NASA and Politics

[WhiskeyGirl]

I've always enjoyed visions of the future and all the good things people have to look forward to.  NASA has been part of the imagination for some time.

Obama Planning to Scrap Shuttle Replacement, Says NASA
Michael Asher (Blog) - December 22, 2008 10:13 AM

President-elect's transition team planning to use decades-old military rockets instead, say insiders.

President-Elect Obama's transition team is planning to scrap NASA's Ares program, the successor to the Space Shuttle, say NASA advisors.  The transition team is demanding deep cuts from the agency, and is investigating whether old military rockets such as the Delta IV and Atlas V could be used in place of Ares.

Wow...what a way to bring about change.  Cling to the past, let the rest of the world pass us by.

NASA plans a permanent moon base by 2020, followed by a manned mission to Mars; plans which the agency says require Ares.

The Space Shuttle is due to make its last flight in 2010. Without a replacement, NASA may be without a manned space capability entirely, for the first time since the 1960s, a gap that NASA says would destroy the U.S.'s primacy in space technology.

What happened to the technology president?  Keep the US green and forget that the US is just a small drop in the global ocean of pollution? 

On the campaign trail, Obama blew both hot and cold on plans for NASA's budget. In the NASA-friendly states of Texas and Florida, he promised to expand NASA's budget by more than 10%. In other states, however, he promised cuts and delays to the agency, in order to help fund his education policies.

What is the point of training all these teachers?  Any plans to train engineers?  Doctors?  Workers of the future?  Or, just build schools with programs to nowhere?  Roads and bridges stuck in the past?  Maybe keep recycling that old technology?

Where is the brighter future for the young, if there is no business?  No NASA?  Maybe the new administration has no plan or place in a better America for all these graduates?

The nation will continue to spend it's way out of a depression?  Recession?  Future?

Lori Garver, a space policy advisor for Hillary Clinton and John Kerry, was selected by Obama to lead the NASA review transition team. Despite being criticized for her lack of an engineering or scientific background, Garver has been called a favorite to be the next NASA Administrator.

Wow.  I feel safer already.  What are Garver's credentials?  Aren't there people of science and vision that could lead NASA?  Carry the torch for future generations?

http://www.dailytech.com/Obama+Planning+to+Scrap+Shuttle+Replacement+Says+NASA/article13750.htm

I have to wonder if there is an Obama team looking to save healthcare dollars.   Encourage competition?  Make every healthcare dollar do the work of two or three?   Cut out waste?   

I already see lots of innovation in healthcare every day, private efforts.  I'm not sure the government can really make a difference.  Is healthcare the new priority pork?   Not efforts to help people, or treat their ailments, but just to spend money on special interest medical providers.  Special interest medical researchers.

I keep thinking of all the good things that have come from NASA over the years.  I've watched specials on TV, read things in media, and lived a life that has been made better by investing in the future - not just special interest groups.

What will be the Obama legacy?  Killing future prosperity?  Largest pork and debt fest ever?    Stealing the future from millions of Americans?  Robbing the future to pay for special interests today? 

Once the government spends $25 on a bandaid, it stays a while and it's gone forever.  A quick fix.  Money spent on research continues to provide value. 

It seems like many have criticized American business for cutting research and development budgets over the past thirty or so years.  Many have criticized American business for moving jobs offshore.  Now, there is little if any development, fewer jobs for Americans, and government and people demanding more spending.  The country is broke.

Now, the new administration seems hell bound to cut research and development.  Maybe the cost savings will come from sending those jobs offshore? 

Maybe American workers will compete in the future with highly educated workers for American government jobs?  Customer service jobs?  Who in America be working to pay for all this pork barrel spending?

jmho

[WhiskeyGirl]

Does Obama Want to Ground NASA's Next Moon Mission?

NASA has moved with uncharacteristic nimbleness in the last five years and is already cutting metal on the new machines in the hope of having crews in Earth orbit by 2015 and on the moon by 2020. Schedules have slipped some — the original plan was to launch the orbital missions in 2014 — and costs have swollen, though so far not dramatically.

The Obama team picked Garver to run the NASA transition, in part because of her deep pedigree and long history at the space agency, which saw her climb to the rank of associate administrator. But Garver started as a PAO — NASA-speak for a public affairs officer — and never got involved in the nuts and bolts of building rockets. She is best known by most people as the person who in 2002 competed with boy-band singer Lance Bass for the chance to fly to the International Space Station aboard a Russian rocket. Neither of them ever left the ground.

Was this a reality show competition?

Garver's lack of engineering cred is especially surprising in light of the eggheads with whom Obama has been surrounding himself — most recently, Nobel prize winning physicist Steven Chu, who has reportedly been tapped to be Secretary of Energy. Garver is also not thought to be much of a fan of Griffin — who is an engineer — nor to be sold on the plans for the new moon program. What she and others are said to be considering is to scrap the plans for the Ares 1 — which is designed exclusively to carry humans — and replace it with Atlas V and Delta IV boosters, which are currently used to launch satellites but could be redesigned, or "requalified," for humans. Griffin hates that idea, and firmly believes the Atlas and Delta are unsafe for people. One well-placed NASA source who asked not to be named reports that as much as Griffin wants to keep his job, he'll walk away from it if he's made to put his astronauts on top of those rockets.

NASA is right to be uneasy about just what Obama has planned for the agency since his position on space travel shifted — a lot — during the campaign. A year before the election he touted an $18 billion education program and explicitly targeted the new moon program as one he'd cut to pay for it...

Why shouldn't local communities pay for their schools?  The 'trickle down' theory, according to many does not work.  How much of that $18 billion for education would really make a difference?  If education is important, why isn't something being done on the community level? 

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1866045,00.html?imw=Y

[WhiskeyGirl]

A 360?  Sour grapes?

Space tourism as 'high-tech bungee jumping'
April 29, 2002 Posted: 12:41 PM EDT (1641 GMT)

An ethereal topic, earthly questions that form our debate tonight. Please welcome aspiring space tourist and former NASA official Lori Garver and University of Maryland professor Robert Park.

CARVILLE: How you doing? Lori, I want to get this straight. You're going to pay $20 million to get on a Russian-built spacecraft and go up to space?

GARVER: To have the dream of a lifetime.

PARK: The threshold is low, but what are we doing with this thing? I mean, what is the space station for?

GARVER: Well, the bottom line is the space station is really our foothold to the cosmos. We are going into space. We are explorers just like we were in the West.

With the new administration, the space program is yesterdays leftovers?  Where are all those highly educated young people going to work?

GARVER: Well, clearly, the price has to be reduced through development of new reusable launch vehicles and the market will, we hope, drive investment in those vehicles so that that can happen and more people can have this experience.

Wow.  What an idea.  I wonder how much 'market' potential NASA has lost to the Russians?  Chinese?  How much money has NASA lost due to lack of opportunity?  Will the US government ever invest in technology that will make money?

GARVER: Oh, he absolutely is. The Soyuz craft costs $3 to $4 million and he's paying $20 million. He's not only paying his way, but if the U.S. had to pay this to the Russians, it would be your tax dollars going.

CARVILLE: I think a commercial airliner costs like $30 million. And you're saying the Soyuz craft costs $3 million? So, wait, if I go from Washington to New York, I'm on a $30 million airplane. And you're going up in space on the $3 million craft?

Wow, Soyuz space vehicle less than an airplane.     How many corporate jets does GM own?  Where's the pork going?  Something that all American's can share in like NASA?  Or just special interest groups?

http://edition.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/04/26/cf.crossfire.space/index.html

[WhiskeyGirl]

Lori Garver, 40, of McLean, Va., the self-styled soccer mom, said on Friday that she was thrilled with Mr. Shuttleworth's flight because it increased the chances that others would visit the space station.

Ms. Garver, a former NASA associate administrator for policy and long a space enthusiast, is hoping to get businesses, foundations, educational organizations and others to pay for her ticket.

DFI International, the Washington planning and consulting company where Ms. Garver is a vice president, is backing the effort to send a woman into space who is neither an astronaut nor a millionaire.

Is a consultant a lobbyist?

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F0DE3D9113EF93BA15757C0A9649C8B63

[WhiskeyGirl]

Lobbyists running our government?  Here is one view -

It is worth noting that Lori Garver used to be an Associate Administrator at NASA. Her stint at the space agency consisted for the most part of being nothing more than a "public affairs officer." She was not involved in engineering, planning, budgeting, or any other hands-on work there. Once she had done her time on Uncle Sam's tab, she started her own "consulting firm" called Capital Space LLC, which is rather hard to track down but seems to be involved in sucking up public funds for private entrepreneurial endeavors related to space transport. One of her consulting gigs involves DFI International, where her job is to "...assist DFI's senior management in strategic planning and business development activities related to the firm's corporate space practice."

Yes, Obama's Lori Garver is a corporate shill of the worst kind: she's a "consultant."

Read that: "lobbyist."  Just like countless others, she parlayed a stint in public service to start a "consulting" business so she could rent her little Blackberry of access to government insiders; and given that she now makes her dime with paychecks from the private sector, she has every incentive to interfere with NASA's public space programs because she's a point person for private companies that want to take over what is going to be a hugely lucrative business for the rest of the 21st Century.

Hmmm... is the first job is to kill off anything the taxpayers might benefit from financially?  Shift research and development of corporations and those that profit from them?

From my reading, some feel that space is one important piece of the future...apparently, does the new administration or Obama feel that way to?

Will the US taxpayer be backing up and bailing out all these new private ventures in the future when something goes wrong? 

Is this an example of change to come?  PRIVATIZE PROFITS, SOCIALIZE LOSSES.  Business as usual on Capitol Hill?  Spend, spend, spend away the future for generations?

http://uncapitalist.com/blog/?itemid=1780

I wonder who is on DFI's customer list?  Maybe I'm just cynical, but will someone be cross checking the Obama/democratic donar list with all these new contracts of the future?  Space, healthcare, education, and other?

~~~~~~~~~~

Who is DFI?

1980s:
DFI was established in 1984 by Dr. Barry Blechman. Defense Forecasts, Inc. grew into a company with a reputation for developing products of exceptional analytical rigor and quality, maturing into a multi-million dollar research, analysis, knowledge management, and consulting firm, serving numerous clients in the federal government.  DFI also worked with a number of foundations and think tanks, eventually spurring the creation of the Henry L. Stimson Center, an organization dedicated to promoting international peace and security.

2000s:
DeticaDFI was formed by the merger of DFI International and Detica Inc, following US regulatory approval of the acquisition of DFI by UK-based Detica Group plc in April 2007.

http://www.detica.us.com/-who-we-are.html

I'm not sure why a space supporter would want to redirect the NASA mission?  Eliminate it altogether?  What is the motive? 

jmho