NEWS - Bush May Announce Return To Moon At Kitty Hawk - Space Daily

Washington - Oct 29, 2003
A report by Space Lift Washington and published by NASA Watch suggests
a major new space policy initiative is under consideration and may be
announced by US President George Bush at celebrations planned for the
centenary of flight at Kitty Hawk in North Carolina December 17th.
As the full implications sinks in of funding three decades of a space
program with no serious long term policy planning, Congress has become
increasingly hesitant to offer NASA a blank check anymore.

From a variety of backgrounds and constituencies, pressure is being
placed on Congress and the Bush Administration to get serious about
space..............


.................According to Space Lift Washington, President Bush may
announce at Kitty Hawk a return to manned lunar exploration but
without any specific massive new funding, forcing NASA to get serious
about what it wants to do with it considerable human spaceflight
assets and decades of experience.



Full text of article at this URL:

http://www.spacedaily.com/news/beyondleo-03a.html

(Rusty B) wrote:
Washington - Oct 29, 2003
A report by Space Lift Washington and published by NASA Watch

[...]

Full text of article at this URL:

http://www.spacedaily.com/news/beyondleo-03a.html

It's typical of SpaceDaily's attention to detail that they state it
was 'published by NASA Watch' yet link the words 'NASA Watch' to
Spaceref. (In fact, NASA Watch links the article by Spacelift
Washinton *at SpaceRef*....)

D.
--
The STS-107 Columbia Loss FAQ can be found
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Enhanced HTML Version:
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Corrections, comments, and additions should be
e-mailed to , as well as posted to
sci.space.history and sci.space.shuttle for
discussion.

In article ,
(Rusty B) wrote:

According to Space Lift Washington, President Bush may
announce at Kitty Hawk a return to manned lunar exploration but
without any specific massive new funding, forcing NASA to get serious
about what it wants to do with it considerable human spaceflight
assets and decades of experience.

Forgive me if I sound cynical but how ****ing stupid is that quote? ".
.. . forcing NASA to get serious . . ." PLEASE! NASA is an
administrative agency under the Executive Branch of government. How
about some good, old-fashioned top-down management from, say, the
President? You remember him - the Sean O'Keefe's boss - elected (well,
let's not debate THAT right now) leader of the nation? NASA can't,
itself, "get serious" without being told what the hell it's supposed to
do.

It seems to me that it is the Administration's job to say, "Here's what
you're going to do. [SNIP list of executive mandates which must
specifically include either completing or abandoning ISS, depending on
how that debate settles out]. You can expect $___B per year (or perhaps
a little bit more). Now, how long will it take you to get this
accomplished?"

If the Administration doesn't like the answer, it can either fire
O'Keefe and get the answer it wants (shades of the STS development
process), propose increased budgets to Congress and then sell them on
the Administration's goals (shades of Gemini/Apollo), or accept the
answer and proceed apace. Simply setting some stupid policy goal ("Hey,
let's go to the moon!") and then walking away while NASA twists in the
wind for the duration of another ten year, never-get-done project
(SSF-Alpha-ISS, anyone?) is NOT good leadership.

--
Herb Schaltegger, B.S., J.D.
Reformed Aerospace Engineer
"Heisenberg might have been here."
~ Anonymous

On Wed, 29 Oct 2003 16:50:54 -0600, in a place far, far away, Herb
Schaltegger made the phosphor on my
monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that:

In article ,
(Rusty B) wrote:

According to Space Lift Washington, President Bush may
announce at Kitty Hawk a return to manned lunar exploration but
without any specific massive new funding, forcing NASA to get serious
about what it wants to do with it considerable human spaceflight
assets and decades of experience.

Forgive me if I sound cynical but how ****ing stupid is that quote? ".
. . forcing NASA to get serious . . ." PLEASE!

In addition, just what "considerable human spaceflight assets" does
NASA have that are helpful for going to the moon? And the agency
doesn't have "decades of experience." Organizations don't have
experience--people do, and many of the veterans are dead or retired.

--
simberg.interglobal.org * 310 372-7963 (CA) 307 739-1296 (Jackson Hole)
interglobal space lines * 307 733-1715 (Fax) http://www.interglobal.org

"Extraordinary launch vehicles require extraordinary markets..."
Swap the first . and @ and throw out the ".trash" to email me.
Here's my email address for autospammers:

"Rusty B" wrote in message
om...
Washington - Oct 29, 2003
A report by Space Lift Washington and published by NASA Watch suggests
a major new space policy initiative is under consideration and may be
announced by US President George Bush at celebrations planned for the
centenary of flight at Kitty Hawk in North Carolina December 17th.
As the full implications sinks in of funding three decades of a space
program with no serious long term policy planning, Congress has become
increasingly hesitant to offer NASA a blank check anymore.

Check your clocks. This sounds like his father all over again.



From a variety of backgrounds and constituencies, pressure is being
placed on Congress and the Bush Administration to get serious about
space..............


................According to Space Lift Washington, President Bush may
announce at Kitty Hawk a return to manned lunar exploration but
without any specific massive new funding, forcing NASA to get serious
about what it wants to do with it considerable human spaceflight
assets and decades of experience.



Full text of article at this URL:

http://www.spacedaily.com/news/beyondleo-03a.html

Rand Simberg wrote:
Herb Schaltegger glowed:
Forgive me if I sound cynical but how ****ing stupid is that quote? ".
. . forcing NASA to get serious . . ." PLEASE!

In addition, just what "considerable human spaceflight assets" does
NASA have that are helpful for going to the moon? And the agency
doesn't have "decades of experience." Organizations don't have
experience--people do, and many of the veterans are dead or retired.

While technically true, it does miss a couple of points.

First, the veterans who died and/or have retired had to figure it
out the hard way the first time, and got it right, and left us
scads of documentation on both right and wrong things.
What we have lost in detail is really two things...
One, the institutional hands on knowledge of exactly how
to make the specific hardware that went (which is by now
irrellevant; we wouldn't want to go back to the Moon
by recreating a S-V and CSM/LM from the microfilm anyways).
Two, the successful rapid project project management
experience. Which still exists in corners, though not in
the manned spaceflight organization in NASA.

Second, 'forcing NASA' to get serious does have some validity.
Let us compare... oh, heck. NASA and the Department of Defense.

It is not widely recognized in the Space community,
because it hasn't really been used within NASA,
but fear is in fact a useful motivator for defeating
bureacracies on a temporary basis to get things done.

DOD regularly decides it's going to make some things run differently
and puts people on the spot to fix things. People's careers
get wrecked for failing to perform, aggressive schedules and
R&D goals get set and adhered to, etc. This is not the usual
behaviour over there, but it's done from time to time.
You can see people being tossed out windows on fire from
time to time if you pay attention to the pentagon press.
And programs.

O'Keefe came out of the DOD. He has been involved
in getting some projects incinerated and getting
some people ignited then defenestrated. Rumsfeld has
been reportedly involved in this policy stuff, and he's
got quite a bit more experience applying fear as a
motivator as well.

One hypothetical approach here would be to start a major
set of initiatives now, and set specific long term goals,
and then assuming Bush (43) gets re-elected, for there to
be a major bloodbath among the non-perfomers about oh say
6 months into his second term. Something like that...


-george william herbert

Herb Schaltegger wrote in message ...
In article ,
(Rusty B) wrote:

According to Space Lift Washington, President Bush may
announce at Kitty Hawk a return to manned lunar exploration but
without any specific massive new funding, forcing NASA to get serious
about what it wants to do with it considerable human spaceflight
assets and decades of experience.

Forgive me if I sound cynical but how ****ing stupid is that quote? ".
. . forcing NASA to get serious . . ." PLEASE! NASA is an
administrative agency under the Executive Branch of government. How
about some good, old-fashioned top-down management from, say, the
President? You remember him - the Sean O'Keefe's boss - elected (well,
let's not debate THAT right now) leader of the nation? NASA can't,
itself, "get serious" without being told what the hell it's supposed to
do.

It seems to me that it is the Administration's job to say, "Here's what
you're going to do. [SNIP list of executive mandates which must
specifically include either completing or abandoning ISS, depending on
how that debate settles out]. You can expect $___B per year (or perhaps
a little bit more). Now, how long will it take you to get this
accomplished?"

If the Administration doesn't like the answer, it can either fire
O'Keefe and get the answer it wants (shades of the STS development
process), propose increased budgets to Congress and then sell them on
the Administration's goals (shades of Gemini/Apollo), or accept the
answer and proceed apace. Simply setting some stupid policy goal ("Hey,
let's go to the moon!") and then walking away while NASA twists in the
wind for the duration of another ten year, never-get-done project
(SSF-Alpha-ISS, anyone?) is NOT good leadership.



While I love the idea of Astros returning to the moon, I was on the
Mall in Washington DC on the 20th of July 1989. Bush the Elder then
proclaimed we would go back to the moon and Mars too, thus launching
the Space Exploration Initiative. As we all know, SEI was a dead horse
by the early 1990's generating yet another set of viewgraphs and
Powerpoint presentations and little else.

So Bush the Younger will stand on the sands of Kill Devil Hill on
another anniversary of good ol' American know-how and basically call
on the Nation to do 1/2 of what his father asked. Unless Dubya is a
two term President, his space plans will die in Congress quicker than
SEI and we'll only get half of the viewgraphs and Powerpoint pictures
to boot!

Color me pessimistic,

Gene

"Rusty B" wrote in message
om...
Washington - Oct 29, 2003
A report by Space Lift Washington and published by NASA Watch suggests
a major new space policy initiative is under consideration and may be
announced by US President George Bush at celebrations planned for the
centenary of flight at Kitty Hawk in North Carolina December 17th.
As the full implications sinks in of funding three decades of a space
program with no serious long term policy planning, Congress has become
increasingly hesitant to offer NASA a blank check anymore.

From a variety of backgrounds and constituencies, pressure is being
placed on Congress and the Bush Administration to get serious about
space..............


................According to Space Lift Washington, President Bush may
announce at Kitty Hawk a return to manned lunar exploration but
without any specific massive new funding, forcing NASA to get serious
about what it wants to do with it considerable human spaceflight
assets and decades of experience.


Sounds like his a repeat of his father's failed Mars imitative under Dan
Quayle ..
that was DOA. This is pure political spin .. at a historic event.
If he was serious about space, he would have started 3 years ago.
(Florida, Texas and California economies -- how many electoral votes is
that?)

GB

On Thu, 30 Oct 2003 03:38:47 GMT, in a place far, far away, "G.Beat"
made the phosphor on my monitor glow in
such a way as to indicate that:

If he was serious about space, he would have started 3 years ago.
(Florida, Texas and California economies -- how many electoral votes is
that?)

Space is important to local economies, but not *state* economies.
Particularly in some of the largest states in the nation...

--
simberg.interglobal.org * 310 372-7963 (CA) 307 739-1296 (Jackson Hole)
interglobal space lines * 307 733-1715 (Fax) http://www.interglobal.org

"Extraordinary launch vehicles require extraordinary markets..."
Swap the first . and @ and throw out the ".trash" to email me.
Here's my email address for autospammers:

G.Beat wrote:

Sounds like his a repeat of his father's failed Mars imitative under Dan
Quayle ..
that was DOA. This is pure political spin .. at a historic event.

I can only hope so.

But I am dreading that he is earnest and will accomplish nothing but
increasing the deficit for more flags and footprints.

If Bush is sincere about manned space exploration he should encourage
commercial space flight. That's what a _real_ red-blooded Republican
president would do. But I think this psuedo-Republican is more intent on
spending tax dollars.



--
Hop David
http://clowder.net/hop/index.html