Clinton administration a contributing factor to loss of Columbia?

Years of declining NASA budgets under the Clinton administration and
NASA used as a political tool (GoreSat nonsense, gobs of money spent bailing
out he russian space program, messing with environmentally safe foam instead of
one that works better, etc).
Doesnt this deserve more attention? The report certainly considers
the budget a major factor. Seems to me Clinton/Gore failed NASA.
What do you think?

Mutts wrote:

Years of declining NASA budgets under the Clinton administration and
NASA used as a political tool (GoreSat nonsense, gobs of money spent bailing
out he russian space program, messing with environmentally safe foam instead of
one that works better, etc).
Doesnt this deserve more attention? The report certainly considers
the budget a major factor. Seems to me Clinton/Gore failed NASA.
What do you think?

According to the CAIB report, the backsliding to the same old
bureaucratic inertia started within a few years after the first damning
report was issued on the Challenger disaster.

By the time Clinton became President in 1993, NASA was pretty much back
to business as usual.


--
Steven D. Litvintchouk
Email:

Remove the NOSPAM before replying to me.

In article , Mutts wrote:
Years of declining NASA budgets under the Clinton administration and
NASA used as a political tool (GoreSat nonsense, gobs of money spent
bailing out he russian space program, messing with environmentally
safe foam instead of one that works better, etc).

STS-107, unless something escaped me, was flying with the foam that
"worked better"... or was that just the old tank, but with new foam? The
FAQ (to which we refer once more) is vague here...

Doesnt this deserve more attention? The report certainly considers
the budget a major factor. Seems to me Clinton/Gore failed NASA.
What do you think?

I think that, if the US Government failed NASA, it's not particularly
due to the name of the guy in the White House. I doubt even less
it's due to the name of his party. YMMV.

I did an analysis a while ago, of the variation in NASA's budget over
time; knocked it down into budget as a fraction of national budget, then
noted the fraction that changed by FY to FY. Making the not-unreasonable
assumption that - say - the Clinton years were FY 92 to 00, we could
then see the effects of differently-"aligned" Presidencies on the NASA
budget - if they tended to reduce it, or if one was consistently more
generous than the other. There was very little to show between them,
although this is skewed by the Apollo blip in the later LBJ years -
although he cut it as much as he increased it - and by the fact that I
made my analysis method up on the fly and never rechecked it. g IIRC,
both seemed slightly predisposed to cutting the budget fractionally...

I'll post the figures, if anyone's interested; don't have them to hand,
but I can dig them out.

--
-Andrew Gray

x (Mutts) writes:

Years of declining NASA budgets under the Clinton administration and
NASA used as a political tool (GoreSat nonsense, gobs of money spent bailing
out he russian space program, messing with environmentally safe foam instead of
one that works better, etc).
Doesnt this deserve more attention? The report certainly considers
the budget a major factor. Seems to me Clinton/Gore failed NASA.
What do you think?

I think that there is a political component in the factors that led to
the loss of the Columbia, but it's not particularly partisan, it's more
mixed up with the kinds of self-interest that politics and politicians
always have. That is, I don't think you can single out one side or
another and say that they are to blame. It looks to me that all
administrations, and about all Congress folk have bent NASA according to
their political and pork-barrel desires. To someone who wants to see us
become a space-faring civilization, there has been no one I could point
to who has done much to help.

The piece of foam that came off was from an area where "environmentally
unfrendly" foam was used. Page 51 "BX-250, a polyurethane foam appied with
CFC-11 chloroflorocarbon, was used on domes, ramps, and areas where the foam is
applied by hand." The chunk came from the left bipod ramp, where BX-250 foam
was applied by hand.

http://info-pollution.com/Hacker.htm
http://info-pollution.com/challenger.htm

==========================

Anti-environmental myths
http://info-pollution.com/myths.htm
Practical skepticism
http://info-pollution.com/skeptic.htm

x (Mutts) wrote in message ...
Years of declining NASA budgets under the Clinton administration and
NASA used as a political tool (GoreSat nonsense, gobs of money spent bailing
out he russian space program, messing with environmentally safe foam instead of
one that works better, etc).
Doesnt this deserve more attention? The report certainly considers
the budget a major factor. Seems to me Clinton/Gore failed NASA.
What do you think?



I disagree with the other posters on this issue, but my disagreement
cannot be supported by numbers though. I think to support our mutual
feelings about Clinton/Gore one has to look at the "mindset" of the
president. We will only examine the administrations of Nixon through
Bush (43)as they had the most effect on the shuttle program.

Nixon- Space exploration was Kennedy's domain. Nixon despised Kennedy.
Nixon was consideribly more liberal in social spending than his party
affiliation would have you believe.

Ford- Had the potential to be a pro space president. Wasn't in office
long enough to leave a lasting mark.

Carter- Despite having a background in Nuclear Engineering, little
attention was paid to scientific endeavour ( space or otherwise )as it
didn't fit his populist image. Also his Veep was Mondale....need we
say more.

Reagan- An optimist and a cold warrior, Reagan was willing to use
space as a showpiece for American prowess. Increases in space budgets
bore this out. However it was on his watch that we lost Challenger.

Bush (41)- Ex-Navy pilot with a love of aviation. Wanted to continue
Reagan's legacy. Bush was a little more liberal socially though. Did
propose going to the Moon and Mars and was serious about
it.Unfortunately brought in Dan Goldin.

Clinton- Didn't like the military( Yes kids people that don't care for
the armed services generally don't like NASA either. Remember how
Apollo astros were booed by hippies?). Too obsessed with making Govt.
agencies "a mirror of America", turning away good talent. Proposed
bringing the Russians in on ISS which just made the project more
expensive and lengthend the schedule. Because of its new orbit for the
Russians, ISS became useless as a jumping off point for further
exploration.

Bush (43)- Despite being a jet pilot for the Texas ANG, space wasn't a
big issue during the 2000 campaign. He did bring in O'Keefe though
which I think has been a good move. Sine 9/11 and our war against Arab
nationalism, space hasn't been on Dubya's agenda.

Gene

Somewhere I got the impression that there was undue pressure from the
Reagan White House to launch the Challenger. Anyone else hear that?

"Allan Larsen" wrote in message
...
Somewhere I got the impression that there was undue pressure from the
Reagan White House to launch the Challenger. Anyone else hear that?

Yes, but there's absolutely no evidence supporting that theory.

On Mon, 01 Sep 2003 14:39:16 GMT, "Greg D. Moore \(Strider\)"
wrote:


Somewhere I got the impression that there was undue pressure from the
Reagan White House to launch the Challenger. Anyone else hear that?

Yes, but there's absolutely no evidence supporting that theory.

But there *is* evidence against it.

Brian

In article ,
says...
On Mon, 01 Sep 2003 14:39:16 GMT, "Greg D. Moore \(Strider\)"
wrote:


Somewhere I got the impression that there was undue pressure from the
Reagan White House to launch the Challenger. Anyone else hear that?

Yes, but there's absolutely no evidence supporting that theory.

But there *is* evidence against it.

Just as there *is* evidence against "environmentally-friendly foam"
bringing down Columbia (i.e., couldn't possibly have happened,
Columbia's ET used the old foam). And yet, why do I tend to see the same
people defending Reagan from the above assertions and attacking Clinton
based on just as provably incorrect allegations? Could it have anything
to do with these peoples' political views?

Gee -- political views affecting these dicussions? Perish the thought!

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