There’s a lot of good discussion (and some not-so-good discussion) of the NASA Authorization bill over at Space Politics, here, here and here. I haven’t read the whole thing, and frankly, it’s hard for me to get motivated to invest much time or thought in it, because it’s just an authorization bill. Most of the time, they never even get passed, and even when they do, they’re pretty meaningless, because the only one that really counts is the appropriations bill, where the money gets handed out. Authorization, when it exists at all, simply serves as a sense of the Congress (and more generally, just as a sense of the relevant Congressional committee). But to that degree, it does provide a useful insight into where appropriations might lead, and potential future policy, particularly in the next administration.
Category Archives: Political Commentary
Are Anti-Jaywalking Laws Fascist?
Let me start by saying I don’t know the answer to the question in the post title, but it is one of the hallmarks of a nanny state. Interestingly, though, while it’s an east-coast, west-coast thing, it’s the reverse of the usual stereotype, in which the westerners are anarchist cowboys, and the easterners civilized obeyers of the rules. Let me explain.
Growing up in southeast Michigan, I remember understanding the term “jaywalking,” but only because someone explained it to me after I heard the term, not because I personally had any experience with it. Or rather, not because I had any personal experience with it in terms of it being illegal, and the law being enforced. I walked across a street when it seemed safe to do so, regardless of distance from lights, or their chromatic condition. And no one ever said boo about it, let alone the law enforcement authorities. I always considered the “Walk” and “Don’t Walk” signs advisories, rather than commands (and I should add that I like the new ones that have a countdown clock telling you how many seconds until it’s going to change, so you can judge whether you have time to start across). This was true in both Flint, the city in which I was raised, and Ann Arbor, where I spent three and a half years at school.
Being brought up in such an environment, I was surprised when I moved to southern California, and was informed by the locals that the gendarmes took illegal pedestrian street crossing seriously (i.e., they actually gave out tickets for it if, for instance, you crossed the street within some specified distance of a traffic signal, but didn’t use the crosswalk). I heard many tales from the locals of such ticketry, and accordingly, I restrained my chicken-like urges to cross the road where and when I pleased (traffic permitting, of course). But like red arrows for left turns, when there was no oncoming traffic, I bridled at it, thinking it idiotic, and being treated like a child.
It got to the point that one of the reasons that I looked forward to business trips back east (generally, in my case, DC) was that I would have the freedom to cross the street if it was safe, anywhere and anywhen I wanted, without first having to check for the gestapo.
Anyway, Tigerhawk had a (to him) disturbing visit to the left coast (Seattle) and was shocked at the level of conformity and groupthink in this supposedly hip and counter-cultural town:
I walked down the hill and up again all before about 7 am. The streets were essentially empty of cars, so being an Easterner I skipped merrily along with little regard for the status of the pedestrian Walk/Don’t Walk signs.
Then I noticed that the few other peds were just standing there waiting for the “Walk” signal to come on even when there was not a car in sight. Not surprisingly, they all looked at me like I was a middle-aged feminist at an Obama rally, so I also stopped violating the crosswalk lights.
When I landed I reported all of this to a friend of mine who claims to hate Seattle — how can anybody actually hate Seattle? — and she said “Of course, Seattle is basically just a suburb of Canada.”
Like that explained it. Although it sort of does.
Anyway, other than in Washington, DC — which back in the day raised money by assigning cops in unmarked clothes to write jay-walking tickets — I’ve always thought of crosswalk signals as purely advisory. Not the command “Don’t Walk,” but more like “probably not a good idea to walk, because the cars have a green light.” That is certainly the rule in any city in which I have lived or worked, including both New York and Chicago. In Seattle, though, pedestrians comply with crosswalk signals almost to the extent that motorists obey traffic lights. You know, they wait for the light to change even when there is neither a car nor a cop in sight. It is bizarre, and really quite un-American.
Well, the “suburb-of-Canada” thing doesn’t explain the attitude in southern California. But it is un-American. A good friend of mine (who has been in LA for the past thirty years or so) lived in Germany for quite a few years back in the seventies, and acquired a wife and step-daughter there. He described the Germans (including his wife and step-daughter) as being hyperobediant to the law, including jaywalking laws, and they would never think of going without permission from the traffic signal, or outside of a cross-walk. At the time I attributed it to being German, but one of Tigerhawk’s commenters notes that the Swiss are similar (though he didn’t say whether it was the French, Italian or German Swiss).
Is such strict cultural regimentation in itself fascist? No. In fact, I think that in general, respect for the law is obviously a good thing. But sometimes, as Dickens put into the mouth of his character, “the law is a ass.” Like the rules of bureaucracy, the laws are meant to protect people with poor judgment (and others who might be affected by dumb decisions) by constraining their behavior. Some foolish people might misjudge traffic, and unthinkingly cross the street against the light, or in the absence of a light, and get hit? Make it illegal. Problem solved. No judgment required. Just follow the rules.
In fact, in LA, I suspect that it has the unintended consequence of actually causing more accidents, exactly because it removes pressure for people to think before acting. Children are taught in school to always use a crosswalk, because in a crosswalk, you see, the pedestrian has the right of way, and cars aren’t allowed to enter it while they’re in it. And in fact, when you step into an unsignaled crosswalk in LA County, traffic will generally (note the word) stop for you. It’s the law, and the culture.
Which can breed a dangerous complacency. That the crosswalk doesn’t contain a force shield to actually prevent cars from crossing it while a pedestrian is in it, and that the law doesn’t involve suspension of the very real physical law of momentum or decrease the stopping distance of trucks, isn’t taught, apparently. I haven’t seen the statistics, but I’ll bet that a lot more people (particularly California natives) are injured and killed in crosswalks, where they have a false sense of safety, than in the “unsafe” areas where they actually have to look both ways and think before crossing the highway. Particularly because they not only have to look out for traffic, but police with nothing better to do than hand out jaywalking tickets.
Too much unthinking respect for the law isn’t fascistic per se, but it provides a fertile breeding ground for someone with charisma who comes along with grand ideas for new laws which, of course, because they are laws, must be obeyed. Thus when it became the law for Germans to turn in the Jews, what choice did they have? It wasn’t after all, their decision. It was the law.
But of course, while LA and Seattle are the west (about as far as you can go west in the lower forty eight and remain above water), they’re not the wild west. They’re in fact (with San Francisco) the bluest of the blue states, chock full of so-called “progressives.” So it’s not surprising at all, per Jonah’s thesis, that they are much more culturally attuned to obeying laws, even senseless ones, and all in favor of more. For the children.
OK, now for the challenging part. How to fit the traffic anarchists of New York City (cue Dustin Hoffman, “I’m walking here!”) into the thesis?
“The Real Iraq”
Michael Totten reviews Michael Yon’s book
Iraq is a tragic, unhappy, and often disturbing place, but it’s less sinister and frightening up close than it is from a distance. That’s because it’s a country striving for normality, whose normal aspects rarely make their way into media reports that highlight violence, mayhem, and failure. On TV, Iraq looks like a nation of masked, gun-toting fanatics, but in person, one finds friendliness, solidarity, and reasonableness amid the chaos. “Just because Iraqis have ‘Allahu Akbar’ on their flag,” Yon writes, “doesn’t mean they’re going to blow up the World Trade Center any more than ‘In God We Trust’ means we’re going to attack Communist China.” “Iraq does not hate America,” he insists. “If they hated us, I’d be urging an immediate troop withdrawal, because there would be no hope of winning this war. If the Iraqis hated us, we would be fighting the Iraqi Police and the Iraqi Army. Instead, we’re fighting alongside them.”
Yon convincingly argues that the U.S. is winning in Iraq, at least for the moment. “The enemy learned that our people and the Iraqi forces would close in and kill them if they dared stand their ground. This is important: an enemy forced to choose between dying or hiding inevitably loses legitimacy. Legitimacy is essential. Men who must always either run or die are no longer an army and are not going to found a caliphate.” The outcome, though, is still in doubt. If Petraeus’s surge strategy fails or is prematurely short-circuited by Congress, the American and Iraqi forces will almost certainly lose. “Maybe creating a powerful democracy in the Middle East was a foolish reason to go to war,” Yon concludes. “Maybe it was never the reason we went to war. But it is within our grasp now and nearly all the hardest work has been done.” Which makes the present moment the moment of truth in Iraq.
Barack Obama might productively read it.
“The Real Iraq”
Michael Totten reviews Michael Yon’s book
Iraq is a tragic, unhappy, and often disturbing place, but it’s less sinister and frightening up close than it is from a distance. That’s because it’s a country striving for normality, whose normal aspects rarely make their way into media reports that highlight violence, mayhem, and failure. On TV, Iraq looks like a nation of masked, gun-toting fanatics, but in person, one finds friendliness, solidarity, and reasonableness amid the chaos. “Just because Iraqis have ‘Allahu Akbar’ on their flag,” Yon writes, “doesn’t mean they’re going to blow up the World Trade Center any more than ‘In God We Trust’ means we’re going to attack Communist China.” “Iraq does not hate America,” he insists. “If they hated us, I’d be urging an immediate troop withdrawal, because there would be no hope of winning this war. If the Iraqis hated us, we would be fighting the Iraqi Police and the Iraqi Army. Instead, we’re fighting alongside them.”
Yon convincingly argues that the U.S. is winning in Iraq, at least for the moment. “The enemy learned that our people and the Iraqi forces would close in and kill them if they dared stand their ground. This is important: an enemy forced to choose between dying or hiding inevitably loses legitimacy. Legitimacy is essential. Men who must always either run or die are no longer an army and are not going to found a caliphate.” The outcome, though, is still in doubt. If Petraeus’s surge strategy fails or is prematurely short-circuited by Congress, the American and Iraqi forces will almost certainly lose. “Maybe creating a powerful democracy in the Middle East was a foolish reason to go to war,” Yon concludes. “Maybe it was never the reason we went to war. But it is within our grasp now and nearly all the hardest work has been done.” Which makes the present moment the moment of truth in Iraq.
Barack Obama might productively read it.
“The Real Iraq”
Michael Totten reviews Michael Yon’s book
Iraq is a tragic, unhappy, and often disturbing place, but it’s less sinister and frightening up close than it is from a distance. That’s because it’s a country striving for normality, whose normal aspects rarely make their way into media reports that highlight violence, mayhem, and failure. On TV, Iraq looks like a nation of masked, gun-toting fanatics, but in person, one finds friendliness, solidarity, and reasonableness amid the chaos. “Just because Iraqis have ‘Allahu Akbar’ on their flag,” Yon writes, “doesn’t mean they’re going to blow up the World Trade Center any more than ‘In God We Trust’ means we’re going to attack Communist China.” “Iraq does not hate America,” he insists. “If they hated us, I’d be urging an immediate troop withdrawal, because there would be no hope of winning this war. If the Iraqis hated us, we would be fighting the Iraqi Police and the Iraqi Army. Instead, we’re fighting alongside them.”
Yon convincingly argues that the U.S. is winning in Iraq, at least for the moment. “The enemy learned that our people and the Iraqi forces would close in and kill them if they dared stand their ground. This is important: an enemy forced to choose between dying or hiding inevitably loses legitimacy. Legitimacy is essential. Men who must always either run or die are no longer an army and are not going to found a caliphate.” The outcome, though, is still in doubt. If Petraeus’s surge strategy fails or is prematurely short-circuited by Congress, the American and Iraqi forces will almost certainly lose. “Maybe creating a powerful democracy in the Middle East was a foolish reason to go to war,” Yon concludes. “Maybe it was never the reason we went to war. But it is within our grasp now and nearly all the hardest work has been done.” Which makes the present moment the moment of truth in Iraq.
Barack Obama might productively read it.
Something That Gene Kranz Got Right
“We became our own customers.”
I don’t understand why he doesn’t see that that’s exactly the problem with ESAS.
[Update in the afternoon–sorry, I’ve been housepainting again, in a race against the approaching summer, when it will be too blasted hot in southern Florida for such things]
I recall that Max Hunter said something very similar, I would guess about twenty years ago at a small workshop on launch vehicle design issues that I attended. He said that the big difference between NACA and NASA was that the former saw industry as its customer, whereas NASA saw it as (at best) a supplier. This was a consequence of going from a pure R&D agency to one with an operational mission (put a man on the moon). It has never recovered.
Why Blacks Should Be Skeptical
…of Obama. Cinque Henderson makes the case:
It’s worth remembering that the majority of blacks still think O.J. Simpson is innocent. And, in times like these, when a black man is out front in the public eye, black people feel both proud and vulnerable and, as a result, scour the earth for evidence of racists plotting to bring him down, like an advance team ready to sound an alarm. Barack needed only a gesture, a quick sneer or nod in the direction of the Clintons’ hidden racism to avail himself of the twisted love that rescued O.J. and others like him and to smooth his path to victory, and, therefore, to salvage his candidacy. After Donna Brazile and James Clyburn started to cry racism, Barack was repeatedly asked his thoughts. He declined to answer, allowing the charge to grow for days (in sharp contrast to how he leapt to Joe Biden’s defense a month earlier). But, while he remained silent about the allegations of racism, he gave speeches across South Carolina that warned against being “hoodwinked” and “bamboozled” by the Clintons. His use of the phrase is resonant. It comes from a scene in Malcolm X, where Denzel Washington warns black people about the hidden evils of “the White Man” masquerading as a smiling politician: “Every election year, these politicians are sent up here to pacify us,” he says. “You’ve been hoodwinked. Bamboozled.”
By uttering this famous phrase, Obama told his black audience everything it needed to know. He was helping to convince blacks that the first two-term Democratic president in 50 years, a man referred to as the first black president, is in fact a secret racist. As soon as I heard that Obama had quoted from Malcolm X like this, I knew that Obama would win South Carolina by a massive margin.
Read all.
[Update a few minutes later]
Ruben Navarette, Jr. helpfully explains to us white folks that if we don’t vote for the Messiah, it can only be because we are racist:
Some want to know why it isn’t racist when 70 percent of African-Americans vote for Obama but it is when 70 percent of whites vote against him.
The answer has to do with history. Over the decades, black Americans have had plenty of opportunities to vote for white people for president. And they have done so. But this is the first time that white Americans have a chance to vote for an African-American with a shot at the presidency. And what are they doing?
Many are responding quite well. Obama won the votes of many, to borrow a phrase, “hardworking white Americans,” in Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Nebraska and Wyoming. But, elsewhere, as Obama said in a recent interview, people may need to get their head around the concept of an African-American even seeking the presidency, let alone winning it.
I guess some of us just aren’t responding as “well.” But we can’t have legitimate reasons to not vote for him, because obviously, there are none. We just can’t stand the thought of a darkie in the White House.
Despite the fact that many who won’t vote for Obama would have no problem doing so for Colin Powell, or Condi Rice, or Michael Steele, or J. C. Watts. But then, maybe they’re not authentic black folk.
This reminds me of the nineties, when I was told by the left that I didn’t like Hillary because she was a “strong woman,” and I was threatened by that. By a “strong woman,” did they mean like Maggie Thatcher? Or Jeanne Kirkpatrick? Or any other number of women who I’d have been happy to vote for, because they weren’t power-hungry harridans who wanted to run my life for me? No, it could only be sexism.
As I’ve said in the past, when John McCain wins the election, it will be because the nation is either racist, or sexist, or (if by some miracle they’re both on the ticket), both.
Don’t Know Much About Space Policy
Gregg Easterbrook thinks that NASA should be saving the planet from errant asteroids, instead of building a moon base. He can’t avoid the usual straw man, of course, which makes much of the rest of his whining about moon bases suspect:
As anyone with an aerospace engineering background well knows, stopping at the moon, as Bush was suggesting, actually would be an impediment to Mars travel, because huge amounts of fuel would be wasted landing on the moon and then blasting off again.
Bush only “suggested” that to people who miss the point of the program. No one is proposing that every, or even any, mission to Mars touch base on the moon before going on to the Red Planet. The point was that the moon might be a useful resource for making Mars missions more cost effective, particularly if we can find water there, and deliver it as propellant to some staging point, such as L-1, which isn’t particularly out of the way en route to Mars. In addition, learning how to build a base on the moon, only three days away, is valuable experience to wring the bugs out of a Martian base, which is months away, despite the different environments.
But ignoring that, the real problem is that he doesn’t seem to understand NASA’s role:
After the presentation, NASA’s administrator, Michael Griffin, came into the room. I asked him why there had been no discussion of space rocks. He said, “We don’t make up our goals. Congress has not instructed us to provide Earth defense. I administer the policy set by Congress and the White House, and that policy calls for a focus on return to the moon. Congress and the White House do not ask me what I think.” I asked what NASA’s priorities would be if he did set the goals. “The same. Our priorities are correct now,” he answered. “We are on the right path. We need to go back to the moon. We don’t need a near-Earth-objects program.” In a public address about a month later, Griffin said that the moon-base plan was “the finest policy framework for United States civil space activities that I have seen in 40 years.”
Actually, Congress has asked NASA to pay more attention to space rocks. In 2005, Congress instructed the agency to mount a sophisticated search of the proximate heavens for asteroids and comets, specifically requesting that NASA locate all near-Earth objects 140 meters or larger that are less than 1.3 astronomical units from the sun–roughly out to the orbit of Mars. Last year, NASA gave Congress its reply: an advanced search of the sort Congress was requesting would cost about $1 billion, and the agency had no intention of diverting funds from existing projects, especially the moon-base initiative.
Now, I disagree with Mike that we don’t need an NEO program–I think we do. But unlike Gregg, I wouldn’t put NASA in charge of it. And if Congress wants to fund NASA to look for space rocks, it’s going to have to tell NASA not to do the other things that it wants to do, or fund it. Also, this was a little verbal gymnastics on Gregg’s part. Mike said that Congress had not instructed NASA to defend the earth, which is true, and the fact that they asked NASA to look for hazardous objects doesn’t change that fact in any way, despite his sleight-of-hand at the keyboard. Looking for objects is one thing–actually physically manipulating them is a different thing entirely. It’s like the difference between the CIA and the military. The former provides intelligence, the latter acts on it.
The Space Act (almost fifty years old now) does not grant NASA the responsibility to protect the planet, even with subsequent amendments. It is simply not its job. Moreover, no federal agency has that job, and as Gregg points out, if the US military were to take it on, there would be widespread suspicion on the part of the rest of the planet, and it would open us up to tremendous liability if something went wrong (not that there would necessarily be any lawyers around to care).
And is it really the job of the military? Again, as Gregg points out, this is a natural problem, not an enemy. If ET, or Marvin the Martian presented a threat, it would make sense to get the Air Force (or if we had one, Space Force) involved, because that is a willful enemy to be engaged, which is what we have a military for.
But as I’ve written before (six years ago–geez, where does the time go?), the only historical analogue (at least in the US) we have for planetary defense is the management of flooding by the Army Corps of Engineers. This is a predictable (though not as predictable as an asteroid or comet strike) natural disaster, at least statistically, and one that can be managed by building dams, which is largely what they do.
Now, I’m not proposing that the ACE be put in charge of defending the planet, but that thought isn’t much more frightening than putting NASA in charge of it. Yes, Gregg, we could lobby to get Congress to amend the Space Act to put it in the agency’s portfolio, but do you really think that would be a good idea? NASA is fifty years old this year, and bureaucratically, it acts much older than that. You don’t want to take an existing agency, with too much on its plate, and too little resources with which to do it (and yes, much of what it’s doing it shouldn’t be doing, but that’s a different discussion) and give it such an important, even existential task. It worked fine in the sixties, because it was a young, new agency with a focus on a single goal (though it managed to accomplish a lot of other things along the way in terms of planetary exploration–Tom Paine once told me that there was so much going on during Apollo that NASA did a lot of great things that it didn’t even know it was doing).
No.
I’ve often said that if the president really thought that the VSE was important, he would have taken a policy lead from the Strategic Missile Defense program in the eighties, in which an entirely new entity was established to carry it out (SDIO, now BMDO), because it would otherwise get bogged down in blue-suit politics in the Air Force.
I agree that we should be doing much more about this threat than we are, but just because NASA is ostensibly a space agency doesn’t mean that they should be in charge of it. I would establish a planetary defense agency, which had that as its sole charter. It might ask for (and occasionally get) cooperation from NASA, but it would do the same with the Air Force, and it would put out contracts to the private sector, and it would coordinate with COPUOS and encourage other nations to establish such entities to enter into cooperative agreements. If you ask NASA to do it, it will just become one more boondoggle, or it will get buried in the agency’s other priorities. Either way, if it’s important, you don’t want a sclerotic agency, long past its sell-by date, to be in charge.
Don’t Know Much About Space Policy
Gregg Easterbrook thinks that NASA should be saving the planet from errant asteroids, instead of building a moon base. He can’t avoid the usual straw man, of course, which makes much of the rest of his whining about moon bases suspect:
As anyone with an aerospace engineering background well knows, stopping at the moon, as Bush was suggesting, actually would be an impediment to Mars travel, because huge amounts of fuel would be wasted landing on the moon and then blasting off again.
Bush only “suggested” that to people who miss the point of the program. No one is proposing that every, or even any, mission to Mars touch base on the moon before going on to the Red Planet. The point was that the moon might be a useful resource for making Mars missions more cost effective, particularly if we can find water there, and deliver it as propellant to some staging point, such as L-1, which isn’t particularly out of the way en route to Mars. In addition, learning how to build a base on the moon, only three days away, is valuable experience to wring the bugs out of a Martian base, which is months away, despite the different environments.
But ignoring that, the real problem is that he doesn’t seem to understand NASA’s role:
After the presentation, NASA’s administrator, Michael Griffin, came into the room. I asked him why there had been no discussion of space rocks. He said, “We don’t make up our goals. Congress has not instructed us to provide Earth defense. I administer the policy set by Congress and the White House, and that policy calls for a focus on return to the moon. Congress and the White House do not ask me what I think.” I asked what NASA’s priorities would be if he did set the goals. “The same. Our priorities are correct now,” he answered. “We are on the right path. We need to go back to the moon. We don’t need a near-Earth-objects program.” In a public address about a month later, Griffin said that the moon-base plan was “the finest policy framework for United States civil space activities that I have seen in 40 years.”
Actually, Congress has asked NASA to pay more attention to space rocks. In 2005, Congress instructed the agency to mount a sophisticated search of the proximate heavens for asteroids and comets, specifically requesting that NASA locate all near-Earth objects 140 meters or larger that are less than 1.3 astronomical units from the sun–roughly out to the orbit of Mars. Last year, NASA gave Congress its reply: an advanced search of the sort Congress was requesting would cost about $1 billion, and the agency had no intention of diverting funds from existing projects, especially the moon-base initiative.
Now, I disagree with Mike that we don’t need an NEO program–I think we do. But unlike Gregg, I wouldn’t put NASA in charge of it. And if Congress wants to fund NASA to look for space rocks, it’s going to have to tell NASA not to do the other things that it wants to do, or fund it. Also, this was a little verbal gymnastics on Gregg’s part. Mike said that Congress had not instructed NASA to defend the earth, which is true, and the fact that they asked NASA to look for hazardous objects doesn’t change that fact in any way, despite his sleight-of-hand at the keyboard. Looking for objects is one thing–actually physically manipulating them is a different thing entirely. It’s like the difference between the CIA and the military. The former provides intelligence, the latter acts on it.
The Space Act (almost fifty years old now) does not grant NASA the responsibility to protect the planet, even with subsequent amendments. It is simply not its job. Moreover, no federal agency has that job, and as Gregg points out, if the US military were to take it on, there would be widespread suspicion on the part of the rest of the planet, and it would open us up to tremendous liability if something went wrong (not that there would necessarily be any lawyers around to care).
And is it really the job of the military? Again, as Gregg points out, this is a natural problem, not an enemy. If ET, or Marvin the Martian presented a threat, it would make sense to get the Air Force (or if we had one, Space Force) involved, because that is a willful enemy to be engaged, which is what we have a military for.
But as I’ve written before (six years ago–geez, where does the time go?), the only historical analogue (at least in the US) we have for planetary defense is the management of flooding by the Army Corps of Engineers. This is a predictable (though not as predictable as an asteroid or comet strike) natural disaster, at least statistically, and one that can be managed by building dams, which is largely what they do.
Now, I’m not proposing that the ACE be put in charge of defending the planet, but that thought isn’t much more frightening than putting NASA in charge of it. Yes, Gregg, we could lobby to get Congress to amend the Space Act to put it in the agency’s portfolio, but do you really think that would be a good idea? NASA is fifty years old this year, and bureaucratically, it acts much older than that. You don’t want to take an existing agency, with too much on its plate, and too little resources with which to do it (and yes, much of what it’s doing it shouldn’t be doing, but that’s a different discussion) and give it such an important, even existential task. It worked fine in the sixties, because it was a young, new agency with a focus on a single goal (though it managed to accomplish a lot of other things along the way in terms of planetary exploration–Tom Paine once told me that there was so much going on during Apollo that NASA did a lot of great things that it didn’t even know it was doing).
No.
I’ve often said that if the president really thought that the VSE was important, he would have taken a policy lead from the Strategic Missile Defense program in the eighties, in which an entirely new entity was established to carry it out (SDIO, now BMDO), because it would otherwise get bogged down in blue-suit politics in the Air Force.
I agree that we should be doing much more about this threat than we are, but just because NASA is ostensibly a space agency doesn’t mean that they should be in charge of it. I would establish a planetary defense agency, which had that as its sole charter. It might ask for (and occasionally get) cooperation from NASA, but it would do the same with the Air Force, and it would put out contracts to the private sector, and it would coordinate with COPUOS and encourage other nations to establish such entities to enter into cooperative agreements. If you ask NASA to do it, it will just become one more boondoggle, or it will get buried in the agency’s other priorities. Either way, if it’s important, you don’t want a sclerotic agency, long past its sell-by date, to be in charge.
Don’t Know Much About Space Policy
Gregg Easterbrook thinks that NASA should be saving the planet from errant asteroids, instead of building a moon base. He can’t avoid the usual straw man, of course, which makes much of the rest of his whining about moon bases suspect:
As anyone with an aerospace engineering background well knows, stopping at the moon, as Bush was suggesting, actually would be an impediment to Mars travel, because huge amounts of fuel would be wasted landing on the moon and then blasting off again.
Bush only “suggested” that to people who miss the point of the program. No one is proposing that every, or even any, mission to Mars touch base on the moon before going on to the Red Planet. The point was that the moon might be a useful resource for making Mars missions more cost effective, particularly if we can find water there, and deliver it as propellant to some staging point, such as L-1, which isn’t particularly out of the way en route to Mars. In addition, learning how to build a base on the moon, only three days away, is valuable experience to wring the bugs out of a Martian base, which is months away, despite the different environments.
But ignoring that, the real problem is that he doesn’t seem to understand NASA’s role:
After the presentation, NASA’s administrator, Michael Griffin, came into the room. I asked him why there had been no discussion of space rocks. He said, “We don’t make up our goals. Congress has not instructed us to provide Earth defense. I administer the policy set by Congress and the White House, and that policy calls for a focus on return to the moon. Congress and the White House do not ask me what I think.” I asked what NASA’s priorities would be if he did set the goals. “The same. Our priorities are correct now,” he answered. “We are on the right path. We need to go back to the moon. We don’t need a near-Earth-objects program.” In a public address about a month later, Griffin said that the moon-base plan was “the finest policy framework for United States civil space activities that I have seen in 40 years.”
Actually, Congress has asked NASA to pay more attention to space rocks. In 2005, Congress instructed the agency to mount a sophisticated search of the proximate heavens for asteroids and comets, specifically requesting that NASA locate all near-Earth objects 140 meters or larger that are less than 1.3 astronomical units from the sun–roughly out to the orbit of Mars. Last year, NASA gave Congress its reply: an advanced search of the sort Congress was requesting would cost about $1 billion, and the agency had no intention of diverting funds from existing projects, especially the moon-base initiative.
Now, I disagree with Mike that we don’t need an NEO program–I think we do. But unlike Gregg, I wouldn’t put NASA in charge of it. And if Congress wants to fund NASA to look for space rocks, it’s going to have to tell NASA not to do the other things that it wants to do, or fund it. Also, this was a little verbal gymnastics on Gregg’s part. Mike said that Congress had not instructed NASA to defend the earth, which is true, and the fact that they asked NASA to look for hazardous objects doesn’t change that fact in any way, despite his sleight-of-hand at the keyboard. Looking for objects is one thing–actually physically manipulating them is a different thing entirely. It’s like the difference between the CIA and the military. The former provides intelligence, the latter acts on it.
The Space Act (almost fifty years old now) does not grant NASA the responsibility to protect the planet, even with subsequent amendments. It is simply not its job. Moreover, no federal agency has that job, and as Gregg points out, if the US military were to take it on, there would be widespread suspicion on the part of the rest of the planet, and it would open us up to tremendous liability if something went wrong (not that there would necessarily be any lawyers around to care).
And is it really the job of the military? Again, as Gregg points out, this is a natural problem, not an enemy. If ET, or Marvin the Martian presented a threat, it would make sense to get the Air Force (or if we had one, Space Force) involved, because that is a willful enemy to be engaged, which is what we have a military for.
But as I’ve written before (six years ago–geez, where does the time go?), the only historical analogue (at least in the US) we have for planetary defense is the management of flooding by the Army Corps of Engineers. This is a predictable (though not as predictable as an asteroid or comet strike) natural disaster, at least statistically, and one that can be managed by building dams, which is largely what they do.
Now, I’m not proposing that the ACE be put in charge of defending the planet, but that thought isn’t much more frightening than putting NASA in charge of it. Yes, Gregg, we could lobby to get Congress to amend the Space Act to put it in the agency’s portfolio, but do you really think that would be a good idea? NASA is fifty years old this year, and bureaucratically, it acts much older than that. You don’t want to take an existing agency, with too much on its plate, and too little resources with which to do it (and yes, much of what it’s doing it shouldn’t be doing, but that’s a different discussion) and give it such an important, even existential task. It worked fine in the sixties, because it was a young, new agency with a focus on a single goal (though it managed to accomplish a lot of other things along the way in terms of planetary exploration–Tom Paine once told me that there was so much going on during Apollo that NASA did a lot of great things that it didn’t even know it was doing).
No.
I’ve often said that if the president really thought that the VSE was important, he would have taken a policy lead from the Strategic Missile Defense program in the eighties, in which an entirely new entity was established to carry it out (SDIO, now BMDO), because it would otherwise get bogged down in blue-suit politics in the Air Force.
I agree that we should be doing much more about this threat than we are, but just because NASA is ostensibly a space agency doesn’t mean that they should be in charge of it. I would establish a planetary defense agency, which had that as its sole charter. It might ask for (and occasionally get) cooperation from NASA, but it would do the same with the Air Force, and it would put out contracts to the private sector, and it would coordinate with COPUOS and encourage other nations to establish such entities to enter into cooperative agreements. If you ask NASA to do it, it will just become one more boondoggle, or it will get buried in the agency’s other priorities. Either way, if it’s important, you don’t want a sclerotic agency, long past its sell-by date, to be in charge.