President Ron Paul might let the Space Shuttle flying beyond 2010. :-)

Ron Paul has about as much chance of being elected President as Jerry
Brown - and Jerry's not even a legal resident of the planet Earth.

Seriously, I prefer to spend time on candidates who are not asterisks
in the polls. Paul is running to get a platform for his message, and
good for him.

The only serious candidate who's even put out a space policy so far is
Senator Clinton, and she was careful to promise something for everyone
and not talk budget numbers.

"lab~rat :-)" wrote:

For the record, that has never stopped anyone from trying to sue in
the past. I'm sure that the agreement for space travel has that
language, but for some reason folks over here seem to think that kind
of legalese is unenforceable. And it's probably because people get
paid when they sue...

Actually it's because black letter law as well as case law strictly
limit the conditions under which, and the extent to which, one can
sign one's rights away. Additionally, there is the legal principle
(in the Anglo Saxon legal systems) that one is strictly limited to the
amount one can bind ones heirs by a current contract.

It's not because 'people get paid', it is also part and parcel of the
legal principles that prevent debt bondage as well as natural collary
of the principle of "sins of the father are not those of the son".

D.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.

http://derekl1963.livejournal.com/

-Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings.
Oct 5th, 2004 JDL

I like Paul - he says what he thinks, and he uses the campaign to draw
attention to his message. Democracy in action.
But I'll spend any time and money concerning the election on a
candidate who has a ghost of a chance to win. Paul has as much chance
of being President as Jerry Brown (who should be disqualified on the
grounds he's not a legal resident of the Earth).
The only candidate to say anything about space is Senator Clinton, who
said little of substance, but at least she said something. Hopefully
others will follow that lead.

Not quite true, Representative Ron Paul has a space policy statement too.
It's twenty years old and Ron Paul had only served in Congress for 10
years. The relevant part of the 1988 statement being "... and the rest of
NASA should be sold to private operators." This is when he was the
Libertarian candidate for President.

So, if his views haven't changed too much in 20 years as a Republican, the
Space Shuttle could very well fly beyond 2010. And the Space Station beyond
2015, most likely with a Space Hotel attached.

--
Craig Fink
Courtesy E-Mail Welcome @
--


http://www.islandone.org/Politics/LP.space-dom.html
SPACE - DOMESTIC POLICY
Ron Paul Presidential Campaign
Position Paper
(1988)

Time after time NASA has developed capabilities at great expense then
discarded them: a space station larger than the Soviet MIR, a heavy lift
vehicle competitive with the new Soviet Energia, a nuclear engine twice as
efficient as the space shuttle main engine and a well tested Earth-Moon
transport.

The fate of the Saturn V heavy lift launch vehicle is one of the saddest
examples of this folly. Production was intentionally halted and portions of
its tooling were "lost". This bridge burning ensured support for the next
aerospace welfare program: the space shuttle. Now we have a grounded
government shuttle that can lift a third as much as the Saturn V for the
same cost per pound. That's progress, government style.

Even worse, this failed state monopoly is now wrecking businesses to avoid
well deserved embarrassment. American companies desperately need to get
their satellites into space. They have been blocked from using the
cheapest, most reliable launcher in the world which unfortunately happens
to be the Soviet Proton.

NASA has cost our nation a full twenty years in space development, twenty
years that has seen the Soviet Union surpass us to an extent that may well
be irreparable. It is inconceivable that a private firm could have
committed such follies and survived. NASA deserves no better.

Our only hope now lies in the power of free individuals risking their own
resources for their own dreams. We must recognize the government led space
program is dead and the corpse must be buried as soon as possible. Any
defense functions should be put under the military, and the rest of NASA
should be sold to private operators. The receipts would be applied to the
national debt. Then, all government roadblocks to commercial development of
space must be removed.

It is not the business of the defense department of a free society to veto
business decisions of remote sensing or launch companies. The interests of
liberty would be well served by a bevy of mediasats that will put any
future Iran-Contra affair under the full glare of live television coverage.
Maybe, besides competition, that's what our government is afraid of.

There is really only one proper role for the military in space or on Earth:
the protection of America. Otherwise, the new frontier of Space should be
opened to all. Space pioneers will generate knowledge and wealth that will
improve the lot of all people on earth. We should not let government get in
their way.




Matt wrote:

Ron Paul has about as much chance of being elected President as Jerry
Brown - and Jerry's not even a legal resident of the planet Earth.

Seriously, I prefer to spend time on candidates who are not asterisks
in the polls. Paul is running to get a platform for his message, and
good for him.

The only serious candidate who's even put out a space policy so far is
Senator Clinton, and she was careful to promise something for everyone
and not talk budget numbers.

I don't know what Hillary's space policy is, do you have a link. She sure
has been giving away a lot of stuff lately, stuff that doesn't belong to
her. If she were Bill Gates, yeah sure, go ahead and give every child born
in the US $5000.00. She's not Bill Gates, so she must be a modern day Robin
Hood, except she wants to work for the Government, to be Queen Hillary. I
guess that would make her equivalent to "John of England", not Robin
Hood...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_of_England
....King John's reign has been traditionally characterised as one of the most
disastrous in English history...

She most definitely believes in the Nanny State, that the Government should
take care of you from cradle to grave. That's not what freedom and liberty
is all about.

In the 20th century money became more important than people. In the
21st century money will become more important than the laws that are
passed by elected officials, who owe money for their campaigns to
major corporations. Thus big money will put itself in a position of
total authority.

The trade agreements that are signed between nations have small print
that replace the laws of nations with decisions by international
councils in the interest of trade. This is a continuing process and
puts major corporations into a position where they don't have to
follow the laws of any country or pay money from lawsuits to
individuals even when lawsuits are brought prosecuted and won.
Transfer pricing and transferring products from one nation to another
through tax-havens, allow major corporations to avoid taxes.

This has been used mostly by US firms against supplier nations, but
the process is ongoing and will ultimately put all major global firms
in absolute control of world affairs.

On September 11, 1973 the democratically elected President of Chile
was killed by people hired by the CIA because he promised to raise the
salaries of copper miners to a level equal to half that of the US
copper miners. A right wing puppet government was installed by the
United States after the killing. The torture and murder of so many
Chilean people that followed was shameful to the world. But most
Americans who never saw the story accurately reported in the US on our
television networks, controlled by the corporations who instituted the
killing in the first place, are unaware of this and US culpability.

Over the past 20 years, following our military's failure in Vietnam,
which was largely blamed on the media by military planners, there has
been a concerted effort to change the nature of news reporting in
America to bring it under tighter control of the corporations beyond
that in 1973. And this effort has succeeded in undermining any
critical analysis and often any critical knowledge of what is going on
in the world, totally making the stage managed elections an exercise
in public entertainment - with the outcome known well in advance, sort
of like wrestlemania.

The experts are in charge, and they listen primarily to the experts
within corporations. The idea that ordinary untutored citizens could
contribute meaningfully to this process is laughable in their view.
The only protection offered the average citizen is that afforded by
'tradition' - tradition that is redefined and eroded with each passing
generation.

In this environment there is always introduced new scientific and
technical information and capabilities.

Rockets are a simpler version of jet engines. But because rockets can
orbit the Earth, they can be used to project weapons from any point on
the Earth to any other in a matter of minutes. So, rockets, naturally
are important strategic weapons. So, missile proliferation is a
legitimate government issue. Prohibting and controlling that
proliferation of rocket technology is one of the things the US
government is committed to. Another is prohibiting and controlling
the proliferation of nuclear technology. This means that rockets and
especially nuclear rockets are infeasible for anyone to develop.
Anyone, anywhere become targets. Because an effective rocket of this
type destroys US nuclear and military hegemony.

Lyndon Johnson and Robert McNamara decided in December 1963 to end
serious nuclear rocket programs, also to end the cooperation between
the nuclear weapons labs and civilian space labs, and to end serious
development of any launchers larger than that and more capable than
that needed to get to the moon, and once the moon landing was assured,
funding for NASA was dramatically cut.

This was all done for very important national security reasons. To
control missile proliferation, and also for political reasons. In the
1960s there was an air of unlimited potential and possibility for the
world. Kennedy's vision of the US being first among equals, of
converting the cold war to a space race - the same way that Europe
avoided wars for centuries by competing on the oceans and in foreign
lands - we could compete against one another in the development of the
solar system. And the US would curtail intelligence operations and
replace them with operations like the Peace Corps to build trust and
understanding, and address the issues of disparity of income around
the world. This stood in stark contrast to the then secret commitment
by the US to maintain and exacerbate disparities of income for the
sole purpose of maintaining military and economic dominance.

So, Kennedy was killed by a lone assassin in Dallas in November 1963,
and his plans for space and a peaceful coexistence on Earth were
undone by December 1963 by LBJ and McNamara.

In today's environment, where the elected President of the US in 2000
receives a Nobel Prize for his work to help the world against
corporate excesses, while the son of a former CIA director usurps
power from the true winner and leads the country from one disaster to
another - it is not an environment where anyone who does not follow
the corporate party line will have true power in the world.

David Smith wrote:

It was 15 Sep 2007, when Craig Fink commented:

Hopefully, President Ron Paul would privatize the Space Shuttle Program.

Private Enterprise, first thing I'd do after purchasing Enterprise on
E-Bay would be to move the LOX, LH2 lines inside the Orbiter.

The first thing a privatized space program would do would be to decide
there's no immediate profit in it, break it up into smaller pieces, and
sell it to other folks who would shortly go out of business.


Unless they had a generous customer (like NASA) to tide them over until they
could make the modification necessary to make the Shuttle operate in an
efficient (cost) and reusable manner. NASA has spent billions on the
Shuttle to get that extra pound of performance, and very little on get
reducing costs. The original concept of what the shuttle was to be, isn't a
bad one. It's implementation by NASA was.

A two stage winged reusable vehicle that is able to achieve a once or twice
a day (or week) flight rate, would be competitive. Look at the SSMEs, sure
they made some improvements, safety wise maybe, but they haven't done the
things necessary to make them totally reusable. Doing that would have added
weight to the SSMEs, to give them a reasonable flight rate between
refurbishment. Removing, refurbishing, and re-installing many things
because the objective was payload performance not re-usability or cost. The
SSMEs are so bleeding edge, they are bleeding all the way to Orbit, tearing
themselves apart.

The first thing would be to fix first stage with liquid flyback booster,
using a fully reusable engine. Something like the Russian kerosene/lox
engine.

Then a reusable Orbiter, one that incorporates an internal fuel tank and
addresses all the other problem areas. NASA has had lots of proposals in
the past for all kind of changes to move towards a truely reusable vehicle.
None implemented and all changes to squeeze extra pound of payload into the
bay. Get rid of the hydrazine, hydraulic fluid, old computer... This gets
rid of an army of maintenance. Get rid of the army at the MCC. Get rid of
the army of software maintenance. All the cost of the Shuttle really has to
do with the army of people. These operating procedures and concepts
developed by NASA are pretty much useless for any commercial company.

Looking at where NASA is headed, Apollo II, is going to have the same army
working on it. Nothing really reusable, same MCC crew, same maintenance
crew, same modifications crew. Even the capsule called reusable but
requiring an army to refurbish it. An airline could never operate like
this.

Private Enterprise would have worked on cost reduction for the past 30 years
of the Shuttle Program, not maintaining a maintenance, operations, and
modifications army of people. The difference between Private Enterprise and
a relic of the Cold War called NASA. Our very own Communist Space Program,
needs to be Privatized.

Vote for Ron Paul in 2008, and we will have Private Enterprise flying in
Space, sooner than later.

On the so called scientific Media polls?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=If9EWDB_zK4
Thank you Luntz, or is it F U Frank!

--
Craig Fink
Courtesy E-Mail Welcome @