If you are wondering whether or not Rick Perry is running, I think this is pretty good evidence — he’s slamming Obama for something he didn’t do:
The Obama administration has left “American astronauts with no alternative but to hitchhike into space,” Perry said in a press release.
…Perry criticized the lack of a clear path forward for NASA.
“Unfortunately, with the final landing of the Shuttle Atlantis and no indication of plans for future missions, this administration has set a significantly different milestone by shutting down our nation’s legacy of leadership in human spaceflight and exploration,” Perry said.
There are plenty of plans for future missions — people either remain blind to them, or are pretending they don’t exist for political reasons. And to blame Obama for shutting down the Shuttle with no immediate replacement is absurd. This is one of the few things that he really can blame on George Bush. There was nothing that Obama could have done, coming into office two and a half years ago, that would have had anything flying right now (at least nothing that Congress would have found politically acceptable), and it was really even too late to keep the Shuttle going. If he’s made a decision to do that then, they might have been able to start flying again in a year or so from now, but there would have been no consensus for spending the money necessary to do so. Space policy was a mess then, and it still is, but that’s mostly due to the porkers in Congress, and at least we’re not wasting as much money on Constellation, and particularly Ares I.
Anyway, I don’t know if Perry believes this, and is just ignorant of space policy (likely) or if he’s just cynically mistating to take advantage of an opportunity to bash his potential future opponent on an historic day. I do hope that he can be educated on the policy, but I fear that he will be “educated” by the likes of Kay Bailey Hutchis…
Hmmmmmmm….
This could present an interesting opportunity…
This could present an interesting opportunity…
You’re running for Hutchinson’s seat? Sounds good. Will you call Dick Durbin a ******* on the floor of the Senate?
“There are plenty of plans for future missions — people either remain blind to them, or are pretending they don’t exist for political reasons. And to blame Obama for shutting down the Shuttle with no immediate replacement is absurd. This is one of the few things that he really can blame on George Bush”
Has NASA do as much as it should done, to get private sector to point of sending crew to ISS.
Or is the fault private sector and inherent difficulties of sending crew to ISS.
Wouldn’t been reasonable for Bush to assume the private sector could quickly take over after the Shuttle retired?
And did Bush insist that Shuttle, stop flying- couldn’t the shuttle have been transferred to some entity other than NASA to fly and operate the Shuttle?
And wasn’t Bush informed by Griffin that NASA would develop a back up to getting crew to ISS. So wouldn’t it been mostly the fault of Griffin, and with cancellation of Constellation [which I don’t disagree about] but shouldn’t some effort make to redouble effort to fill that gap?
How do you shut down a legacy anyway?
Write Perry a letter.
Probably a lot easier to get through -now- than later.
Or is the fault private sector and inherent difficulties of sending crew to ISS.
This whole debate is so confused by the silly ways language has been abused by the “pro-space” activists over the years to try to make NASA sound like some capitalistic enterprise. It’s a Herculean task to unravel the layers of economic fantasy that NASA and its fans have built up over the years and the ways they have preposterously redefined words like “private sector”, “market”, “commercial”, etc.
Sending astronauts to orbit has always been, remains, and will be long into the future be a preposterous economic fantasy. It’s an activity that requires taxpayers to fund 99% or more of it. To call such things “commercial” fraudulently tries to invoke the actual private markets that drive most of our economy, the kind economists study when they call markets “efficient”. Markets where both the suppliers _and_ the customers are private.
To fault the actual private sector for failing to achieve economic fantasies that have always been 99%+ government funded is like blaming the private sector for failing to provide the children of the world free Maseratis for Christmas. It’s beyond the silly, preposterous, and ridiculous and really more into the range of insanity. But it is alas a natural outgrowth of the last 50 years of space activism in the West that has tried to justify s*c**l*st economic fantasies with free enterprise terminology.
How do you shut down a legacy anyway?
Push the red button, max!
If Perry isn’t clueless he’s probably sure the press is.
Googaw, I was going to reply, but then I noticed it was you. Yes, commercial markets for human spaceflight would be nice.
commercial markets for human spaceflight would be nice.
So would free Maseratis for all the single men on the planet.
So would telephones that you can carry in your pocket! Milk that takes weeks to spoil! A cure for Polio! Anyone else want to play?
Roga, those are all boring because they can be done by the private sector using its own venture capital, and starting out on a small scale.
No, what really need is a grand gigaproject that will give us all hope for the future. What we need is government funding for Commercial Maseratis. Commercial, because the government will pay for them with fixed-price contracts and that makes it work just like a free market.
Maseratis are the next wave of exciting government funding. The government should purchase and give away a Maserati to every young man on the planet when he reaches 18.
Think of all the ways this would improve the world. It will provide millions of high-paying jobs ranging from blue collar to engineer. The spinoffs will be incredible, as inventions inspired by the race to build and drive the fastest car get spun off into powdered orange juice, frying pan coatings, and the next generation of Green Technology. For every Maserati job we will create a dozen Green Jobs. The benefits will be incalculable.
And the impacts on education will be astronomical. Dreams of Maseratis can be incorporated into our curricula, inspiring young boys everywhere to learn the science of combustion, the mechanical engineering of cars, and much more. Furthermore, since few of these young men could afford to take their Maseratis to a mechanic, they will learn how to fix cars themselves. Very educational. We need Maseratis to inspire the next generation of engineers and scientists.
Furthermore, scientists can install a wide variety of experiments into thousands of Maseratis to test drugs, spiders, and many other things in high-gravity environments. The cure for cancer is just around the corner!
To avoid sexism, we can also give Maseratis to the young ladies, even if, or especially if, they’d much prefer their $100,000 benefit be spent on something else.
Don’t jeopardize our economic future!!! Maseratis for all now!!!
Maybe high speed trains for the ladies?
His-and-her high speed trains….
Perry looks good only because Obama and Romney are the measure. Substitute high speed rail for Trans-Texas cooridoor and you have Gov. Rick Perry.
I guess Governor Perry didn’t receive his Tea Party is space briefing 🙂
See Thomas, nobody is going to teach the the secret tea party handshake if you keep making comments like that.
Sending astronauts to orbit has always been, remains, and will be long into the future be a preposterous economic fantasy.
Sadly you are right, but it isn’t inherently true. People need to be shown the way. It’s actually economic right now understanding that the super rich get first shot and the rest of us come later.
We need to develop markets and research ISRU. Both things the government could take the lead in. Fuel depots are a logical first step.
Real estate will pay for everything else so ISRU research is the next step.
It should be illegal for the government not to use the capacity of private enterprise to do these things. This would make apparent the boondoggle of SLS.
Once we have people owning property on the moon, mars and other rocks they will think of economic activities that will encourage growth.
Ken, government isn’t now and couldn’t ever practically take the lead in ISRU. The real leaders in ISRU are the extraction companies, those dastardly oil and mining companies, that are going miles under ground and under the seas for oil, gas, metals, and rare earths, developing a wide variety of kinds of material handling and processing automation as they go. The descendants of these machines will be very useful in space many decades in the future when space mining becomes practical, and bring that day closer. Any practical large-scale and economically sustainable industrial or colonization effort beyond GEO will almost surely require extraction industries in space instead of launching everything out of earth’s gravity well.
Meanwhile, we have very important problems to solve here on earth, especially rescuing our children and grandchildren from the debt slavery our politicians have been selling them into. For that we need export industries: practical, remunerative activities like building and launching unmanned satellites and extracting badly needed resources from the earth below us and the sea bottoms around us. Among many other practical businesses, driven by private investors. Not by government-funded planners and daydreamers. Not by the governmental gigafantasies of yesteryear.
practical government …Imagine there were such a fantasy.
NASA has a budget. Imagine they spent it wisely (it’s a long stretch.) What is there annual budget? ($18b?) Suppose what they waste out of that were mine to invest ($15b?) I wouldn’t need it all.
Today I would set up an oxygen futures exchange where anyone could buy and sell LOX based on locations in the solar system. I would get the exchange going by putting in bids for all the locations specified.
I would expand the exchange to include water, methane, kerosene and other liquids also putting in some initial bids.
I would established a lands claim database. Claims can only be made by individuals. One square kilometer per individual per world. The only way a non individual non governmental entity can own property is buying it from an individual. Governments are not allowed to own any property.
The boots on the ground requirement can be made by proxy with an auction site set up for the purpose.
So far I’ve spent about $100k of that $15b so I’d have it earning interest until the real action starts. My first big expense would be a general purpose lander capable of putting a half dozen passengers on any rock except Venus and the gas giants (so we could also land on the moons of the gas giants.)
The top three private companies to build such a lander would each get $1b after demonstrating a LEO to moon landing and back without refueling.
I’ve still got billions left from my first year budget whenever they finish that.
$1b for each year (up to ten years) a dozen live on mars.
Haven’t made much of a dent in my budget yet…
Getting politicians to get us out of debt? There ya got me.