had not pushed Freedom aside, and the effort kept going…I dont think we would ahve much in orbit today.

Robert G. Oler

Just for clarity, I don’t blame Clinton for 9/11 either, but I also don’t blame Bush. I think it was a systemic failure of our intelligence and law enforcement apparatus at the federal level, probably brought on by the shear size of the bureaucracy. In fact, in many cases the local law enforcement apparati worked fine. The infamous “Phoenix memo”, the flight instructor who reported Moussawi (sp?), the 20th hijacker, for asking to learn how to fly a plane but not how to land to the local authorities in MN, etc. There’s no doubt plenty of other examples of local oficials who did their jobs well and were let down by the “big wigs in D.C.”

Moving on, back on topic…
As has already been hashed out by others, there were some strategic foreign policy goals for including the Russians in the ISS. I doubt that there really are any strategic goals or benefits that could be derived from working with China on space at this point. Some might say cost sharing, but how well has that really worked out on the ISS? There are some costs incurred by working with other countries such as flying to them for face to face meetings (you can’t do everything over email, afterall), just as an example. So was it really any cheaper than going it alone? I’m not sure anyone has ever really looked into that.

(and on thread…sorry for the deviation)

A few points

First there is no one who opposed Russian cooperation on ISS more then I. While I look back on the op eds in the news papers and Space News/Av Leak and think wow those were good ideas…to be fair Psycho Dan gets the A plus award on the station. While I (and some others) would argue about doing the station differently and that would be more efficient etc.

If one was going to do the station how it was going to be done (and that is regretful) the reality in my view is that 1) the Russians were essential and 2) they were probably key to getting it on orbit.

In retrospect NASA is not capable of major space projects that it actually “builds” or “manages” anymore. The station should have shown us that. If we were going to wait for NASA and its contractors to get their act together on things like the Service Module (which is still a vital apart of the station) we would still be waiting. The Russians bring a bit of technical reality to the effort that NASA has not been capable of in years…and of your 1-3 reasons, I honestly think that the only one really that worked was 3…except I dont think that we kept the design bureaus out of proliferation, but I think we kept them firmly in the space business.

My impression “today” is that we have more then gotten our money’s worth out of the Russians and indeed most of the partners. I doubt that NASA and US contractors could have put together most of the things that the Europeans have actually built. At least for the price that we have paid. The NASA/Contractor relationship is just completly dysfunctional.

Second. IN my view anyone who thought that Ivan would end up with a “Jeffersonian” democracy was as stupid as the folks who thought Iraq would end up with one (Oh wait in some instances they were the same people). But how the Russian government is evolving doesnt really “twist” me much BECAUSE I honestly think that it is what MOST Russians want.

I am sure that there are a lot of “real democracy” people in Russia, and of course our policy has shafted them…but my read on the country is that what they are evolving to is “what works for them”. (Iraq will if we are lucky evolve to something that “works for them” )

I think that the PRC is something that works for most Chinese…the difference in my view is that 1) it doesnt work for this country, and 2) I dont see any real need to cooperate with them. I’ll address the first part because you have I think covered the second.

While the Russian government is at times annoying (see Georgia) unlike the Chinese theory of economics on the back of cheap labor…it doesnt terminally affect The Republic.

As long as the policies of this nation (the US) allow US companies to ship the manufactoring base overseas (where the middle class thrives) and then sale those goods to Americans…with no hope or ability to reverse the process (Ie we build things that the PRC people buy) …it is a mortal threat to our country…more then anything OBL or even the USSR in its heyday could match.

I think that cycle must end, and if that means we are “not nice” with the PRC thats fine with me. If we cut the chord, no other country in the world can have its consumer base used, as ours has been to support their government and the Reds will start returning back to their normal size.

Hence I would not cooperate with them on telling the time of day.

Robert G. oler

I appreciate your point on microsats. It’s not clear to me that the powers that be have thought through all the possibilities or consequences, but they open up new architectural possibilities and are intriguing for a range of potential roles and missions. I don’t see that stealth/detectability is the main driver of their potential as ASATs. I’d be more concerned about the possibility of packing a boatload of them into a very small number of launch vehicles, which would represent a signficant development in the ability to stick a lot of nasty stuff in orbit very, very quickly. Salvo attacks become more feasible.

Anyway, I haven’t seen a compelling strategic argument that it’s in the US interest to pursue closer space cooperation with China, by which I mean the kind we have pursued with ESA and Japan for decades and with Russia for the last 15+ years. Suggestions for closer cooperation have a “because we can” feel to them or because folks envision some sort of grand space initiative, without identifying the benefits of such an initiative.

With Russia, the Clinton Administration envisioned very real and substantive benefits of: 1) getting the Russians to cancel a deal to transfer rocket technology to India; 2) keeping Russian design bureaus from going into the proliferation business to stay afloat; 3) accelerating the deployment, and reducing the cost, of the ISS. I’d say they achieved goal #1 (although I heard that the technology still was transferred under the table, never saw much evidence, though.) Failed in goals #2 and 3. They also envisioned the partnership as symbolizing Russia’s joining the community of liberal democracies. It was a nice thought and a valid symbol until the Russians handed their democracy over to Vladimir Putin. From the perspective of the space program, we did learn a ton from them and secured a second means of getting people up and down to ISS. (Of course, Soyuz enabled the US to duck its obligations to develop a CRV, so one could argue Soyuz was a net harm by serving as a crutch for far too long.) On the whole, and in hindsight, I think the cons outweighed the pros, but you can’t accuse the Clinton Admin of not having a solid rationale for cooperation.

Don’t see it in the case of China. They’re not about to slow down their military modernization, change their trade policies, or suddenly become more cooprative vis-a-vis Iran and North Korea because of a space partnership. So, I don’t see strategic benefits.

From the perspective of the space program, I don’t see much benefit there either. Other than some wishful thinking, there’s no evidence that they’re capable of, or interested in, helping us accelerate plans to set up a lunar base or go back to the moon. Can they solve our resource problem for us? No, since they’re not about to give us cash. Can/should we offload critical moon-Mars capabilities on them and reduce our own costs? Sure, but if it’s critical path stuff (which is all that even the most optimistic NASA budgets would fund), why do the Chinese need us? So, to my mind, there’s not a lot to be said for close cooperation in human spaceflight. Even if you cobbled something together, would it still be desirable in a few years when the Chinese next crack down on Tibet, democracy protestors, etc. etc. etc.? If civil space still contributes to soft power, it seems to me that being in bed with an authoritarian regime tends to send the wrong message.

Things might be different in space and earth science missions, which are typically one-shot deals and don’t require the kind of long-term marriage that true cooperation in human spaceflight demands. As I mentioned earlier, by coordinating some activities, it might be possible to contribute more to the general cause of increasing the sum total of human knowledge than would activities undertaken in isolation from one another and to do so more cost effectively. Such possiblities would need to be considered on a case-by-case basis.

Of course, all of that assumes you can satisfactorily address tech transfer and intellectual property problems and develop coordinated activities that don’t significantly contribute to China’s defense industrial base.

One doesn’t have to be part of the “right wing” (what an idiotic use of the phrase) to point out that Clinton turned down an opportunity to take Osama into custody. This “right wing” this and “right wing” that is why I can’t take any of your political nonsense seriously.