There is zero correlation between NASA budgets and tax rates.

When I ask NASA people what practical value Constellation has I get meaningless answers like “well, we don’t want the Chinese to beat us to the moon”. The Constellation contractors and their allies in Congress assume that if Obama is defeated the program will magically continue. This is pure fantasy. The Republican Congress plans to cut spending drastically and even the most ardent Constellation supporters also demand tax cuts.

The irony is that we have Republicans fighting to maintain a monolithic government program that wastes billions of taxpayer dollars while a Democratic president tries to shift NASA funding to more efficient private industry which might just possibly be able to use some of the technology to sell commercial services in the free market.

Robert G. Oler”

“…the words “amateur President” are a tad incendiary but excusable.

Robert G. Oler”

Pot, kettle, … You get the picture.

Given that Dems controlled the White House for the past 2 years and Congress for the last 4 years (with Obama as a part of that in the Senate), they have had ample time to change the direction of NASA. Despite Oler’s constant jibes at the GOP, the minority party was in no position to stop the Dems on NASA or anything else. The Dems punted on the 2010 budget fearing an even larger slaughter in the falls elections. The ~2000 page omnibus they tried to ram through at the 11th hour was written last February as part of a strategic play to get as much of the Dem agenda passed without public outcry after the elections. Thankfully that strategy failed. Yet another example of how clueless and/or dishonest the Dems are. The past year of NASA mismanagement is testament to the inability of the Dems to lead or play it straight with the American taxpayers.

Actually, that doesn’t explain anything. The GOP doesn’t trust the Dems on anything, generally speaking, but that is entirely beside the point that I was making. Congress is at once ordering NASA to stick to the old path and asking how they plan to implement the new law. I don’t care which side of that fence you sit on, you can’t do both, unless there’s an interpretation of the CR or the authorization bill I’m not aware of. The GOP can have all the lack of trust they can muster, but they can’t, or at least they shouldn’t, in the same breath demand we implement the new direction. Nelson may be the one saying it, but I didn’t hear any GOP’ers disagreeing with him.

“If you’re looking for a reason to have the 5 seg booster, you could say that it’s a planetary asset since it is the largest, most powerful, rocket motor in existence. That alone is reason enough in my mind.”

easily satisfied Robert G. Oler

“So, the crafty amateur might come up with the idea of interpreting a contract clause to force the companies to retain money for contract cancellation”

I thought the contract includes that the contractor is liable for the close out costs. A contractor, based on how strongly they believe the program will go forward, can use those close out funds for other things believing close out will never occur so why bother with saving them.

I listened to Bolden outline this, all he said was those companies better have all their ducks in a row because if the program got shut down, they better have the funds available because NASA was not going to provide them double funding for them because of a tight budget. ( I believe in more than one instance, NASA has canceled a program and then gave the company those close out costs again because the contractor already spent them and Bolden said it was not happening again.)

thats a reasonable explanation of the situation…the words “amateur President” are a tad incendiary but excusable. Having said that most of the issues are caught up in the inability to pass a budget in a timely manner that includes realistic cost in terms of changing things.

Robert G. Oler