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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.
It was VP Johnson who began the push for space in the first place. What evidence is there that Kennedy would not have taken the necessary steps to fulfill his own famous proclamation? Because, you know, without it, all this article is doing is underscoring the fact that Nixon just reaped the rewards for something he didn't personally undertake.
Coincidentally, just today I've read about the NERVA (Nuclear Engine for Rocket Vehicle Application) and related projects and their cancellation again. It really boggles the mind... They basically had a working and thoroughly tested nuclear engine design, ready for use in manned missions to Mars and beyond by the 1970s, which was, ironically, its own downfall:
The RIFT vehicle consisted of a Saturn S-IC first stage, an SII stage and an S-N (Saturn-Nuclear) third stage. The Space Nuclear Propulsion Office planned to build ten RIFT vehicles, six for ground tests and four for flight tests, but RIFT was delayed after 1966 as NERVA became a political proxy in the debate over a Mars mission. The nuclear Saturn C-5 would carry two to three times more payload into space than the chemical version, enough to easily loft 340,000 pound space stations and replenish orbital propellant depots. Wernher von Braun also proposed a manned Mars mission using NERVA and a spinning donut-shaped spacecraft to simulate gravity. Many of the NASA plans for Mars in the 1960s and early 1970s used the NERVA rocket specifically, see list of manned Mars mission plans in the 20th century.
The Mars mission became NERVA's downfall. Members of Congress in both political parties judged that a manned mission to Mars would be a tacit commitment for the United States to decades more of the expensive Space Race. Manned Mars missions were enabled by nuclear rockets; therefore, if NERVA could be discontinued the Space Race might wind down and the budget would be saved. Each year the RIFT was delayed and the goals for NERVA were set higher. Ultimately, RIFT was never authorized, and although NERVA had many successful tests and powerful Congressional backing, it never left the ground.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N...
There is no sig.
"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?
Play Command HQ online
But his support of a puppet in Iran led to a overthrow by an extremist regime that will be in power for decades more.
That particular one goes back a bit further than Reagan by a couple of decades itself. 1953 Iranian coup d'état IMHO Putting the puppet dictator in power in the first place is the root cause of a hell of a lot of radical islamic behavior.
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
Somebody owns one of those "Word Of The Day" calendars, apparently.
"to have an effect for good or ill"
it's a word. Look it up.
Nixon was a "complicated" man, with a "complicated" presidency. I personally think the guy did a lot of rotten shit, although through the course of time, I have come to view him more with pity rather than contempt. He was a deeply unhappy and insecure man with (it seems to me) few, if any, real friends.
Reading this article, I get the sense of his pragmatic realism, especially in light of a country which was at-the-time engaged in a very costly war, and a nation riven with socio-economic strife. (It is a good thing those days are behind us).
1953 Iranian coup d'état IMHO Putting the puppet dictator in power in the first place is the root cause of a hell of a lot of radical islamic behavior.
While Ike certainly didn't help matters by agreeing to do this for the British. The British and French carving up the Ottoman empire as they saw fit happened much earlier than the 1950's and is the biggest catalyst for the current "radical Islamic behavior". It was certainly the first domino.
Stop calling it that. The bill to repeal Glass-Steagall was written by three Republicans. Clinton only got on board because he had his mind on his dork and his treasury secretary was a wall street asshole who had promised his pals that he'd look out for them in a big big way.
The initial votes for the Gramm-Leach-Bliley act were along party lines with all but one Democrat voting No. But the banks, smelling blood in the water, smoothed all the objections over with money and the rest is the ugly history of the 21st century so far.
You are welcome on my lawn.
That's for sure. There's something about having some other country come in and install a brutal dictator in your country that causes people to get angry. Go figure.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Reagan made deals with the Iranians to hold Americans hostage until after the elections. If that's not traitorous, I don't know what is. Well, maybe following through on the deals and selling weapons to our enemies, directly giving aid to enemies of the USA.
Learn to love Alaska
Nixon was the first U.S. President to see a human space launch (Apollo 12).
Someone forgot Project Mercury.
President Kennedy - Jan 20 1961 to Nov 22 1963
Freedom 7 (May 5 1961), Liberty Bell 7 (July 21, 1961), Friendship 7 (February 20, 1962), Aurora 7 (May 24, 1962), Sigman 7 (October 3, 1962), and Faith 7 (May 15, 1963). Kennedy, as president, saw ALL the manned Mercury spaceflights. Here's a pic of Kennedy watching the Shepherd launch on TV in the White House, same as millions of other people.
And Project Gemini.
President Johnson - Nov 22 1963 to Jan 20 1969
Gemini 3 (23 Mar 1965) through 12 (11-15 Nov 1966), all manned. Apollo 1 (fatal fire), Apollo 7 (11 October 1968), Apollo 8 (21 December 1968) - the "around the moon mission". Here's a pic of Johnson watching the launch of Gemini 3
And there were the other flights, Apollo 9 through 11 - the first moon landing, all observed by Nixon as president.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
I really want to hate Nixon for what he did to NASA. But... There is a small voice of reason that keeps reminding me that I do value Democracy and the president SHOULD act on what the people want. Therefore instead I should hate all the supersticious luddite voters!
But.. if I feel like Nixon hating there is always Vietnam....
Logsdon and Callahan, for reasons best known to themselves and like so many others, continue to mythologize the space program... to the detriment of the facts.
They forget, as so many do, there's a third President (Johnson) and a number of years between President's Kennedy and Nixon. Nixon's policy decisions were shaped largely by decisions made by and during the Johnson Administration by the President and Congress. Most notably, in the budget battles of '65-'67 Apollo's budget was sharply cut, capping hardware production (and thus limiting the number of landings) and all but cancelling the follow on Apollo Applications program. During the same period, both NASA management and the Administration began to concentrate on the Shuttle as an Apollo follow on as cheaper access to space began to loom as a more important national priority than flags-and-footprints stunts. Nixon was thus caught between a rock and a hard place - inheriting (as every President after him has) a rudderless, directionless mess that would take far more money to fix than the public would stand for and far more political capital than the returns could possibly justify.
And really, Apollo has screwed us up in space pretty much for all time... Because it's lead too many people to believe that progress is only made by Great Leaps Forward. Because it stuck us (as a nation) with a bloated and inefficient NASA bureaucracy. Because it's blinded too many people to the fact that it was an accident of history and a detour from any rational path of space development.
Recently released documents confirm that our then-president nixon committed treason, which directly resulted in the deaths of more than 20,000 US servicemen. http://www.commondreams.org/vi...
I bring to your attention King John, Magna Carta and how it's part of the foundation of the law of the USA. In fact a US president put a major part of it in modern terms "no man is above or below the law". Since divine right of kings and later presidents got thrown out they do not have unlimited power which was why there was so much sneaking about with Iran-Contra and selling weapons to Hezbolla less than a year after they had blown up more than one hundred US marines.
or they are neither utterly perfect or don't have the numbers to prevent an inquiry being a whitewash.
The Shah was gone before Carter could do anything other than give him a place to hide, and Reagan came after Carter.
As for Reagan, not even Republicans could stand him after part way into his second term. He was a pariah after what he did to the economy among other things, even though now he is revered as some sort of saint.
Pretty well the rest can be laid at the feet of the house of Saud and us propping them up. Those fuckers are now financing ISIS/ISIL but we like them too much to ask them to stop.
Bush Jr decisions will take at least another 10 years to pay off.
Actually, the military-industrial-security complex has been benefiting enormously for quite some time now.
He couldn't have been traitorous as president, the president himself decides who our enemies are and are not.
Except:
1) Reagan wasn't president at the time of the supposed deal that GP mentioned
2) Iran was subject to an arms embargo at the time the administration sold it arms
3) The profits from arms sales to Iran were then funneled to the Nicaraguan Contras, further violating the law
In defense of Reagan - a phrase I never thought I'd write - there's no proof that he actually knew about (3), at least. So, a dupe, but not necessarily a traitor.
Lol.. Divine right of kings has absolutely nothing to do with it. In the US, the constitutional role of the president is commander in chief and the power to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States except for impeachment. As commander in chief, he can declare enemies and undeclare them and the power to grant reprieves and pardons reinforces the later. Why you brought up the divine right of kings is sort of puzzling unless you failed to read all the limits to this ability of the president and conditions I listed.
In Iran-Contra, the problem wasn't anything about divine right of kings, but the boland amendment which made it illegal to use certain appropriated money to fund the contras fighting the communist in Nicaragua. It was later amended to include any military support. It specifically left open the ability to find funding outside of appropriated sources like private donations and other countries. Iran contra was sneaking funding around that law which no court to date has said was illegal. But that is neither here nor there because I never mentioned funding the contras, we were talking specifically about the conspiracy about Reagan colluding with Iran in order to delay the release of hostages until after his election which was before the Iran contra BS. Way to move the goal posts. Do you think it makes the parent's claim any more correct by talking about unrelated stuff?
I think history would prove you wrong on that. There were 55 democrat senators and 270 democrat representatives. That's 58% of the senate and 62% of the house of representatives. But please, go ahead and invent history. It is not like it isn't easy to look up or anything.
To build NASA’s post-Apollo program around the space shuttle without establishing a specific goal or long-term strategy the shuttle would support
Not true. The shuttle was designed to lift and recover spy satellites. It actually did put several in orbit (and the Hubble, same size as a spy satellite) but in the end it was more cost effective to use one-time rockets.
You might have been less angry if you'd actually read the words before responding to them.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Then he couldn't have made any deal in violation of any law at that time. How can a presidential candidate sell US weapons without being president?
The claim was that the deal happened when he was a candidate, the actual weapons transfers happened later. The latter is not in doubt, the former is more of a conspiracy theory.
Which is likely why the US never sold weapons to Iran. Israel did and the US replenished Israel's. Splitting hairs I know, but if someone can argue the meaning of the word "is" in order to escape blame for wrong doing, certainly an actual step to isolate yourself would do the same.
So, you're saying providing arms to a state sponsor of terrorism in violation of an embargo is equivalent to receiving oral sex from a White House intern?
But the later is documented to have happened over a completely different set of hostages.
Let me fix that for you. Providing arms via an intermediate to a state sponsor of terrorism in violation of an embargo had you actually provided those arms to them directly is equivalent to perjuring yourself in a deposition in a court of law and getting away with it by insisting ambiguity of one of the most simple words in the English language.
Let's not white wash one indiscretion in order to inflame another. A violation of a law is a violation of a law except when it isn't a violation of the law.
Because it is equivalent to the idea that a President is above the law and has had no place in the English and US legal systems since the 1200s. A President or King can be charged with treason if there are grounds for it. If a President were to declare or "undeclare" an enemy due to outside inducement and enough of the rest of the State saw it as a betrayal of the country then treason would be the charge. If a "Manchurian Canditate" situation was possible you can bet treason would be on the table if someone under the control of another state got the top job.
Initially that was before he was President so the silly "President can't be treasonous because they are the LAW" thing doesn't apply either way.
Nice how you sidestepped the Hezbolla thing, especially given current events. It's a testament to discipline that North and Poindexder were not murdered in a Rambo rampage by ex-Marines after they were pardoned.
In the era of Obummer...
I just like my history as it happened and NOT as it is rewritten by partisan ideologues.
Throwing around "Obummer" makes you a partisan ideologue, you moron.
I might not care for his policies much myself, but using that term invalidates everything else you vomited onto this page.
Growing up on the mythology of Apollo (the space program not the god) I was shocked to read the things found in the quite below. But mythology is one thing and history is another.
As a Senator Kennedy did not believe in manned space flight, he thought the money should be spent on social programs. He was more open to less expensive robotic missions.
As President he was still not interested in manned flight. The "new frontier" was actually of little interest to Kennedy. What did get Kennedy behind the Apollo program was, payback to Vice President Johnson for his support and more importantly Cold War politics.
Shockingly, here is NASA's portrayal of Kennedy's motivations:
"Kennedy as president had little direct interest in the U.S. space program. He was not a visionary enraptured with the romantic image of the last American frontier in space and consumed by the adventure of exploring the unknown. He was, on the other hand, a Cold Warrior with a keen sense of Realpolitik in foreign affairs, and worked hard to maintain balance of power and spheres of influence in American/Soviet relations. The Soviet Union's non-military accomplishments in space, therefore, forced Kennedy to respond and to serve notice that the U.S. was every bit as capable in the space arena as the Soviets. Of course, to prove this fact, Kennedy had to be willing to commit national resources to NASA and the civil space program. The Cold War realities of the time, therefore, served as the primary vehicle for an expansion of NASA's activities and for the definition of Project Apollo as the premier civil space effort of the nation. Even more significant, from Kennedy's perspective the Cold War necessitated the expansion of the military space program, especially the development of ICBMs and satellite reconnaissance systems."
http://history.nasa.gov/Apollo...
Another interesting and shocking bit of trivia.
"Consistently throughout the 1960s a majority of Americans did not believe Apollo was worth the cost, with the one exception to this a poll taken at the time of the Apollo 11 lunar landing in July 1969. And consistently throughout the decade 45-60 percent of Americans believed that the government was spending too much onspace, indicative of a lack of commitment to the spaceight agenda."
http://www.theatlantic.com/tec...
I see you are back to making separate posts in an attempt to drag someone out to the point of frustration and giving up. You seem to like to do that a lot when you are losing an argument. I will recombine them so save some time and effort.
Yes it has which is why you never should have brought it up. Nothing I said even resembles that and everything I said is backed by the US constitution which describes the powers the president actually does have.
Yes, he can. A situation this might arise in would be if we are in a declared war and the war has not ended and the president gives the enemy information on troop movement or supplies or something. But the president cannot be trialed for treason if he ends a war- Nowhere in American history has congress declared a war to be over. It's all happened by the president. You do not think Obama is treasonous for ending the war on terror or giving support to the Muslim Brotherhood who support terrorists do you?
Possibly, but it didn't happen in this case and neither did impeachment which would likely be necessary for it to happen if a sitting president was charged otherwise he could pardon himself unilaterally and end it all before it ever happens.
Yep.. I addressed this above but seeing how you brought no connection to my original statement, I will have to reiterate Why you brought up the divine right of kings is sort of puzzling.
A presidential candidate cannot transfer military weapons. That is the only part that would have been illegal. Talking with foreign governments and even striking deals with them is not illegal unless you represent yourself as speaking for the US as a nation without the consent of congress or the president or do it when we are actually at war with them. Many people made deals with the Soviet Union during the cold war. Hell, we have senators and government officials making deals with Castro in Cuba before he left office and we still have an economic embargo against them.
Reality doesn't seem to be on your side here.
First, a point of fact. North and Poindexter were never pardoned. Their convictions were overturned with the help of the ACLU. Also, non of their convictions stemmed from their actual involvement with selling arms to Iran or funding the freedom fighters in Nicaragua. They were about lying to congress, accepting illegal gratuity and destruction of evidence.
Second, I ignored the Hezbollah thing because it isn't relevant. The topic at hand was a conspiracy that happened well before this and the Iran contra thing. BTW, the hostages in the Iran contra deal were not the same hostages in Iran. The Iran contra hostages were taken in Lebanon and taken a few years after the conspiracy supposedly took place.
Once again, reality is proving to be dangerous to your worldview.
Leon Panetta has already laid the blame for the rise of ISIS at Obama's feet.
As he should. Obama's head is stuck in 2003. In 2003 Al Qaeda was not in Iraq.
However in 2006 they were in Iraq and the proto-ISIS groups were defeated by US forces and Sunni tribal fighters during the Anbar Awakening.
Today, without US support and without real support from their own government in Baghdad those same Sunni tribal leaders have sided with ISIS.
If the US had maintained a sizable special ops / rapid reaction force / anti-terrorist force in Iraq, and with the US air support such a force would be able to call in, Sunni tribal leaders may have been less inclined to side with ISIS. What is beyond debate is that ISIS would not have rolled down the open highway in their Toyotas and heavy weapons capturing one town after another. Their vehicles and heavy weapons would have been destroyed by US air power. Plus with US air support and the nearby US "boots on the ground" it is far less likely that the Iraqi army would have fled, especially considering how degraded any ISIS force that got past air attacks would be.
So what prevented any such residual force in Iraq. It was entirely Obama's mindset born of the 2003 invasion. It is a *false* narrative that the Iraqi's unwillingness to grant US forces immunity is to blame. The status of US forces in Iraq had to be negotiated multiple times prior to Obama. The Iraqi's always initially refused immunity until US negotiators offered a better deal. Its a negotiating tactic to get the US to offer a little more. The difference between Obama and his predecessor is that instead of offering the Iraqi's more he used it as an excuse to pull everyone out. He wanted to pull everyone out, the Iraqi's gave him a convenient excuse. One could say that Obama was not negotiating in good faith, he really did not want to have an agreement, did not want to leave a residual force, he wanted to be completely out and rid of Iraq.
The problem is that his head is stuck in 2003. Whether the invasion was right or wrong, whether the occupation was right or wrong, all of that is irrelevant. Decisions in 2012 have to be made based on the realities of 2012, not the decisions of 2003 or 2006 that you hate, not the decisions of your predecessor who you hate, not to be consistent with your 2003 position that is no longer relevant. What mattered in 2012 were all the experts who were saying that a complete US withdrawal could lead to a very dangerous destabilization of Iraq. He should have negotiated in good faith and sweetened the deal enough to get immunity for a residual force, but he couldn't get his head out of 2003.
And in 2014 it continues. The Al Qaeda type are in Iraq, in 2008 and in 2012 Obama claimed these were the people who were the real enemy, the real threat, the real ones we shouldn't have taken our focus off of. He needs to act accordingly.
Let me fix that for you. Providing arms via an intermediate to a state sponsor of terrorism in violation of an embargo had you actually provided those arms to them directly is equivalent to perjuring yourself in a deposition in a court of law and getting away with it by insisting ambiguity of one of the most simple words in the English language.
Let's not white wash one indiscretion in order to inflame another. A violation of a law is a violation of a law except when it isn't a violation of the law.
Nobody is whitewashing the perjury charge by saying that it is not treason. Providing arms to the enemy, even through an intermediary, is treason, and it is the highest offense the federal government can charge someone with.
The president- absent an act of congress, can declare who is and is not an enemy. The president therefor cannot provide arms to an enemy unless we are in a state of war declared by congress and he has not ended the war. For instance, President Obama has provided arms to ISIS after he ended the war on terror and declared them to be a moderate force in Syria. Of course with the war on Terror still around, he would have been embargoed from doing the same because ISIS was known to support terrorism. Now the same can be said with the Muslim Brotherhood which was a terrorist group specifically outlined as a sponsor of terrorism and we gave them shit tons of arms when they overthrew the leadership in Egypt and assumed control (before the military ousted them). Same with Libya who later came around and killed an ambassador and some other people- likely with arms we provided.
It is a whitewashing when you or anyone else considered perjury in a court of law by the highest law enforcement officer in the land- a lawyer himself- is not as important as skirting a law by introducing a third party specifically for that purpose.
Bush Jr decisions will take at least another 10 years to pay off.
Looking at Iraq, I think you're missing a couple of zeroes there...
World War 2 would have had US involvement far earlier if that was actually the case.
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.
The linked article is stilted and brain dead. It did not discuss the real science at NASA, i.e. the unmanned robotic probes that have been so successful such as the Voyager and Mariner missions and Hubble. There was (and still is) almost no scientific returned from the manned spaceflight missions. Almost all the discoveries and science come from robotic missions. Yes in spite of that, the unmanned directorate had to (and still does) fight for its life as the manned missions people who run NASA are always trying to steal their funding. That is why Carl Sagan started the Planetary Society; to stop the poaching of funds my the manned spaceflight pork-masters.
What the hell does that mean?
Watch this Heartland Institute video
As a kid, I saw this summarized in the World Book Encyclopedia, but this is a much more grown-up explanation for it. By all accounts, Nixon was flabbergasted by the cost, and that's what really killed it. The shuttle was part of the plan, and it's all that got built, which explains why it seemed to have no purpose. http://www.wired.com/2012/06/t...
Good points. For those who care about the NASA budget, you need to understand federal budget politics. The NASA budget is part of "domestic discretionary spending". The Republicans have successfully pressured domestic discretionary spending for many years, and Democrats have failed in defense of it. Now defense discretionary spending consumes a larger share of total federal discretionary spending. If you support Republican budget policies, you support squeezing the NASA budget.
I could tell you many things to cut in domestic discretionary spending, but not enough to free up money to fund NASA. NASA has poorly managed its budget by starting too many projects it could never pay for. Then NASA whines about the result.
And the Germans encouraging Jihad as a response to the Ottoman empire getting carved up. A 100 years and the Great War is still playing out.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
It's a perfectly cromulent word. (But, yeah, "resound" was the word needed I think.)
No, he said:
I am not a kook.
And he was wrong.
Because it's lead too many people to believe that progress is only made by Great Leaps Forward.
Whoa, whoa, whoa, buddy! Not cool! WTF were you thinking with that? Casually using the name of the greatest human genocide of all time in an unrelated context? What's next, the Final Solution to the space problem?
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
There was no "quota". The only part of the strategy that had the force of law was that lenders could no longer discriminate based upon the fact that black people lived in the neighborhood. The only part that was put into regulation was the anti-redlining provisions.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Not at all. You can have enemies without war.
The deregulation came about because Clinton put a quota on banks giving mortgages to people who didn't qualify. His “The National Homeownership Strategy" was what caused the housing bubble and burst.
As you point out "The National Homeownership Strategy" was deregulation, which I agree is the problem. But let's be clear, the banks wanted and lobbied for the deregulation. There's no quota, no bank was forced to give a loan (a quota would be a regulation). They were allowed to make loans they wanted to, not forced to and not regulated. But people that hate regulation point to this as if this is an example of government overreach and conflate it with the CRA which required banks to make some loans in their local neighborhoods. CRA loans accounted for a very small portion of subprime loans and did not have a significant default rate. Only one of the top 25 subprime lenders in 2006 was directly subject to the housing law, all the rest of the institutions making subprime loans were doing so completely voluntarily.
Banks created "liar loans" specifically because investors wanted a place to put their money with a decent return and they were begging the banks for more loans which could be then be sold to investors as CDOs. The banks were deregulated, and the banks used their freedom to crank up short term profits, created the housing bubble and tanked the economy.
Some privacy policy Slashdot.
Remember: malfunctioning rockets have a tendency to EXPLODE, and rockets that do not explode but either place a payload into orbit or fail to properly push it out to escape velocity have put something above everybody's heads that WILL come back down someday and probably in an inplanned location.
Saffaya never suggested using a nuclear rocket to launch cargo from the Earth directly to Mars. He suggested using a nuclear engine to propel a ship to Mars, from Earth orbit. Did you miss the bit about the ship having artificial gravity (with a self-rotating part)? You can't do that with a single mission; that's something you do by launching pieces into orbit or someplace near the Earth, assembling them there, and then sending that ship to Mars. That means you use existing, reliable chemical rockets to lift all these pieces (including a nuclear engine) into high orbit or perhaps a Langrange spot. An actual nuclear rocket launched from Earth would leave behind a trail of radiation in our atmosphere, so that's obviously not politically feasible these days; out in space, who cares about some extra radiation?
Well, you used to be able to....
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
How about actually thinking about the example of a President that wanted to declare war but did not until Pearl Harbour instead of your strange answer. If that's not enough think about why Johnson fabricated the Gulf Of Tonkin thing instead of just declaring war.
The USA is not run by a King.
Why don't you go back and read what i actually said. Your answer to that was posted before you even replied. Why in the hell are you ignoring what has already been stated and trying to press those things as if it somehow negates everything that has been said altready?
Here is a hint. A country can have enemies with a war. ISIS is considered an enemy of the US and no declaration of war has happened. In fact, congress has not even authorised the war like actions we are taking against them right now. Obama is relying on the authorization to use military force granted to Bush even after he declared the war on terror over and Al Qaeda decimated.
From the article, which none of you seem to have read,
Excerpt:
Logsdon points to three key decisions Nixon made regarding the U.S. space program, which had long-term consequences for NASA. The three decisions were:
To treat the space program as one area of domestic policy competing with other concerns, not as a privileged activity
To lower U.S. ambitions in space by ending human spaceflight beyond low Earth orbit for the foreseeable future and not embark on another space goal requiring a massive investment similar to Apollo
To build NASA’s post-Apollo program around the space shuttle without establishing a specific goal or long-term strategy the shuttle would support
Professor Logsdon says that Nixon’s lasting imprint on the space program was an end to human exploration of space beyond low Earth orbit in the twentieth century, and he sees the Nixon Space Doctrine and more ambitious human space exploration as incompatible. Under Nixon, NASA became just another domestic program, and the agency’s budget decreased even as it retained ambitious goals. During this time, however, NASA’s efforts did include increased international participation in U.S. human spaceflight programs.
--- end excerpt ---
As I've been saying for decades, the Republicans hate civilian space programs becase a) they've *always* seen it as a Democratic initiative, and because they're too dumb to see how the money is spent here on earth... and how it drives new technology.
For the 90% of you who are kids, here's one of the real-life, it-was-in-the-media-in-the-sixties, motivatoin for the space program: a moral equivalent of war.
But you turkeys would rather have wars (and y'all have, as traitor Dick Cheney put it, about the draft, "other agendas" than fighting) none of you put yourselves in danger. It's all a fucking video game with other peoples' lives.
mark "this is *not* the Real 21st Century; I want the REAL one back RIGHT NOW, thankyouveddymuch"
The US public was not enthusiastic about going to war, and Roosevelt was keenly aware of that. Roosevelt wanted to get the US into a war with Germany (and tried to avoid a war with Japan), but had to take it slowly. He did order the Navy to fight the German navy in September 1941, and at that time the US Army and Army Air Force were not in any sort of shape to fight the Germans.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Which means the nuclear engine has to be launched into orbit. At some point, nuclear fuel is going to have to be launched, and that's what GP is saying could go very wrong.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Yes, but I thought he was saying it was dangerous because a nuclear engine could fail, not because a regular chemical rocket launch could fail. If a nuclear engine fails in space, big deal (except for the crew....). But to keep things low-risk, you launch everything dangerous with highly reliable and proven rockets from the earth. It's not going to be risk-free; nothing in life is. But we do have some very reliable rocket engines now, and by the time we're ready to build a nuclear-powered ship to Mars, we should have even more reliable rockets (or, we'll use the same ones we have now, but by that time they'll be even more proven and have more bugs worked out).
The other things we could try are 1) building the nuclear engine here on Earth, but obtaining nuclear fuel from the Moon or an asteroid. I'm not sure how plentiful such fuel would be up there though; didn't they detect thorium or something on the moon? I dunno. 2) This is farther off, but if we could build working fusion engines, there's plenty of He3 on the Moon to power them.
Yes, let's look at the line I'm discussing shall we:
Does that sort out the attention span problem or mixing me up with another poster or whatever the hell is going on? "I am England/I am America" went out with Magna Carta when King John was put in his place, and it's never come back. A President CAN be found a traitor. The will of the people doesn't choose one King, they choose a pile of other people to make sure there is not just an authoritarian King who does not answer to anyone else, but instead a President with deliberately limited power who can be held to account by the court.
It's gravely wrong and that's enough to discuss even if you got something right a bit down the page.
Then discuss it but do not set up straw men pretending i said something other than what i actually said.