Jeff Foust has a roundup.
And as I note over there in comments, the Kennedy myth persists:
“Not since John F. Kennedy, has a president truly understood the incalculable value of space…”
Not even then…
3 thoughts on “Clueless Space Commentary”
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No kidding. If the Soviets had been trying to colonize the oceans, we’d probably have resorts on the sea bottom now. Beating the Soviets was not coherent space policy.
Bill,
Actually, if the Soviets had been trying to colonize the ocean, the U.S. would have sent aquanauts to the Marianas Trench, but would now be struggling to assemble a platform just off the Atlantic Shelf and on our 4th design for a Juggernaut that can carry a year’s worth of supplies to the crew on the platform in one trip.
– Jim
P.S. while insisting that those pesky commercial and military-derived helicopters aren’t safe enough to actually land on our platform.
Anybody interested in how President Kennedy really felt about Apollo and the rest of the space program should take a look at Robert Seamans’ book, Project Apollo, The Tough Decisions, at http://history.nasa.gov/monograph37.pdf. There is a conversation that begins on page 44 in which Kennedy states his view very clearly. The following excerpt of Kennedy’s words from page 45 sums it up:
“. . . but I do think we ought to get it, you know really clear that the policy ought to be that this is the top priority program of the agency, and one of the two things, except for defense, the top priority of the United States Government. I think that is the position we ought to take. Now, this may not change anything about that schedule but at least we ought to be clear, otherwise we shouldn’t be spending this kind of money because I’m not that interested in space. I think it’s good, I think we ought to know about it, we’re ready to spend reasonable amounts of money. But we’re talking about these fantastic expenditures which wreck our budget and all these other domestic programs and the only justification for it in my opinion to do it in this time or fashion is because we hope to beat them and demonstrate that starting behind, as we did by a couple of years, by God, we passed them.”