Pres. Kerry's NASA

On Wed, 11 Feb 2004 03:48:55 GMT, in a place far, far away,
h (Rand Simberg) made the phosphor on my
monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that:

On Tue, 10 Feb 2004 16:13:55 GMT, in a place far, far away, "carym"
made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such a way
as to indicate that:

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.

No reason to think that, and if they have any affect, it won't be for
many years.

D'oh!

That should be "...any effect..."

On Tue, 10 Feb 2004 12:09:45 -0800, in a place far, far away, Michael
Walsh made the phosphor on my monitor glow in
such a way as to indicate that:

Did you really expect Kerry to come out in support of a Bush
initiative?

Is it required for him to automatically oppose anything that Bush
comes up with? It is impossible to conceive that even a blind
squirrel can come up with the occasional acorn?

Michael Walsh wrote in news:402939A3.D6F3AE12
@Adelphia.net:

Sort of like the number of extreme conservatives in the
Republican party, except they are more likely to hang out

....in the white house than anywhere else.

--
Coridon Henshaw - http://www3.telus.net/csbh - "I have sadly come to the
conclusion that the Bush administration will go to any lengths to deny
reality." -- Charley Reese

"Mike Rhino" wrote
The Wall Street Journal has dug up some people who still care about that
issue, but I think it's a fairly small number. If the ruler of North
Korea
decided to fight SARS, would you turn around and support SARS? So Kerry
agreed with Jane Fonda on some issue. So what?

I love the smell of paleoconservatives burning about the Vietnam issue, like
they did with Bill Clinton (elected twice). It smells like--victory!

And even then they had a bomber pilot to match him against, instead of Pres.
AWOL.

Plus, Pres. Kerry could make Barbarella the head of NASA.

Joe

"Rand Simberg" wrote in message

Sander Vesik

But you are making an assumption that Moon+Mars was in fact
anything more than a disguised campaign speech.

To think otherwise is laughable. Where is the big constituency for
going to the moon and Mars whose votes Bush is seeking?

Good grief. I can't believe the broad misperception of this, nor the
baseless cynicism that is being propagated. **Read section 9.3 of the CAIB
report (Vol. 1)**. Yes, things are done in an election year for political
reasons. Yes, the new space vision was announced at the beginning of an
election year. Is everything the president does this year an election year
gimmick? No, of course not. He's the president, he has to keep working.
Business goes on. So, how do you tell the difference? (Does this really need
to be spelled out?)

The new space vision was not done in response to any popularity numbers
going down. It wasn't done in response to the demands of any constituency.
It was done because NASA exists and will continue to exist. The lack of a
long term vision was cited in the CAIB report as detrimental on several
fronts - indeed, there is a sub-section in the CAIB report in section 9.3
entitled: "Lack of a National Vision for Space". It's just common sense that
some kind of mission statement or vision for an organization such as NASA
provides needed focus. One can certainly argue about the content of the
vision. But the new vision was arrived at after a lengthy and thorough
deliberative process, and appears to feature a more viable approach at
implementation than previous plans. The fact that the announcement of the
new vision fell in an election year is coincidental and mechanical: if Bush
had wanted to make it into a bigger deal, he would have announced it with
great fanfare at the SOU address.

Finally, the irony of your statement must have escaped you: if you feel
there is no "constituency", how can this provide much or any political gain?

Jon

"Mike Rhino" wrote in message ...
It's not too hard. The current leading Democrat is John Kerry. You
know, the same guy who worked wholeheartedly with Jane Fonda, the SDS
and VVAW to end containment of Communism.

The Wall Street Journal has dug up some people who still care about that
issue, but I think it's a fairly small number. If the ruler of North Korea
decided to fight SARS, would you turn around and support SARS? So Kerry
agreed with Jane Fonda on some issue. So what?

Not on 'some' issue, but on the central issue for which she is widely
reviled--public support for North Vietnam while American soldiers were
dying in battle and being tortured in Hanoi. There are lots of people
who care. John Kerry wrote a book shortly after he got out in which it
is obvious he wanted an eventual North Vietnamese victory in the civil
war. He was pro-communist, not just anti-war. Nothing in his
Congressional record or public statements indicates a repudiation of
his previous beliefs or actions. And people will care about that.


If I remember correctly, Kerry didn't get out of the military and start
protesting until 1972.

Nope. He went to Vietnam in October of '68 to serve on a river boat.
By March of '69 he got his third purple heart and (immediately)
requested transfer back to the states. In October '69 he was released
entirely from the Navy, 8 months early, and immediately joined and
became central to the VVAW. There's a picture currently circulating
the internet of him protesting with Fonda in early 1970.

Sort of like the number of extreme conservatives in the
Republican party, except they are more likely to hang out
at country clubs than colleges.

I like the country club set. It's mainly the religious right that bugs
me -- especially the people who believe that the Earth is less than 10,000
years old.

Even funnier are the people who try to use "evidence" to prove the
above. Nothing sadder than someone who thinks they need to prove a
'fact' of their faith, blissfully ignorant to the theological and
logical gap involved in needing to prove something they're already
supposed to take on authority from God.

Tom Merkle

jeff findley wrote:
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.

For jobs that don't produce a product that's solid (i.e. any job who's
product is some sort of computer file), increased productivity doesn't
mean much. Management has a hard time measuring the productivity of
many of these tasks. How can they tell if the CAD drawings they
receive in electronic form are any good or not? How do you tell if
the thousands of lines of code someone writes is any good once it's
merged into an executable that has hundreds of people working on it?

By counting the number of defects. Any realistic project will be doing
this (and there is no doubt that those who don't go under quite fast)
as well as seeing what amount of designs need to be redesigned.


These jobs are going overseas with very little in the way of
cost/benefit analysis because the productivity and quality that comes
from these jobs is so hard to measure.

I don't think so. Either they were in a really bad situation already
before outsourcing or they will have pretty good idea of the quality
they are getting (or not getting) within a couple of months.


Jeff

--
Sander

+++ Out of cheese error +++

Rand Simberg wrote:
On Tue, 10 Feb 2004 18:30:43 +0000 (UTC), in a place far, far away,
Sander Vesik made the phosphor on my
monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that:

But you are making an assumption that Moon+Mars was in fact
anything more than a disguised campaign speech.

To think otherwise is laughable. Where is the big constituency for
going to the moon and Mars whose votes Bush is seeking?

A lot of propeller heads and self style "patriots" who think that
US needs to demonstrate its obvious superiority by proving that it
can put its citizens on celestial body X before anybody else?

Just count the number of threads that imply the start of rains of manna
as the result of the Bush speech on the new space initiative in this
newsgroup.

--
Sander

+++ Out of cheese error +++

On Wed, 11 Feb 2004 06:37:42 -0600, in a place far, far away, "Jon
Berndt" made the phosphor on my monitor glow
in such a way as to indicate that:

But you are making an assumption that Moon+Mars was in fact
anything more than a disguised campaign speech.

To think otherwise is laughable. Where is the big constituency for
going to the moon and Mars whose votes Bush is seeking?

Good grief. I can't believe the broad misperception of this, nor the
baseless cynicism that is being propagated. **Read section 9.3 of the CAIB
report (Vol. 1)**. Yes, things are done in an election year for political
reasons. Yes, the new space vision was announced at the beginning of an
election year. Is everything the president does this year an election year
gimmick? No, of course not. He's the president, he has to keep working.
Business goes on. So, how do you tell the difference? (Does this really need
to be spelled out?)

The new space vision was not done in response to any popularity numbers
going down. It wasn't done in response to the demands of any constituency.
It was done because NASA exists and will continue to exist. The lack of a
long term vision was cited in the CAIB report as detrimental on several
fronts - indeed, there is a sub-section in the CAIB report in section 9.3
entitled: "Lack of a National Vision for Space". It's just common sense that
some kind of mission statement or vision for an organization such as NASA
provides needed focus. One can certainly argue about the content of the
vision. But the new vision was arrived at after a lengthy and thorough
deliberative process, and appears to feature a more viable approach at
implementation than previous plans. The fact that the announcement of the
new vision fell in an election year is coincidental and mechanical: if Bush
had wanted to make it into a bigger deal, he would have announced it with
great fanfare at the SOU address.

Finally, the irony of your statement must have escaped you: if you feel
there is no "constituency", how can this provide much or any political gain?

Jon, I don't understand your post. You seem to be agreeing with me,
but then at the end you ask a question that indicates that you
completely missed my point.

I *don't* believe there is any significant political gain for the
president from the new space policy. I *don't* believe that he did it
for political reasons. I was simply stating why.

On Wed, 11 Feb 2004 14:38:43 +0000 (UTC), in a place far, far away,
Sander Vesik made the phosphor on my
monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that:

Rand Simberg wrote:
On Tue, 10 Feb 2004 18:30:43 +0000 (UTC), in a place far, far away,
Sander Vesik made the phosphor on my
monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that:

But you are making an assumption that Moon+Mars was in fact
anything more than a disguised campaign speech.

To think otherwise is laughable. Where is the big constituency for
going to the moon and Mars whose votes Bush is seeking?

A lot of propeller heads and self style "patriots" who think that
US needs to demonstrate its obvious superiority by proving that it
can put its citizens on celestial body X before anybody else?

There aren't that many people like that, and most of them were
probably going to vote for him anyway. It's much more likely to turn
off voters who are upset about his spending, and don't give a damn
about space.

Just count the number of threads that imply the start of rains of manna
as the result of the Bush speech on the new space initiative in this
newsgroup.

Do you *really* think that this newsgroup is indicative of the voting
population? You need to get out more.