|
Reader's Favorites
Media Casualties Mount Administration Split On Europe Invasion Administration In Crisis Over Burgeoning Quagmire Congress Concerned About Diversion From War On Japan Pot, Kettle On Line Two... Allies Seize Paris The Natural Gore Book Sales Tank, Supporters Claim Unfair Tactics Satan Files Lack Of Defamation Suit Why This Blog Bores People With Space Stuff A New Beginning My Hit Parade
Instapundit (Glenn Reynolds) Tim Blair James Lileks Bleats Virginia Postrel Kausfiles Winds Of Change (Joe Katzman) Little Green Footballs (Charles Johnson) Samizdata Eject Eject Eject (Bill Whittle) Space Alan Boyle (MSNBC) Space Politics (Jeff Foust) Space Transport News (Clark Lindsey) NASA Watch NASA Space Flight Hobby Space A Voyage To Arcturus (Jay Manifold) Dispatches From The Final Frontier (Michael Belfiore) Personal Spaceflight (Jeff Foust) Mars Blog The Flame Trench (Florida Today) Space Cynic Rocket Forge (Michael Mealing) COTS Watch (Michael Mealing) Curmudgeon's Corner (Mark Whittington) Selenian Boondocks Tales of the Heliosphere Out Of The Cradle Space For Commerce (Brian Dunbar) True Anomaly Kevin Parkin The Speculist (Phil Bowermaster) Spacecraft (Chris Hall) Space Pragmatism (Dan Schrimpsher) Eternal Golden Braid (Fred Kiesche) Carried Away (Dan Schmelzer) Laughing Wolf (C. Blake Powers) Chair Force Engineer (Air Force Procurement) Spacearium Saturn Follies JesusPhreaks (Scott Bell) Science
Nanobot (Howard Lovy) Lagniappe (Derek Lowe) Geek Press (Paul Hsieh) Gene Expression Carl Zimmer Redwood Dragon (Dave Trowbridge) Charles Murtaugh Turned Up To Eleven (Paul Orwin) Cowlix (Wes Cowley) Quark Soup (Dave Appell) Economics/Finance
Assymetrical Information (Jane Galt and Mindles H. Dreck) Marginal Revolution (Tyler Cowen et al) Man Without Qualities (Robert Musil) Knowledge Problem (Lynne Kiesling) Journoblogs The Ombudsgod Cut On The Bias (Susanna Cornett) Joanne Jacobs The Funny Pages
Cox & Forkum Day By Day Iowahawk Happy Fun Pundit Jim Treacher IMAO The Onion Amish Tech Support (Lawrence Simon) Scrapple Face (Scott Ott) Regular Reading
Quasipundit (Adragna & Vehrs) England's Sword (Iain Murray) Daily Pundit (Bill Quick) Pejman Pundit Daimnation! (Damian Penny) Aspara Girl Flit Z+ Blog (Andrew Zolli) Matt Welch Ken Layne The Kolkata Libertarian Midwest Conservative Journal Protein Wisdom (Jeff Goldstein et al) Dean's World (Dean Esmay) Yippee-Ki-Yay (Kevin McGehee) Vodka Pundit Richard Bennett Spleenville (Andrea Harris) Random Jottings (John Weidner) Natalie Solent On the Third Hand (Kathy Kinsley, Bellicose Woman) Patrick Ruffini Inappropriate Response (Moira Breen) Jerry Pournelle Other Worthy Weblogs
Ain't No Bad Dude (Brian Linse) Airstrip One A libertarian reads the papers Andrew Olmsted Anna Franco Review Ben Kepple's Daily Rant Bjorn Staerk Bitter Girl Catallaxy Files Dawson.com Dodgeblog Dropscan (Shiloh Bucher) End the War on Freedom Fevered Rants Fredrik Norman Heretical Ideas Ideas etc Insolvent Republic of Blogistan James Reuben Haney Libertarian Rant Matthew Edgar Mind over what matters Muslimpundit Page Fault Interrupt Photodude Privacy Digest Quare Rantburg Recovering Liberal Sand In The Gears(Anthony Woodlief) Sgt. Stryker The Blogs of War The Fly Bottle The Illuminated Donkey Unqualified Offerings What she really thinks Where HipHop & Libertarianism Meet Zem : blog Space Policy Links
Space Future The Space Review The Space Show Space Frontier Foundation Space Policy Digest BBS AWOL
USS Clueless (Steven Den Beste) Media Minder Unremitting Verse (Will Warren) World View (Brink Lindsay) The Last Page More Than Zero (Andrew Hofer) Pathetic Earthlings (Andrew Lloyd) Spaceship Summer (Derek Lyons) The New Space Age (Rob Wilson) Rocketman (Mark Oakley) Mazoo Site designed by Powered by Movable Type |
Who Wrote That Headline? Neither the headline or the lead paragraphs are justified by this article at Space.com. Hed: "Space Experts Say International Cooperation is Key for NASA's Space Vision." Lead grafs: NASA should not limit itself to merely seeking support from the American public to push forward its vision of the human exploration of space, according to the foreign space agency directors, scientists and space enthusiasts addressing a presidential commission Monday. Now one would think from such an introduction that there was unanimity, or at least some kind of consensus, among the "foreign space agency directors, scientists and space enthusiasts" on this point, but there's no evidence of it in the article. If anyone other than the "foreign space agency directors" mentioned the need for international cooperation, it went unreported. And of course, pleas of foreign space agency directors for international cooperation on space are the space reporting equivalent of dog bites man. And of course, they whined, politely: The lack of a concrete plan, one with specific goals that are more detailed than the broad statement "to the Moon, to Mars and Beyond," has made it difficult for some of NASA's international partners to gauge whether they could be an asset in the vision. Because a bureaucrat, particularly a space bureaucrat, is lost without a, you know, twenty-year plan. I don't believe that international cooperation is necessary for this initiative, at least in the sense that it's normally used, though I have no problem with purchasing technologies from overseas if they're useful. The space station experience should be cautionary, and when international cooperation becomes an end, rather than a means, it can rapidly lead to disaster. I wrote a Fox column about this a couple years ago. In fact, I think that Mr Malik buried the actual lead. Here's what I found of more interest in the article, which I think would have been as valid a theme: During its hurly-burly days in the race with Russia to put humans in space, NASA's most attractive quality was in the imaginations of the American people, who hoped they would soon join the astronauts on spacewalks, panelists said. That's Tony Tether, head of DARPA. He gets it, even if NASA doesn't. I hope that the commission was listening. Posted by Rand Simberg at May 04, 2004 02:31 PMTrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.transterrestrial.com/mt-diagnostics.cgi/2356 Listed below are links to weblogs that reference this post from Transterrestrial Musings.
Comments
Your link in the opening paragraph points to your own site. Posted by Dan at May 4, 2004 03:48 PMIndeed, he didn't just say it in passing. He repeated "We wanted to go!" several times, making it very clear that he felt gypped by NASA. It was a theme that they picked up several times throughout the rest of the day and in today's public deliberations [sic]. What strikes me, yet again, is how disconnected these guys are from the rest of our community. I guess its my naivet'e to think that they would have already heard our memes. Like the fact that I was astounded that they had never heard the "If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we put a man on the moon" quote. There's a wall here and we're not breaking through it very well. Posted by Michael Mealling at May 4, 2004 07:09 PMI liked this: "Robert Walker, a commission member and former U.S. Congressman from Pennsylvania, said that today's senators and other politicians are not feeling any political pressure from space advocates, and that a more comprehensive effort on the public's part would be necessary to show their interest in a more robust NASA" We can't expect NASA to run a space program like a business. And, I think, more and more space advocates are realizing that there just isn't much point in pushing for NASA until they realize they need to enable business rather than run their own monolithic space program. Frankly, I don't think we CAN break through. The inertia is just too great. But, for the first time, it is really starting to look like private space may take off. Posted by VR at May 5, 2004 02:20 PMAs I discuss here, no one is going to put political muscle behind this effort until we see what that commission is going to produce and we see what the President does with those recommendations. I know I'm not about to call my congressman and advocate for an increase in NASA's budget unless I have some pretty damn tight guarantees that it will be the last. Posted by Michael Mealling at May 5, 2004 09:08 PMPost a comment |