3 thoughts on “The Farmers And The Cowboys”

  2. Her analogies are off.

    Aeronautics programs don’t come under the same public political scrutiny and grandstanding as manned spaceflight. So, “If the space program is to overcome its ingrained technological conservatism, NASA must find an equivalent motivation for its own space systems,” how does she propose to get congress onboard and motivated? Historically, congress has only really perked up its ears, demanded action, and provided funding after hearing of the very “imagineered” (isn’t that a Disney term?) programs she’s criticizing. They have to fear either losing or not gaining something and she’s not saying what that something is with ObamaSpace. “Onward”? WTF is that? (“Senator Shelby, we propose to move onward and do the other things.” “Sounds good to me! Here’s the checkbook!”)

    “In a sense, this is analogous to the challenge President Clinton levied on NASA when he asked the agency to include international partners in building and operating a space station.” No, it’s not. Of those “international partners”, the only one Clinton gave a damn about (and made pretty obvious he only gave a damn about) was Russia and even then, failure of clear direction from his administration led that venture to the aimlessness and wastefulness we’ve seen in it. On top of that, the culture gap between Russia and the US, which has never really been overcome in that program, is entirely different from conflicts internal to NASA or between NASA and US commercial space.

    The way NASA brings together its two subcultures will determine whether the result is a shotgun marriage that falls apart as soon as it’s allowed to, or a love match that’s stimulating, productive, and enduring for as long as they both shall live…The profound cultural differences between NASA’s research and program segments make conflict absolutely foreseeable and almost inevitable.”

    This is very liberal-academicky and is a dead giveaway. Whether she realizes it or not, it says, “Hey, we don’t care about the content, as long as it’s transgressive, it must be good”. This is the place ObamaSpace comes from and how commercial manned space can think getting entangled in it is a good idea continues to baffle me.

  3. B. Lewis, I always misunderstood the chorus to that song and thought it was hilarious to imagine a farmer dancing with a cow.

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