Category Archives: Political Commentary

Political Commentary, Space

Flexible Path

129 Comments

Explained, by Jeff Greason (it’s buried in the comments, so I thought I’d post it up front here):

A little disappointed in the debate above.

I’m going to try, one more time, to explain flexible path. It isn’t hard. You just have to read what we said rather than try to do Kremlinology on what you think we must have meant.

I’ll boil it down the same way that I explained it to policy makers.

* We want to go to Mars.
* We can’t reasonably go to Mars without more experience with long-duration missions.
* Long-duration missions can be done to Lagrange points, NEO’s, and Phobos/Deimos and they are all worthwhile missions in their own right.
* We can’t reasonably go to Mars without updating our experience doing manned planetary exploration.
* Manned planetary exploration would be done on the Moon, which is a worthwhile mission in its own right, and could be a source of propellant for exploration.
* The Moon vs. Mars vs. NEO’s is therefore a FALSE CHOICE; the only choice we have is what sequence we do them in.
* Therefore, the only reasonable way to proceed is to accept that we MUST plan to do all of these things and plan accordingly.
* Since the spacecraft, lander, and boosters/EDS’s are the expensive part, constrained budget says develop 1 or at most 2 of them first.

Now, the version of this in the Augustine report was:
* Do the boosters/EDS’s and spacecraft first
* Do buildup flights in LEO, Lagrange, Cislunar, NEO’s
* Do Lunar landings
* Do Mars
(whether Phobos came before or after Lunar landings really wasn’t clear, it depends on how the technologies shake out).

Look at the mission timeline in the report, under flexible path, and you see Lunar landings, NEO visits, and Phobos visits before Mars. Construing that as “abandoning the moon” or “don’t touch” requires one to either refuse to read the report, to assume we only meant part of what we said, or to be dishonest.

Today, as it seems the NASA budget may not support doing 2 elements at once, I would suggest we do one at a time:
* spacecraft
* then boosters
* then landers

Because that way we can begin the exploration sequence with spacecraft on existing boosters and build the (relatively modest) upgraded boosters we need for more agressive missions as we go.

Makes sense to me. But the “look but don’t touch” morons will continue to be confused. I’m sure that we’ll be discussing this this evening, on a panel on which Jeff and I will be on, at the conference.

Business, Political Commentary, Space

The Stages Of Grief

4 Comments

With the exception of ATK, the contractors seem to have reached acceptance:

Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne, which has a manufacturing plant in West Palm Beach, is not the only aerospace giant turning their back on Constellation. Boeing Co. also appears to be joining the ditch-the-Ares crowd.

During every shuttle launch, Boeing publishes a “Reporter’s Notebook” full of facts,figures and puffery about NASA’s latest orbiter mission. These are handed out with other freebies to journalists, VIPs and anybody else looking for launch SWAG. Every notebook always starts with a section on Constellation.

“The vision to inspire begins with a dream of hope and knowledge and ends with a mission of purpose and realization,” it began — that is until now.

The Constellation section vanished from the latest notebook prepared for the STS-131 flight of Discovery’s resupply mission to the space station. The cut was not unintentional or left for keen-eyed reporters to discover on their own like old Soviet-era readers looking for possible changes in Politburo by reading the Pravda newspaper to see whose name was left out of stories. No. In this case the change was pointed out, somewhat boastfully by Boeing spokesman Ed Memi.

“Hey Bobby, you’ll see that we finally took out the Constellation section of the notebook,” Memi said as I picked one up early on Monday morning ahead of the launch.

ATK remains in either denial or anger, though they may be starting to bargain. And of course, there are payoffs, such as the new engine development for P&W. But as for the Program of Record, it’s dead, Jim.

Business, Economics, Political Commentary, Space

So What About The Jobs?

26 Comments

I got an email today, that I thought I’d just publish:

People don’t seem to be to sympathetic to the workers who will lose their jobs with the loss of the shuttle and Constellation. If I understand you correctly, neither program should be continued just for jobs. I tend to agree with that, however, what should be done to help the people who will lose their jobs?

It would be interesting to know more about the employment situation, what type of jobs will be lost, how easy or hard it will be for workers to find new jobs, and if the government has any ideas on helping these people find work.

Do you think that there will be skilled workers who will now start their own space related companies?

Any insights would be appreciated.

Others may have better insight than I. But I would note that generally, if some event results in a loss of jobs in an area with a jobs shortage, people tend to have to move. It’s a very tough time for those losing NASA-related jobs, because it’s a tough job market out there. On the other hand, a lot of people are hurting, and might even resent the notion that there’s something special about space jobs that those losing them should get special treatment.

This may in fact have been an historical high-water mark for space-related Brevard County employment, and the end of a half-century era, when the region boomed due to a fortunate happenstance of geography. But the fundamental problem of space is the high cost of access to it. And in principle, if not practice, the purpose of NASA spending should not be job creation, but wealth or knowledge creation. If we are to reduce the costs of space transportation, we need to either reduce the number of people who work on it (because their paychecks and benefits are where the vast majority of those costs come from) or dramatically increase their productivity. Neither Shuttle or Constellation offered any prospects for doing that. Commercial might, in the longer run, but it’s not going to do anything to help the current NASA work force.

And if we develop the kinds of vehicles that we need for true significant cost reduction (fully reusable), there’s nothing magic about the Cape, in terms of launch location. So I don’t expect to ever see the levels of space employment there again that we saw from the Cold-War-legacy program. That’s a reality with which the local officials are simply going to have to come to grips.

Political Commentary, War Commentary

Ahmadinejad Is No Rube

14 Comments

He’s clearly got Barack Obama’s number:

Unlike the United States, Iran is run by adults. This is why the world fears Iran more than it fears the United States.

Has there been any rally to the side of the United States in this dispute?

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad knows this and so he mocked Obama: “Mr. Obama, you are a newcomer (to politics). Wait until your sweat dries and get some experience. Be careful not to read just any paper put in front of you or repeat any statement recommended. (American officials) bigger than you, more bullying than you, couldn’t do a damn thing, let alone you.”

I remember thirty years ago, when there was so much “liberal” concern that Ronald Reagan would lead the US into war. But just as in 1938, it’s feckless thinking and policies like these that are much more likely to, and one for which we’re not prepared.

[Update a few minutes later]

Thoughts of allies and enemies past:

Why does this matter, other than that it is stupid for a country to treat old friends like belligerents and old belligerents like friends?

In the case of Britain, history resonates. Over the last century it was Britain that, sometimes alone, defended liberal constitutional government, whether from Prussian militarism or the hydra of fascism, Nazism, and Japanese militarism. It was always a reliable partner in the Cold War, and aside from normal periodic spats was a loyal ally in most of America’s postwar fights. We forget sometimes the courageous record of the British in Korea, or their lonely alliance with us in Iraq. Note that this is all apart from the British role in general in the shaping of Western liberal political history, and in particular the protocols and values that underlie so much of the American experiment, from a common language to a rich heritage of literature and thought. For an American president to be woefully ignorant of all that, and why it should count, is nothing short of unbelievable.

Obama is equally clueless about why, for a half-century at least, both Republican and Democratic presidents have forged a second special relationship, this one with Israel. There certainly were not always strategic advantages in doing so, given the Arab world’s vast petroleum reserves, its huge size and population in comparison to tiny Israel, and the global fear, first, of rampant Soviet-inspired Palestinian terrorism, and, subsequently, its radical Islamic epigone.

But he’s throwing that all away. Let’s just hope that 2013 isn’t too late to resurrect the relationships.

History, Political Commentary

No Roosevelt

11 Comments

Democrats fantasize that Barack Obama is the new FDR. But I think that history will view him as the Democrats’ Herbert Hoover.

Discuss.

[Noon update]

Not that he can’t be usefully compared to other presidents as well, but the parallels I was thinking of were:

  • Had a major financial crisis in his first term, made immeasurably worse by economically ignorant policies of his own
  • Lost over fifty House seats in his mid-term Congressional election, and eight Senate seats
  • Lost in a landslide in his reelection, cementing the fortunes of the opposing party for many years

The latter two are predictions, of course. And Hoover didn’t lose control of Congress. Obama doesn’t have that kind of margin in the House…

[Afternoon update]

Obama the undergrad:

He doesn’t know much history (he thinks Muslims invented printing), geography (his America has 57 states), or economics (he believes you can reduce health care costs by adding millions to the public rolls).

The most important thing to this president is how you feel and what you say, not all those annoying facts (50 states, the Chinese invented printing, and you increase deficits when you spend more). And, like most students, when the debate goes badly for him, the president makes fun of his critics–when he actually lets them talk a little bit. Remember when he hosted a few Republicans in the White House so he could listen to what they might say about health care…and then talked twice as much as they did?

As a typical undergrad, Obama loves to talk, and loves to talk about peace and justice. You know, the really important things. His new nuclear policy is right out of a college bull session: “Why don’t we just promise not to use them?” Nukes are bad, ugly things. Doesn’t everyone agree that the world would be better off without them?

As Michael notes, grading time is coming up this fall. Expect him to whine about them.

Political Commentary, Space

Ah, Youth

3 Comments

This was kind of amusing:

On Sunday a group of Embry-Riddle students organized their own “Roadside Awareness Rally” about the new plan, holding signs along a Daytona Beach road with slogans like “Let Us Go To The Moon” and, bizarrely, “Constellation will REVIVE our WORLD’S ECONOMY!” (um, points for enthusiasm, at least.)

Constellation: like alcohol, it is the cause of, and solution to all of life’s problems.