Last night, when I'd calmed down a bit, I had a mild flashback to STAR
TREK (which I loved) and AVATAR (which I haven't seen yet), and what
they had in common: They could be hits or flops, nothing in between.
Especially with all the money Cameron put into Avatar, if it wasn't
the biggest movie ever (which it is) he'd be out of a job.

Obama has taken a gamble of similar magnitude in space.

Right now, administration officials and anti-NASA coolaid addicts are
the only ones celebrating the end of Constellation. The mainstream
media has been negative, with phrases like "end of an era" common.
This story on Yahoo ....

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100203/..._budget_impact

..... sums up the mood of a lot of people. And this says nothing of
the fact that other governments are continuing manned programs while
we, who wrote the book on it, are not. CATS cats may be celebrating,
but in the real world, people are not.

The only way to counter the negative coverage and for this to work out
for Obama is for his plans -- assuming he gets them through Congress
unaltered -- to deliver on everything and more. The commercial space
taxis HAVE to be on time, at or below budget, and awesome looking,
too. (If ULA et al know what's good for them, they'll have videos on
Youtube within a month.) The talk of NASA still sending people beyond
LEO HAS to pan out, with programs being spelled out. No way to get
away with, "no we're researching this so it can be used someday."
Uh-uh. And "re-vamping" KSC had bettern not include bulldozing LC39.
Where's the Augustine commission's heavy lifter going to fly from
without them? Unfortunately, the NASA budget page calls for RESEARCH
into heavy lifter technology, not actually building one. I don't like
the sound of that. Anything short of launching counts as staying
grounded.

So everything has to work out as advertised and more. Anything less
is putting lipstick on a pig and calling it a supermodel. And given
that Obama is already being compared to Jimmy Carter, another public
relations disaster probably won't do him any good even if, by itself,
it doesn't cost him the election (although Texas does have a lot of
electoral votes, doesn't it; and Florida decided the 2000 election.
Hmmmm). And the CATS cats who have been bashing NASA for years have
to put up or shut up. If you don't live up to your own boasting,
you'll look like idiots. No in-between, guys, sorry.

If Obama's space plan isn't a hit, it will be a flop, and he'll
probably spend the rest of his life explaining it.

I won't vote for him next time, but I still hope he knows what he's
doing.