This is long overdue, I think. I’d sure like to see it go somewhere.
EmBoldening The Budget
There are rumors that during the Bolden meeting with Obama, the subject of a potential need to decrease NASA’s future budget came up, and that Bolden discouraged the president from doing so.
One of the ways that Goldin ingratiated himself with the Clinton administration was to actually take pride in and volunteer for budget cuts, which simply strained the agency, and some think, led to the Columbia disaster. But it is possible to spend less money on space, and it’s even possible to get more for less than we’re currently getting (simply getting NASA out of the launch-vehicle development business would go a long way toward that goal). The problem is that it’s not politically possible, because the primary goal of the money remains keeping cafeterias and parking lots full in Huntsville, Houston and the Cape
Contrarian
In the midst of all of the celebration of the successful repair mission, I’m going to dash a little cold water here. While I criticized the O’Keefe decision to not do the Hubble repair, it wasn’t a criticism of the decision itself, but rather of the rationale for it. I’ve never supported the mission, because I think that there were much better uses for the money, even for astronomy. But cancelling it because of risk to the crew was a dumb reason to do so (particularly because it made it easy for Griffin to reverse it when he came in). As always in these cases, it’s the money, stupid. And while I’m sure that we’ll get spectacular results from the fix, I remain convinced that there were better uses for the money.
Anyway, Rocketman agrees. Though I would note that the cost of a Shuttle flight isn’t a billion dollars for the purpose of determining the cost of this mission. What’s important for this analysis is the marginal cost of the flight, which, ignoring the cost of the telescope upgrade hardware, was less than a couple hundred million, including crew training. But it was still a lousy deal.
The People Have Spoken
“In talking to different organizations that did focus groups and polling throughout the process and also organizations that did exit polling afterwards, it was really clear that voters were giving us a very specific message– This is too complicated. We don’t want to vote on it. We are fatigued with the number of elections we’ve had especially special elections and we want you to go back to Sacramento and resolve this.”
The problem, of course, with this self-serving theory, is that it doesn’t explain the single “Yes” vote to deprive these looters of their pay raises if they can’t balance the budget. I’m going to go with Occam here — the California voters are fed up with spending and taxes. I know that I was when I lived there, and that was five years ago. It’s only gotten worse since.
Related bonus: another good reason that newspapers are dying.
Hiatus
I’m going to be gone for the next week and a half (including some time at the ISDC) and am packing tonight and flying tomorrow (the next week will be in central Missouri). I’ll be doing the “have laptop, will travel” gig, though, because this is a working vacation, so I won’t be totally absent, but I’m unlikely to post much for the next day or so.
[Thursday morning update]
Travel went fine yesterday, but I didn’t get out the laptop until this morning. More posts anon.
Engine Problems
Chair Force Engineer has been reading the DIRECT rebuttal, and says that there are problems with both the RS-68 and the SSME has an upper-stage engine. One point that he doesn’t make, but is a major issue, is that the SSME is not currently capable of air (or vacuum) start. It currently needs a lot of ground support equipment. Even ignoring the manufacturing cost (which will be recurring every flight), requalifying the hot box for second-stage work will be a major program cost and risk.
Abandoning reusables because of the Shuttle and X-33 is nuts. It’s Wile E. Coyote engineering.
Arnold’s Legacy
Thoughts from Veronique de Rugy:
In the end, the Terminator’s tenure as a governor of the Golden State will be remembered as a disaster flick which ends with high taxes, failed promises, and gigantic spending. For instance, not only did he bail on his promise to destroy the car tax, cut spending, and bring unprecedented prosperity to California, but he also caved to the unions and now wants voters to pay for the mess he caused.
The sad part of this bad movie is that this is a guy who came into office with a very promising future and a potential to be transformative in important ways. He was pro-business, pro-small government, and open-minded. He even quoted Adam Smith.
Yet he failed in every dimension of the job.
About the best that can be said is that he became a slightly darker shade of Gray.
Chutzpah
As Jim Geraghty notes, it goes right along with his complaining about borrowing and spending:
Other NRO folk who have much more knowledge and background in the relevant matters have commented on President Obama’s address at the graduation ceremony at Notre Dame. I’ll just add that perhaps the man who said his foes “take pride in being ignorant”, who said his opponents wanted to “do nothing” in the face of the recession and who characterized rural voters as clinging “to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment” is perhaps the wrong person to call upon the public to stop “reducing those with differing views to caricature.”
Again, the cognitive dissonance of his supporters is a wonder of nature.
How About That Net Spending Cut?
I continue to be amazed that people think that this president is honest, when there is such a huge ongoing gap between words and deeds. Who was foolish enough to believe that he would actually cut the federal budget? Of course, as was the case with many of his campaign promises, I assume that his supporters just assumed and hoped that he was lying.
The Latest Bailout
It’s obviously too big to fail.
[Via Greg Mankiw]