one wonders if space policy will come up in both Ohio and Texas now that both primaries could be pivotal…RGO

There’s a thought. Though I’m thinking that instead of statehood, they’ll just end up in FL-24. Redistricting results in some innovative district morphologies, so why not? Why shouldn’t the space coast include a space crater or two?

This sort of shows a few things…

but 1) I think that the article misinterprets Ronaldus the Great’s space policy…and 2) it shows the obsession with Reagan 30 years later that is dooming the GOP to a level of mediocrity that is just stunning.

Who knows what Reagan would have done today? Reagan handled his times well, but these are not his times.

Anyway the article shows some interesting splits in the GOP over Newts space policy.

RGO

You skeptics, you can’t recognize visionary visions when you see them. We really will have that congressional delegation from the 51st state and they too will be visionaries — you will be outvoted!

Cynics like you fail to recognize the central role of our heavenly pilgrims in making all our tech dreams come true. As soon as Chinese taikonauts set foot on our holy sanctuaries in the heavens we are doomed! Doomed I say! Repent of your skepticism now before it’s too late!

The crux of the issue that we seem to agree upon, (miracles never cease to amaze) but just as important is the other side of the “ONLY/NOT in my back yard” coin. It’s called HUMAN NATURE”

No Fred its called politics…

Look pork is pork no matter the perspective and two things are true about pork. First it has existed since the dawn of The Republic and second its not in itself bad.

Pork is like a family stopping for an icecream desert or going to a entertainment place or …whatever it is something that gives us enjoyment, regional flavor and preserves in large measure our cultural identity. I have no more problem with 1 million spent on the “Steam engine museum” any more then I have a problem with 1 million spent on the “Cowboy museum” in both OK City and Fort Worth.

What I Have a problem with, and where things have gotten out of hand…is that now we have very very large projects masquerading as infrastructure when they are pork.

Whittington for instance likes to bang on the Obama stimulus…I didnt like it much either but at least I am fair about it. Mark’s big gripe about it seems to be that Cx wasnt included in it..and then he list projects that he thinks are bad…and goes on about how Cx should have at least been funded as those were…goofy

Bad performing programs are bad performing programs if they are social programs, bad foreign policy or well bad domestic technical programs.

THE REALITY is that Cx had more money then Gemini spent on an operational program..in fact it had THREE times the amount of money and really had nothing for it.

To then go on and try and defend that to argue for it continuing is where we are at with so many things in The Republic today. The F-35 has consumed more real dollars then the entire F-14 buy did. What is up with this?

This is not a matter of perspective and just because one supports the goals of the effort does not mean that the effort alone has value.

This is now where the GOP is today. In some cases; Iraq, the F-35, Cx and lots of others we are way past debating the goals of the project; we are into debating the competency about which the project was undertaken…and it is goofy for people, mostly Republicans to rail against out of control government spending…when they are supporting the most out of control spending…in history

RGO

“Doug, yes our tech has improved, but most of it due to the space program in general.”

Piffle. “Most”? Name five technologies that are significant in our lives today that are direct outgrowths of what NASA has been doing in the past 10-20 years.

OK, I know that was hard. Name one.

The Shuttle last had an effect on technology back in the 70’s. The ISS likely used whatever technology we had at the time, but didn’t break ground on anything significant.

Companies making products for the consumer market (technology, medicine, etc.) drive the majority of innovation today. I doubt NASA contributions even show up as a blimp on the chart.

Doug how dare you question the dogma of spinoffs! When you’re working for NASA it’s just cosmic. Engineers working on missiles or spy satellites, or at Bell Labs or SRI or Xerox PARC, just can’t produce important breakthroughs the way they can when they are daydreaming of astronauts!