Campaign '12

Gingrich planning a space speech this week

In an appearance on C-SPAN’s “Washington Journal” program Sunday morning, Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich said he would be giving a major speech on space later this week in Florida. The former Speaker of the House, fresh off a victory Saturday in the GOP primary in South Carolina, said he would be giving a series of speeches on various topics in Florida this week in advance of the January 31 primary there. “I’ll give a speech on the Space Coast, for example, about the future of man in space and the future of the United States in space,” he said in the first half-minute of the appearance.

At the 8:10 mark, he also mentions his upcoming speech after referencing his 1984 book Window of Opportunity, which includes a chapter about space. “I’ll be at the Space Coast in Florida this week giving a speech, a visionary speech, on the United States going back into space in the John F. Kennedy tradition rather than the current bureaucracy.” That rhetoric sounds similar to some of his earlier comments that have been disdainful of NASA bureaucracy, such as this appearance in Florida in October.

Gingrich didn’t disclose exactly when he would give this speech, but it’s likely to be on Wednesday. Florida Today reports that Gingrich has two appearances on the Space Coast on Wednesday afternoon, attending a “‘Space & Technology Roundtable’ with Leaders of the Space Community” and, later, a town hall meeting in Cocoa, Florida. According to the same article, another candidate, Rick Santorum, will also speak on the Space Coast on Saturday—which, by chance, also happens to be the 26th anniversary of the loss of Challenger.

50 comments to Gingrich planning a space speech this week

  • sc220

    Great opportunity to make hollow promises in preparation of the Florida Primary.

  • If Gingrich gives a speech bashing NASA and the space-industrial complex that employs thousands of people here in the Space Coast, he’s likely to get a chilly reception. NewSpace is not real popular around here.

    Gingrich co-wrote an op-ed in February 2010 titled “Obama’s Brave Reboot for NASA” that ran in the Washington Times:

    http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/feb/12/obamas-brave-reboot-for-nasa/

    If he bashes the Obama administration now for what he endorsed two years ago, he’s going to look like a hypocrite.

    Oh, wait, he’s Newt Gingrich. Hypocrisy goes with the territory.

  • Coastal Ron

    Newt wants “the United States going back into space in the John F. Kennedy tradition rather than the current bureaucracy

    Hopefully he’s talking about the level of activity Kennedy inspired, not the massive government funding that the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs needed to make Kennedy’s vision come true.

    Since he’s on record supporting X-Prize type efforts, maybe that’s what he’ll talk about.

  • Robert G. Oler

    Stephen C. Smith wrote @ January 22nd, 2012 at 9:24 pm

    Along with a few other things (family, life etc) I have tried to go through the Fox News, Charlie Cook (which I subscribe to) and MSNBC exit polls of South Carollina.

    I would urge everyone to go watch the MTP Roundtable…its pretty good.

    I assume Muncy is plugging away on a speech.

    Newt will have to balance what he thinks the space coast vote is, any level of hypocrisy pandering on a sort of reversal…and the votes that can be had by a more forward thinking policy along the lines Obama has …but wrapped up inside something Obama never (sadly) has done…and that is wrap his policy in some grand vision for the future.

    THIS WONT get the “same my paycheck” people but who are they going to vote for? Obama (LOL), Willard (nope)…so whats to lose…but a grand vision (which Obama should have done in a lot of things but seems incapable of) would motivate non BASE Republicans who are growing weary of Willard but are afraid of Newt the wild man.

    Newt is capable of that. his victory speech was a lot of red meat to his base (which is the “we are angry and someone needs to talk to our concerns …even if they are mostly simply made up) but his speech on MTP was more reasonable and was the stuff that national political figures are made of.

    I’ve been reluctant to write Newt off and on my facebook page for months I have said that he is the only GOP candidate who I think has a pathway to the Oval. Having said that it is a small one and most likely somewhere Newt will implode…but it probably wont be with the folks who voted for him in SC and will likely vote for him in future efforts.

    The GOP base is very very white (less then 1 percent non white), not very affluent, mostly non college grads (the college grads and above are going for Willard) but it is a very angry base over perceived issues. “If the American people only knew Obama was not born in this country” or “blacks are the ones on food stamps” or “our morals are the ones the country really likes its just liberal judges who are stopping (insert view here)”. that was the crowd Gingrich pandered to in his victory speech…and it is the group that is the majorityh of the GOP base…and has no one else really to go to now.

    The odds are that Willard is going to win the nomination but something tells me those odds will keep going down. There is almost nothing that is going to get the people who voted for Gingrich to vote for Willard…

    If I had to bet I would bet that Newts speech is not a “save our space program” speech…it is crafted around the use of free enterprise to do something “great”…thats the campaign he is headed for and I suspect will run in the general. I give him a better then 40 percent chance of getting there now RGO

  • guest

    “Hopefully he’s not talking about the massive government funding that the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs needed”

    Actually, Mercury and Gemini were pretty low level spending using boosters already developed for other programs.

    Apollo was unaffordable and unmaintainable.

    Orion is Apollo redux. Obama’s cancellation of Orion was warranted. Obama’s continuation of the Shuttle shut down without using it as the basis for the follow on HLV was a mistake on Obama’s part. Congress re-establishing Orion was a Congressional mistake. SLS is sort of an attempt to recover the fumble of shutting down Shuttle without using it as the basis of HLV, and was another fumble compounding the first. We will need HLV eventually, but we’re now doing it the harder and more expensive way.

    My guess is that Newt won’t be able to speak to a lot of specifics because of the muddled current situation. He’ll probably talk in general, wide scale terms, maybe similar to the way Kennedy did.

  • Mark

    One thing Gingrich cannot be faulted for is his passion for the issue. Some of his proposed solutions are unworkable, but if he can put something together that is both exciting and doable, he might just change history. Space, for a President Gingrich, would not just be another box to check off or something to lie to the voters about before sticking in the knife.

  • TK420

    He’s talking about the space program guys.. it’s a good thing!

  • Coastal Ron

    Mark wrote @ January 22nd, 2012 at 10:47 pm

    One thing Gingrich cannot be faulted for is his passion for the issue.

    He does have passion, but does he have enough discipline to get any of his multiple passions, including space-related stuff, done?

    One way to get around this is to wrap the “big space idea” into some larger national effort, but then the question is will it fit within the current NASA budget, or does he try to shift money from some other budget pot?

    However he’s got a lot of winning to do over the next few months to make any of ideas be more than just election year jabber…

  • Robert G. Oler

    Mark wrote @ January 22nd, 2012 at 10:47 pm

    One thing Gingrich cannot be faulted for is his passion for the issue.>>

    YES

    as it stands now and most likely there is little that would change it…I would vote for Obama against Newt…if for no other reason then a Newt nomination with a defeat would end the GOP cycle of “terror”…but…

    Newt has several things which he cannot be faulted for…you mention one but another far larger one is that Newt has a vision for a new America…I think Obama does but he couldnt describe it if he had to (at least he has been unable to so far maybe???). We need a new America. the old one has been dying for over 20 years since the end of the cold war which was the centerpiece of American life after WW2.

    (parenthetically another problem with Newt is that some of his “New America” scares me!) RGO

  • Robert G. Oler

    Mark…one prospect which would interest me is a heavily Democratic Congress with Newt as POTUS RGO

  • Steven White

    Newt should announce that he will cancel Obama’s as yet unnamed mission to rendezvous with the as yet unnamed asteroid by 2025. Instead, we will put humans on Mars by 2022, fifty years after Apollo 17. America, that would be bold. Yes, we can!

  • DCSCA

    “In an appearance on C-SPAN’s “Washington Journal” program Sunday morning, Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich said he would be giving a major speech on space later this week in Florida.”

    It’s called outgassing.

    We’ve heard it before as noted on this very forum.

    http://www.spacepolitics.com/2011/10/21/gingrich-calls-for-privatizing-human-spaceflight/

    Reaganomics is not going to fuel human expansion out into the cosmos and he’s not going to sucker space coast folks fifty years past the Mercury days- especially when conservatives in Kennedy’s day fought JFK tooth and nail on funding space projects of scale and it was LBJ who actually made Apollo happen. Gingrich has repeatedly demonstrated an inability to manage his own life and career and is one of the most ignorant, corrupt politicians of our times. Something his own party recognized when it forced him out of office nearly 20 years ago. But his foolishness is consistent as the following news blurb from 1995 noted:

    “GINGRICH CRITICIZES NASA

    House Speaker Newt Gingrich said on Saturday that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration should have been disbanded after the Apollo moon program ended in the 1970′s. Source- NY Times February 6, 1995″

  • Fred Willett

    As a Australian I can’t comment on the politics of it all. I just don’t know. But if any of the candidates is going to comment on Space it is a good issue leaving aside the fan-boy-ism.
    1/ Space is growing at a rate above the rest of the economy.
    2/ Space is one of the few sectors that continued to grow through the recent crash.
    Newt. Someone. Anyone needs to hold the space sector up as an example of how the economy can be made to grow.

  • DCSCA

    Mark wrote @ January 22nd, 2012 at 10:47 pm
    “One thing Gingrich cannot be faulted for is his passion for the issue.”

    Gingrich has only one passion for one issue- Gingrich.

  • SpaceColonizer

    What I’m more interested to see is how the other candidates “respond”, if at all. I can imagine Santorum using his manufacturing sector cred to try and swoon the space coast, but he’ll end up doing it in an insanely ignorant way like suggesting we bring the shuttles back into service. Romney might actually pay one of his army of servants to read up on the issue and will support commercialization… but try to keep the Obama haters happy by saying his way of doing it was stupid even though it’s just a continuation of policies started under Bush, but they love criticizing Obama for stuff that Bush did anyways. If anyone is stupid enough to ask Dr. Paul about the subject he’ll just have to remind them that space is not in the constitution.

    The we’ll leave Florida and space policy will once again disappear from the the political discourse.

  • @Smith

    NewSpace is not real popular around here.

    It’s not as if there’s any animosity either. New commercial providers pose little to no threat to the current public space sector, even if Congress decided to get government out of the launch game. There’s more than enough work to go around.

  • I just posted a blog on Gingrich’s planned speech.

    Gingrich has been very critical of NASA bureaucracy over the years. In 2007, he wrote in Real Change:

    One of the great disappointments of my life has been the hijacking of the great space adventure by the NASA bureaucracy. Space should be an area in which American innovation, creativity, and entrepreneurship are producing constant breakthroughs that increase our economic capability, improve our quality of life, and raise our prestige around the world. Instead, space has been hijacked by dull, inefficient, and unimaginative bureaucracies and transformed into an expensive, risk-adverse, and sad undertaking.

    I propose a dramatically bolder approach. NASA currently has plans to spend twenty years getting to Mars at a cost estimated of up to $450 billion. A very significant amount of that time and money will be spent studying, planning, and thinking. We would get much further much faster if we simply established two prizes: a tax-free $5 billion prize for the first permanent lunar base and a tax-free $20 billion prize for the first team to get to Mars and back.

    A lot of people here in Brevard County would take great offense to his description of NASA. Personally, I agree with him, but lots of folks here make/made a comfortable living off that “dull, inefficient and unimaginative” bureaucracy and are mightily peeved that Obama didn’t resurrect Shuttle which they viewed as a guaranteed-job-for-life.

    I find curious Newt’s claim that he will present a speech in the JFK tradition. It was JFK who created the bloated bureaucracy Newt rails against. At its height in the mid-1960s, NASA was about 5% of the federal budget. The Apollo program went way over its initial projected costs. In 1963, JFK ordered three separate reviews of Apollo, perhaps looking for a way out. In September 1963, he proposed the U.S. and USSR merge their space programs.

    Why Newt would invoke the most glaring example of a bloated space bureaucracy is beyond me.

    In any case, the Wednesday speech should be interesting, especially for the reaction by the locals.

    Prez Cannady wrote:

    It’s not as if there’s any animosity either.

    I have personally seen, heard and read a number of people here in the Space Coast openly root for SpaceX to fail and Falcon 9 to blow up. That certainly qualifies as “animosity” in my dictionary.

  • SpaceColonizer wrote:

    What I’m more interested to see is how the other candidates “respond”, if at all.

    As of this morning, the only candidates scheduled to appear in Brevard County are Gingrich and Santorum. I doubt Santorum will say much of anything about space and, if he does, it will just be a generic anti-Obama rant devoid of any knowledge about space.

    Outside of north Brevard County, nobody in Florida cares about space. The candidates will spend most of their time in the more populated areas chasing the rich GOP donors. There’s not much here for them.

  • @Smith:

    I have personally seen, heard and read a number of people here in the Space Coast openly root for SpaceX to fail and Falcon 9 to blow up.

    Last time you made this claim, you pointed to anonymous commenters on a Florida Today story. Still can’t find even those.

  • Coastal Ron

    Prez Cannady wrote @ January 23rd, 2012 at 9:52 am

    Last time you made this claim…

    Have you read his blog bio?

  • Robert G. Oler

    Stephen C. Smith wrote @ January 23rd, 2012 at 8:45 am

    I find curious Newt’s claim that he will present a speech in the JFK tradition. It was JFK who created the bloated bureaucracy Newt rails against.>>

    I dont agree with that.

    JFK in my view no more created the bloated bureaucracy that exist today then Reagan created the goofiness that passes for GOP economics (or foreign policy or whatever) today.

    JFK came from a time that you and I simply dont know or if we know know only as children. He came from a time when government actually had to do technical and other things that “worked” and that lived within some economic reality.

    Jack Kennedy had seen government “groups” tackle the atomic bomb, develop nuclear submarines (and was working on a CVN), had built a military and industrial complex that had won WW2…and he was comfortable throwing that model at various issues. And for the most part they worked and worked within some notion of budget.

    The technical feat of Apollo was simply amazing…and it did what it did for pretty much a cost that was predicted before the effort started. Was there waste, was their inefficiencies yes…but that NASA did things that this NASA is simply not capable of doing.

    Why? for a lot of reasons but mostly because they had people who came from the same generation Kennedy did who knew how to do those things and get them done.

    here is a non space example. the F-4 Phantom, the premier fighter of its day a very sophisticated leap from what was…went from an idea to the fleet in less then 1/2 a decade. Today the F-35 is well on multiple decades.

    The space shuttle system…flawed as it was was more or less put together on apretty good time span and for close to what people thought that version of it would cost.

    the NASA that spends 15 billion dollars on Cx and gets a phoney test flight is a creature that emerged in the 80’s. It had nothing to do with Jack Kennedy RGO

  • Vladislaw

    Romney got Newt’erd in South Carolina, if he comes to florida saying a moon base is lunacy will Gingrich pull another one? If everyone recalls one of the first debates with all the republican candidates, a NASA funding question was asked and no one said increase funding. How long are the florida memories relating to that topic.

  • MrEarl

    Steve Smith said:
    “I have personally seen, heard and read a number of people here in the Space Coast openly root for SpaceX to fail and Falcon 9 to blow up. That certainly qualifies as “animosity” in my dictionary.”

    That also certainly qualifies as anecdotal and is in no way a basis to make any conclusions as to the sentiment of voters in Florida in general and Brevard County in particular.

  • Ivan Durakov

    You all sure can draw quick conclusions from a speech that hasn’t even been given yet.

  • JohnHunt

    I think that a distinction needs to be made between the prize approach and a COTS- like approach.

    Prizes work fine up to a certain dollar amount but may not work beyond that. Basically, an entity must be willing to loose the money that they invest towards a prize because there I’d no guarantee that they will get their money back. Beyond something like $20 million, a companywool be unwilling to invest that much unless the believe it highly likely that they’ll win. If they think they might come in second place them they won’t even try.

    However, a COTS-like approach is guaranteed income if you achieve the milestones. So there’s the salutary effect where the companies are uncertified

  • JohnHunt

    …incentivized to reach milestones quickly while keeping lists down. Broken down to small milestones, there I’d no limit to the size I the overall COTS program.

  • MrEarl

    I’ve always believed that prizes work fine for stunts but a COTS like approach is a better way to bring a product or service to market that would not normaly happen in a given period of time without using government funds.

  • Coastal Ron

    JohnHunt wrote @ January 23rd, 2012 at 12:07 pm

    Basically, an entity must be willing to loose the money that they invest towards a prize because there I’d no guarantee that they will get their money back.

    Well said. I can’t see Boeing’s Board of Directors approving $10B in spending to win a $20B prize – too much risk, even for such high potential ROI.

    The successful prize programs so far have been low enough in cost that what big companies spent could be chalked up to a sub-account in their marketing budget. Anything beyond that and you really have to be committed to the product and the market long term, and so far there ain’t much of a market in going to Mars or setting up colonies on the Moon.

    This is where Newt’s lack of business experience leads him to dream a little too far beyond what reality is, and while that’s OK on the stump, it could be a waster of time & money in practice.

  • Robert G. Oler

    Ivan Durakov wrote @ January 23rd, 2012 at 11:20 am

    You all sure can draw quick conclusions from a speech that hasn’t even been given yet.>>

    Hope springs eternal.

    Look my guess (grin) about the speech and about where Newt is trying to go with this has little to do with specifics (grin) but more with broad outlines of a different sort of American enterprise structure in space.

    It is worth speculating for a moment what would have happened had the space shuttle system worked; ;ie had it come close to meeting flight and cost schedules instead of well becoming more and more expensive and less and less flexible.

    If the shuttle system had worked then all the reasons for building it would have been correct…it would have opened a new door into the new frontier for expanding (or more correctly) creating some role for people in space that is more in tune with the notions of a free enterprise society.

    There strikes me as no reason that this door cannot be opened in an appropriate way that enables free enterprise to function in space like it does on earth.

    Left out of the movie 2001 (and the book for that matter) was the notion of what propelled people into space and created the wealth that created the infrastructure in the movie…ie why was Pan Am running a shuttle? There had to be more then just aking government employees up and down…

    opening that door, or at least trying to is the stuff that big ideas are made out of…it is a new economy to replace the one we have which is not working in this century RGO

  • E.P. Grondine

    Hi RGO –

    Very perceptive comments. But its a long way to the election, and things change.

    Assume for a minute that planetary defense will determine international leadership in space. The political problem is that it is way more fun to fantasize about manned Mars flight than to think about death by impact.
    For that matter, it is more fun to imagine “ancient aliens” fighting on Earth with nuclear weapons than to accept that there have been geologically recent impact events. Assume that NASA science has certain clients who it supports.

    What do you do?

  • Robert G. Oler

    E.P. Grondine wrote @ January 23rd, 2012 at 3:52 pm

    Hi RGO –

    Very perceptive comments. But its a long way to the election, and things change.>>

    yes they do change…the trick in a fluid situation is to see if recent “change” is based on the trends in the fluidity or are just another symptom of it.

    My view is that in some measure Newt has finally found the key to galvanizing what is this year the “insurgent” wing of the GOP. Ever since 1980 (excepting 84( there has been an insurgent wing…Ronaldus the Great was the insurgent in 80…and they all represent to some extent some different “mass” that is trying to coalesce into political power…and usually that mass is broken up by the establishment wing of the party literally bombarding it with well watch what the wing does to Newt in the next 10 days.

    What “might” be different this year is that 1) Willard is such a weak candidate really disliked by the base, 2) Willard is a fraud in his politics and 3) the base might be able to coalesce around “being angry”.

    The trends that were significant to me in SC is that Newt got well actually either broke even or won outright the “god squad” of the party. This means that most of them did not listen to the folks who babbled on endorsing Santorum…whY? my guess is that their interest in social issues is more tenuous then the folks who voted for Ricky, or at least tenuous then their “anger” over Obama in specific and in general the way things are going.

    I dont see how Willard breaks that hold.

    Gingrich has enough things to slime him with; he basically is moral pygmy ie he routinely does things that he shouts evil at others for… but those things are probably well known even to the “primitives” (to use Adali Stevenson’s words) in the GOP and I dont think that they care, they hate Obama so much (mostly on race).

    This can get him to the nomination and if the establishment does not stop him soon; the train will pick up speed because the god squad will get on board (they hate Mormans worse). But it cannot get Newt to the oval office.

    What can even with his baggage is a notion of how to rebuild/recreate America. Newt is no conservative…he is a big government guy and has some clever ideas (his space politics and policy is one) about how to use government differently then it is being used now.

    Which would make a general campaign interesting. WE will see how the speech goes.

    I assume Muncy is helping write it? RGO

  • the “primitives” (to use Adali Stevenson’s words) in the GOP and I dont think that they care, they hate Obama so much (mostly on race).

    What an idiotic bigoted comment.

  • E.P. Grondine

    Hi RGO –

    I was surprised that Huckabee did not do better, perhaps you put your finger on it “the anger”.

    The “unsurgent wing” started before the 1976 election – it was based on computer mailing lists to narrow segments, and then coalescing them into the “wing”.

    The race aspect is only one part (McCain did well); in point of fact, they don’t know what hit them, nor why, nor what to do about it. Any indication that their own decisions may have led to their problems they reject, and they will accept any other explanation given to them.

    I am pretty sure that on a very fundamental level “the god squad” does not like the Mormon religion, even if they share the same values for living.

    Between Rush and American Family radio, you can try to put their thinking together, but don’t expect it to be coherent, except in its own strange way.

    Dealing with the impact hazard has been a bi-partisan effort.

  • DCSCA

    @Stephen C. Smith wrote @ January 23rd, 2012 at 8:45 am

    “A lot of people here in Brevard County would take great offense to [Newt’s] description of NASA. Personally, I agree with him…”

    Hmmmm. 60% of the U.S. electorate disagree with Newt’s bombastic positions. Which puts you in the distinct minority. ‘Nuff said.

    “It was JFK who created the bloated bureaucracy Newt rails against.”

    Uh, no, it was the Eisenhower Administration- Republican BTW- which created your self-described ‘bloated bureaucracy’ aka ‘NASA’ in 1958 and JFK was notoriously vocal as Mercury came to a close and Apollo was announced for stating they ‘shouldn’t waste any money’ but ought to ‘get the job done.’ Peruse the Congressional Record from the period and you’ll discover conservatives opposed finanacing Apollo and spaceflight ventures from the get-go. And JFK was coincerned public support would wane during the year-plus gap between the end of Mercury and the start of Gemini- something he sadly didn’t live to see. In fact, if you do any kind of review, you’ll find NASA was a fairly lean and mean operation by government standards of the era. The MSC built in LBJ’s home state at Houston was staffed with less than 2500 people in 1965- many of them not highly paid by 1960s standards- as it came on line w/Gemini and the bulk of the investment costs for space operations in that period went to literally building facilities and infrastructure for support- much of which is still in use to day, like the launch facilities, the VAB, etc… And of course, the bulk of space spending in that era was an LBJ enterprise.

  • Robert G. Oler

    Rand Simberg wrote @ January 23rd, 2012 at 5:58 pm

    the “primitives” (to use Adali Stevenson’s words) in the GOP and I dont think that they care, they hate Obama so much (mostly on race).

    You replied:
    What an idiotic bigoted comment.”

    which part. that the right wing base hates Obama or that it is because of his race? There is heavy polling data to suggest that both are accurate…even from Fox News RGO

  • Robert G. Oler

    DCSCA wrote @ January 23rd, 2012 at 8:06 pm
    many of them not highly paid by 1960s standards-”

    that is simply not accurate. Sorry I was a minor political figure in the Clear Lake Area for sometime including the largest community association in the State (President) and the school board (President).

    When (now) Exxon formed the Clear Lake Community Association the income projections for the folks at the then Manned Spacecraft center show your statement to be nonsense. RGO

  • Jeff Foust

    Discussion of race is way off-topic here, folks. Cease and desist, please.

  • Robert G. Oler

    Jeff Foust wrote @ January 23rd, 2012 at 10:38 pm

    Discussion of race is way off-topic here, folks. Cease and desist, please.>>

    wilco RGO

  • Robert G. Oler

    E.P. Grondine wrote @ January 23rd, 2012 at 7:22 pm

    Hi RGO –

    I was surprised that Huckabee did not do better, perhaps you put your finger on it “the anger”.

    The “unsurgent wing” started before the 1976 election – it was based on computer mailing lists to narrow segments, and then coalescing them into the “wing”. ”

    There is nothing at all wrong with this. When Ronaldus the Great lost the 76 campaign (and he was an insurgent) he and his staff started putting together the notion of a coalition which could grab control of the GOP foot soldiers away from the “wing” that had it….

    What the trick is in figuring out if an insurgent has a chance is to try and ascertain if there is sufficient “mass” that identifies themselves as Republican or Democrat that is interested in that (whatever it is) message. Dean in 04 was an insurgent and had a good message where he lost it (Kolker and I were in Iowa) was that he never had a second act…ie he never could discuss where “these reforms” would take America.

    The GOP today has a serious problem. They have the weakest President in modern history to run against, he should be an easy knock off…and yet the establishment wants a candidate that is more or less hated by the base…and while some of it is his flip flops on most issues a great deal of it is what would make Willard unliked in the general…he is the 1 percent that people are (even on the GOP side) starting to not like

    What Gingrich seems to have done is tapped into an anger that goes beyond what most people in the country feel…but it is in large measure the anger of the “left behind” as America changes.

    I am going to be interested to see how the space comments (see the additional thread) play out in the Space Coast groups. It is a small group and I dont think will change the outcome…but it will fit into the larger message that the various candidates have RGO

  • DCSCA

    Robert G. Oler wrote @ January 23rd, 2012 at 10:15 pm
    In fact, it is, for the 1960’s. Look it up– these are matters of public record.

  • Byeman

    “Uh, no, it was the Eisenhower Administration- Republican BTW- which created your self-described ‘bloated bureaucracy’ aka ‘NASA’ in 1958″

    DCSCA is wrong again. It was not “bloated” until tasked to do the lunar mission, which was under JFK’s watch.

  • E.P. Grondine

    Hi RGO –

    “those “left behind” as the US changes”? I think that is entirely too polite,and avoids looking at the core issues. Can you be a little more specific as to those changes, and why they left some people behind?

  • DCSCA is wrong again.

    What a shock.

    It was not “bloated” until tasked to do the lunar mission, which was under JFK’s watch.

    Yes, Eisenhower’s NASA was mainly a continuation of the NACA, extended to space technology.

  • Robert G. Oler

    DCSCA wrote @ January 24th, 2012 at 2:09 am

    Robert G. Oler wrote @ January 23rd, 2012 at 10:15 pm
    In fact, it is, for the 1960′s. Look it up– these are matters of public record.>>

    you are just wrong on it. The federal job GS pay rates were and remain “high” for Texas as well as most red states. That is one reason the homes at Clear Lake are built like and how they were. sorry RGO

  • Robert G. Oler

    E.P. Grondine wrote @ January 24th, 2012 at 11:34 am

    Hi RGO –

    “those “left behind” as the US changes”? I think that is entirely too polite,and avoids looking at the core issues. Can you be a little more specific as to those changes, and why they left some people behind?”

    I always try and be polite. grin

    Well take NASA for instance…it has run its 50 year course….and is about to undergo massive changes and lots of people are having problems with that because 1) its their paycheck and 2) its their way of life and 3) it is sort of a legacy of how they look on America (or all three)…SpaceX and others are going to take over access to LEO and there is no real reason to continue the myth of human exploration of space now…so people who cannot adapt to those changes are not going to do wellin the coming years.

    this happens a lot of places in America and it is not limited to technical or programatic things, there are social changes as well that a lot (or some anyway) people are having a hard time dealing with. In my era as a young adult in the Navy and the flying business it was women coming into the profession…some simply couldnt handle that…today “gender identification” issues are making it had for some people to deal with reality.

    The role of the US in the world is changing…there is not a bipolar alignment in terms of military power anymore…and people like Mark W and Paul S and others LONG for just that kind of superpower confrontation. You could not listen to Rick S on his views on Iran and sort of say “wow he is out of touch”.

    When I was on the school board a lot of people could not get hold of the reality that we didnt live in Ward and June Cleavers world anymore with Ms. (or Miss) Landers (who as a child I always thought was HOT!) and everyone coming from a certain social economic background. …their response was to want to create that world (home schooling) because that is the only world they feel comfortable with.

    this is the China longing here in space politics. People would feel comfortable with a mindless race to the Moon…so they try and create one. RGO

  • DCSCA

    Robert G. Oler wrote @ January 24th, 2012 at 2:16 pm

    “SpaceX and others are going to take over access to LEO”

    ROFLMAO THEY HAVE FLOWN NOBODY. Tick-tock, tick-tock.

  • DCSCA

    Byeman wrote @ January 24th, 2012 at 10:04 am

    You really don’t follow along very well….

    Rand Simberg wrote @ January 24th, 2012 at 1:06 pm

    Yes, Eisenhower’s NASA was mainly a continuation of the NACA, extended to space technology.

    Wrong- as it abosrbed elements of NACA and much of the military space assets of the period like Von Braun’s Army people. Ever the dhill. s

  • DCSCA

    Robert G. Oler wrote @ January 24th, 2012 at 2:05 pm
    You’re simply wrong. For the ’60’s, its all a matter of public record and the number have been discussed in various memoirs. Get with it and follow along.

  • DCSCA

    Byeman wrote @ January 24th, 2012 at 10:04 am
    “Uh, no, it was the Eisenhower Administration- Republican BTW- which created your self-described ‘bloated bureaucracy’ aka ‘NASA’ in 1958″

    DCSCA is wrong again. It was not “bloated” until tasked to do the lunar mission, which was under JFK’s watch.

    ROFLMAO the ‘lunar mission’ assembled its bureaucray which was hardly ‘bloated’ by 1960s standards- it was a lean and mean operation for that period and expanded under LBJ, not JFK. And the ‘lunar mission’ aka Apollo was a LBJ financed endeavor until Nixon killed it.

  • DCSCA

    @Robert G. Oler wrote @ January 23rd, 2012 at 10:15 pm
    DCSCA wrote @ January 23rd, 2012 at 8:06 pm
    many of them not highly paid by 1960s standards-”that is simply not accurate.”

    =yawn= In fact it is. Example- John Aaron’s starting salary at NASA was $6,800/yr. That’s six-thousand, eight hundred dollars A YEAR… not very high by early 60s standards.

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