There's no mention of space policy in the Democrat Party platform. It mentions Apollo, but only as an example of how the nation can accomplish great (non-space-related) things when it sets its mind to it. As I noted in a comment there, it's the old "if we can send a man to the moon, why can't we solve world hunger?" platitudes.

No shock--there's been no visionary space initiative on the part of any Democrat president since Kennedy (and I'd argue that even Kennedy's wasn't that visionary, since the vision was mainly to beat the Russians to the moon).

I would expect to see the president's new vision in the Republican Party platform. It would be a monumental screwup, and indicative of its true priority, if it's not.

It is an often-repeated, but rarely internalized, corollary to the "If we can go to the Moon..." justification for federal programs that, right now, we can't go to the Moon.

I think Rand's conclusions are little hot-tempered. There are many Democrats who are dedicated to space exploration and who have solid and sound ideas on it. Ditto Republicans. But God's truth is that it doesn't move the electorate this year. It is not going to win the election for anybody. So to hope to find it in either platform is unreasonable. You really have to look carefully at what each party does out of the TV lights to know where your allegiance should go.

I suspect it should lie with the Republicans only because private enterprise -- e.g. Rutan and friends -- light their eyes, and perhaps because much of the aerospace industrial plant and support services are in the South and hence Republican constituents. That means they'll take care of the aerospace industry a little better than Democrats from New York, who, conversely, take care of the financial and legal industry.

Anyway, I think it's a mistake to even want a space policy plan in either party's platform. Remember, what we *really* want is not for government to define and take the lead role in American space activities, but for government to get the hell out of the way so that private ingenuity and daring can re-energize the field. Benign neglect is the best possible government policy on space exploration.

Remember, what we *really* want is not for government to define and take the lead role in American space activities, but for government to get the hell out of the way so that private ingenuity and daring can re-energize the field. Benign neglect is the best possible government policy on space exploration.

That's not realistic. The absence of a space policy is a de facto space policy, given our continued defense needs for space hardware, and our international treaty obligations. If the government is going to get out of the way, that has to be a conscious decision, and it would constitute a policy.

And why am I skeptical that you're really Al Gore? But if you are, maybe you can give us a scoop--will your head really explode in prime time tonight?

> ... but for government to get the hell out of the way so that private ingenuity and daring can re-energize the field.

Shoot, if I'd known you felt that way, I would have voted for you 4 years ago. Well, maybe not.

Rand, I agree with your comments regarding America's defense needs, but don't you think it's possible that Bush may be trying to focus NASA on a few specific, achievable tasks so that the rest (i.e. Launch providers) could be considered as falling to the 'benign neglect' category?

-S

The problem with that theory is that NASA has been given permission to continue to provide their own rides to orbit for their astronauts, and they may be allowed to develop a heavy lifter. The policy is still broken.

It's obvious the imposter is such, considering Al Gore's push for Triana as a way to energize the electorate. In that, the real Al Gore wasn't far off. Consider the excitement with the landing of the two Mars rovers. The number of hits NASA received on its website (across that great invention called the Internet) was stunning to say the least. Even months later, there is still updates with keen interest about the events there.

NASA manned spaceflight is certainly wavering, but even there interest abounds. Rutan has done remarkable work, but interest in his work does transcend to interest in NASA's continuing efforts. I still get questions routinely interested in return to flight.

The electorate is interested in space. They have been for sometime. I'll even go one further, US spaceflight has always awed the international community and provided us a peaceful level of respect. It would really be a mistake for both parties to forget that.

Military space policy would not be in anybody's platform, I think. Don't think it ever has been. Even thinking about the military use of space has made people very uneasy since Sputnik. So it's not something either party discusses publicly. There's no doubt one of the major reasons Kennedy talked up space was military -- beginning with the famed missile gap -- and everyone knew all that nice going-to-the-Moon technology had very handy military applications. But Kennedy not only didn't mention that, he stressed repeatedly the peaceful applications of space policy. He was no fool (PR-wise that is).

In short, the U.S. will always have a robust military space policy, generally set quietly by the Pentagon, and it will never be openly discussed in an election.

Civilian use of space is another story, of course, but here I stick by my original point, which is that benign neglect is what you want. Any time you find a major party making a major plank out of space issues, watch out. The engineering viewpoint will be shoved aside and the political/legal/PR viewpoint will dominate technical and economic choices. Out goes Dyna-Soar, in comes Project Mercury and so forth.

Just be sure we don't want a national space policy because we secretly long for that lovely access to piles of money and the patriotic glory that government sponsorship can bring. It's more addictive than crack, as the big aerospace firms can confirm, and, as you have ably argued before, just as dangerous in the long run.

Bottom line: we don't have a national policy on computer software development or the Internet, and if you're a clever programmer in an ambitious Internet start-up, you're damn glad we don't, lest we end up like the French (who unfortunately did have a national policy on telecomputing) or the Soviets (who had national policies on everything). The same argument applies to space, I think.

I do emphasize "benign" in "benign neglect," by the way. If government puts in a whole lot of nanny-state insurance and regulation rules that stifle the fledgling industry, that's not benign.

Remember, when national prestige is on the line, decisions are conservative and politically-driven. Just look at how the necessity of *never* having an American astronaut die in a national space vehicle has stifled innovation and massively inflated cost in the Shuttle program.

And let's hope instead for something like the (non-existent) national aviation "policy" of circa 1900, when government thought aeroplanes were a completely unserious topic compared to, say, dreadnoughts, and spent no thought or money on it, but were perfectly happy if fruitcakes like the those Wrights wanted to risk their lives and private fortunes in the damn silly contraptions.

...let's hope instead for something like the (non-existent) national aviation "policy" of circa 1900, when government thought aeroplanes were a completely unserious topic compared to, say, dreadnoughts, and spent no thought or money on it, but were perfectly happy if fruitcakes like the those Wrights wanted to risk their lives and private fortunes in the damn silly contraptions.

Hope away, but such a hope is unrealistic. As you point out, the space industrial complex is going to ensure that the government remains heavily involved in space activities (as is the Outer Space Treaty, unless we withdraw). There will be a federalo space policy, benign or otherwise. I'm not so much concerned that it's not in the platform, or enunciated in speeches, so much as that there's no indication that the party or candidate have given it any serious thought at all, other than to praise the failed policies of the Clinton administration (sorry, Al).

I don't agree my hope is bootless. You and I are old enough to remember the transition from regulated to deregulated commercial aviation, and the profound changes that has made to air travel since then. Whether you like those changes or not is not the point -- the point is that it is entirely possible for a major U.S. industry to travel from quasi-nationalized status to nearly unregulated free enterprise in a decade or so. Even more drastic transitions have occured in Britain (with more success) and Russia (with considerably less).

Hence, I encourage you to have the courage of your convictions: if you *believe* in free enterprise, then don't sell it short and wish for a government regency until it comes of age.

Why? Because I think the consequences of that "serious thought" for which you hope are going to be worse than the consequences of inattention. If politicians were good at engineering insight and entrepreneurial vision -- nay, if they even understood these things well -- then they wouldn't be politicians, they'd be in business for themselves, or, at the least, NASA would not be in trouble like it is.

After all, ask any of your engineer or entrepreneur friends if they'd really love to be a Congressman. If they're at all like mine, they'll recoil in horror. Logically, the reverse is true, too. The two breeds of humans are just very different. Hence the best way for the engineers and entrepreneurs to prosper is for the lawyers and civil servants to be as unaware as possible of their activities.

I encourage you to have the courage of your convictions: if you *believe* in free enterprise, then don't sell it short and wish for a government regency until it comes of age.

You obviously aren't a regular reader if you believe that I either sell free enterprise short, or wish for a government regency until it comes of age. I simply want sensible policy, given that government space policy is not going away any time soon.

By the way, nice speech last night, Al--you almost sounded sane.

Well. . .in the same vein, I might write that I don't want immortality, I simply want to live forever. C'mon, Rand, don't you say yourself you're a recovering aerospace engineer? Are you sure you don't need an intervention here? Government is not the answer, and a little bit of government help is like just one more small drink for the road.

Listen, if the government could come up with a sensible space policy why couldn't they run the whole show sensibly? Hard to believe they'd be sensible on the big picture but dumb on the detailed management. (The reverse is more often true of big goverment.) You don't think they can run the whole show, right? That means, I suggest, that they can't be sensible about setting basic policy either.

No one's saying the President shouldn't make encouraging speeches trumpeting the triumphs of private American enterprise, and Congress shouldn't provide a little seed money via NASA/NSF/DOD, and make sure the law doesn't needlessly stifle innovation and private daring. But setting of general plans and priorities (e.g. Moon or Mars? Shuttle or seperate crew and cargo lift vehicles? Reusable or expendable?) at the national level is just big-government statist folly.

Top-down technology policy in a democracy almost never works, for the very simple reason that a democracy approaches majority rule, and on any non-trivial issue the Second Law of Thermodynamics guarantees that the majority opinion is wrong. (That is, there are obviously far more ways to guess wrong than right, so when people must guess about the best technology for the future, elementary statistical law guarantees most of them will guess wrong.)

Nearly the only way technology advances in a democracy is for the (wrong) majority to leave the (right) minority alone long enough for the latter's inspired correctness to become apparent to everyone.

Remember that if it was up to the majority of software developers for the PC (who worked for Microsoft) there'd be no World Wide Web browsers. It took a "crackpot" minority like Marc Andreessen and friends to develop and push the new idea until the majority realized its mistake and underwent a religious conversion.

Another way to put it: you can't win in the stock market (of ideas or company paper) if you hew closely to what the majority thinks the future holds. You can only win if you buy the stock most people think is a bust (e.g. Apple in 1985) and hold onto it until everyone realizes it's sleeping dynamite. It's almost axiomatic that the idea the future will (in hindsight) think is the best for space travel is going to be dismissed by the majority in its day as lunatic. So we can't have that majority, or its representatives in Congress, deciding the merits of those ideas, lest they be abandoned before they're given a chance.

You wouldn't be arguing so much if you didn't see my point, and reasonable persons can differ on the details, as perhaps we do. Since this is your forum and I've made my case, I'll shut up now, and I thank you for the response and in general for the interesting blog.

Top-down technology policy in a democracy almost never works, for the very simple reason that a democracy approaches majority rule, and on any non-trivial issue the Second Law of Thermodynamics guarantees that the majority opinion is wrong. (That is, there are obviously far more ways to guess wrong than right, so when people must guess about the best technology for the future, elementary statistical law guarantees most of them will guess wrong.)

I've no idea why you think that I disagree with any of this. You're arguing strawmen.

You wouldn't be arguing so much if you didn't see my point

There's no logic to this comment whatsoever.