Comments on: SLS engineer seeks to run against Mo Brooks as an independent

By: Cathi

Cathi — Mon, 04 Aug 2014 18:59:39 +0000

Mo Brooks, the scared elderly white man is playing the race card. Is he that worried about being ousted?

By: Cathi

Cathi — Mon, 04 Aug 2014 18:58:50 +0000

Makes no difference in Alabama what party you’re associated with, they all lean to the right.

By: Jack

Jack — Tue, 08 Jul 2014 17:24:56 +0000

Anybody except MO – RON.

By: greybeardmike

greybeardmike — Wed, 16 Apr 2014 21:12:39 +0000

Vlad,

Be careful not to confuse what a Tea Partier says and what they do.

By: Hiram

Hiram — Thu, 13 Feb 2014 02:44:47 +0000

Sorry, I should have noticed it was 2012, and not last year.

By: Dick Eagleson

Dick Eagleson — Thu, 13 Feb 2014 01:02:01 +0000

Entirely agree, sir. Mr. Bray’s “issues” platform is a 100% specifics-free compendium of boilerpate “applehood and mother pie” platitudes.

By: Dick Eagleson

Dick Eagleson — Thu, 13 Feb 2014 00:59:26 +0000

I just had a chance to listen to that 12-17-12 Space Show episode. On the basis of his presentation I would be hard-presed to categorize Mr. Bray as much of a friend of commercial space. He expressed considerable skepticism about any potential market for commercial space efforts except in his own field of materials development. In particular, he stated that he didn’t expect any commercial space enterprise to be profitable on non-government-derived business for at least another 10 years. Even allowing for this show being 14 months old, that is a fabulously blinkered view of the whole commercial space arena and especially of SpaceX. Unlike what Mr. Bray claims in his own case, I have no professional connection whatsoever to SpaceX; I certainly have no non-disclosure agreements with them as Mr. Bray also claims. But the idea that SpaceX was ten or more years away from profitability on non-government business was patently idiotic 14 months ago and even more so now when, in all likelihood, SpaceX has already crossed that particular bar or is, at worst, a mere few weeks or months away from doing so. With alleged friends like Mr. Bray, commercial space need look for no enemies.

By: Dick Eagleson

Dick Eagleson — Thu, 13 Feb 2014 00:45:59 +0000

With all due respect, MSFC is not designing a new vehicle, they’re redesigning two old vehicles. By direction of its political designers in Congress, SLS is supposed to be based, to the greatest possible extent, on the 35-year-old technology of the Shuttle while Orion is simply a bigger, more fragile version of the Apollo command module.

As for would-be Rep. Bray’s particular expertise in materials development, perhaps the reason he has enough spare time on his hands to run for office is because his day job makes few demands upon his putative professional expertise. Using old technology, as ordered by Congress, means using old materials as well; nothing much new for our Mr. Bray to develop.

I recall, in particular, reading that the Orion team elected to use 50-year-old Apollo technology for Orion’s heat shield even to the extent of leaning on the company that used to make the main filler material to recreate their production line for the stuff, which they had shut down four decades ago. The Apollo heat shield was adequate for lunar return, but looks marginal as hell for Mars return and worse yet for any other real deep space mission, and yet Orion is alleged to be a deep space craft. In the intervening four decades since the end of Apollo, NASA, itself, developed the superior PICA material which SpaceX has additionally refined into the yet more superior PICA-X. At MSFC, it’s apparently always 1965.

By: Dick Eagleson

Dick Eagleson — Thu, 13 Feb 2014 00:25:18 +0000

I have no idea what commercial space enterprise Mr. Bray tried to start. If it had worked he would, I assume, be running said enterprise now rather than sucking on the SLS teat. I have more than one failed attempt at entrepreneurship along my own backtrail. But I don’t consider that any of them particularly qualify me to run for elective office. It is interesting that, rather than essay a second or third attempt at entrepreneurship, Mr. Bray’s decision is to pursue an alternative avenue of acquiring a gov’t.-funded paycheck.

By: Vladislaw

Vladislaw — Tue, 11 Feb 2014 21:33:47 +0000

The Tea Party Patriots’ mission is to restore America’s founding principles of Fiscal Responsibility, Constitutionally Limited Government and Free Markets.

So now you are impling that someone wanting to get rid of a big government deficit spending program like SLS and Orion and utilize more commercial space companies will be crushed by the Tea Party?