On Sun, 26 Feb 2017 04:41:14 -0700, Fred J. McCall
wrote:

...... you should stop repeating your political bull**** in a
sci.space newsgroup.


This group is sci.space.POLICY. I would assume that's government
policy. That means people in government can't be ignored. That means
Trump's motives in character are very much relevant. And it's not a
moderated group, so for all your ranting and raving you can't stop
people from posting what you don't want to read.

To bring it back to the question at hand, what is Trump's position on
space, in particular the manned space program? Before the election,
his position was best summed up by this line from page 124 of
"Crippled America: How to Make America Great Again:" "Before we build
bridges to Mars, let's make sure the bridges over the Mississippi
river aren't going to fall down."

That's it. That's all there is in the book. And it jives with a
public statement he made late last year.

Now, for the last couple of months, I've followed the reporting from
Space News, and tha has included articles like this:

http://spacenews.com/the-big-changes...oming-to-nasa/

....so in the face of that, the idea that Mr. Musk has pursuaded Trump
to cancel SLS/Orion and go whole hog for Mars colonization with SpaceX
hardware might be a bit premature. If anything, they seem to be
looking at a greater role for Orion, not less. It's possible that
since this is not a top priority for him, Trump may be inclined to
follow Congress' lead and pander where he wants to. So other than the
predictable action of cutting or ending the earth sciences program,
there may not be an appetite for major changes to the manned program.

Of course, at the moment, this is all specuation. I just favor the
idea that they want consistency, as opposed to entertaning the idea
that the long-hope-for cancelation of SLS and Orion will finally
happen. (cue organ music) We'll know more when they release their
budget and name the new NASA administrator.

But so far, this most we can say is it's business as usual at NASA and
this is a part of the goverment Trump has not screwed up.