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How President Nixon Saved/Wrecked the American Space Program
MarkWhittington writes John Callahan posted an accountof a talk given by space historian John Logsdon on the Planetary Society blog in which he described how President Richard Nixon changed space policy. The talk covered the subject of an upcoming book, After Apollo: Richard Nixon and the American Space Program. Logsdon argued that Nixon had a far more lasting effect on NASA and the American space program than did President Kennedy, most famous for starting the Apollo project that landed men on the moon.
Nixon came to office just in time to preside over the Apollo 11 lunar mission. At that time, the space program was a national priority due to the Kennedy goal of landing a man on the moon by the end of the 1960s. However by the time Neil Armstrong made that first footstep, public support for large-scale space projects had diminished. Nixon, therefore, made a number of policy decisions that redound to this very day.
Nixon came to office just in time to preside over the Apollo 11 lunar mission. At that time, the space program was a national priority due to the Kennedy goal of landing a man on the moon by the end of the 1960s. However by the time Neil Armstrong made that first footstep, public support for large-scale space projects had diminished. Nixon, therefore, made a number of policy decisions that redound to this very day.
"Reagan's economic changes doomed Bush Sr due to debt but helped Clinton with a the good economy."
Thanks for the chuckle.
"But his support of a puppet in Iran led to a overthrow by an extremist regime that will be in power for decades more."
The revolution happened while Carter was president.
"Clinton's economic decisions are affecting us now through joblessness (Perot had it right - a big sucking sound as jobs leave)."
Perot was right, but it was Clinton's financial deregulation and capture of the remaining regulation that tanked the economy, and that's what caused the spike in unemployment. What NAFTA did was suck away *good* jobs.
"Bush Jr decisions will take at least another 10 years to pay off."
You ever hear of ISIS? The national debt? Massive wealth inequality?
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What evidence is there that Kennedy would not have taken the necessary steps to fulfill his own famous proclamation?
The most important step he took was getting shot. Once he was dead, few people wanted to challenge his legacy by opposing the moon race.
You know what's funny is that the two guys who immediately followed him, Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter, were probably the only two presidents going back to Eisenhower who were actually pretty decent human beings. Moral, honest and pretty authentic. It's no wonder they got eaten alive. Every president and vice president after Carter have been more or less sociopaths, weak in the face of an elite that has an agenda hostile to most everyone but themselves.
You are welcome on my lawn.
It's true that the specific impulse you can get from a fission rocket is about six times greater than H2/LOX, but if you take into account the mass of the reactor and the shielding to protect the flight deck and you're down to a factor of three for improvement in velocity change. The spinning donut thing needs to be really big, or you'll get spacesick from Coriolis effects. But the main reason Apollo and NERVA were canceled was that the space race was just another proxy battle in the cold war, we won, and therefore we lost interest. Having a thing is never as sweet as wanting a thing. You know that.
It appears you've got me mixed up with the other poster, so NOW I'm making separate posts to clarify. I raised the Iran-Contra situation (as distinct from the other Iran situation from the other poster) as a serious of examples of a sitting President doing weapons deals with two parties that were declared enemies of the USA at the time. Various extralegal actions made the players immune to prosecution for everything, even North's embezzlement - it appears treason is not when you sell American weapons to terrorists with a track record of killing Americans but instead when you beat Russians at chess.