Campaign '12

Space hasn’t completely faded from the presidential campaign

The conventional wisdom was that, after the Florida primary earlier this week, space policy would fade from the presidential campaign at least though the rest of the GOP primary race. By and large, that’s been the case: as the candidates have moved on to Nevada and other states, they’ve focused their attention on other issues, including the economy. But one leading candidate brought up space again yesterday, primarily as a cudgel against another.

“Ground Control to Major Newt: Nevada Needs Jobs, Not Moon Colony” reads the headline of a release from the Mitt Romney campaign. The release argues that Newt Gingrich is focusing on literally out-of-this-world ideas like a lunar settlement that the Romney campaign claims “could cost up to $500 billion” (based on a quote from a single article) while “Nevada is suffering from a jobs and housing crisis”. That lunar base idea, the Romney release argues, is the “latest in a string of expensive extraterrestrial initiatives” that would drive up government spending. Those initiatives largely predate Gingrich’s current presidential campaign, ranging from his “space mirror” concept from the 1980s to more modest proposals for space manufacturing and tourism tax credits from 2006 (which is sourced from an interview published in The Space Review) to, of course, his “Northwest Ordinance for space” lunar statehood act. The Romney campaign doesn’t discuss its views on space—or anything else—in the release: the apparent message is that a candidate who talks about housing on the Moon isn’t concerned with housing problems of voters in Nevada.

56 comments to Space hasn’t completely faded from the presidential campaign

  • SpaceColonizer

    So they’re trying to push the fact that Romney doesn’t care about the very poor out of discussion by keeping talk of lunar colonies in? Geez… will somebody please make a campaign appearance at Bigelow before they leave Vegas?

  • Well, Romney just lost the Area 51* vote …

    * Nellis AFB north of Las Vegas

  • For those who don’t have a subscription to WSJ, you can find some details from it on Clark Lindsey’s blog:
    http://hobbyspace.com/nucleus/index.php?itemid=35400

  • amightywind

    .* Nellis AFB north of Las Vegas

    Groom Dry Lake is hundreds of miles from Nellis.

    “Major Newt.” Funny. This looks like an effective attack by the Romney campaign in a far west state where he already has an advantage. The Mormons are a strong political force. It will be interesting to see if Newt can still do well in the many upcoming southeastern state primaries coming up after a Nevada beat down.

  • GeeSpace

    It would seem that Romney is really anti Space Development, Romney;s most positive statement on space is that he thinks private companies should do the space thing with an unstated viewpoint that NASA should not be funded at all including NASA funds to provate space compamoes.

    Also, it’s interesting to see anti-space people quote the highest possible dollor amount which is someone’s opinion, from a mis-read study, or from a Christmas tree study.

    If Romney become Oresident, I fear, that the funding problems NASA has now will be minor compare to Romney prosed funding. I hope I am wrong and that Romney makes a strong statement on private and public funding for space expolration.

    By the way, for those who might care, I am not a supporter of Newt’s presidential bid.

  • Dex

    It appears that the Romney campaign is blissfully unaware that Bigelow Aerospace’s factory is in Las Vegas and has plans to build a moon base. A not insignificant portion of the the hardware for the Bigelow moon base would be built in Nevada.

  • Doug Lassiter

    Dex wrote @ February 3rd, 2012 at 9:26 am
    “A not insignificant portion of the the hardware for the Bigelow moon base would be built in Nevada.”

    Actually, a significant attraction of the Bigelow plan for a Moon base is that the base part is pretty cheap. A huge fraction of the hardware for such a base (especially transportation to that base, for humans and cargo) won’t be built in Nevada.

    It’s possible that Romney just doesn’t care about space. But another way to interpret Romney’s lack of attention to space planning in the primary campaign is that he doesn’t regard space as a state-specific issue, but as a national issue. It becomes a state-specific issue when the purpose of human space flight is jobs in that state. In his defense, maybe Romney thinks that the rationale for human space flight is about more than jobs. Were that the case, one might expect him to bring up human space flight in the general campaign, once he gets the nomination. That is, when you’re in Nevada, the right campaign strategy is to talk about what’s good for Nevada. What’s good for Nevada isn’t protection against big holes in the ground that would more likely be in Alaska or Texas, national soft power, or lunar ISRU.

  • @GeeSpace:

    It would seem that Romney is really anti Space Development.

    That’s a stretch.

  • John

    Romney’s reaction at the news conference was striking. He doesn’t care about space exploration and would be willing to leave things just as they are indefinitely if elected. Gingrich would shake it up a bit by cancelling SLS to free up money for a worthwhile launch vehicle system. Right now NASA does not have a crew vehicle or reliable lifting capability to get anything done.

  • @Dex:

    It appears that the Romney campaign is blissfully unaware that Bigelow Aerospace’s factory is in Las Vegas and has plans to build a moon base.

    He’s also probably unaware of the Waffle House in Ashland, VA. What’s plainly obvious after Florida is that presidential campaigns are no place to industrial planning and budgeting, including where it concerns civil space.

  • @Lassiter:

    It’s possible that Romney just doesn’t care about space.

    Possible, but highly unlikely given that he laid out unimpeachably stark guidance for how his Administration would approach space affairs. His campaign has been as substantive on the issue as any other, including Gingrich’s.

    But another way to interpret Romney’s lack of attention to space planning in the primary campaign is that he doesn’t regard space as a state-specific issue, but as a national issue. It becomes a state-specific issue when the purpose of human space flight is jobs in that state.

    Not quite sure what point you’re trying to make here, but this strikes me as imposing paradigms for the sake of argument. You don’t have to be in the weeds to know that provincial concerns are the single biggest drivers of public space spending; it’s a readily observable feature on the campaign circuit. There is also no inherently false choice between devising a useful strategy for national space policy and dealing out pork to gain political support. Romney pursuit of a new consensus through committee is how Presidents have historically prodded Congress to inject new or reprogram old spending. It might not work, but you don’t have a better plan to get the money.

    In his defense, maybe Romney thinks that the rationale for human space flight is about more than jobs. Were that the case, one might expect him to bring up human space flight in the general campaign, once he gets the nomination.

    I don’t see how thinking space policy is more than just a jobs program–or is, for that matter–requires you to make it a campaign issue. And on the scale of the rest of the budget–which deals with immediate (as in this year) concerns–space policy is a meager concern no matter how exciting it is.

  • @John:

    Romney’s reaction at the news conference was striking. He doesn’t care about space exploration and would be willing to leave things just as they are indefinitely if elected.

    Leaving things as they are, at the very least, injects new commercial competition for lift.

  • GeeSpace

    Prez Cannady wrote @ February 3rd, 2012 at 11:51 am
    @GeeSpace:
    It would seem that Romney is really anti Space Development.
    That’s a stretch.

    Prez Cannady, please show me when and where Mitt Romney made any statement (more than a sentence) on his vision for space development’

    Please show links.

  • Robert G. Oler

    “I find it interesting that the Gingrich campaign never tried to defend itself from the ridicule it got over his lunar ambitions.”

    There are I suspect three or four reasons.

    First I suspect that Gingrich and whoever is talking to him about space (Muncy wont tell you one way or the other, Jim has a lot of honor and that is what people in the back of the bus do) did not anticipate that both Willard and the “space community” would essentially turn on the idea.

    not calculating that Willard would do it was a blunder but almost excusable because I think Newt believes in space and its impact on the nation future that he finds it hard to see that others do not. It was a little surprising even to me how the space community turned on the idea…and in large measure (like the answer he got on the Atlas human rating) is an indication of how far into the “technowelfare” that the community has gone. It is not important what the programs actually do…just that they look good doing it and feed money to the Space industrial complex.

    SEcond there literally was no time or really venue.

    Third is that Willard just has a lot of money and he was at saturation in the airways in Florida and while Newt has some money; he doesnt have willards money. A lie will travel quite a bit faster then the truth and the GOP (and Newt has as well) has learned how to lie to spin things up.

    Since Rove doesnt like “Willard” I find it ironic that Willard is more or less running Rove’s playbook. “Turdblossom” (Bush43’s “nick” for Karl Rove) rule number 7 for sliming an opponent (he publishes these in his book) is to always have some charge that has “one sensational fact in it that obscures everything else and is fact checkable”. This was the “lunar colony” thing.

    Newt Used that phrase and so Willard felt quite comfortable in using it completely out of context and hammering Gingrich with it.

    All is fair in love, war and politics. Willard will “Not care about the poor” THE REST OF THIS CAMPAIGN.

    Robert

    Robert

  • Googaw

    “will somebody please make a campaign appearance at Bigelow before they leave Vegas?”

    Sure, Newt can endorsed a federal goal to find the UFOs by 2020 while he’s at it.

  • Googaw

    “It would seem that Romney is really anti Space Development”

    So being against spending billions of dollars for useless shrines for astronauts on the moon makes one anti space development, eh?

  • @Gingrich:

    There are I suspect three or four reasons.

    There’s only one. He can’t defend it. Specifically, he can’t defend his particular basket of proposals because he’s never thought about them beyond the point of “Gee, whiz! I’m a visionary about to make history!” That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it does mean that he’s no more substantive on space issues than his primary opponents.

  • Googaw

    “presidential campaigns are no place [for] industrial planning and budgeting”

    Heretic! If we do not borrow more billions from the Chinese to build more heavenly temples in which our cosmic pilgrims may uselessly abide, according to Newt’s 8-year Plan, we will go bankrupt! Bigelow’s green friends will punish you for your blasphemy! Why are you so anti Space Development!?!

  • Robert G. Oler

    Doug Lassiter wrote @ February 3rd, 2012 at 9:53 am

    Dex

    It’s possible that Romney just doesn’t care about space”

    I dont think he does; but that is not why he is beating up on Newt. All Willard cares about is him becoming President and he is running an “issues” not a theme campaign.

    To get the GOP nomination these days what you have to do is “be OK” on a litmus test of issues to get this or that group to come along with you…and watch his campaign carefully and that is what he is doing. Space, human spaceflight has no real group to have a litmus test with other then the corporations which he wants to get money from.

    RGO

  • Googaw

    “…on the scale of the rest of the budget..”

    That’s what they all say. On the scale of the whole budget, every bureaucrat’s own budget is tiny.

    You may remember that Sputnik was a symbol for the Soviet Union’s deadly (and then novel) nuclear ICBM capability. A symbol that motivated vastly more funding for non-military space efforts than was rationally required.

    And astronaut cultists have delighted in using the symbolic power of their otherwise useless heroes to grab federal money every since.

    Space symbolism works both ways. Newt’s lunar “colony” is a now symbol of the casual ease with which politicians spend our money with the wave of a hand. It’s government profligacy gone astronomical.

  • amightywind

    Willard just has a lot of money and he was at saturation in the airways in Florida and while Newt has some money

    Opponents are reasonably qualified it comes down to that. Mitt was a good party Republican the last 4 years and he is being rewarded this time around by the establishment. It is famously ‘his turn’ for good or bad. It is a difficult obstacle for an insurgent to overcome, as Newt and Santorum are discovering.

    Since Rove doesnt like “Willard” I find it ironic that Willard is more or less running Rove’s playbook. “Turdblossom” (Bush43′s “nick” for Karl Rove) rule

    Name calling hurts your otherwise respectable, if partisan reasoning.

  • Robert G. Oler

    Prez Cannady wrote @ February 3rd, 2012 at 1:25 pm

    “There’s only one. He can’t defend it. Specifically, he can’t defend his particular basket of proposals because he’s never thought about them beyond the point of “Gee, whiz”

    you are I see new to this. That statement is a complete non starter with Newt, in fact it is just pure wrong.

    Newt has thought and spoken a LOT about how he envisions a “free enterprise human space effort” would change mankind and the future of the nation.

    I hold as a “Happy possession” a “Dear Robert” letter which he signed “Newt” which was in response to a piece I wrote, Rich Kolker edited and Mark Whittington just wanted his name on that was published in The Weekly Standard on July 1999 (I was in Albania at the time!) which noted some of his ideas and expanded on them and oddly enough argued for a course of action; a lunar base, how it should be done differently and what I thought the results would be.

    Newt in several speeches and his teaching of some college courses made similar points.

    They are not points that are 30 second sound bite points nor are they politically easily made after a 200 billion dollar space station effort that has left something of little or no value to cost…but you are wrong. Newt has thought them through.

    RGO

  • The problem is that people confused Newts moon base program with a lunar colony program and of course Newt’s– illegal– lunar statehood program.

    Newt advocated a simple moon base by 2020. But the confused populace and the scientifically ignorant media are talking about Newt advocating thousands of people on the Moon by 2020.

    The real danger in all this negative media about the Moon is that it could actually make a Moon base taboo for Americans in the near future which would pretty much give the Moon and its precious water resources to China and other nations. China is already taking advantage of American fears. They’ve got 26 nuclear reactors under construction including America’s most advanced nuclear reactor, the AP1000– which we haven’t even built here yet. The US only has one reactor under construction. And Bill Gates is talking about getting the Chinese to help him fund his next generation breeder reactor.

    Where would America be if the public and the media had ridiculed placing of an artificial moon (a satellite) into orbit back in the late 1950s to such a degree that we feared doing it at all? Where would we be!

  • @Googaw:

    Space symbolism works both ways.

    Do you seriously need to invent new formalism every time you try to make a political point?

    Newt’s lunar “colony” is a now symbol of the casual ease with which politicians spend our money with the wave of a hand. It’s government profligacy gone astronomical.

    To what extent is the American public even paying attention to candidate’s views on space? Seems to me if you can’t even show that it’s a measurably significant concern to the electorate, then this whole line of discussion is moot.

  • well

    A reiteration of what he said in his initial comments about Newt’s plans, He’s “more concerned about housing”. That’s the message and Romney is a disciplined campaigner. His job is repeating the same stuff and not making mistakes (he’s less good at that).

  • E.P. Grondine

    Hi RGO, googaw –

    I disagree with both of you on the value of ISS. Please note carefully carefully the first of Romney’s objectives:

    “In his speech Romney identified four objectives for American space efforts: “existential” studies of things “going on in the universe that could dramatically affect the Earth”, supporting commercial efforts, increasing the health and well-being of Americans through research and spinoffs, and national defense.”

    I don’t think Romney was talking about climate system struides in that first objective, I think he was obliquely referring to impacts, but did not want to appear crazier than Newt to the voters.

    Dealing with Impact entails CAPS, with the US in a leadership role or without the US in a leadership role. Newt’s shoeing his age, and still thinking in the 1950’s “colony” mode.

    What I don’t want is more money wasted on Ares1, which unfortunately is my guess as to what Romney would most likely actually do. Another of my guesses is that Romney would bow to the base and cancel climate study probes. Anyone here remember the TOMS series?

  • Mark

    Romney is being pretty sleazy with this misleading press release. If course he has also let himself have an out when, during his hypothetical presidency, his space advisers come up with a return to the moon plan. It won’t cost anywhere near $500 billion and therefore would not be Newt’s zany idea.

    Of course Newt’s plan wouldn’t cost that much anyway.

    Gingrich and his poor excuse for space advisers really asked for this kind of treatment by not fleshing out the lunar base idea, not giving a credible cost estimate, and not listing a number of easily understood reasons why it should be done. Romney may be a creep for jumping on the lunar base like he has, but Gingrich has been incompetent for letting him do it.

  • Googaw

    E.P. Grondine, that threat, like a very large number of other possible threats in the decade since 9/11, has been greatly exaggerated. The idea that, since 9/11 was itself very improbable, that we have to pay attention to the near-infinity of threats of nearly infinitesimal probability, is quickly becoming untenable. But Romney and his neocon advisers have a tendency to exploit these kinds of scares, so it doesn’t surprise me to see it making his space list.

    In any case, at least we have a problem that at least plausibly should be addressed and that can be tackled rationally, instead of starting with the idea that we must launch astronauts for the sake of launching astronauts. That’s progress.

    The biggest problem that needs to be solved to address the comet threat is figuring out how to detect cold comets while they are still far out in the solar system. As much as it may disturb the astronaut worshipers out there, astronauts don’t really have any significant role to play in helping solve this problem. It’s also much easier and far cheaper to set up meteorite counting arrays on the moon without the gigacosts and distractions associated with this cult. What we need the most here are even more sensitive telescopes, probably infrared space-based telescopes, that can detect cold objects very far away. If you really want to save the planet, lose the astronauts and focus on what actually solves the problem rather than what distracts from it.

  • Mark

    By the way, I rather wish Oler would stop lying about the authorship of the Weekly Standard piece. Just saying.

  • Googaw

    “Another of my guesses is that Romney would bow to the base and cancel climate study probes. ”

    This isn’t what most of the global warming skeptics/deniers (whatever you prefer to call them) want. In fact they’d love to gather facts that they believe would disprove the theory of human-caused global warming.

    What they don’t want is for NASA or climate “scientists” (using the scare quotes they use) to have the opportunity to monopolize or manipulate the data without their methods being “audited” (i.e. replicated or otherwise confirmed or found to be erroneous) by skeptics. Since plenty of sensible people who agree with global warming also endorse public data and open source software for science, especially science the public is paying for, there’s a compromise here that all reasonable parties should agree to: fund the climate science but insist that all the data and software developed with these funds must be published on the Internet along with the papers.

  • Vladislaw

    “What I don’t want is more money wasted on Ares1, which unfortunately is my guess as to what Romney would most likely actually do.”

    Romney wouldn’t support Ares 1, I think he would instead support the ATK – LIBERTY .. with big american flags on it.

  • Robert G. Oler

    Mark wrote @ February 3rd, 2012 at 4:49 pm

    By the way, I rather wish Oler would stop lying about the authorship of the Weekly Standard piece. Just saying.>>

    what lie have I told on that? You WROTE NOTHING not a single word of the piece. I wrote the piece and Rich edited it…I sent it to you and you suggested no changes (I have the emails). You did however take 1/3 of the payment.

    Rich more then deserved a masthead name because he did one of the finest edits of the piece that I have seen, he made it sing…but you Sir did nothing and I’ll get Kolker to show up on this forum to give his end of that as well.

    You had nothing to do with the edits that TWS did. Rich did because I was at sometimes not available. But you had nothing to do with the piece in terms of writing it or editing it.

    You have grown so use to the GOP lies that you buy outright and telling a few yourself that you no longer know the truth. To claim that Commercial crew/cargo is like Solyndra (or whatever the name is) is a lie. Yet you continually repeat it…

    You did not write a single word of TWS piece, whose context is to repudiate the very stands you have now.

    Robert G. Oler

  • DCSCA

    “Ground Control to Major Newt: Nevada Needs Jobs, Not Moon Colony” reads the headline of a release from the Mitt Romney campaign.

    There’s a TV & radio spot as well. Makes Griffin, Cernan and Crippen look all the more foolish for endorsing Mitt. The only space Sir Willard of Romney has any interest in is the square footage of his fifteen homes.

  • DCSCA

    Space is now a punchline. As feared.

  • DCSCA

    “What we need the most here are even more sensitive telescopes, probably infrared space-based telescopes, that can detect cold objects very far away.”

    That’s not a need. That’s a want. Big difference.

  • Coastal Ron

    Mark wrote @ February 3rd, 2012 at 4:25 pm

    Romney is being pretty sleazy with this misleading press release… It won’t cost anywhere near $500 billion and therefore would not be Newt’s zany idea.

    Maybe, but that is the standard political tactic to put your opponent on the defensive and to make them either A) spend far more time correcting/explaining the “truth” than they want to, or B) don’t take the time to defend or explain the “truth”, and be looked at as weak.

    This is why smart politicians have learned not to say much of substance if they can help it, which in the case of Romney means that he will “appoint a blue ribbon panel to help him figure out the right approach for his space plan”. Of course that means ignoring the work of the last blue ribbon panel (Augustine 09), but that’s what the victors get to do – rewrite history in their image.

  • Robert G. Oler

    E.P. Grondine wrote @ February 3rd, 2012 at 3:42 pm

    Willard doesnt know nor care what those words say or mean. In Willards world words mean anything you care to put on them…as do his position statements.

    Willard has been on at least both sides and maybe more of every substantive issue; he was pro choice before he was pro life, he was for government sponsored health care before he was against it….and if he gets to the general since the campaign will be fought “between the forties” of American politics ie in the middle he will find ways to try and morph his policies to that group as well.

    What those words were designed to do is molify the “Jonah Goldberg” crowd who know where the corporate wins are blowing and are trying to sell an excrement sandwich (Jonah makes the preposterous claim that Willard will “owe conservatives” which in itself says he is not really one).

    This is why Crippen and Anderson and all the other thuds who signed that letter are fools…they got nothing for their endorsement and instead helped make space policy something one does not discuss.

    thanks fellows RGO

  • Robert G. Oler

    For Willard words are well entertaining

    “I believe in an America where millions of Americans believe in an america that is the America millions of Americans believe in. That’s the America I love” and then Willard lead the crowd in God Bless America

    Sincerity…it shows RGO

  • Doug Lassiter

    Prez Cannady wrote @ February 3rd, 2012 at 3:29 pm
    “To what extent is the American public even paying attention to candidate’s views on space?”

    You haven’t been looking at the media for the last week or so, I gather. Duh? The public is paying a lot of attention to the views of one candidate on our future in space. They’re also paying attention to the views of other candidates, which are most popularly understood as assertions that the views of the first candidate are crazy. Oh yes, the American public has been paying a lot of attention to this.

    No, this isn’t about deep space policy issues. It’s about jokes and ridicule about views about thinly articulated policy. It’s about what are coming to be understood as gaffes. But it sure is about candidates views on space.

    DCSCA wrote @ February 3rd, 2012 at 7:06 pm
    “That’s not a need. That’s a want. Big difference.”

    That statement is more profoundly applicable to human space flight. Well put!

  • Coastal Ron

    DCSCA wrote @ February 3rd, 2012 at 7:02 pm

    Space is now a punchline. As feared.

    No, I see it more as a reaction to “big government” programs more than anything else. Newt failed to lay out a convincing reason to spend that much money for a colony on the Moon by 2020, which is why Romney can get so much traction with his ridicule.

    Give the American people a good reason for why something should be done – a reason an average person can explain and defend on their own – and they will support it. Newt didn’t do that.

  • Robert G. Oler

    Coastal Ron wrote @ February 3rd, 2012 at 9:58 pm

    Give the American people a good reason for why something should be done – a reason an average person can explain and defend on their own – and they will support it. ….

    curious what do you think such a reason would be? RGO

  • @Lassiter:

    You haven’t been looking at the media for the last week or so, I gather.

    Apparently more than you have.

    Oh yes, the American public has been paying a lot of attention to this.

    Keep dreaming.

  • Googaw

    DCSCA: “Space is now a punchline. As feared.”

    Well observed. What this means: all those who were thinking about NASA as a source of funding for your projects — you need to deeply rethink what you really want and how to go about getting it.

  • DCSCA

    Coastal Ron wrote @ February 3rd, 2012 at 9:58 pm

    No, I see it more as a reaction to “big government” programs more than anything else.

    Then you’re in a very small group. War is a very big government program- very, very, big– good for business, too, and you don’t see that being ridiculed by Republicans at all. They’re for it- for a big military across the board, especially Sir Willard of Romney, save Paul, who is a Libertarian. No, the Republican Party has managed to make talk of space a punchline in the minds of the electorate.

  • Robert G. Oler

    DCSCA wrote @ February 4th, 2012 at 1:10 am

    Then you’re in a very small group. War is a very big government program- very, very, big– good for business, too, and you don’t see that being ridiculed by Republicans at all….

    correct. “War” or perpetual conflict has become as important to the mainline GOP as poverty has become for the Democrats.

    The war machine is a big business in The Republic and like the space machine, just on a larger scale “what” or “how well” the weapons actually do is not important…we just have to have the weapons. There is the great moment on the Pete Olson facebook page where Olson is railing against another ‘make work government stimulus” and some dork who lost his job on Cx is explaining how horrible Obama’s space policy is…because it cost him his job… RGO

  • E.P. Grondine

    Hi googaw –

    When I first heard Teller et al. going on about the impact hazard, I thought it was just nuclear physicists looking for work. I was wrong.

    Your statement that that hazard is minimal is just flat out wrong. What you don’t know about the impact hazard would fill four to five books; I finished the manuscript for one of them, but then was hit by a stroke.

    Your statements about the necessary requirements for impactor detectors is just flat out wrong as well.

    Its nearly impossible now to conduct an educational campaign among the general public. That the mammoth were extincted by impact along with about 95% of the human population 13,000 years ago has been nearly completely obfuscated.

    Their representatives do take notice when their own electoral districts were “recently” hit, though.

    Note carefully all of the specious rationalizations DL came up with when I told him that all of Hubble’s observing time was needed now to track the debris stream of Comet 73P.

  • Vladislaw

    “Robert G. Oler wrote:

    [Coastal Ron wrote:
    “Give the American people a good reason for why something should be done – a reason an average person can explain and defend on their own – and they will support it. ….”]

    curious what do you think such a reason would be? RGO”

    I would attack it as America, banking on it’s reputation for putting humans in space, dominate new potential global markets, industries and sectors in Aerospace and offworld commercial enterprises. Founded on the idea of increasing STEM students looking for careers in commercial space by the creation of commercial, high tech, longterm jobs for the 21st Century. These markets will emerge over the next century with or without us, do we want the Nation to get in early and be a market maker or not.

    Contracting changes to more SAA’s v.s. FAR’s, less costplus-fixed fee, more fixed cost, milestone based, make contractors more invested up front.

    Creative space prizes.

    Creative tax incentives, like Zero G – Zero Tax.

    Promote the dual use concept.

    Minimize costs to the taxpayer by choosing items that have the highest multiplier effect and cross over use by government and commercial.

    Have the government act more as an anchor tenant and user of commercial services rather than doing those services inhouse.

    Move the governments efforts more into space based ships like Nautilus X and infrastructure like fuel supply contracts from commercial fuel stations.

    Government would lease ships from commercial companies and supply their own crew, commercial companies own the design and build the ships that both the government and other commercial firms can lease.

    Just some thoughts.

  • Robert G. Oler

    Vladislaw wrote @ February 4th, 2012 at 5:22 pm

    I hope that you are correct but my theory is that there is NOTHING that will sell the American people on another large expensive goal oriented human spaceflight program.

    We finally have NASA’s “next logical step” the space station and 200 billion later…few can see any reason for it. And almost everything you mention was used to keep it alive.

    I think we are at this bad place where until something becomes of economic value in human spaceflight and/ore the price of it plummets well the American people dont see any reason to spend a lot of money on it RGO

  • Vladislaw

    Robert: Look how the ISS runs compared to how it should be if items I listed were utilized versus how it is done.. NASA should have long ago embraced commercial crew with a fixed seat price. Every NASA center has a tourist aspect. There should be like a Bigelow commercial visitor’s center at the ISS. Extra seats on a flight to the ISS could be sold to other researchers/tourists etc.

    Why the hell is NASA delivering freakin’ food for christ’s sake after 50 years. A Visitor center would have a cafeteria and astronauts use food chits… the list is endless how different it would be if commercial would have went with on the ISS and brought NASA’s costs down and increased activity all at a lower cost to the taxpayer.

    A second tier country or group of them will sooner or later realize how expensive NASA has made space operations look just because of all the layers of pork.

    America can trade on it’s reputation only as long as a new player(s) don’t jump in and get established first.

    I do not advocate that NASA gets huge increases to fund more pork, my prefrence is like Bill White’s, whenever possible, go around NASA if possible. I just want the country’s investment in space, tax dollars, are done in a way that makes economic sense on how you use mutipler effects to increase investment, if you truely do want a commercial market to develope. NASA is more times a roadblock rather than a help.

  • @Oler:

    I hope that you are correct but my theory is that there is NOTHING that will sell the American people on another large expensive goal oriented human spaceflight program.

    So sell’em on one that won’t cost a single extra dime.

    We finally have NASA’s “next logical step” the space station and 200 billion later…few can see any reason for it. And almost everything you mention was used to keep it alive.

    And yet Congress still pays to keep it running. Well, if you want to actually use it for something, and if you’re going to go ahead and build something like SLS and launch it once every two years or so, then use it as a supply depot and motel for reusable cislunar vehicles and crews and start dropping payloads on the Moon. Hell, maybe the notion that the system can be evolved into something considerably cheaper might even catch Congress’ attention.

    I think we are at this bad place where until something becomes of economic value in human spaceflight and/ore the price of it plummets well the American people dont see any reason to spend a lot of money on it RGO

    The American people already see fit to spend just shy of $20 billion a year on a space program that has nothing to do with DirecTV. You’ll be fine.

  • Florida Today has posted a deeper analysis of the Florida primary, looking at whether Newt’s space policy speech made any difference.

    A story in The Washington Post prior to the election, called Brevard County a likely Gingrich stronghold in Tuesday’s primary. Saying Brevard was “fueled by conservative anger over cuts to NASA,” the article included Brevard among the five Florida counties to watch. The other counties were Duval, Miami-Dade, Orange and Pinellas.

    “If there is a county where Gingrich’s pledge to have a permanent colony on the moon by the end of his second term will resonate, it’s this one where Cape Canaveral is located,” the article stated. “In the 2008 Florida Republican presidential primary, Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) beat Romney by 5 points in Brevard, which mirrored his statewide margin.”

    Romney, however, came out on top this time, collecting 43 percent of the vote in Brevard compared to Gingrich’s 33 percent.

  • BeanCounterfromDownunder

    Hey Prez. That’s Congress spending the money, not the ‘American people’. Just thought I should point out that slight distinction.

    RGO’s right, there is no imperative in terms of a value case, for spending billions on HSF. NASA’s lost that battle long ago by staying stuck in the past as a recent government report noted.

  • @BeanCounter

    Hey Prez. That’s Congress spending the money, not the ‘American people’.

    Voters, as opposed to the Tooth Fairy, send folks to Congress.

    RGO’s right, there is no imperative in terms of a value case, for spending billions on HSF.

    Americans do anyway, and they spend considerably more money on even less useful space-related pursuits. That seems to be the point everyone here is missing.

    NASA’s lost that battle long ago by staying stuck in the past as a recent government report noted.

    Still trying to remember the last time some unnamed government report made or break a candidate.

  • Coastal Ron

    DCSCA wrote @ February 4th, 2012 at 1:10 am

    Then you’re in a very small group.

    You haven’t been listening to the Republican themes over the past few years, have you?

    War is a very big government program- very, very, big– good for business, too, and you don’t see that being ridiculed by Republicans at all.

    Regardless of their obvious disconnect between wanting to spend ever increasing amounts on “defense”, the party as a whole has a “less spending” mantra. Romney was able to reframe the Gingrich Moon idea into a choice between big government (i.e. Newt) or less government (i.e. Mitt). Gingrich fumbled the roll-out and defense of his idea, and he was perceived as advocating a big government program. Very bad thing to do in Republican primaries.

    No, the Republican Party has managed to make talk of space a punchline in the minds of the electorate.

    In this case everyone is attacking the messenger, not the message per se. The other candidates could care less if Newt was talking about building a government-run base on an island, the Moon, or somewhere in fantasy-land. It was politically expedient fodder.

    And actually, as others have pointed out the other candidates, when they do mention space issues, are for a commercial based approach. Most of us see that as good, so this discussion hasn’t hurt the future of space from our perspective.

  • Coastal Ron

    Robert G. Oler wrote @ February 3rd, 2012 at 10:49 pm

    curious what do you think such a reason would be?

    For space related stuff? I think people saw the value of rescuing and improving Hubble, even though it was pretty expensive. It had easy to digest ROI in the form of a steady stream of beautiful pictures.

    I think the science community understands the need for the ISS, and the average taxpayer can understand that it is an international effort to “help us learn how to live and work in space” (my definition).

    The Mars rovers (Sojourner, Spirit & Opportunity) I think have been very popular too.

    Overall I think it’s not an easy thing to predict, as it boils down to what the public is perceiving, and whether they perceive it as worthwhile. Many of the conversations about what the next space exploration effort should be echo that, with huge chasms between Moon First, Mars First, Flexible Path, robot vs human and such. Yes, we all want to explore further out into space, but what goal is worth the money, and what approach is worth the money?

    I think about the only thing I could say with any confidence is not too far too fast, as that implies too much money and too little ROI.

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