Paul Spudis is an advocate for an immediate return to the Moon. Bob Zubrin, by comparison, sees the Moon as something of an unnecessary detour to the real goal, Mars. However, they both agree on something: their opposition to the White House’s plan for NASA. In an op-ed in Tuesday’s Washington Times, they note that while “we are known for holding different opinions on the order and importance of specific objectives in space, we are united in our concern over this move to turn away from the Vision for Space Exploration.”
Specifically, they’re concerned over plans to abandon Constellation and focus on commercial crew and technology development, which they believe threatens the agency’s existing spaceflight infrastructure. “By adopting the new program, we will lose – probably irretrievably – this space-faring infrastructure and, most certainly, our highly trained, motivated and experienced work force,” they claim. “It will be prohibitively expensive and difficult to restart our manned program after five to 10 years of agency navel-gazing, effectively signaling the end of America’s manned space program and our leadership in space.”
They argue that NASA does best when given specific goals and then develops the systems needed to achieve them. “The administration claims it is setting daring goals – the asteroids and Mars – but has posited them so far in the future that no real, focused work needs to be done toward their achievement during this or the next presidential term,” they note (a statement Zubrin also made Saturday at the International Space Development Conference in Chicago.)
Meanwhile, Dennis Wingo, another advocate for lunar exploration and development, seeks a compromise between the White House plan and opponents who wish to keep Constellation. “[Neil] Armstrong and [Gene] Cernan are 100% right when they say that the new plan is unfocused in its execution and uninformed in the finding that ‘We have been there and done that’ on the Moon,” he argues in a SpaceRef essay. “Unfortunately, Constellation was never going to get us to the Moon or anywhere else in a sustainable manner.”
Wingo advocates a return to the Moon, but one done in a more sustainable manner, including the use of in situ resource utilization. “If a lunar outpost is utilized that incorporates, as a core principle, ISRU, then exploitation along with the new plan for commercial crew in LEO and technology development for sustainable exploration beyond LEO” would bring Armstrong and Cernan on board in support of it. “Therefore, the table is set for compromise if Armstrong and Cernan are willing to abandon an unworkable Program of Record for the new plan – and the Moon.”
“If Congress is truly concerned that we are abandoning our spaceflight heritage, then they need to fund the new plan before October 1 while mandating the Moon and a strong presence there,” Wingo concludes. Given that in the least contentious of recent times getting a budget approved by the beginning of the new fiscal year has still proven impossible, it seems likely that even if a compromise like that was made we’ll still have to wait until late this calendar year (or later) for a final appropriations bill.
Funny how none of these people tell us how the taxpayers are going to pay for their fantasies.
Polls for years have shown that a majority of Americans want less government spending on human space flight and want the private sector to pick up more of the cost.
This is fairly weird, in a number of ways. VSE was centered on Mars as an ultimate human destination, as is the current plan. This piece seems to have heartburn over the fact that the current plan has no date by which we should have humans on Mars. Which is weird, because VSE didn’t either.
If implemented, they say, the current plan will guarantee a decade of non-achievement. But at least by credibly promoting access to space through commercial carriers, the cadence of achievement as proposed now will be higher than it would have been with Constellation.
The piece is a yawner in what has become a tradition in Constellation defenders. Where Constellation is confused with VSE, and where the architecture is promoted, but the costs aren’t covered. OK, our nation *should* be paying a lot more for human space flight. But it isn’t, and won’t. Get over it and make the best of it. Spudis and Zubrin can’t.
Aside from what has turned out to be an unaffordable date for putting us back on the Moon, VSE remains a powerful and inspiring vision, and the new plan seems quite consistent with it.
The Vision is indeed inspiring; however, being inspired by something, anything, and then putting resources into making it happen are two distinct phenomena.
As a nation we haven’t bought into it putting resources into the Vision consistent with anything resembling movement towards achieving it’s goals, at least not in any measurable sense.
Say what you will about the PoR; they at least had a measure of how far behind schedule and over budget they were in reaching VSE Goals.
I”ve not seen anything that will let Amer-icans know how far behind/ahead of schedule or over/under budget Obamaspace is wrt achieving VSE goals. Which is perfect if you are avoiding being held accountable.
@ Stephen C. Smith
Polls for years have shown that a majority of Americans want less government spending on human space flight and want the private sector to pick up more of the cost.
Other than by selling advertising, how do you propose that the private sector pick up more of the cost?
For the record, I’ve been saying for years space dreamers need revenue streams that do not flow through “Uncle Sugar” and that the sale of media rights, marketing and advertising (as well as tourism) are the largest potential markets for human spaceflight that I see.
= = =
Constellation is very much a dead end, however FY2011 as it currently exists won’t ever get us out past LEO, either.
The cost issue is best addressed through reapportionment. Most of NASA’s funding is dedicated to non-core activities. Why does NASA fund earth sciences when they are already funded through the NSF or NOAA? What about NASA’s pointless life sciences research? Also, NASA’s Mars science program has become a disaster with the MSL, otherwise known as ‘Battlestar Galactica’. The $ billions carved from these programs would be a great down payment on robust HSF.
“Most of NASA’s funding is dedicated to non-core activities. ”
That doesn’t make a lot of sense. Human space flight is not specifically part of the Space Act, and that Act is what defines the agency. Science efforts you refer to are very much part of the Space Act. So how is it that HSF is a “core activity” for the agency and these other efforts aren’t?
The real problem, of course, is that people who bitch and moan about “all that money we spend in space” haven’t the *first* real clue about the ROI of the money we’ve invested in space development over the last 55 years (3-4 times the stock market, though admittedly not quite as good as hedge funds :-), or the ways in which the lives of every single person on this planet have benefited *markedly* from the spinoffs of rapidly accelerated space development.
Just as an example, the amount of diesel saved by *just the US commercial trucking fleet* in a given year because of GPS aided dispatch is something like *2 to 3 times* NASA’s annual budget.
So before you use finances to support your anti-space arguments, please know what you’re talking about?
Baylink – the problem with that argument is
1. It isn’t HSF that provided GPS
2. Spinoffs are really the 2nd weakest argument for Human spaceflight. Much of the technology didn’t require sending people into space to develop
How do fuel savings due to GPS dispatch of commercial trucking, compare to the *USAF’s* annual budget? You know, the organization actually responsible for GPS?
It is very, very hard to justify NASA’s budget on the basis of spin-offs and the like, to anyone who isn’t already on our side. It goes from very, very hard to outright impossible, when you start making this sort of basic mistake.
I should add that I believe Bigelow’s “sovereign client” approach has considerable merit as well. Selling human spaceflight to other nations that cannot afford a stand-alone HSF program is a business case I believe can close.
That said, I do not see much of a role for NASA in that business model.
There were many parts of Constellation that were broken, but now we propose to replace it by some muddled pastiche (I have been looking for an occasion to work that word in!) of technology development programs. The grand goals of the current Administration are far in the future and poorly thought out as well. This idea of an asteroid mission is crazy – we are far from having the technology to visit any known asteroid. A good article in Spaceflight Now today (about VASIMR) summarizes the problems we face with that. We need a program that maintains some part of the Human Space Flight corporate knowledge – while we transition to commercial boosters.
The Flagship Technology Development programs are all targets to be sacrificed on the altar of the Federal Deficit – they will be low hanging fruit to be picked off one at a time in various committees. While we spend freely on High Speed Rail and other boondoggles.
Following the current proposed plan – we will wander in the wilderness for years, and when we wake up the rest of the world will have standardized on the Russian hardware (docking adapters, navigation, etc) and we will be forced to get compatible with them. The Europeans and Japanese are now concluding that the Russians are the reliable partners in space.
Ferris wrote:
“2. Spinoffs are really the 2nd weakest argument for Human spaceflight. Much of the technology didn’t require sending people into space to develop”
I generally agree. But, neither did those technologies invent themselves and there is not necessarily a reason to believe that at least a portion of them would have been invented in the absence of a space program.
There is an argument that the need to overcome complex challenges pulls the development of new technologies along and changes the state of the art, enabling others to apply those technologies to new things. Warfare often gets tagged as a major technology driver. Seems to me that human space exploration has a similar potential, in part because it crosses so many technical disciplines and scientific fields: materials, propulsion, structures, life-support, man-machine interfaces, physics, biology, chemistry, etc. etc. etc. So, I wouldn’t justify the space program in terms of specific spinoffs, but more in terms of its potential to change the state of the art.
This bears repeating and I strongly concur!
Following the current proposed plan – we will wander in the wilderness for years, and when we wake up the rest of the world will have standardized on the Russian hardware (docking adapters, navigation, etc) and we will be forced to get compatible with them. The Europeans and Japanese are now concluding that the Russians are the reliable partners in space.
Of course, allowing the Europeans and Japanese and Chinese access to our docking interfaces and navigation would probably violate ITAR.
Some people say that the Constellation program is (was) unaffordable. Well maybe it is, I’m not a tech people. But the same people say that President Obama’s plans are affordable. How do they know that when Obama plans are somewhat undefined?
Some people say that Spudis and Zubrin are dreamers. But, isn’t the Obama plan made out of hopes and dreams? How do we know Obama’s plans are affordable? One way to make the plan affordable is to continue to push back the few stated mission dates. If a decison for a HLV design is not made by 2015, then 2016 or 2017 or someday will be fine? Right?.
It’s unfortunate that NASA doesn’t seem to look at existing plans, proposals, proof of concepts already done. But it looks like NASA is ‘hung-up” on developing new technology.
Never let it be said that President Obama cannot bring people together. The sad thing is that it is in opposition to his Potemkin space program.
http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n1006/01vasimr/
If a decison for a HLV design is not made by 2015, then 2016 or 2017 or someday will be fine?
Actually, never would be fine. We don’t need HLV to do human exploration.
“We don’t need HLV to do human exploration.”
No indeed. After lowing the seas, and healing the earth, Obama plans to miracle astronauts to the outer solar system. Can we please elect adults in 2012?
After lowing the seas, and healing the earth, Obama plans to miracle astronauts to the outer solar system.
Neither HLV, or miracles are required. And it has nothing to do with Obama, who, as it happens, still plans HLV. But please, continue to display your idiocy.
It is shocking that Dr. Paul Spudis and Dr. Robert Zubrin are fighting so hard for a program which will only delay their dreams, as long as it exists. The Vision for Space Exploration at first seemed a miracle that NASA had finally seen the light but it soon became corrupted by shuttle culture. The Vision soon lost all talk of permanence, and insitu resource utilization and developed into a jobs program which used the Moon and Mars as an excuse for continuation of the shuttle architecture with its extraordinarily high costs because of its standing army. The dependence of the shuttle architecture on it standing army justifies its existence while assuring neither the Moon or Mars will ever be developed due to so the extremely high costs of continuing to maintain the standing army.
The line from Stephen is pretty good…Spudis and Zubrin have no clue how to convince the taxpayers to pay for their “dreams”.
I would however recommend Dennis Wingo’s piece. Wingo and I have (to be kind) crossed swords on many occassions…so this is not a “friend patting a friend” (although I do consider Dennis one). His piece is a solid analysis of where the planning internally for Constellation went off track, the bad assumptions politically Griffin made in his zest for Apollo on steroids…and he ends up with a nice compromise…
that I think is to late. The trains are already leaving the station and the notion of some exploration activity, even within the NASA budget is probably dead for a few years.
But it is a good article.
Spudis and Zubrin …they need to get out more.
Robert G. Oler
>Spudis and Zubrin need to get out more< ?
Dude… what about you!? At least they're doing real work in the real world rather than endlessly posting leftwing dribble on forums over and over and over and over and over….
Take you're own advice Oler
Max Peck wrote @ June 1st, 2010 at 2:15 pm
“Dude… what about you!? At least they’re doing real work in the real world rather than endlessly posting leftwing dribble on forums over and over and over and over and over….”
Don’t confuse effort with results. Constellation was a bottomless pit for U.S. taxpayers money – who knew when it would ever be completed, since the schedule kept moving to the right.
For Spudis and Zubrin, I give them their due for their advocacy, but that doesn’t mean that they are right. They don’t even agree with each other, so how can you determine that they are doing such great work?
This taxpayer loves the idea of HSF exploration, until it is proposed we pay for it by choking off funds for basic research, tech dev, robotic probes, earth observation, and the like.
I also lose my enthusiasm for HSF exploration when a virtue is made of always increasing the price per pound to orbit, as though there is inherent value in building up an ever more expensive infrastructure and workforce for diminishing flight frequency.
Show me a sustainable operational and economic model, and my enthusiasm remains unbounded.
I recognize that beyond earth is a harsh environment, and getting there requires extraordinary capabilities. There seem to be though, technologies on the horizon that offer a better way forward. Putting those in place would seem to be the kind of dream to work toward.
Perhaps it is time to build a new spacefaring heritage. After all, the X-15 heritage got cut off prematurely, as did the original post-Apollo NASA mini-shuttle or space taxi concept.
The FY11 plan may not have the drama of the JFK lunar deadline, but it sets the stage for greater capability, and a qualitative and paradigmatic rebirth of America’s civil space effort.
Dennis Wingo is having a good picture of what CEV/Constellation was and has become because I believe he was there at the beginning. And we all see what happened when Mike Griffin took the helm. I had a lot of reservations with O’Keefe’s spiral approach but I guess I did not understand it that well then. Today’s events make it a lot clearer why it was the RIGHT approach.
I think Dennis is beyond frustration as the VSE was kind of helping his dreams while Constellation killed them. I could somehow argue about the benefits or not of ISRU as an observing layman. I am not ISRU litterate. I also think the new plan will serve Dennis better than the POR but it’ll take (quite) a while longer. Had we stayed on the right path all along… blahblahblah.
Anyway I think that hoping Congress will do more than whining and complaining is whishful thinking. Some of thsoe people want to keep Constellation but not fund it accordingly. The result is the mess we are in.
I would hope that Dennis comes to the realization that Flex-Path is closest to VSE, that a timeline is just nonsense but what is important is that the technologies for ISRU be developed at whatever pace we can afford. We already lost several $Bs for nothing, essentially. Let’s cut our losses and regroup and go forward. Now is the time to get together behind this new plan. And yes… Hope it works! Otherwise…
y’all may not need HLV to go to deep space with folks onboard, but tell me how you’re going to get BIG diameter stuff (10-12 meters, not the dinky 4-meter stuff we can do now) on these “little” sticks? there is no plan for a >5-meter fairing on the books, and there are a lot of projects that are going to need it, as well as a lot of cramped astrofolks if we don’t build it; going to Mars in a 4-meter can ain’t gonna be fun…
Max Peck wrote @ June 1st, 2010 at 2:15 pm
with a person in the family who is acting like a small child, because she is a small child, one finds that the “time” one spends outside of work is necessarily “homebound” particularly when Mommie flies airplanes as well.
enjoy Max
Robert G. Oler
juggler – Are we on the same planet? Atlas V has already launched 4 times with a 5.4 meter fairing. The Delta IV has a diameter of 5 meters, already, and thats without a hammerhead style fairing (if we assume a similar growth size for the Atlas V & Delta IV with regard to hammerhead size, this would bring the fairing up to over 6 meters).
going to Mars in a 4-meter can ain’t gonna be fun…
Ever heard of inflatables? The burden of proof is on those demanding tens of billions for a heavy lifter that it cannot be done without it. They have struck out, so far.
yup, 5-meters is done, my mistake; 6 is reachable, but you lose payload on what those current lifters can do if ya go that big – and anyway Ferro as ya say that’s assuming a growth path – those aren’t on the books; but bottom line Saturn V could do 10; and 10 is what ya need for some of the real science plans coming down the pike; inflatables will be great – I’ll give ya that; though I get dizzy thinking how doing a spin on a group of connected inflatables is gonna work.
Juggler – you wanna tell me why you MUST have 10? Or why you can’t launch it in sections? Or why we should get concerned if you get dizzy?
“If a lunar outpost is utilized that incorporates, as a core principle, ISRU, then exploitation along with the new plan for commercial crew in LEO and technology development for sustainable exploration beyond LEO†would bring Armstrong and Cernan on board in support of it. “Therefore, the table is set for compromise if Armstrong and Cernan are willing to abandon an unworkable Program of Record for the new plan – and the Moon.â€
I forget, from what aerospace firm or congressional district are Armstrong and Cernan from? What is their stake in this that they get a bigger voice today, than they have had the last 40 years?
@ Vladislaw
The people who can best answer your question are Jay Rockefeller and Bart Gordon. After all they are the people who chose Armstrong and Cernan to testify before the relevant (sub)-committees of the Senate and House.
Whether Armstrong and Cernan should have the influence that they do can be debated. That they have such influence (for good or ill) seems beyond dispute.
“Ever heard of inflatables? The burden of proof is on those demanding tens of billions for a heavy lifter that it cannot be done without it. They have struck out, so far.”
You space clowns are the ones who have struck out. The latest study on beyond earth orbit missions to mars- to land a 70 ton lander, would mean an earth departure stage of over 1000 tons. The heaviest launcher operation is the Delta IV heavy at 25 tons. That is 40 launches with the heaviest bird we have. Actually it would be alot more than that because with more launches the weight goes up slightly. The figures for a Side Mount shuttle derived HLV are 16 launches of 79 tons each for 1264 tons compared to 7 launches of 150 tons (Ares V) for 1050 tons. I would say you are looking at at least 50 launches for any kind of a worthwhile mission. So if you want to anywhere with HSF beyond earth orbit you need a heavy lift vehicle. You can lie and come up with bogus figures and say my info is wrong by citing a ton off here or there, but the truth is your little tourist industry pandering to obscene spending habits for the ultra-rich is still a sick joke and has always been misrepresenting itself as space exploration.
I would say you are looking at at least 50 launches for any kind of a worthwhile mission.
Instead of counting launches, I prefer to count dollars.
Sure, count filthy money you con artist. Send your clusters last stand falcon a hundred times for one mission. Sure, I believe that.
Sure, count filthy money you con artist
Sorry, but it has to be paid for. And I’m not a con artist, but you are certainly a loon. And no one said that it would be fifty Falcon launches.
@Gary Church
“You space clowns are the ones who have struck out. The latest study on beyond earth orbit missions to mars- to land a 70 ton lander, would mean an earth departure stage of over 1000 tons. The heaviest launcher operation is the Delta IV heavy at 25 tons. That is 40 launches with the heaviest bird we have. Actually it would be alot more than that because with more launches the weight goes up slightly. The figures for a Side Mount shuttle derived HLV are 16 launches of 79 tons each for 1264 tons compared to 7 launches of 150 tons (Ares V) for 1050 tons. I would say you are looking at at least 50 launches for any kind of a worthwhile mission. So if you want to anywhere with HSF beyond earth orbit you need a heavy lift vehicle. You can lie and come up with bogus figures and say my info is wrong by citing a ton off here or there, but the truth is your little tourist industry pandering to obscene spending habits for the ultra-rich is still a sick joke and has always been misrepresenting itself as space exploration.”
I don’t believe that study included the several hundred tonnes of additional mass shielding that would be required to keep from frying astronauts brains from the heavy nuclei during months of traveling through interplanetary space.
Manned journeys to Mars are probably going to require huge light sails or nuclear rockets which will still require extremely heavy mass shielding even if we use liquid hydrogen as the shielding material.
Off topic … Florida Today reports that Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis will be at KSC tomorrow with Lori Garver and Rep. Suzanne Kosmas to make an announcement about the Shuttle workforce:
http://flametrench.flatoday.net/2010/06/labor-secretary-plans-major.html
Rand Simberg wrote:
And I’m not a con artist, but you are certainly a loon.
It appears Gary Church is self-destructing because many of the regulars here have pledged to no longer read his troll posts.
“I don’t believe that study included the several hundred tonnes of additional mass shielding that would be required to keep from frying astronauts brains from the heavy nuclei during months of traveling through interplanetary space.Manned journeys to Mars are probably going to require huge light sails or nuclear rockets ”
VASMIR is all about an under 40 day mission, which is still a heavy dose and if a solar storm happens they are dead. But VASMIR is missing some pieces like high temp. superconductors and a really powerful- but lightweight nuclear reactor. I do not think it will ever work right. It might. But in my opinion the way to go is the medusa concept
From Wiki entry on Nuclear Pulse Propulsion:
“Medusa performs better than the classical Orion design because its “pusher plate” intercepts more of the bomb’s blast, its shock-absorber stroke is much longer, and all its major structures are in tension and hence can be quite lightweight. It also scales down better. Medusa-type ships would be capable of a specific impulse between 50,000 and 100,000 seconds.
We could make this in the same time frame as a HLV; about 5 years. God knows we have plenty of bombs.
“It appears Gary Church is self-destructing because many of the regulars here have pledged to no longer read his troll posts.”
Yes…I could not survive without you ridiculous space clowns lying about everything anyone says that does not promote your scam. Puh-leese.
I think that Solis/Garver are going to announce that Florida will be getting a twenty-million National Emergency Grant.
“you are certainly a loon. And no one said that it would be fifty Falcon launches.”
Hmmm. A thousand ton vehicle 10 tons at a time would be…..that’s right!; 100 launches. I did not say 50. Are you going to blow up your inflatable astronauts and send them on your inflatable spaceships or is all that just in your inflatable head? You are the loon if you think “inflatable” are gong to get you BEO. Like I said- it is all a sick joke designed to collect tourist dollars.
Rand Simberg wrote:
I think that Solis/Garver are going to announce that Florida will be getting a twenty-million National Emergency Grant.
From the Department of Labor web site:
http://www.doleta.gov/neg/
National Emergency Grants (NEGs) temporarily expand the service capacity of Workforce Investment Act training and employment programs at the state and local levels by providing funding assistance in response to large, unexpected economic events which cause significant job losses. NEGs generally provide resources to states and local workforce investment boards to quickly reemploy laid-off workers by offering training to increase occupational skills.
From the Wingo article; Both Armstrong and Cernan are correct in saying that our six missions to the lunar surface barely hinted at our possibilities there and I would argue that we will never go to Mars without learning how to operate in a sustained manner on the Moon and to learn how to use its resources.
If Congress is truly concerned that we are abandoning our spaceflight heritage, then they need to fund the new plan before October 1 while mandating the Moon and a strong presence there. Within 24 months we could begin sending missions to a lunar outpost location on the moon and building up a capability that humans could use when they get there. By doing this we will preserve our workforce, leverage the $100 billion dollar taxpayer investment in ISS, and provide some stability for our national program.”
I did not think the moon or Mars were appropriate destinations- until they found that water and evidence of underground caverns. The water changes everything and that hole in the Marius hills also changes things. With mega tons of water and ready made radiation shelters, developing the moon becomes economical as a source of radiation shielding for interplanetary spaceships. I still do not want to go to Mars. With a nuclear propulsion system, Ceres is a much better mission.
National Emergency Grants (NEGs) temporarily expand the service capacity of Workforce Investment Act training and employment programs at the state and local levels by providing funding assistance in response to large, unexpected economic events which cause significant job losses.
There wasn’t much “unexpected” about the shutdown of the Shuttle program…
But that’s the scuttlebutt I’m hearing. I’m kind of surprised that John Kelly didn’t talk to the same people I did.
Rand Simberg wrote:
There wasn’t much “unexpected†about the shutdown of the Shuttle program…
Well, it’ll probably be in the context of the Shuttle retirement combined with the Great Recession.
It doesn’t matter how much help the Obama Administration lards upon Space Coast, people here won’t support him. The area is too right-wing.
It’s more help than the Bush Administration gave them, though. As I’ve mentioned before, in the days after Bush announced his vision in January 2004 then-NASA Administrator Sean O’Keefe testified before a Senate Commerce Committee. When asked about the thousands of jobs that would be lost, he told them, “We’ll have to work out those challenges at that time,†the “time” referring to after the end of Shuttle.
It doesn’t matter how much help the Obama Administration lards upon Space Coast, people here won’t support him. The area is too right-wing.
Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzztttt.
Want to rephrase that to remain credible? i.e., not put yourself in the Oler category?
Serious question.
Rand Simberg wrote:
Want to rephrase that to remain credible? i.e., not put yourself in the Oler category?
No. It’s true. And quite frankly, I’m fed up with the hypocrisy in this area from people who crank off letters to Florida Today calling Obama a socialist yet they demand he keep the government-funded Constellation jobs program.
I don’t know where you live, but I live here and see this mindless Obama hatred every day. Up and down Courtenay (the main road into the KSC south gate) someone plastered “NObama” stickers on street signs. The neon sign on the diner across the street for months has been running a message stating, “Obama lied!” with a web site address. I volunteered for a local emergency response volunteer group but stopped going when the monthly meetings turned into non-stop Obama hate rhetoric.
Heaven forbid I try to respond with actual facts.
I’m fed up with the hypocrisy in this area from people who crank off letters to Florida Today calling Obama a socialist yet they demand he keep the government-funded Constellation jobs program.
So am I, but complaints about “right wingers” continue to not have much of a useful place in space policy discussion.
Stephen C. Smith wrote @ June 2nd, 2010 at 9:59 am
Stephen. the problem is that everyone agrees that the status quo is bad and needs changing, until the effort starts to change “their” status quo. Then all of a sudden that “change” is bad.
What the folks who work in the HSF industry have come to believe is taht their program is important no matter what or if any results that it produces…because like just about every other federal program on a local level, they have wrapped that program in the flag and made it the determiner of national destiny.
When the right wing (or left, but the right wing is the worst) finds that their pork is in peril then they feel justified pulling out all the stops…because of course to attack their pork is not patriotic. They are after all “patriots”.
Robert G. Oler
“they feel justified pulling out all the stops…because of course to attack their pork is not patriotic. They are after all “patriotsâ€.
Rumsfeld pushed hi-tech, doing more with less, reducing the size and footprint of the military. Very much like the NASA “flexible path.”
Cheaper is better?
There is no cheap. We are losing an infrastructure that is….priceless. Why? Because it was underfunded in the first place and made to fail. Not space politics- money and defense job politics.
I like you Mr. Oler. I used to fly around in rescue helicopters; in the back running the hoist. I am a pilot myself- paragliders. I fly for hours along the coast, back and forth. Looking at the ocean, at San Francisco, at 25 miles an hour about a thousand feet up on a strong day. Pretty quiet. One day it will end and I will die. But I don’t want it to end for everyone else. It is quiet out in space ; we have never picked up any TV shows from another planet. I suggest you think about why.
“Human space flight is not specifically part of the Space Act, and that Act is what defines the agency”
From the Space Act:
DEFINITIONS
Sec. 103.
(2) the term “aeronautical and space vehicles” means aircraft, missiles, satellites, and other space vehicles, manned and unmanned, together with related equipment, devices, components, and parts.
and what should have killed Ares 1, given the existence of Atlas and Delta:
FUNCTIONS OF THE ADMINISTRATION
Sec. 203. (a) The Administration, in order to carry out the purpose of this Act, shall–
(1) plan, direct, and conduct aeronautical and space activities;
(2) arrange for participation by the scientific community in planning scientific measurements and observations to be made through use of aeronautical and space vehicles, and conduct or arrange for the conduct of such measurements and observations;
(3) provide for the widest practicable and appropriate dissemination of information concerning its activities and the results thereof;
(4) seek and encourage, to the maximum extent possible, the fullest commercial use of space; and
(5) encourage and provide for Federal Government use of commercially provided space services and hardware, consistent with the requirements of the Federal Government.
(emphasis mine)
From Wiki:
Signed into law by Ike in 58; the new law made extensive modifications to the patent law and provided that both employee inventions as well as private contractor innovations brought about through space travel would be subject to government ownership.
Cannot have the Government keeping people from making money – even if the technology was developed with tax dollars, so Reagan had to do something about that and in 84 signed into law the commercial space launch act.
And the rest is history. The products of your tax dollars handed over to the thieves.
I’m sorry to say this but I would would have to agree with Mr. Smith. The Space Coast really is pretty right wing and very politicized, and many local Republicans like Haridopoulis and Posey, and a fair percentage of the voters, really do viciously attack Mr. Obama evey time they open their mouths, blaming him for literally everything, in particular for all the job losses even though of course these jobs are being lost because of Bush’s ill-advised cancellation of the Shuttle program at the very point when it was becoming productive.
The Space Coast really is pretty right wing.
Is there something wrong with the word “conservative”? That is a much more understood and agreed-upon word.