A really great essay by Keith Cowing

On Fri, 21 Nov 2003 17:54:53 +0000 (UTC), in a place far, far away,
(Eric Chomko) made the phosphor on my monitor
glow in such a way as to indicate that:

I keep forgetting you're one of those that believes that commercial
spaceflight is the only way to go. Damn, I gues the aspect of regulation
never crossed your mind or do you simply repress that sort of thinking?

It consumes my thinking.

--
simberg.interglobal.org * 310 372-7963 (CA) 307 739-1296 (Jackson Hole)
interglobal space lines * 307 733-1715 (Fax) http://www.interglobal.org

"Extraordinary launch vehicles require extraordinary markets..."
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On Fri, 21 Nov 2003 18:13:52 +0000 (UTC), in a place far, far away,
(Eric Chomko) made the phosphor on my monitor
glow in such a way as to indicate that:

: With all due respect, Rand, even if she was in DI and not DO,
: she was abroad under diplomatic cover doing fieldwork
: in not entirely friendly foreign countries, and that
: qualifies as 'agent' for most people (including me).

: I wasn't aware that she was abroad at the time.

There appears to be several facts that you are not aware of.

Such as?

--
simberg.interglobal.org * 310 372-7963 (CA) 307 739-1296 (Jackson Hole)
interglobal space lines * 307 733-1715 (Fax) http://www.interglobal.org

"Extraordinary launch vehicles require extraordinary markets..."
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On Fri, 21 Nov 2003 18:00:59 +0000 (UTC), in a place far, far away,
(Eric Chomko) made the phosphor on my monitor
glow in such a way as to indicate that:


: A CIA employee. They have many who aren't agents.

I CIA employee gets mentioned in the paper to prove a point? What point?!

Who knows? You tell me.

: Just the wife of a US ambassador that wouldn't go
: along with the lie that Saddam Hussein was trying to buy uranium from
: Niger?

: No one ever claimed that.

Wilson himself said it.

Wilson himself said what? That Saddam Hussein was trying to buy
uranium from Niger?

: Where do you get this nonsense? Democratic Underground?

Yeah, scared now?

laughing

--
simberg.interglobal.org * 310 372-7963 (CA) 307 739-1296 (Jackson Hole)
interglobal space lines * 307 733-1715 (Fax) http://www.interglobal.org

"Extraordinary launch vehicles require extraordinary markets..."
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h (Rand Simberg) writes:

On Fri, 21 Nov 2003 09:52:24 -0500, in a place far, far away, Chris
Jones made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such a
way as to indicate that:

What "claim" am I making here?

"All kinds of politicians get shot at, but liberals seem to have a
higher mortality rate."

The operative words being "seem to." Not a particularly strong claim.

In the words of Pat Paulsen, "Picky, picky, picky." Here's a claim for
you (I won't say whether you should consider it strong or not): we sure
do like to argue.

"Jorge R. Frank" wrote:

(Eric Chomko) wrote in
:

Rand Simberg ) wrote:
: On Thu, 20 Nov 2003 17:45:10 +0000 (UTC), in a place far, far away,
: (Eric Chomko) made the phosphor on my
: monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that:

: I listened to the whole thing. Granted he is no scientist and
: clearly a politician. Despite that, it is clear he set a high
: priority on going to the moon.

: Yes, because it was important to beat the Russians, not because he
: gave a damn about the moon.

Again, you seem to think he hated space and was totally against it.

You seem to think wrong. Disinterest does not imply hatred nor opposition.

I'm saying that his primary motivation was politcal to be sure but his
interest, though not that deep, was still there.

His interest was in beating the Russians; since the Russians seemed at the
time to be intent on outdoing the US in space, he had a political interest
in space. But it would be naive to pretend that his interest went any
farther or deeper than that. Indeed, in his conversation with Webb, he
actively steered Webb away from any priorities for NASA *other* than
beating the Russians to the moon.

--
JRF

I believe that if you are depending on this one conversation you are making
too much of it as an indicator of JFKs interest in space apart from beating
the Russians. The message I got was that he was emphasizing to his
closest advisors that, no way, should they let things like scientific
exploration get in the way of the Moon landing program. He wanted
to cut off the discussion and, I beleive, not be bothered by it again.

I don't disagree with the argument that things would not have been
much different in the space area if Kennedy is lived, but claiming
that his interest in space went no further than the Moon landing
is going beyond his remarks. I note that one of the quoted remarks
about space is that we should do it, but it would not justify the
amount they were spending on the Moon program.

He was at least as interested in space as later Presidents, and
some of the comments in this thread seem to be claiming that
he wasn't.

Mike Walsh

On Sat, 22 Nov 2003 16:59:44 GMT, in a place far, far away, Michael
Walsh made the phosphor on my monitor glow in
such a way as to indicate that:

He was at least as interested in space as later Presidents

No one is disputing that. We're just trying to get the Kennedy
worshipers in touch with reality.

--
simberg.interglobal.org * 310 372-7963 (CA) 307 739-1296 (Jackson Hole)
interglobal space lines * 307 733-1715 (Fax) http://www.interglobal.org

"Extraordinary launch vehicles require extraordinary markets..."
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"Jorge R. Frank" writes:

Chris Jones wrote in :

"Jorge R. Frank" writes:

[...]

Only on this issue of race; he remained a populist-conservative on most
other issues.

Populist-conservative is an interesting term, oxymoronic I would say

Maybe in the north; such politicians were common in the south.

Point taken. Until Nixon's "Southern Strategy", successful politicians
in the South avoided the Republican party like the plague, a legacy of
Lincoln, the Civil War, and Radical Reconstruction (and it sort of cut
the other way, too: John Prine has a wonderful line in one of his songs
how his grandfather "voted for Eisenhower 'cause Lincoln won the war").
Goldwater started to break the logjam in '64 since LBJ, despite being a
Southern Democrat, was ahead of most of the white South (the only ones
who could vote at that time) in supporting civil rights, Wallace in '68
gave those voters somewhere to go besides the national Democrats and
helped break the ingrained habit of pulling the Democrat party lever,
and the Republicans took advantage of the opening to use their more
conservative and (as they have been forced to come to believe, or at
least say in public (and I believe that some but not all of them DO
believe)) racist policies, which were a better fit to the Southern
voters of that day (and I don't disagree that their current policies are
a better fit to the Southern white voters of today).

OB space, it was Southern Democrat politicians, who tended to amass tons
of seniority and hence influence since there were almost no electable
Southern Republican politicians, who got so much Federal pork into their
home states, which includes a disproportionate (compared to population)
share of NASA and military centers. Northern politicians and Southern
Republican politicians (after such started to exist), of course, have
done/are doing the same to this day for their districts, and their
constituencies thank them.

Rand Simberg wrote:

On Sat, 22 Nov 2003 16:59:44 GMT, in a place far, far away, Michael
Walsh made the phosphor on my monitor glow in
such a way as to indicate that:

He was at least as interested in space as later Presidents

No one is disputing that. We're just trying to get the Kennedy
worshipers in touch with reality.

Lots of luck with the Kennedy worshipers as that won't happen.

I do disagree that no one is disputing that Kennedy was at least
as interested in space as later Presidents. The arguments in
this thread quite frequently can be interpreted as claiming this.

I agree that most of the people who have posted things that
I could interpret in that manner are not people that have shown
anti-Kennedy tendencies, but I do think sometimes go overboard
in trying to prove their points.

Looking at another President, I don't believe Richard Nixon
ever was really interested in space, but that didn't keep him
from making a comment "The Moon landing was the greatest
thing since the creation." or some words to that effect.

Mike Walsh

Michael Walsh writes:

[...]

Looking at another President, I don't believe Richard Nixon
ever was really interested in space, but that didn't keep him
from making a comment "The Moon landing was the greatest
thing since the creation." or some words to that effect.

(Disclaimer: I have a gigantic anti-Nixon tendency, though I can manage
to credit him sometimes.) What I remember, and this is just like Nixon,
and me and my memory, is that he called the phone call he made from the
White House "the most historic phone call ever made."

As to the "since creation" bit, U.S. President Rutherford B. Hayes (on
whose behalf the Republicans stole the election of 1876, to tie this to
something I posted earlier in this thread) said of the first White House
phone, installed in 1879, that its invention was "one of the greatest
events since creation". (See
http://www.americanradioworks.org/fe.../notebook.html)

"Rand Simberg" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 21 Nov 2003 18:13:52 +0000 (UTC), in a place far, far away,
(Eric Chomko) made the phosphor on my monitor
glow in such a way as to indicate that:

: With all due respect, Rand, even if she was in DI and not DO,
: she was abroad under diplomatic cover doing fieldwork
: in not entirely friendly foreign countries, and that
: qualifies as 'agent' for most people (including me).

: I wasn't aware that she was abroad at the time.

There appears to be several facts that you are not aware of.

Such as?

That she was abroad at the time ;-)

IIRC there is an article in this month's Economist on living under cover
which goes over the reality which she and other CIA staffers live with.
Apparently they have only recently been allowed to actually break cover when
they leave the service, prior to a couple of years ago you'd have to
maintain what ever fiction you'd been given for life, even with loved ones.

It would seem that CIA standard operating procedures would have people in
admin roles in various places doing field work. Hardly glamerous, but I
think we have a distorted image of spying anyway.

Look at David Shayler, about as far from James Bond as I can comfortably
imagine.

Dave