Griffin: Shuttle-CEV Gap Unacceptable

Jorge R. Frank wrote:
"Keith F. Lynch" wrote in
:

Henry Spencer wrote:
However, it wasn't a hard choice, since he clearly *was* going to
have to raise taxes somehow soon. The promise was a really stupid
mistake. This way he at least had an excuse.

An honorable man, if he found it impossible to keep a promise that
helped him get elected, would have resigned.

Then every president would have to resign at some point.


What if the president wasn't honorable? What if he was a politician ?
What if he didn't share your notion of what and how presidents should act?
What percentage of US electorate supports your ideas anyways?


--
Sander

+++ Out of cheese error +++

"Rand Simberg" wrote in message
.. .
On Tue, 19 Apr 2005 01:12:13 GMT, in a place far, far away,
(Henry Spencer) made the phosphor on my monitor
glow in such a way as to indicate that:

By the way, the know-how base for manned spacecraft in particular has
not advanced much in the last 25 years.

I wonder if in some ways it hasn't actually regressed.

There is one way that it frequently does. If you have a long period of
slow activity then the "knowledge base" (people) move on, one way
or another. They may move on to other activities, retire or as time
goes on die.

I hope that the documented part of the "knowledge base" is improving and
getting easier to access. Back in the old days (1960's) I can remember
doing
computerized library searches at McDonnell-Douglas. If you were very
detailed in
your request you got very little. The most efficient technique was to do a
very
wide search on titles and get copies of the abstracts. If you were looking
for
propellant tank technical information the best way to cover all the
applicable
bases was to get everything they had in the library on "tanks". You start
out
by throwing out all the stuff about army tracked vehicles.

In those pre-internet days the search was limited to what was in the
McDonnell-Douglas library. You got about two boxes of abstracts printed
on cards.

Mike Walsh

Paul F. Dietz wrote:
Jorge R. Frank wrote:
"Keith F. Lynch" wrote:
An honorable man, if he found it impossible to keep a promise that
helped him get elected, would have resigned.

Then every president would have to resign at some point.

You say that like it was a bad thing.

Perhaps Keith wants only dishonorable presidents.

I want only *honest* presidents. People who don't make idle promises.
--
Keith F. Lynch - http://keithlynch.net/
Please see http://keithlynch.net/email.html before emailing me.

Keith F. Lynch wrote:
Paul F. Dietz wrote:
Jorge R. Frank wrote:
"Keith F. Lynch" wrote:
An honorable man, if he found it impossible to keep a promise that
helped him get elected, would have resigned.

Then every president would have to resign at some point.

You say that like it was a bad thing.

Perhaps Keith wants only dishonorable presidents.

I want only *honest* presidents. People who don't make idle promises.

Promises are policy statements. If you don't make policy
statements that sound like you're committed to things then
people don't think you have solid trustable beliefs.

Attempts to qualify answers with "unless it's really economically
necessary to do it anyways" is weasel-words. Weasel-words get
you not-elected.

The best we could hope for is politicians honest enough to come
out and forthrightly say "The situation has changed and I have
to change my mind about the right solution."

However, on top of the first level problem of being honest,
you have the second level problem of being the public
source of confidence etc. A lot of the stuff you'd have
to say to be forthright about dealing with big problem
situations would also scare people and make those
situations worse. Leadership involves sometimes not
being completely forthright.

It can be argued that a policy of perfect honesty may be
more destructive for the country, all things considered,
than Presidents taking reputation hits from time to time
and not being entirely credible, if it keeps the public
confidence up higher in crisis situations.

Welcome to the world's worst political system,
except for all the others...

Even if we could get the truly honest people elected,
they might not be the best crisis managers anyways.


-george william herbert

Henry Spencer wrote:
Sander Vesik wrote:
As Griffin himself pointed out, Gemini is a better example: it went from
a vague concept to a preliminary unmanned test in 3 years, with a first
manned test about a year after that and a fully operational spacecraft
around six months later. And at that, it was held up by both sheer bad
luck ... and novel technology ...

But surely it should be possible to do such much faster now?

Not very much, even as a crash project. There is a limit to how quickly a
substantial engineering project can be done, even if it is done by a
highly competent team and completely unhampered by budget considerations
and government purchasing rules.

The key here is, of course, to make it a less substantial
engineering project.


-george william herbert

George William Herbert wrote:
Keith F. Lynch wrote:
I want only *honest* presidents. People who don't make idle promises.

Promises are policy statements. If you don't make policy statements
that sound like you're committed to things then people don't think
you have solid trustable beliefs.

Attempts to qualify answers with "unless it's really economically
necessary to do it anyways" is weasel-words. Weasel-words get you
not-elected.

In other words, only liars can get elected.

Of what value is an election when people have no idea what they're
voting for?

The best we could hope for is politicians honest enough to come out
and forthrightly say "The situation has changed and I have to change
my mind about the right solution."

Politicians honest enough to admit that they lied to get elected?

Leadership involves sometimes not being completely forthright.

Being a master involves sometimes having slaves.

Even if we could get the truly honest people elected, they might not
be the best crisis managers anyways.

And perhaps a convicted embezzler would make the best bank teller.
But *I* sure wouldn't hire him for that job.
--
Keith F. Lynch - http://keithlynch.net/
Please see http://keithlynch.net/email.html before emailing me.

"Keith F. Lynch" wrote:

:Henry Spencer wrote:
: However, it wasn't a hard choice, since he clearly *was* going to
: have to raise taxes somehow soon. The promise was a really stupid
: mistake. This way he at least had an excuse.
:
:An honorable man, if he found it impossible to keep a promise that
:helped him get elected, would have resigned.

So Clinton should have resigned about 48 hours after he was elected
(remember the 'Middle Class Tax Cut' he was promising right up until
the day after the election, where he reversed field)? Or is it ok if
it's a deliberate lie in the first place?

--
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable
man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore,
all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
--George Bernard Shaw

Fred J. McCall wrote:
"Keith F. Lynch" wrote:
An honorable man, if he found it impossible to keep a promise that
helped him get elected, would have resigned.

So Clinton should have resigned about 48 hours after he was
elected ...

Yes, he should have.

Are you under the impression that I'm a Democrat? I'm not.
I'm an anarchist.
--
Keith F. Lynch - http://keithlynch.net/
Please see http://keithlynch.net/email.html before emailing me.