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Partisan Food Fight Erupts Over NASA, Commercial Space
RocketAcademy writes "Until recently, space policy has been a non-partisan issue. Even when politicians disagreed on space-policy issues, that disagreement rarely aligned with party lines. That has changed in the last few years. Now, one organization is throwing fuel on the political fire. The Space Frontier Foundation has called Republicans the Party of Big Government Space. SFF is upset about the GOP platform, which lacks specifics about space policy. According to the SFF, the GOP 'has nothing but hackneyed praise for NASA, and doesn't even mention the increasing role of the private sector.' The Obama campaign quickly echoed the statement. But NASA Watch points out that the Democratic platform is even less specific than the GOP's. Others express concerns that partisanship harms space policy."
Every new administration we get to keep things fresh by having an entirely new space policy. The incoming administration gets to label the prior efforts a billion-dollar boondoggle and ashcan it, putting their unique stamp on a whole new paradigm that can achieve new heights of replicating prior work until it, too, is ashcanned by the next administration before too much progress is made.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Partisanship harms ALL policy. It is inevitable in our system, but for the past few cycles it has been an increasingly more violent atmosphere (blatant space lingo there) that is harming a lot more than just space policy.
The solution? Smarter and more involved voters. Politicians will not change unless we make them. We let this happen.
And while I'm a Republican, space exploration is what government does better, so far, than private industry. We should be doing a LOT more. But I would happily exchange that initiative for an Apollo-style alternative energy program to render fossil fuels largely obsolete in 10 years. A manned mission to mars would ahve impact on our science, engineering, etc, so either project is a drvier for me. But making NASA a political football makes no sense, unless you're just a partisan that needs something to argue over.
ps - Side note, blame the Republicans all you want, remembering that the other parties are not innocent of the same problem - arguing anything for the sake of it.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
It's trans-partisan. Obama, supposedly the most liberal human being since the big bang, has reformed The space race to rely more on the private sector. This isn't mentioned in the Democratic platform because the hard core lefties don't like it. It isn't mentioned in the Republican platform because it made the hard core righties' heads assplode.
Meanwhile a middle of the road solution was found that is working fine. Mission accomplished.
The republicans have continued to gut over and over the private space. In addition, they were the ones that gutted NASA back in the late 90's and stopping them from doing the original COTS program that was suggested in 1994. Worse, they have continued to fight against funding for private space while pushing multiple (3-5 Billion PER YEAR) to their key programs such as Constellation and now the god foresaken SLS.
yes, some dems have joined these dark creatures of the night, but the neo-cons that control the republican party are far more interested in helping themselves and their friends rather than the nation. Even now, I am fully aware that MY representative, Mark Coffman, takes money from a company that he KNOWS is owned by the Chinese gov. The fuck who screams patriotism would rather take money from China than help America. GD pricks.
Sadly, other than O, the dems are absolutely USELESS. They have no sense of loyalty to either nation or party. Instead, they are bunch of fuck-ups. The only reason why they do not sux worse then the neo-cons is that the neo-cons are pretty much committing treason against the nation and have been actively working to destroy unions, etc. IOW, they consider it a higher priority to destroy unions (which they could have self-destructed on their own) then to help the nation.
We need 2 answers: a third party of social moderate/fiscal conservative (nixon was the last time that a republican was a fiscal conservative), and RootStrikers to get amendments on the constitution. We need to kill off all of the dark creatures of the night within the republicans party (or simply stake them all), and re-bury the zombies in the dem party, while creating a new party.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Its not about "Private" vs "Public". Its about a fundamental shift in the way NASA buys things.
Under the new system (the one Obama is so fond of), NASA is paying fixed amounts of money to private companies for fixed deliverables. This gives an incentive to companies doing the work to reduce costs as much as possible, to not reinvent the wheel if they dont need to, to use as few staff as they need to use to get the job done and generally to do more with less.
The old way (which is how the space shuttle got built and very much like the way the military buys large things like aircraft or tanks) involved the government having a lot more say in exactly how things were built, where they got built, which companies got to make which bits etc. (just look at the pressure from a number of congressmen to get NASA funding bills passed that basically say "whatever NASA builds next, it MUST use the rockets made by ATK systems"). It resulted in a lot of inefficiencies that were bad for the total cost of these projects but got there because someone in congress wanted some factory or facility in their state and wanted the jobs and benefits that come with it.
In what ways did the federal government get involved in your "day to day" life today? Not some hypothetical situation, or something that "affects society in general", but a real, actual "Shit, I'd love to do this, but the damn Federal Government is in the way!!" intrusion into your personal life that happened today?
Hundreds of billions going to what? People's salaries, government contractors, and some natural resources. The money isn't being burnt
Yes it is.
That is a MASSIVE opportunity cost from what private industry could have done with the same funds.
For every NASA worker private industry could probably hire two or more people. For every billion spent private industry could have created 10 billion in return for every billion spent, if it had not been taken from them.
I love NASA, NASA did thigns no-one else could have done and has a massive amount of experience on tap. But the age of large government is nearing a close, and we must move to a world where private industry takes on the role NASA once did. Only then will we start seeing real innovation in space travel again, including more actual space TRAVEL.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley