Pres. Kerry's NASA

In article ,
(Henry Spencer) wrote:

Bear in mind that even assuming Kerry wins and goes two terms, and the
CEV stays roughly on schedule, we'll be in the tail end of his presidency
before shuttle retirement and manned CEV LEO flights are an immediate
prospect. Only then will a big decision have to be made about funding for
more ambitious things. By that time, the easy thing to do will be to
stall and punt any major decision to the next president.

If a future president wanted to kill the CEV why wait until then? By
reducing the funding in future budgets needed to pay for its development
wouldn't that accomplish the same end?

--
Stephen Souter

http://www.edfac.usyd.edu.au/staff/souters/

"Reed Snellenberger" wrote
[JFK]'d probably be a Republican today (the mind boggles)

Oh yeah, just like the rest of his family. This is a silly game Reaganites
play.

Joe

"And the only basic issue in the 1960 campaign is whether our government
will fall in a conservative rut and die there, or whether we will move ahead
in the liberal spirit of daring, of breaking new ground, of doing in our
generation what Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman and
Adlai Stevenson did in their time of influence and responsibility." -- Sen
J. Kennedy

(Henry Spencer) wrote in
:

The Eisenhower administration actually had, overall, a rather more
sensible approach. Had that continued, we probably wouldn't have
gotten to the Moon until the 1980s... but we probably wouldn't have
abandoned it four years later either.

Good point... come to think of it, it's the same point I made in rebuttal
of Alex Roland's recent Florida Today op-ed (without mentioning
Eisenhower). So my dismissal of Eisenhower was a bit flip.

--
JRF

Reply-to address spam-proofed - to reply by E-mail,
check "Organization" (I am not assimilated) and
think one step ahead of IBM.

"Jon Berndt" wrote in message
...
"Phil A. Buster" wrote

Your statement "Bush never had any interest ..." is false, and you would
know this had you been keeping up on things. There has been a *lot* going
on
behind the scenes for longer than the past year. One can argue about the
content of the new vision, but to call it an election year ploy is
ignorant.
Also, during the Clinton years, the NASA budget decreased (as posted by
JRF
some time ago).

Jon


I disagree.

In his years as governor Bush never visited NASA Houston and some of his
close associates have been reported to say that they never heard him express
any interest in space activities. Nor is there any indication of attention
to this area as President before Columbia. The "*lot*" going on in the past
year was driven by the Columbia tragedy, and the timing of Bush's speech is
very much related to the MER excitement blip in an election year. The
complete absence of any mention of the issue in the state of the union
speech (and since) is widely, and accurately, regarded as a response to the
fact that it didn't get the response his political handlers hoped for. This
is very reminiscent of his fathers short lived and ineffective attention to
the space program. Let's hope, nonetheless, that something positive comes
out of it.

I could just as easily call you "ignorant" because you disagree, but I place
some value on courtesy and reasoned arguments, rare as that may be in a news
group discussion. You might try it sometime.
..

I think China's long term efforts in space will have a serious effect
on the US government's plans to continue, or discontinue the Bush plan.


"Kelly McDonald" wrote in message
...
On 8 Feb 2004 15:55:49 -0800, (ed kyle) wrote:

What will President Kerry do with NASA? My guess is that
he will want to dump the Bush Moon/Mars plans ASAP, but
will he be able to stop CEV and the end of Shuttle?

- Ed Kyle

Ultimately it will be the House and Senate that will decide if Bush's
proposal moves forward or not, after all it is they who have power of
the purse.

Kelly McDonald

In article .rogers.com,
carym wrote:
I think China's long term efforts in space will have a serious effect
on the US government's plans to continue, or discontinue the Bush plan.

To quote one G. Bush: "this is a journey, not a race".

China had nothing to do with it, and that lack of connection will continue.
The 1960s space race was about the Cold War, not about space.
--
MOST launched 30 June; science observations running | Henry Spencer
since Oct; first surprises seen; papers pending. |

In article ,
Stephen Souter wrote:
Bear in mind that even assuming Kerry wins and goes two terms, and the
CEV stays roughly on schedule, we'll be in the tail end of his presidency
before shuttle retirement and manned CEV LEO flights are an immediate
prospect. Only then will a big decision have to be made about funding for
more ambitious things. By that time, the easy thing to do will be to
stall and punt any major decision to the next president.

If a future president wanted to kill the CEV why wait until then? By
reducing the funding in future budgets needed to pay for its development
wouldn't that accomplish the same end?

I'm not talking about killing the CEV, but about killing Moon/Mars plans.
Note the words "more ambitious things" -- that is, more ambitious than
replacing the shuttle with the CEV. The CEV generally makes sense and I'm
expecting it to be continued, regardless of who's in the White House.

My point is that Bush's leisurely schedule pretty much pushes all major
decisions about beyond-LEO activities out to the president *after* the one
who's sworn in next year. Whether it's Dubya or Kerry next year is really
a rather secondary issue as far as manned deep-space exploration is
concerned.
--
MOST launched 30 June; science observations running | Henry Spencer
since Oct; first surprises seen; papers pending. |

In article ,
Reed Snellenberger wrote:
And even [JFK] had Cold War based motivations. There's nothing like that
now, and it might well take us in a direction that would be unproductive
in the long term, if there were.

Nothing like that now? Do you remember anything significant happening in
2001?

Nothing like that now. Anyone who compares 9-11 and subsequent events to
the Cold War either doesn't remember what the Cold War was like, or is
lying to you.
--
MOST launched 30 June; science observations running | Henry Spencer
since Oct; first surprises seen; papers pending. |

jeff findley wrote:

: Third, they have watched middle class jobs at large US corporations
: being shipped overseas because the labor is cheaper. Not that the
: labor is necessarily better, because management's belief is that the
: lack of quality is insignificant when compared to the increase in
: quantity.

: Today it's computer programming and customer support going overseas.
: Tomorrow it will be every other job that requires you to work in front
: of a computer all day. Engineering jobs included. It's trivial to
: ship CAD/CAM/CAE data around the world with today's data management
: software.

: Jeff


If you think the President or even Congress can do something about
that without spinning the nation into deep Socialism, you need to
think again.

It's an unstoppable economic event and there's nothing anyone can do
about it.

There are minor things:

Such as inventing new stuff which, for a while can only be
manufactured here.

there are long term things:

Once the economic level of the rest of the world rises to the First
World nations, or even second, then US workers become more
competitive.

Increased productivity can keep manufacturing here, but that's
usually accomplished without increases in payroll.


Just my opinion.


--- Gregg
"Improvise, adapt, overcome."

Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
Phone: (617) 496-1558

TKalbfus ) wrote:
: My guess is that we would probably see the end of Americans in space under a
: Kerry administration, sooner or later. It's pretty clear that regardless of
: what some people might want, we can't keep the shuttles flying for more than
: about ten years in any case. So without something like the Bush plan to
: replace the shuttles, we'll see the triumph of Robert Park's "robots uber
: alles" additude.

: Kerry is often compared to Kennedy, but that's Edward (Ted), not John. And who
: is Edward Kennedy to us? A big nobody who for some strange reason the people of
: Massachusetts keep on reelecting to the Senate. Has Edward Kennedy proposed any
: bold new space visions like his brother? Of course not, he's much too modest to
: do anything like that. If there's anything John F. Kennedy will be remembered
: for, its the Apollo program that achieved Mankinds first landing on the Moon.
: that's what I learned the first time I heard of John F. Kennedy. The Cuban
: Missile Crisis I learned of later, but that's a non-event because nothing
: happened, nothing was achieved either except a resumption of the status quo
: that existed prior to that crisis.

We created the Washington/Moscow Hotline as a result of the Cuban Missile
Crisis. Get a history lesson!!

: There is the Peace Corps, and the fact that
: he got assassinated.

And the assassination looks very much like a domestic coup in the US, not
some banana republic where things like that ONLY occur. Haven't you heard
about having lost our innocence after the JFK assassination?

: That's about it. Its too bad that Ted Kennedy doesn't want
: to emphasize the Moon program because that's JFK's main claim to fame, that's
: like talking about Abe Lincoln but refusing to mention the Civil War or the
: Abolition of Slavery.

And now you are confusing Abe Lincoln with John Brown.

Eric

: Tom