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How President Jimmy Carter Saved The Space Shuttle (blastingnews.com)
MarkWhittington writes: Eric Berger has published an account in Ars Technica about how President Jimmy Carter saved the space shuttle program. The article is well worth reading for its detail. In essence, around 1978 the space shuttle program had undergone a crisis with technical challenges surrounding its heat-resistant tiles and its reusable rocket engines and cost overruns. President Carter was not all that enthused about human space flight to begin with, adhering to the since discredited notion that robotic space probes were adequate for exploring the universe. His vice president, Walter Mondale, was a vehement foe of human space flight programs, maintaining that money spent on them were better used for social programs.
Star Trek is fiction, you realize. That ship taking pictures of Jupiter right now? Kirk isn't on it.
Never pet a burning dog.
Since discredited by what? I think there might be some bias in the reporting there, because it should say "since credited by 4 decades of remote robotic exploration"
the since discredited notion that robotic space probes were adequate for exploring the universe
Hah. What? Robotic space probes are bloody brilliant for exploring the universe, and they've done far more of it than could have been achieved if we'd had to send a meatbag along for the ride.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
The shuttle was a terrible program. It set the space program back thirty years by cementing in the public mind the idea manned spaceflight must always be far more expensive than the value of any possible benefit.
And the idea Carter is some sort of hero because he was too weak to say "Let's not throw good money after bad..."? Ugh.
In fact, when I look for any successes in space exploration (and no, low earth orbit does not count as "exploration"), all I see is robots and what I see is that many of them are wildly successful.
It seems the story writer is an idiot.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
... held back usable, affordable space flight for several decades, this was one program that was not worth saving.
That's obvious in hindsight. For those of us old enough to remember the shuttle when it was new I can tell you anyone who thought that about the shuttle at the time was mostly keeping it to themselves. Yes it was a dead end but it took a while to realize that. That happens sometimes. At the time the shuttle seemed like the next logical evolution of spaceflight.
Unless, of course, all you care about in space flight is the feeling of awesomeness while getting exactly nowhere.
Manned spaceflight has had tremendous benefit to humanity. The amount of technology development that has come from the manned program has been tremendous due to the challenge of the task. The information value of manned spaceflight is easy to overlook but it should not be. We've probably gotten more economic benefit from manned spaceflight than from probes and I would argue that the scientific value has been at least equal.
The argument of probe vs manned space flight is an idiotic one. We need both. Probes can tell us things that would be hard to learn or take MUCH longer and are quite economical for many mission profiles. But there are many things we can only learn though manned spaceflight and the technology and economic side benefits tend to be bigger as well. We need both and to present it as an either/or really is doing all of us a huge disservice in the long run.
That is the image that Ronald "we will not deal with terrorists" Reagan projected.
The truth is that President Reagan and his staff cut a deal with the Iranian terrorists. In order to negotiate the release of American hostages held by Lebanese terrorists who were backed by Iran, Reagan was willing to sell the Iranian terrorists arms so they could spread terrorism and threaten more people. These arms weren't shipped directly from the USA to Iranian terrorists. That would have been illegal. Reagan's team worked out a deal where the arms were sold through third parties to the Iranians.
Not satisfied with just supporting and spreading Iranian terrorism, Reagan's team wanted to also support a bunch of narco-terrorists, called the Contras. Monetary and material support for the Contras was prohibited by law. The Republican administration didn't like the left leaning Sandinista government of Nicaragua and wanted to support a right wing revolution so a puppet government could be installed. Similar to the support for the Shah's puppet government in Iran that lead the Iranian people to hate America so much.
American intelligence officials syphoned some of the money made selling arms to Iranian terrorists, to the drug trafficking Contras in Nicaragua who opposed the left leaning government there. The Republicans called these drug trafficking scum 'Freedom Fighters'.
The Iranian revolutionary terrorists were completely aware of the arms deal Reagan had made with them, although the American people were not.
So when the Iranians saw President Reagan give the icy stare and say those scary words, the Iranians were in no way frightened. The Iranians knew Reagan was a liar with no morals. A man who would sell out his own principles in order to gain power and high office. They labelled him "The Great Satan" because of his skill at lying.
The American people were unaware of the deal that Reagan had made to give arms and money to the Iranian terrorists, and were unaware that the freedom fighters were really drug traffickers sending poison to the streets of America and spreading terrorism throughout Central America. The American people saw Reagan as a tough guy who would never deal with terrorists and never waiver on truth, justice and the American way.
So once you read up on the Iran Contra affair, you will realise that the tough talk and that icy stare threatening the Iranian terrorists was one of Ronald Reagan's best acting jobs.