Slashdot Mirror
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.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/wp/2012/07/13/13-reasons-why-this-is-the-worst-congress-ever/
You don't need to read it all, the first reason says it all. The entire point of congressional sessions is ot discuss and the whole point of discussion is to change minds. There is none of that from this congress and thus, they don't do their jobs but they get paid anyway.
Seriously, the headline had me thinking it was about a fight over food supplies in space with issues regarding commercial vendors to supply NASA or something.
Greatly disappointed :(
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.
16 Trillion reasons not to spend more than keeping life support on for NASA. When there are less than 50% of US citizens are dependent on some type of federal aid to keep above bankruptcy it might be time to go to the moon. And when college students can afford to pay tuition from the earnings of part time job and not finance the basic education until there retirement perhaps mars would be in reach of American Astronauts. We will need to go backwards for a bit to rebuild ourselves.