Comments on: Former astronauts and administrator endorse Romney

By: Daddy

Daddy — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 06:03:44 +0000

All I know is that at the rate we were going during Apollo, we could have been on Mars and had a fledgling colony and manufacturing industry on the moon by 1980. Nixon put a stop to that, but at least he had the foresight to understand that our nation had to keep a human presence in space. Even after the Challenger and Columbia setbacks, Reagan and Bush II both stayed the course. Carter coasted and Clinton pushed through the foreign policy initiative otherwise known as the International Space Station. Daddy Bush and Baby Bush had grand, meekly funded visions. The real change has come from Obama who has shown the “audacity” to empower incompetent NASA leadership and trash the whole dream. The Republicans now can hide in the visionless wake to dismiss any substantial space investment. Only Gingrich offers any loosely cobbled vision, and he won’t even commit any real federal funds.

Our nation used to have ambition and vision. We are now satisfied to rest on our laurels and coast through slow decline, all in the name of social justice, economic fairness, and fiscal conservatism. Republican or Democrat, I see no real difference in today’s failure of leadership. We will wake up, someday. Or we will continue a decline just as all the rest of history’s empires have suffered. The advantage the benevolent American empire appears to have is that we will dwindle in a comfortable numbness, as opposed to going down in flames…

I do have faith in the future… I just don’t think I will see that future in my lifetime. Maybe I can help my daughter see it or even make it happen in her lifetime.

By: Michael from Iowa

Michael from Iowa — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 17:16:10 +0000

@Googaw
You sound surprised.

Hell, I’m amazed the brief focus on the space program lasted as long as it did.

By: Prez Cannady

Prez Cannady — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 02:36:58 +0000

@well:

The letter said very little about what Romney would do, because they donâ€™t know Neither does Romney. What they know is that Newt Gingrich is saying scary things about space policy and sounds unpredictable to them ( A potential threat to SLS).

Give me a break. Most of these guys were talking to Romney before Gingrich was even a contender. The letter doesn’t mention the Speaker. Eric Anderson’s only remark about Gingrich concerned his “prize” plan. I doubt anyone of the folks who endorsed Romney did so because they felt the Speaker and their candidate were locked in some iconoclastic battle for the future of space.

By: Googaw

Googaw — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 21:34:30 +0000

I notice that since the snickers, guffaws, and belly laughs over Gingrich’s cosmic colony have died down, there has been utter silence from the candidates and their leading flaks on the space subject. Deafening silence.

By: Michael from Iowa

Michael from Iowa — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 18:00:42 +0000

Timeline and future projections for DCSCA posts:

2009 – 2010: Why hasn’t SpaceX launched their rocket yet? Tick-tock, tick-tock! It’s never gonna happen!
*SpaceX launches Falcon 9*

2010 – 2011: Why hasn’t SpaceX launched their capsule yet? Tick-tock, tick-tock! It’s never gonna happen!
*SpaceX launches Dragon*

2011 – 2012: Why hasn’t SpaceX docked with the ISS yet? Tick-tock, tick-tock! It’s never gonna happen!
*SpaceX successfully docks with the ISS*

2012 – ????: Why hasn’t SpaceX landed on the Mars yet? Tick-tock, tick-tock! It’s never gonna happen!

By: well

well — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 14:44:38 +0000

The letter said very little about what Romney would do, because they don’t know Neither does Romney. What they know is that Newt Gingrich is saying scary things about space policy and sounds unpredictable to them ( A potential threat to SLS).

By: Prez Cannady

Prez Cannady — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 13:50:02 +0000

@Vladislaw:

How much of that was actually Mike? It was already laid out in the VSE for commercial cargo AND crew before Mike came on board, I canâ€™t imagine that Mike would have chopped that 500 mil in a heart beat and put it into constellation if he would have had the chance.

Great, you can read minds now.

By: DCSCA

DCSCA — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 06:27:30 +0000

@Dennis Wingo wrote @ January 28th, 2012 at 1:36 pm

=yawn= â€œ[But] a trip to the moon was not dependent on new scientific discoveries:.. nothing here was completely novel. It was all a matter o development.â€ â€“ source, â€˜Space Historyâ€™ by Tony Osman, pg. 47.

By: DCSCA

DCSCA — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 04:58:39 +0000

gregori wrote @ January 29th, 2012 at 5:13 am

Space X has not flown an operational mission delivering cargo to the ISS nor has it successfully launched, orbited and returned any crewed spacecraft.

By: Robert G. Oler

Robert G. Oler — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 15:47:39 +0000

Dennis Wingo wrote @ January 28th, 2012 at 1:36 pm

“Jeff, sorry I am back out of here for another year as all people like this guy makes me want to do is to smash their stupid heads against a wall as a service to the gene pool.”

OH there are things to get angry at, a blog is really not one of them…see you on facebook RGO