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The Chairman Of The House Science Committee

15 Comments

…is a moron:

“If Orion could provide a redundant capability as a fallback for the commercial crew partners, why is it necessary to carry two partners to ensure competition in the constrained budget environment?” Smith asked NASA Administrator Charles Bolden in an Oct. 7 letter co-signed by Rep. Steven Palazzo (R-Miss.), chairman of the House Science space subcommittee.

So as a bonus, the chairman of the space subcommittee is an idiot, too.

The country’s in the very best of hands.

15 thoughts on “The Chairman Of The House Science Committee”

  1. Is there someone on the Committee staff who writes this stuff for the Congressmen, or is it direct input from lobbyists?

  2. Are they assuming the 1-every-two-years production rate SLS as the Orion LV? Or the non-human-rated Delta H? Or just ignoring the need to actually get Orion into orbit to get to ISS? All three of the preceding options make equal sense, so I suppose it makes no difference….

    Yep, as for Mr. Smith, I recall some non-space-related idiocy (SOPA, for one) from him, so this is no surprise.

    I’ll also bet that they’d prefer dropping the Commercial Crew provider that’s the cheaper of the two… in the interest of saving money, of course.

      1. “Will be making” or “could make”?

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

        http://www.spacenews.com/article/civil-space/36012tooling-processes-coming-together-for-%E2%80%98affordable%E2%80%99-space-launch-system

        The Vertical Weld Center, Gore Weld Tool and Circumferential Dome Weld Tool that are [at the Michoud Assembly Facility] now could make two SLS core stage structures a year at most, [Patrick Whipps, the agency’s resident manager for Michoud] told SpaceNews.

        “It all depends on flight rate,” Whipps said.

  3. Renner: Wrong!
    Blaine: The tactful way, the polite way to disagree with the Senator would be to say, ‘That turns out not to be the case.’
    Renner: Hey, I like that. Anyway, the Senator’s wrong.

    – The Mote In God’s Eye, in 1974

    Not an idiot. At least, not if you ever want to change his mind on the matter.

    “Misinformed”, perhaps…

  5. Idiotic statements are exactly the reason Lamar Smith and is the Science Committee chairman and Dana Rohrabacher is not. In Dana, you have someone who wants to change the current system, isn’t beholden to Boeing and Lockheed Martin, and wants and endorse competition and innovation, and people don’t like that. Thats why he has been passed over repeatedly for Science Committee chair. All Lamar Smith is, is another supporter of the current regime of NASA/Boeing/Lockheed Martin, that will continue to bring pork and business welfare to their states. Steven Palazzo as chairman of the space subcommittee is also part of this. I call them the Gulf Coast Space Mafia, representatives and senators from Texas, Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, and Florida who want nothing to change with NASA particularly in regards to manned space flight and the launch business, and as we have seen with SpaceX, are willing to do anything to impede any new competition.

      1. You are correct. We both know Holder wouldn’t answer any questions.

        Hopefully, Bolden will give a well thought out answer that explains the economics of flying on Orion vs Boeing and SpaceX, why redundancy is important, and the technological drawbacks for using SLS/Orion to visit the ISS. Sometimes people ask questions not because they don’t know the answer but because they want to hear someone’s version of the answer.

        But I don’t know much about Smith, maybe he really does think we should use SLS/Orion rather than SpaceX or Boeing even if it costs more during this time of unconstrained budgets.

  8. The product of Universal Suffrage. The idiots think they rule, but it’s their manipulators who actually rule.

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