Glenn speech

Charles Buckley wrote:



The threat to Bush now is from inside his party. There is a large
enough section of them that want to cut the deficit that Bush
stands a good chance of losing some of these budget fights.
Cutting the deficit is one of the major rallying points for
bipartisan action.


And speaking of cutting things; from "NASA Watch":
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=14693
http://www.dailypress.com/news/dp-bu...dlines-topnews
If we are about to embark on a new space initiative, why are we getting
rid of people?
IIRC, wasn't this how Goldin's Golden Age began?

Pat

On Sat, 04 Dec 2004 18:44:43 -0600, in a place far, far away, Pat
Flannery made the phosphor on my monitor glow in
such a way as to indicate that:

If we are about to embark on a new space initiative, why are we getting
rid of people?

Maybe because some people stand in the way of progress?

I don't know the answer, but it's not obvious a priori that getting
rid of some people is a bad idea, or a hindrance to embarking on a new
space initiative. Certainly if some people had been gotten rid of
sooner (e.g., Dick Truly), we might have embarked on a new space
initiative fifteen years ago, instead of now.

Pat Flannery wrote:


Charles Buckley wrote:



The threat to Bush now is from inside his party. There is a large
enough section of them that want to cut the deficit that Bush
stands a good chance of losing some of these budget fights.
Cutting the deficit is one of the major rallying points for
bipartisan action.



And speaking of cutting things; from "NASA Watch":
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=14693
http://www.dailypress.com/news/dp-bu...dlines-topnews

If we are about to embark on a new space initiative, why are we getting
rid of people?
IIRC, wasn't this how Goldin's Golden Age began?


Well, I would guess a few issues are at play he

1) Even Bush's plan gutted parts of NASA, particularly the
aviation side of the house. That is stuff that has been in
the pipeline now for almost a year and is going to happen no
matter what else happens. Different priorities is going to have
an effect on which departments are staffed and how much funding
they can get.

2) I recall back when I attended college, that one of the professors
pointed out that there were several orders more electrical engineers
working on the space station project than aerospace engineers working
on it. Which brings up an interesting subpoint: You have to have a
lot of people for the phrase "orders of magnitude" to be a meaningful
statement. It apears to me that the current shift in strategy is
going to have an impact here as most of the targetted tech is pointed
more towards aerospace and mechanical engineering.

3) 2005 was projected to be Core Complete on ISS and was going to be
a blood letting year anyway. You simply can not justify the current
staffing when there is nothing in the R&D pipeline or production
side of the house that justifies that level of manning. As the ISS
modules role off the production line and get warehoused until they
get launched, you simply don't need nearly as many designers and
production staff. In this case, it is worse for NASA in that,
technically, the actual production was a contract job. You can justify
the technicians who do the actual work, but how many people do you
need to supervise the warehousing of completed modules?

4) If they are going to ground Shuttle in 2010, then we are looking
at the possibility of closing a number of facilities related to
Shuttle support and equipment that is not necessary now. We won't
be taking one shuttle out of production for upgrades for the remaining
lifecycle of the Shuttle. When they start rolling out next year, that
will be it in terms of large facility requirements. If they can't fix it
in the VAB, then it is probably not going to be cost effective to fix
at all.

Honestly, you could gut entire Centers at NASA and get a fairly large
addition by subtraction effect in terms of shifting towards an
exploration focus. NASA does incredibly good work below the radar.
Many of it's small focussed programs have done quite well. I
would argue that 99.5% of NASA's workforce is probably not really
needed for the program in question and trying to use a Mongolian
Horde approach is more a hindrance than help.

Charles Buckley wrote in
:

We won't
be taking one shuttle out of production for upgrades for the remaining
lifecycle of the Shuttle. When they start rolling out next year, that
will be it in terms of large facility requirements. If they can't fix
it in the VAB, then it is probably not going to be cost effective to
fix at all.

This is wrong. Atlantis is scheduled for a 22 month OMM in 2006-07 and
Discovery for 17 months in 2008-09 (Endeavour is getting its OMM now,
concurrently with RTF upgrades).

Pat Flannery ) wrote:


: Kevin Willoughby wrote:

: You make the President sound like the mail Paris Hilton...
:

: Continuing that postal theme- although both should be stamped out, I'll
: bet Paris is easier to lick than Dubya. ;-)

Frankly, your comedic priviledges should be cancelled after that post.

Somehow I think someone is confusing philately with fellatio, or is it
Bush with Clinton?

Eric

: Pat

Rand Simberg ) wrote:
: On Fri, 3 Dec 2004 23:43:49 -0500, in a place far, far away, Kevin
: Willoughby made the phosphor on my
: monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that:

: In article ,
: says...
: Sounds like you're asking for a friendly visit from the Secret
: Service.
:
: Idiot.
:
: Really? My interpretation was that Mike had a sense of humor.

: Yeah, my liver is showing from the hilarity.

: You seem
: to expect the worst of anyone who disagrees with you...

: Not to me. I disagree with many people, usually amiably.

You mispelled "arrogantly".

: Anyway, it doesn't matter how *I* interpret it. I'm not the one
: who'll be paying him a friendly visit.

Rand Simberg ) wrote:
: On Sat, 04 Dec 2004 18:44:43 -0600, in a place far, far away, Pat
: Flannery made the phosphor on my monitor glow in
: such a way as to indicate that:

: If we are about to embark on a new space initiative, why are we getting
: rid of people?

: Maybe because some people stand in the way of progress?

: I don't know the answer, but it's not obvious a priori that getting
: rid of some people is a bad idea, or a hindrance to embarking on a new
: space initiative. Certainly if some people had been gotten rid of
: sooner (e.g., Dick Truly), we might have embarked on a new space
: initiative fifteen years ago, instead of now.

15 years...that would be at the start of Bush I/Quayle. Huh, I could have
sworn Bush I mentioned Mars back then and left Quayle to deal with it.

What makes you so sure that Bush II's initiative won't go the way of his
father's? At least you sort of believed that Quayle might have an interest
in space. I have seen NOTHING that would indicate that Cheney cares about
space.

It will be interesting to see what progress, if any, we have made with the
Bush II initiative by 2019. Don't get me wrong, I want progress. It is
just that I don't get Bush is committed to it. Certainly not as comitted
as he is to Iraq.

Eric

In article ,
lid says...
You make the President sound like the mail Paris Hilton...

Ouch! "Male Paris Hilton"

Spell check is great, but not perfect...
--
Kevin Willoughby lid

The loss of the American system of checks and balances
is more of a security danger than any terrorist risk.
-- Bruce Schneier

On Mon, 6 Dec 2004 23:05:25 -0500, Kevin Willoughby
wrote:

In article ,
says...
You make the President sound like the mail Paris Hilton...

Ouch! "Male Paris Hilton"

....You mean Mr. Slave, right?


OM

--

"No ******* ever won a war by dying for | http://www.io.com/~o_m
his country. He won it by making the other | Sergeant-At-Arms
poor dumb ******* die for his country." | Human O-Ring Society

- General George S. Patton, Jr

Kevin Willoughby wrote:

In article ,
says...


You make the President sound like the mail Paris Hilton...



Ouch! "Male Paris Hilton"

Spell check is great, but not perfect...


Oh come on- we got some great puns out of that little slip up... :-)

Pat