One of my ongoing themes is that space is not politically important. Apparently the incoming administration agrees. It isn’t mentioned anywhere at the transition web site. I poked around in “Technology,” “Energy and the Environment,” and couldn’t find anything about civil space, or NASA. The only discussion of space that I could find was under “Defense”:
Ensure Freedom of Space: An Obama-Biden administration will restore American leadership on space issues, seeking a worldwide ban on weapons that interfere with military and commercial satellites. He will thoroughly assess possible threats to U.S. space assets and the best options, military and diplomatic, for countering them, establishing contingency plans to ensure that U.S. forces can maintain or duplicate access to information from space assets and accelerating programs to harden U.S. satellites against attack.
A “worldwide ban on weapons that interfere with military and commercial satellites” would be unenforceable–it’s pie in the sky. And there’s no way to “harden U.S. satellites against attack” unless we come up with much lower costs to orbit. Does the new administration consider Operationally Responsive Space to be part of the solution? And will they take it seriously?
In any event, space policy in general seems to be a tabula rasa, other than campaign promises, so maybe there’s an opportunity to write some and get it added to the site.
…in an Obama administration. Alan Boyle has a sneak preview. (I actually linked to this yesterday, but only in the context of the suborbital regulation issue.)
Right now, the current trends are not good. The US Navy is smaller than it has been in decades, currently has no viable shipbuilding programs for surface combatants, and has credibility issues in Washington. The US Army has a clear modernization strategy, but faces a maintenance overhang, challenges with both program management of its $160 billion Future Combat Systems meta-program and the very premises behind it, and other issues. The USAF has become concerned about its institutional future, even as its aircraft continue to see their average ages rise and respected outside organizations slam its procurement plans as fantasy. A recent Pentagon Defense Business Board report that examined programs from 2000 – 2007 throws the problem into stark relief: cost increases on 5 major weapons programs accounted for $206 billion, or 22%, of the total jump in spending for new arms so far this decade. The Defense Procurement Death Spiral is biting, hard, across the board.
NASA has similar problems. Norm Augustine
saw a lot of these problems coming a couple decades ago. I wish that I could believe that an Obama administration will take defense seriously enough to do something about it.
I agree with everything Jeff wrote, except for the part about his likely interest in this issue. I’m pretty sure that he hasn’t forgotten it, even if he has given up on it for now on the Hill.
And as I noted in comments over there, I don’t think that it’s “panicking” to attempt to nip a problem in the bud. It’s a lot easier to put the kibosh on it now than it would be after he was formally selected and announced. Clark Lindsey seems to share my view.
I would also note that I didn’t mean to imply that I thought this meant anything at all about an Obama administration’s general attitude toward commercial space. I doubt if whoever is considering Oberstar is even aware of the issue.
This was written about Richard Holbrooke, who is likely to be a major player in the new administration (despite the fact that he outed Valerie Plame):
I’m violently opposed to the idea of Richard Holbrooke as Secretary of State and only slightly less set against George Mitchell, and it is entirely personal. I don’t care if they’re qualified. They represent that which makes life in Washington hell. They are archetypes of the Washington Male…
The Washington Male has absolutely and profoundly no sense of humor… And greater love hath no man than this: that of the Washington Male for the Washington Male. A really pure Washington Male can be wrong about everything he does and says for decades without harboring a single twinge of self-doubt…
But it seems to me to apply even more to Vice-President-Elect Biden. I don’t know how familiar with geography Sarah Palin is, but ignorance can be cured. Rampant idiocy cannot.
[Evening update]
A commenter corrects me. It was indeed Richard Armitage (another Democrat) who outed Valerie Plame, not Richard Holbrooke. In my oncoming senility, I confused my Democrat candidate Richards for SECSTATE.
Disregarding my sore winner anonymous trolls, many friends of mine no doubt voted for Barack Obama, and I think it’s crazy to let something like that affect a friendship. I don’t understand the thinking that if someone disagrees with you politically, you must be excommunicated. I lost a friend from high school, because she decided I was evil because I thought that Saddam Hussein should be removed from power in 2002.
We do have to work together to make the new administration successful, but we may just not agree on what constitutes success.
Less than fifty years ago, African-Americans were barred from public universities, restaurants, and even drinking fountains in many parts of the country. On Tuesday we came together and transcended that shameful legacy, electing an African-American to the country’s top job — which, in fact, appears to be his first actual job. Certainly, it doesn’t mean that racism has disappeared in America, but it is an undeniable mark of progress that a majority of voters no longer consider skin color nor a dangerously gullible naivete as a barrier to the presidency.
It’s also heartening to realize that as president Mr. Obama will soon be working hand-in-hand with a former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard like Senator Robert Byrd to craft the incoherent and destructive programs that will plunge the American economy into a nightmare of full-blown sustained depression. As Vice President-Elect Joe Biden has repeatedly warned, there will be difficult times ahead and the programs will not always be popular, or even sane. But as we look out over the wreckage of bankrupt coal companies, nationalized banks, and hyperinflation, we can always look back with sustained pride on the great National Reconciliation of 2008. Call me an optimist, but I like to think when America’s breadlines erupt into riots it will be because of our shared starvation, not the differences in our color.
