“Somehow I cannot understand how anyone today could not push for human spaceflight. Kepler has just discovered more Earth like planets in life zones around distant stars, and I hope we can at some point detect whether life inhabits these places or not. If one is discovered with life, then the question becomes, how do we get there?”

If by “push for human spaceflight” you’re referring to programs like Constellation or the SLS, then I have to tell you that those programs won’t bring us ANY closer to reaching beyond our solar system. We need to focus on technology development if we want to get to the next stage of space exploration and we’ll need significantly more technology development to take us beyond our solar system.

People seem to take the position that ending our government run launch capabilities for a few years is a disaster of some kind, like it’s the end of HSF forever. But just getting people into space isn’t enough. They need the appropriate equipment to accomplish their missions and be able to live for the duration of that mission and have an acceptable level of health when they get back. If we keep spending the amount of money that we do on unsustainable launch systems, and don’t have enough left over for the ground breaking science, then all we’re doing is sending people into orbit… maybe to the moon again… and not much else.

People need to end this completely ridiculous conception that not spending money on a government run launch system is somehow an anti-HSF position. It’s not! In fact it is just the opposite. We’re trying to make the developments that we need to go beyond our current capabilities. And also, supporting commercial access to space leads us down the road to eventually providing all humans with a way to get into space, not just the super-elite with years of training.

At 4 light years away, ever our closest star is way beyond our current reach. We’re going to need to continue with our baby steps before we can run. Unfortunately some people insist on repeating the same baby steps over and over again.

Note that I did not speak of Charles Bolden but rather of our dear Congress. I still question Bolden’s choice to keep some of the CxP execs in place but I can see that with a reluctant Congress it might be the only way, until Constellation, or so-of-Constellation, is effectively disbanded.

I can somehow understand the inertia of our federal government but, and this why I used the parallel to political capital, when Bush though he could forge ahead he just did and everyone, almost, followed him, even into two, or at least one, idiotic wars. Now, what is it with Democrats? They just cannot follow an elected leader? Why? They fear the Republicans so much? If so why don’t they go do something easy like run CxP for example? Remember “In democracy we get the government we deserve”. So here is what we deserve: http://www.house.gov and http://www.senate.gov Pretty sad I think.

The President MUST lead that is a fact. But he needs people to lead. Where are the people to be led? In the case of the Democrats are they hiding behind the Republicans? We need to find them to go forward. How’s Nelson helping his lead. See “leading” is a 2 way street. You can lead whatever you like if people do not want to be led you go nowhere.

The people of the USA elected a leader, the President. The people of the USA are represented by Congress. Yet Congress chooses to not be led. Don’t you think there is a problem?

I’m sure you were being ironic in the past when you claimed that every one who supported the administration’s space plan were left wing.

That is also the case when you claimed the first launch of Falcon 9 had not made it to orbit long after it was manifestly apparent that it did. You were just joking.

Also you prior claims of being a true TEA partier are entirely consistent with your desire to continue the waste of tax money through continuing the prior status quo.

And you have no ulterior motives a la ATK for wanting the status quo continued.

In case you missed it, ALL of my above comments were BOTH sarcasm AND irony.

Sure you were.

Nothing gets by you. But I was using irony on top of irony. Think about it, if it doesn’t hurt too much.

Mr. Oler,

http://mash.wikia.com/wiki/Colonel_Sam_Flagg

You are hilarious! By saying the above cited statement, Col Flagg inadvertently called himself dumb while thinking he was only calling the person he was addressing dumb. The fact that you used this quote to retort Oler means that you called yourself dumb because you misinterpreted what the statement was inadvertently saying in the same way that Flagg did. Now we can add lack of understanding of the word irony to the list of logical deficiencies that you have so often earlier demonstrated.

Fair question, though somehow we also can’t understand how anyone today could not push for all the things we do to credibly improve our quality of life. Those are the things that compete for funding with human space flight. Sorry, but shaking hands with a resident of an Earth-like planet is not one of those things. The investments we’re arguing about these days have nothing to do with sending people to distant stars, any more than they have to do with increasing a human lifetime to a thousand years or magically materializing vast quantities of food out of the ether.

Let me help you understand. The value of human spaceflight hasn’t been clearly established compared with the value of investments on other frontiers. From the perspective of entertaining adventure, and perhaps for species preservation, I hope it can be. But for many people, it hasn’t passed the smell test.

@ Coastal Ron wrote @ February 2nd, 2011 at 7:16 pm
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Interesting but tiresome… I am wondering when Congress will stop making a fool of itself………………………………………..

Hello

For those of us who follow space policy in my view we have been very very lucky the last two years that inertia, sloth, and the inability to do anything really functional on the part of NASA and the folks who are running crewed flight…coupled with some reasonably enlightened efforts by Boldin, the AC, and yes (and I choke on this a bit) Garver…have all somehow meshed together to give us the “vector” that we are going to get.

A lot of this is Charlie. As I predicted here when he was named this is Charlies style of management and leadership, and he is methodically making the political moves to change the direction of NASA HSF

Parts of it as well are just the fact that the various programs started under Griffin simply are collapsing and thats kind of pushed us into the need for change. That coupled with the economic mess left by the last administration..well Bolden has manuevered in the environment he was given and in my view has done well.

None of it is going as fast as I like but it is going about as fast as federal change can occur in the absence of strong very strong Presidential leadership and Obama has just not proved adequate to the task.

There is almost nothing the last administration did that I agree with, but in the skills of leadership defined as “changing the direction of public debate”…the last administration was amazing at that. I dont like the direction and think that the nation is screwed for it…it is about the worst direction of leadership since oh Lord Raglan in the Crimiean war but both got people to follow them.

Obama sadly as not lead very well…and I am starting to feel that he simply does not have it in him…which makes the space change all the more impressive.

Robert G. Oler.

“It’s going to be an interesting year…”

Interesting but tiresome… I am wondering when Congress will stop making a fool of itself… Is there ever going to be a chance they put the people of the United States first? Democrats and Republicans are at fault. But I have to say that Democrats in Congress are a special breed of hypocrits. They had almost 2 years to use the political capital they earned when this WH incredibly won the presidency and they dragged their feet. Unbelievable! They did not want to vote for healthcare reform lest they’d be ousted. Well guess what! They were ousted. The public needs winners not whiners. And it applies as well to HSF, see Nelson for example. If they don’t make a statement someone else will. And the one that makes the statement will win. I fear 2012 to some extent. I wish the Republicans had a REAL candidate associated with their values not “the values” if you see what I mean. But to win they will try anything. I cannot imagine a President Palin, worse, I can imagine a President Palin and that is very, very scary. Sorry off topic. Somewhat.