I’d like to know who those “twenty hand-picked space experts” are. Unfortunately, I’ll bet that one of them is Walt Cunningham. But at least he won’t be the only one.
Category Archives: Political Commentary
It’s That Time Of The Week Again
Lileks takes on Keillor. Again.
Every column now ends with on-marching truth. But what’s this thing about the rich and privileged saying it’s not a great country? I hear more distaste and dismay about America from one Senator than the other; I hear more disdain from cosseted movie stars than I hear from ordinary folk; I hear more grumpy, costive old burbling about the dark hole into which America has fallen from a rich and privileged Old Scout than I hear from, say, middle-class bloggers who get 40 hits a day but happen to love the actual country we have as opposed to the theoretical variant which Keillor believes is right around the corner. Next week: an attack, probably, on the smug, self-righteous rich and privileged, who think America’s just great. At least we know how that one will end: truth, marching, et cetera.
I think that Keillor has attained that unblessed state that no one dare edit him. Thankfully, we have Lileks.
Ignorance Of America
Frequent commenter “Fletcher Christian” is a poster child for this phenomenon. And as one of the commenters at Glenn’s post notes, the BBC is largely responsible.
An Attack By The Real Fascists
Over at Amy Alkon’s place.
Articulate?
Everyone (including Joe Biden, who also thinks he’s “clean”) says that Barack Obama is articulate. I’ve never seen any evidence of it, and there was apparently plenty of counterevidence at the Rick Warren thing. Being good at reading a teleprompter is not the same thing as being “articulate.”
Casualty Of War?
I have a piece up at Pajamas Media this morning on the potential effect of Russia’s renewed belligerence on the US space program.
I should note that I may have been a little too sanguine about the situation for the current ISS crew. While the RSA astronauts in Expedition 17 weren’t born in Russia, it’s possible that they are Russians, and sympathetic to Russia, given the way that Russia had colonized the Ukraine and Turkmen Republic and moved populations of Russians in there. It’s all really speculation. Only the crew really know what the atmosphere is up there.
Change!
…and hope!
Well, not really. The Obama campaign has released its new space policy, and there’s not much breaking with the status quo in it. It’s basically sticking with the current plan, at least in civil space, but promising (as in all areas) to spend more money. While one suspects that Lori Garver must have played a major role in it, it also reads as though it was written by a committee, or different people wrote different sections, and then it was stitched together, like Frankenstein’s monster.
For instance, in one section, it says:
Obama will stimulate efforts within the private sector to develop and demonstrate spaceflight capabilities. NASA’s Commercial Orbital Transportation Services is a good model of government/industry collaboration.
But later on, in a different section, it says:
Obama will evaluate whether the private sector can safely and effectively fulfill some of NASA’s need for lower earth orbit cargo transport.
If COTS is a “good model,” why is such an “evaluation” necessary? Isn’t it already a given? I also like the notion that Obama himself would do the “evaluation.” As if.
It’s got the usual kumbaya about international cooperation, of course, which I think has been disastrous on the ISS. There are also implied digs at the Bush administration, about not “politicizing” science (as though Jim Hansen hasn’t done that himself) and opposing “weapons” in space. It also discusses more cooperation between NASA and NRO, ignoring the recent rumblings about getting rid of the latter, and the problems with security that would arise in such “cooperation.”
Also, interestingly, after Senator Obama called McCain’s proposed automotive prize a “gimmick,” the new policy now explicitly supports them. So are they no longer “gimmicks”? Or is it just that McCain’s idea was (for some unexplained reasons) but Obama’s are not?
Overall, my biggest concerns with it are more on the defense side than on the civil space side. This is utopian:
Barack Obama opposes the stationing of weapons in space and the development of anti-satellite weapons. He believes the United States must show leadership by engaging other nations in discussions of how best to stop the slow slide towards a new battlefield.
Sorry, but that horse is out of the barn, and there’s no way to get it back in. No anti-satellite weapons treaty would be verifiable. It is good to note, though, that the policy recognizes ORS as a means to mitigate the problem. That’s the real solution, not agreements and paper.
In any event, it’s a big improvement over his previous space policy, which was not a policy at all, but rather an adjunct to his education policy. Now it’s time for the McCain campaign to come up with one. I hope that he gets Newt to help him with it, and not Walt Cunningham.
[Mid-morning update]
One of the commenters over at NASA Watch picks up on something that I had missed:
Sen. Obama names COTS and several other programs by name, but not Ares or Constellation. He mentions “the Shuttle’s successor systems” without specifying what they might be.
That does give him some options for real change. I also agree that a revival of the space council would be a good idea. I hope that the McCain campaign doesn’t oppose this purely because the Obama campaign has picked it up.
[Afternoon update]
One other problem. While it talks about COTS, it has no mention of CATS (or CRATS, or CARATS, or whatever acronym they’re using this week for cheap and reliable access to space). It hints at it with COTS and ORS, but it’s not set out as an explicit goal. I hope that McCain’s policy does.
[Update a few minutes later]
Bobby Block has a report at the Orlando Sentinel space blog.
This part struck me (and didn’t surprise me):
Lori Garver, an Obama policy adviser, said last week during a space debate in Colorado that Obama and his staff first thought that the push to go to the moon was “a Bush program and didn’t make a lot of sense.” But after hearing from people in both the space and education communities, “they recognized the importance of space.” Now, she said, Obama truly supports space exploration as an issue and not just as a tool to win votes in Florida.
I’m not sure that Lori helped the campaign here. What does that tell us about the quality and cynicism of policy making in the Obama camp? They opposed it before they were for it because it was George Bush’s idea? And does that mean that space policy was just about votes in Florida before this new policy? I know that there are a lot of BDS sufferers who oppose VSE for this reason, and this reason alone, but it’s a little disturbing that such (non)thinking was actually driving policy in a major presidential campaign.
George Bush greatly expanded federal involvement in education and expanded Medicare. Are they going to shrink them accordingly? I’d like to think so, but I suspect not.
Must Be Getting Crowded Under That Bus
That wasn’t the Wes Clark that I knew.
Misanthropes
Do Democrats hate men?
It sure seems like it sometimes. And of course, if we object, we’re misogynists (and probably racists as well).
Space Politics
It’s hard to think of any sitting (or past, for that matter) member of Congress who has done more for commercial space efforts than Dana Rohrabacher. He’s been representing his southern California district for many years, so I was a little surprised to hear that he’s in a potentially tough reelection battle. But his opponent is currently out-fund-raising him, and it’s going to be a generally tough year for Republicans, even those whose seats had previously been secure. So for those of you who want to keep him in Washington for his space efforts (or for other reasons), a fund has been set up to help make that happen.