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Obama Taps Charles Bolden To Lead NASA
viyh notes that President Obama has named former astronaut Charles F. Bolden Jr. as NASA administrator. Obama's campaign space adviser, Lori Garver, will be Bolden's deputy. Bolden flew four shuttle missions, two as commander, as well as 100 combat missions over Viet Nam. If confirmed, Bolden will take over an agency uncertain of its direction. The shuttle Atlantis's landing will mark the end of the servicing era — it was the last planned mission to repair any satellite. Some inside the agency are less than happy about how NASA's future looks from here.
I thought NASA was pretty damned certain of where they were heading over the next few years, the only uncertain part was what the next NASA administrator would try to change.
But Frank Borman did not get the job done as the CEO of Eastern Airlines, while John Glenn was less than impressive as a Democratic Presidential candidate in 1984 (and was one of the Keating 5).
In pro sports, Hall of Fame athletes are more than not failures as head coaches.
One problem could be that the program, while brutally tough, is laid out for these guys. As head of the organization, they'll be the ones creating and staffing the program instead of following it.
After Apollo was over, one of the greatest collection of scientists and researchers got their walking papers when NASA was disassembled. Why not take an agency like that and say "now, go cure cancer" or "figure out how to power the Nation for the next 1000 years"?
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Where the hell did this comment come from, and why is it being modded up? To whose ignorance are you referring? Why is it particularly cool that the NASA administrator and the president are the same color? Would it be less cool if he were some other color? Can you rank for us the various color permutations in order of coolness?
Don't Bogart the fish sticks
They care about what is directly in front of them
Usually, that's a TV, probably with coverage supplied by satellites, put there by someone's space program. I think NASA's failure (and all post-Apollo Presidents) has been to fail to point out the benefits, both direct and indirect, of space exploration. We're in a Reaganesque "government is stupid" era where national programs get the ingrained grief of being another step towards Socialism. Until that changes, we're not going to see bold spending. Hell, we can't even get national healthcare because of the contradictory argument that a government program won't fix what private healthcare ruined.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
This is very true, but it isn't the same issue as NASA's relationship to the politics surrounding Apollo. There was no pressing scientific or technical reason to push for a lunar landing before 1970. JFK made a credible political case for it. Lots of emotion, lots of handwaving, lots of Red Baiting. It just happened to be in a sphere the US is / was pretty good at (high tech).
Since then, NASA hasn't had the high profile testosterone producing issue to follow the lunar landings. Mars? A bit too far away to sustain the hype. ISS - an interesting case. It certainly has increased our ability to do long term grunt work in space - maintaining a manned station in a hostile environment, fixing said station without pre planning every bolt twist for five years, dealing with the myriad of details to do this without killing anyone and with significant budget constraints. That sort of thing doesn't get everybody's panties dropping even if it's more important in the long run.
Nope, we need some some of external challenge to get the gingiosm and the dollars flowing. If we can't find any helpful aliens, maybe we can cut a deal with the Chinese?
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
While I agree we need to explore our vast oceans more extensively, I completely and utterly agree space is empty and boring. There are so many things we don't know and haven't discovered (just like in the oceans). In fact, I would go so far as to say there's a whole universe out there we haven't explored. You're statement that space is boring and empty is highly suspect at best and downright wrong at worst.
And as for the space station, at the very least it gives us good data on how humans and possibly other living organisms can survive in space
When your examples of how a country is still going strong are 65, 90 and 230 years old respectively, you've done some calculations wrong.
In brief, because it doesn't work like that. The people who built Apollo would not have a clue about curing cancer, because rocket building and molecular biology have bloody little in common. Nor can they reliably make Einstein-like leaps of genius. No one can.
If there's any problem with educational priorites, it is that "intelligence" is valued over hard-earned competence, and leaps of genius are romanticised at the expense of all the small, important steps.
xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
that we'd need to bring in foreign contractors just to make up the intelligence gap.
Nonsense. NASA's a big agency, but not so big that it couldn't meet its hiring requirements purely by hiring Americans (not that that is necessarily a good idea for other reasons).
Name a single scientific or technical field where it is impossible to find an American.
A lot of the science went into keeping humans alive where they shouldn't be. I'd say NASA knows a thing or two about the human body.
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The agency is hamstrung by lack of funding...
I actually had to look this one up http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_Budget/. I guess it depends on your perspective. 17 billion dollars sounds OK to me.
FWIW, I have never heard of a government agency that said it *wasn't* hamstrung by lack of funding, thereby justifying a higher budget each year. That's how the game is played.
There are a number of valuable aspects to space exploration.
First and foremost, there are more and better accessible resources of nearly every kind to be found in space. Contrary to detractors of this issue, the problem isn't getting the stuff to the Earth, but rather getting there in the first place with enough equipment to obtain those resources in the first place.
By resources, I mean heavy metals (gold, silver, platinum, iron, copper, aluminum, uranium, and much more) and energy that is available in such staggering amounts that it boggles the mind to even comprehend what is available. All of these can be obtained using existing technologies, or with technologies that have at least had some minor demonstration projects that aren't really exotic or different from what we are already doing on the Earth. Indeed, reducing iron oxide to pure iron is much, much easier to do in space and even beneficial for its "pollutants" (mainly oxygen).
On top of all this, these minerals and resources can be obtained with a much more minimal impact on the environment here on the Earth. If you genuinely are concerned about global warming, trying to figure out how to feed a growing global population, learning how to predict and avoid natural disasters like tsuamis and hurricanes.... all of this demands a strong and growing presence in space.
If that weren't enough, the countries and peoples that "control the high ground" will also have the military advantage in any future conflicts. Simply put, if the country you are in doesn't have a strong presence in space (or have a strong ally in space), you are screwed and doomed to be invaded or destroyed as a nation. The economic rationale is a strong one and has a huge and more immediate impact, but this military issue is all that more important to remember, and ultimately the one that got America and Russia into space in the first place. Worries about weapons in space are misplaced.... they are already there and have been deployed there for decades, regardless of what governments may have said in the past.
In addition to all of the above reasons, whenever people get into a new situation and have to work on solutions for new problems, that knowledge gained from living in that new environment can be adapted to other situations back in more familiar territory. Just being in a new situation will allow neural synapses to be organized in a new configuration within your brain, meaning that you are literally going to be thinking differently than others who have not been in that situation, such as being an astronaut in space. This is going to give a diversity of experience that will ultimately enrich all of humanity just simply by being there at all. For this reason alone, it is a pity that more people have not been to the Moon than the dozen men that went there.... we certainly don't have a female perspective of what it is like to walk on the Moon.
The scientific, political, and cultural knowledge that can be gained by going into space is something that is literally immeasurable. If we don't get into space and stay there... and expand our presence in space, humanity is doomed to extinction. It will have also been a waste of life for us to not get there.
Now as to if NASA is the best way to accomplish the task of going into space for Americans, that is something of a much more worthy debate. The key to unleashing the potential of space exploration is to drastically reduce the cost of getting up there in the first place. Common ordinary citizens need to have the ability to go up there and become prospectors, settlers, amateur explorers, and artists... and do so without having a government hand-out to get there.
NASA has supposedly been trying to reduce the cost of going into space with multiple vehicle prototypes like the Space Shuttle, Venture Star, DC-X, and so many other vehicles that it is nearly impossible to name all of the vehicle designs that have been proposed and in many cases had some initial hardware built for those designs. It
Anyone who thinks space is empty and boring are they themselves .. empty and BORING. I am all for exploring the ocean, I love the ocean, I was raised right next to it and I have always been fascinated by it. But for the most part we know whats there, rocks, fish, whales, dolphins, corals, eels, plants, anemones, etc, etc. Can you tell me what it's like to be in the ocean, and see things for yourself just by a few crappy photos from an unmanned sub? No ... you can't. Just like you can't tell what it's like to stand on the surface of the moon and see the Earth in the sky, or to stand on the surface of another planet. People like you are the kind of people who assume that what they see on there Television and/or computer screen is what it is really like .... it's not. Either that or you have forgotten what it is like to actually BE THERE versus seeing it on a screen.
Well, frankly, NASA's the only part of the budget I don't mind seeing my tax dollars go to.
You go ahead believing your taxes go to Congressmen's paychecks and welfare and food stamps and Medicare...I'll hold out hoping that mine's being diverted to Orion.
I think you need to look a little closer to what is going on at NASA then. I love the idea of a government space exploration program. Having a bunch of heroes that do things like repairing a telescope in orbit and fixing it to be able to peer back in time to the very creation of the universe is something I find outstanding. This last shuttle flight was outstanding.
Unfortunately, there is no follow-up flight planned or anything like unto that to be done. The Space Shuttle program is canceled, and all that is left is to decide if perhaps one more flight might be added to the manifest.
Orion... the capsule itself... is something that may have a little bit of merit. It is essentially a revised and revamped Apollo command module capsule. The Ares rocket on the other hand is something that leaves much to be desired and is a step backward in terms of technological development. There is nothing novel or original going into that rocket and looks worse and worse as I dig into the details and how it got proposed in the first place.
No, I'm not necessarily a DIRECT fanboi either, as even that concept has its own set of problems, but at least they are trying to use some rational explanation for why they are building that vehicle. The Ares (I and V... or is that VI or IX) is merely a way to to keep folks employed at NASA who have been designing rockets. As the panic over the fact that NASA will have no manned spaceflight vehicle soon, and that it will be years before they will be able to get back up there (along with unrealistic expectations of congressional funding levels in the future) it all seems doomed to nearly certain failure.
I suppose in the grand scheme of things dumping money into Orion is still better spend taxpayer money than getting dumped into a socialized medicine feasibility study and pilot project. That I might agree with. Still, there is so much better work that could be done with those funds that it makes me cry thinking about what could be done and comparing that to what is being done with that money.
You don't want national healthcare.
What will happen is someone will notice that nearly all (over 90%) of healthcare spending is spent on the last year of life. A law will be passed saying "let 'em die" more or less and this will rescue all healthcare in the US immediately - and the costs to the taxpayer will be 10% of what is spent today.
Not so popular with anyone over 50, but immensely popular with everyone under 50. And most of the people paying taxes, unless they happen to be older. The main difference between US healthcare and the rest of the world is that spending ratio. Eliminate it, and all will be well with healthcare spending.
But not so popular with anyone over 50.
I don't know about other countries with national healthcare plans, but where I live, it certainly isn't so that we don't spend on the dying. In fact it's common knowledge that a considerable amount of money is used for taking care of people their last year alive. My guess would be that this also is the case with a great deal of other countries having a national healthcare plan.
The whole argument you're making assumes that democratic governments would be allowed to treat elderly like that, I doubt it for most western countries.
I think it is worthy to note that he also achieved the rank of Major General (two-star general)... in of all things the U.S. Marine Corps. That is also by itself an impressive accomplishment in a branch that is loathsome to do promotions of any kind... at least compared to the other military branches. If it were merely for his accomplishments as an astronaut, he should have been merely a full Colonel, as it typical for most retired astronauts.
This also indicates a level of leadership skills, showing that the Marine Corps would be willing to trust him with a group of Marines at least as numerous as the number of employees that can be found at NASA. The NASA administrator and a division commander (often a Major General) could be considered quite comparable in terms of responsibilities.
Why this might be a point of contention to show a lack of qualifications boggles my mind.
It's fascinating how right-wing trolls love to say "Barack Hussein Obama" but hardly ever say "John Sidney McCain III."
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
No, they won't. Companies are not necessarily interested in advancing humanity, but getting ahead in the next 1-5 years. There is very little incentive for a private company to spend 15 billion dollars a year on anything that won't pay off in a decade. (If you don't believe me, start your own company sometime!)
Governments can fund BIG projects with uncertain but (if successful) huge outcomes. America became a world superpower (in part) because it's not afraid to fund such things. I would rather have the government triple NASA's budget rather than buy a couple more golf balls for GM execs...
Unfortunately, as long as the average techie in the USA has this myopic pseudo-libertarian "if it's worth doing some private company is going to do it" attitude, our children will only dream of the the glory days when there were Americans who walked on another heavenly body. By then, the expertise (and the infrastructure) to do such things may have been irretrievably lost.
[The best thing Obama or any other leader can do is to inspire a clear and concrete vision for the next 10 years and put in the framework to support it. But this boils down to general political will, which is sadly lacking].
When I was a F/A-18 electrician in the Marines for VMFA-232, General Bolden would come by once a month and fly our jets. Really nice guy, this is a great accomplishment.