12 thoughts on “The Next “Space” President”

1. “What do you mean Rand?

   “Look at all those Presidential speeches that brought us… the PC!, …the Mac!…the iMac!…the cellphone! …the iPad!…the …oh well.”

   On a related topic, the Orion test is the Ares 1-X test on steroids – and just as irrelevant. But oh-ho, we’re awash in the biggest PR effort by the cost-plus companies and the dead-enders at NASA and their pork-masters on the Hill that I’ve seen in years.

2. I think the opening up of space projects with more flexible and competitive procurement instead of top down planning of anything and everything is doing a lot of good. If the government wants to invest on something it should be on propulsion research, which could be done with a DARPA like model, and the deep space settlement activities themselves should be done openly with more than one competitor and provide them the room to do their own experimentation and business models.

   NASA still needs to have some expertise and facilities like the wind tunnels and other specialized research facilities which are in the national interest to preserve and that can be shared among different commercial players. However I think a lot of what NASA does and defines could be done by the private sector by now.

3. On another note I do think a lot of you people in the US diss the importance of government driven initiatives a bit too much for your own good. Even Eisenhower thought it was better off for the government to handle highways than the private sector. The US founding fathers put the USPS in the Constitution because they saw the need of the government having fast, reliable, non-tappable communications.

   I think telecoms, roads, energy grids, water supply, need to have some sort of government control and influence because they are by themselves natural monopolies.

   1. Even Eisenhower thought it was better off for the government to handle highways than the private sector.

      That’s because it was a national defense program.

      1. I believe the title of the project was something like the “Interstate and National Defense Highway System.”

         Not to mention that people should ask themselves why the route number signs are all in the shape of a stylized shield.

         QED

   2. I think telecoms, roads, energy grids, water supply, need to have some sort of government control and influence because they are by themselves natural monopolies.

      As a kid I lived in the Mojave high desert. With my father I dug our septic tank hole and leach line with hand tools, built our wooden water tank tower and drove our water truck into town to get water (before that I walked 5 miles with two 5 gallon containers.) We graded our dirt road with our little tractor. We could have used solar panels like my friend down the road here in Springerville does today but we had utility company power. Multiple competing companies can provide telecommunications.

      I don’t see anything natural in monopolies. Competition is what benefits consumers.

4. Of course lack of presidential leadership doesn’t seem to be getting us anywhere either. The trick is not just making the big speech. JFK showed us how that was done. The trick lays in both the preparation and follow through, which has been sadly lacking,

   1. No such policy can survive multiple congresses and presidents. Apollo was an historical fluke.

      1. Unlike the space shuttle and space station programs that did just that,

         1. They were primarily jobs programs, and in the case of the station, there was no rush to actually build one.

5. Sustainability comes from private profit otherwise known as ownership.

   1. Another way to think of it is that private, profitable space activities would be self-funding space activities which don’t require continuous input from the public or elsewhere to exist.

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