Obama Campaign Asks Romney Campaign About Space
As NASA Announces Partnerships With Commercial Crew Program, Floridians Worry About Romney’s Silence On Space Policy, Obama for America-Florida
“As Floridians have seen President Obama’s continued commitment on moving our nation’s space program forward, Mitt Romney refuses to answer even the most basic questions surrounding space policy. He won’t say if he supports President Obama’s efforts to support and grow America’s commercial space industry, and as each day passes, it becomes increasingly clear that Mitt Romney has no clear vision for NASA.” – Eric Jotkoff, Obama for America-Florida”
Parroting Obama’s political gamesmanship?
/disappointed
Haha! Just noticing this? Nothing new here. Keith is as biased as can be. For the record it was exactly four years ago (Aug 2, 2008) that candidate Obama came to Florida and uttered this promise “…by speeding the development of the Shuttle successor. By making sure that all those who work in the Space Industry in Florida do not lose their jobs when the Shuttle is retired, because we can’t afford to lose their expertise.”
A child of four can plainly see this was a HUGE broken promise. Just ask the thousands and thousands of laid off Space industry workers who used to work in Florida. All that is left are the administrators; the contractors who actually assembled, processed, tested and launched the Shuttle are almost all gone. This broken promise was made at exactly the same time frame in the campaign that Romney is in now as the challenger. I would much rather have a well thought out plan from Romney after he is President than hear him simply giving us a calculated pack of lies like Obama gave to us four years ago.
Back to the original point which was the bias of this website. There is a clear double standard here. Obama was allowed a free pass for having no policy toward space 4 years ago other than parroting what the voters in Brevard county wanted to hear. Four years later Romney is chastised for not doing the same.
I allow people with no last names like you to rant semi-anonymously. If I were biased I’d simply delete your post – yet here is your rant – verbatim. If Romney has issued a space policy statement I will post it with the same prominence with which I posted one from the Obama campaign. Feel better now?
And once they got “a look under the hood” as Griffin refered to it. They found a bloated, over budget, decade behind porktrain to nowhere being foisted on the American taxpayer by the usual porkonauts in congress.
Why do people take about the cancelation of a bloated government nightmare as a bad thing.
Thanks for the Link Keith. Gov. Romney did say that after he is elected, he would assemble a team of experts, like President Obama did, and only then decide what his policy would be. There is one difference, then Senator Obama did put out a policy paper on his direction he would move NASA, nothing forth coming from Mr. Romney yet.
President Obama did wait until campaigning in Florida though, so Mitt will not have really get serious until mid Sept – October before he puts out something.
Hopefully Mike Griffin is tasked to respond to this. This could potentially show the public how smart (full of ****) Mike Griffin is.
Things have changed in Florida in the last 4 years. NASA supplied jobs to a lot of people in Florida many of whom were ignoring the end of Shuttle. They wanted to believe the new president would help. Now there are a lot of unemployed rocket men in Florida, they will be very suspicious.
The “unemployed rocket men” in Florida are actually people who spent
their professional lives glued to Shuttle. They were not only ignoring
the end of Shuttle, but were ignoring the fact that Shuttle wasn’t going
to define the space systems that would follow. As a result, they find
themselves unemployable by much of Newspace, because their skill set is
almost entirely shuttle derived. By contrast, there are a lot of new,
firmly employed rocket men in at least Hawthorne and Mojave who
represent the future.
Those “unemployed rocket men” in Florida wanted to believe the new President would help. He did. He provided funds and counseling to help those people retrain. But what he wasn’t going to do was to help them by creating jobs that would demand archaic skill sets.
Well said.
It may be well said, but Helen’s response completely ignores a lot of the inconvenient facts of Obama’s campaign promises as compared to the reality of what he did after winning office:
http://www.spacepolicyonlin…
Ray,
On the other hand, Obama, then, at least gave the Florida Coast people, and the nation, some indication of how he was thinking with respect to their situation at the time. To me, Romney’s failure to publicly address the issue with anything at all is a message to Florida (and other special interest groups) — “I don’t think I can win you in this election, and I don’t think the investment necessary to try to win you is likely enough to profit me to be worth spending money on.” I see this as a clear indication of how calculating the man is, and it suggests to me that he will make (and remake) his decisions as factors shift, so as to gain/maintain best current advantage — for himself, not for America or any geographic portion of it. To anyone who operates in that mode, promises are going to be meaningless anyhow. I could be wrong completely, but that’s how it adds up to me if you judge his intent by his lack of action.
President Obama’s promoting transition to “commercial” space, I strongly believe, was the right thing at the right time, although he could have been more supportive. The balance of his policy/action with respect to NASA and civil space has been much less than I personally would have liked, but in a side-by-side comparison, he’s clearly the lesser of two zeros. I find it hard to shake the feeling that Obama is relatively sincere, overall, for a President, whereas Romney just wants to be President of the United States.
Steve
I have to agree. I just responded to an email from a buddy that listed off all of his broken promises. After researching, for the promises he has made, even the ones he has broken (this happens), it seems he has made a genuine effort to improve those things. This shows he is trying hard and not just breaking promises so to me that is a positive. He is guilty of optimism.
Mike,
And to be fair to first-term Presidents, good or bad, it is inevitable that they will make certain promises on the campaign trail, with all sincerity, but then learn things during their first week on the job that they couldn’t possibly have known beforehand, which change the situation totally. So, as much as it might burn, I always assume there will be a percentage of campaign promises that are better not kept, even though we may never know why.
Steve
Let’s be clear here. In his Titusville speech, Obama never gave any assurance that Shuttle workers would keep their jobs doing Shuttle stuff. In fact, he specifically referred to the retirement of those vehicles. He promised that these workers could keep being a part of the space industry, which is a whole lot bigger than Shuttle. To the extent that Shuttle workers heard his words and said to themselves “Ah, I get to keep gluing tiles onto wings”, or “Ah, I get to keep resurfacing runways”, or “Ah, I get to keep working on Shuttle-style avionics”, they were just dumb. Wallowing in their own illusory hopes.
Obama promised the nation to keep us as leaders in space flight. He never promised to allow people to wallow in their own illusory hopes. In fact, that would have certainly compromised our leadership in space flight. His staff worked hard to give these workers, with their somewhat obsolete skill sets, some other options in an effort to keep them in the space industry. To the extent they weren’t able to stay in the space industry, perhaps because they weren’t trainable, and are flipping burgers instead, I’m not going to blame Barack Obama for it. Those may not be the workers the space industry needs.
Perhaps you’d like to be more specific about what Obama promised and didn’t live up to. The issue is less promises he made, but whether he’s doing the right thing for the nation. Keeping old jobs is the stuff of Congressional pork. Pushing ahead as leaders in space is real vision.
Isn’t this a thread on Romney’s responsiveness to space?
Don’t we expect to hear something from the candidate on the issue?
So, let me take a stab and forecast what would please these unemployed workers.
1. Will Romney tout rapid SLS to get those workers jobs?
2. Will Romney restart Shuttle so those workers can have their old jobs back?
3. Will Romney offer those workers an alternative employment?
These seem most likely answers. But the kind I’d expect to see discussed in comments.
Helen’s comment in many ways addresses the issues with these. It is the only comment that does.
Could anybody even remotely associated with Romney … genuinely be responsive, on topic, instead of dodging the issue.
I totally despise the ignorant “so’s your mother” commentary common on the internet these days. I’ve wondered if its from some kind of automated “spam” machine, because real people … couldn’t be that … vapid and useless?
Obama lied about his plan to Floridians about the space plan just to win votes 4 years ago and I’ve yet to hear his space plan for the future. Better to be quiet and develop a plan than to lie about it. This biased heading ought to point out all the facts not one’s own biased opinion.
Where is the bias? Have you seen any statements from the Romney campaign?
It’s called “circular logic”.
You want a witch, you observe something of the prospective witch, that’s now a witch-like attribute, presto ! Proof of a witch.
What now, “critical thinking”? Isn’t that against the law in Texas now? Might explain some things at JSC I guess …
Jason,
If you kept asking me for information that only I had, information that was important to you and your future, so that you could make informed decisions with respect to the welfare of your family, and I just put you off, saying that I’ll decide at some later date — after the date by which you have to make your important decisions — how well would that sit with you? Would you still consider it “better” to be quiet? That’s exactly the position that thousands of hard-working Americans are in because Romney is saying nothing about space policy, and has no intention of doing so. To be honest, based on what I’ve just typed, your own comment is nothing more than your own biased opinion showing through.
In theory, people vote for a party platform (so much for ancient history). But whether you’re voting for a party, its platform, its candidate, or even simply voting against any of those, how on Earth can you vote when you don’t know the policies being chosen from? In short — you can’t. A federal election becomes nothing more than a popularity contest. Is that a sane way for the people of a country to select their President, Commander in Chief of their armed forces, and possibly the most powerful person on the planet? What happened to “representation by population”? How can you know if a candidate will represent your interests and welfare if he won’t tell you his policies? I strongly suspect that Obama will get another term in office, not because he’ll win the election, but because Romney will lose it.
Steve
Sorry but Obama did kill Constellation. The Orion capsule would have been completed by now if it wasn’t for his flip flopping.
I don’t credit Obama with killing Constellation. Mike Griffin and congress did that through mismanagement and non-attention. Obama did sign the Death Certificate though, and that upset a lot of people.
It would have made no difference who was sitting in the big chair at that point; Constellation was canceled because it was the only sensible thing to do. Any honest assessment, I think, would have shown it to be beyond saving, in any form. There were too many technical hurdles and limitations to overcome. Besides, if the solids-only nonsense had been carried through and anyone was hurt or killed, the US might never have recovered from it. This is all very old news; why do people keep dragging it up?
Steve
Constellation was not only already dead, but it was starting to smell bad. Official recognition of this was merely delayed until after the election.
Assuming Constellation ever mattered …
Can you illustrate to a dumb hick like myself, how the President can kill the funding of a program without utilizing the veto power of the executive branch?
The President’s budget, is a request. It does not carry the force of law. The President’s budget is routinely ignored, changed, deleted or added funding to programs.
In order for the President to have killed the Constellation program, first both houses of Congress would have had to voted for funding the program.
The President would have then had to veto that funding bill for NASA. The Senate would have then had to fail at overriding that veto.
None of that happened … do you know why?
Because a BI PARTISAN congress REFUSED to fund the over budget and behind schedule Constellation program.
The President REQUESTED that the Constellation program be defunded…. that’s it… a request without the force of law.
CONGRESS decides what programs get canceled, specifically the House or Representives who controls the country’s check book.
I would first point out the history of the Obama 2008 campaign with respect to NASA and Florida: How Obama’s first words about NASA was how he wanted to take $ away from NASA programs and put it into education…then someone whispered in his ear how important it was to win Florida. After this change of tune, we couldn’t hear enough about how Obama was inspired by Apollo and all the lies about how he was going to get right behind NASA and the space program. Sadly, that has not materialized with the biggest bit of evidence that we have no defined misson (i.e. the mission to nowhere).
Now, given this factual history of Obama’s waffleing and lack of real support for NASA or American leadership in space, wouldn’t it be funny if Obama was trying to prevent Romeny from using the same, empty political tactics that Obama used to convince Florida he was a big space fanboy? Oh wait..it looks like that is exactly what’s going on! “Hey Mitt, stop stealing my political maneuvering (lying) tactics!”
Why does it matter what Obama OR Romney say? They can SAY all they want, but by the time any “plan” goes thru Congress… forget about it.
Unless there is a way that NASA could be disbanded and reorganized into something (or a group of smaller somethings) that could escape or minimize the meddling of Congress, we can simply look forward to “more of the same” until something comes along that forces the money and the aim to be made — Asteroid verified to hit Earth in 1-2 years, life discovered on Mars, China making a national claim to real estate located on the Moon, etc…
If Mitt Romney wants a space policy get NASA to go prospecting on the Moon. $500 million should be sufficient to space rate Morpheus and RESOLVE and fly them to the Moon in 4 years.
He can spend half of his presidency setting up infrastructure for manned visits.
I prefer that we stick to the 200 year old American tradition of business doing the mineral exploration. I would much rather see a NASA lunar geologist exploring a commercial lunar mining operation, just like we see here on terra firma.
Anytime commercial firms are going to start digging holes, the archeologists and geologist come running to see if there are any finds to be made.
A commercial entities may spend decades extracting minerals but have short time scales when prospecting. The organisations are likely to abandoned the search before the Moon base is built.
NASA can operate over the time needed to design landers, launchers, habitats and small drills. Find a useful resource on the Moon then the commercial firms can take over.
Neither Obama nor Romney are really that interested in manned space
travel! And its really not an issue that either one of them wants to
debate during the general election especially since manned space travel
is often ridiculed by some on the left and the right as of questionable
value and also because it can be a political hot potato in an extremely
important swing State like Florida.
Both of them would look rather foolish even discussing a subject that
they both have so little interest in– and know so little about!
Marcel F. Williams
Exactly.
And … Romney doesn’t need to have a space policy, given that Shuttle program concluded on Obama’s watch, they can blame him for loss of thousands of jobs. Doesn’t matter anything more than that.
This is a guy who only wants to do the minimum’s to sneak by.
President Obama’s space policy was already laid out for him when he took office. President Bush’s “The Vision for Space Exploration”.
In the VSE it called for commercial crew when the space shuttle retires in Sept 2010. President Obama funded an additional shuttle flight for the AMS and started the CCDEV with stimulus funds.
The VSE called on NASA to build no new launch vehicles but a CEV to be launched on a EELV.
The Orion was funded and will be launched on a Delta IV heavy.
The VSE called for prepositioned fuel or a fuel depot, President Obama is funding that research.
President Obama has not changed course from the basic tenants of the VSE other than moving Luna from a first stop, but still available for future missions.
Personally, I believe by 2020, when commercial crew and commercial space facilities in LEO are online and fully operational, the jump to luna is going to be cheaper by a factor of ten and NASA will just by commercial rides.
Here is the text of the Vision for Space Exploration.
http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/555…
==============================
‘The VSE called on NASA to build no new launch vehicles…..’
Absolutely False.
VSE
said that it will *DEVELOP* new launch vehicle capabilities when NASA
needs are not met. Notice the double negative in the sentence from the
VSE:
———–
VSE ===> “NASA does not plan to develop new
launch vehicle capabilities except where critical NASA needs—such as
heavy lift—are not met by commercial or military systems.”
Black zones, docking risk, etc, all created the “critical NASA needs” in ESAS and Constellation was created.
============================
‘The VSE called for prepositioned fuel or a fuel depot”
Absolutely False. VSE said to ‘invest’ or rather study and test
technologies starting this decade and into next. *Never* part of the HLV, shuttle derived, architecture.
———–
VSE ====> “NASA plans to invest in a number of new approaches to
exploration, such as robotic networks, modular systems, pre-positioned
propellants, advanced power and propulsion, and in-space assembly, that
could enable these kinds of vehicles….starting this decade and into the next.”
============================
“President Obama’s space policy was already laid out for him when he took office.”
Huh? Prop depots and EELVS?! In 2009 it was Constellation and HLVs, with Orion carried on Ares I.
Q: What happened to “the plan of depots and Orion on EELV”.
Q: So your ‘ESAS” ~ 2005 Congress voted for the unsustainable Constellation program
which was $3B to $4B more per year than the depot centric architecture,
already laid out by the VSE? Why did the ESAS Congress do this? Why did Bush not veto HLVs/Orion if depots and EELVs were the Plan from VSE?
“Leroy, stick to the plan!”
So what you are saying is … O’Keefe was planning on building two seperate rockets, one to launch the CEV and a heavy lift for cargo? When Griffin came in, he followed what O’Keefe had laid out, as per the VSE, and didn’t change anything, delete anything?
Griffin’s ESAS was a direct reflection of were O’Keefe was heading with NASA?
Gosh .. Now why wouldn’t a President, who wants off the books funding for two wars, want to fight against the vested corporate interests in the aerospace industry and fight against the ESAS? wow .. I don’t know why President Bush didn’t make this less than 1% of the budget a big priority and turn it into a big knock down drag out fight in his own party.
Not quite. Griffin followed nothing that O’keefe (existing EELVs) had laid out. The two new rockets were ESAS/Griffin.
To clarify:
O’keefe made the business choice of the cheaper approach: EELVs and the hardware elements for the missions, often referred to the spiral architecture. The CE&R studies examined using the existing fleet and what technology to develop. (google CE&R studies).
The problem was NO business for the HLV product lines and of course all the launch operations with shuttle derived.
—
VSE was written. See key phrases in above post. Some say it was biased to maximize IMLEO (hence launch hardware) and to maintain the SDHLV, not to explore sustainably. For example:
“NASA does not plan to develop new launch vehicle capabilities except where critical NASA needs—such as heavy lift—are not met by commercial or military systems.”
Why not state
“NASA will select the most sustainable architecture”
—
ESAS and Griffin:
Then Griffin conducted a 60 day study called ESAS. New LVs are now in the plans. During the ESAS study, smaller, existing launch vehicles were eliminated from further consideration with a blink of an eye. The two most important were black zones and docking risk. The spiral architecture was dead because it did not meet the “critical NASA needs”.
Shuttle Derived was back. While many wanted the hardware to be cheaper and help the Exploration program, it simply did not pan out.
ESAS had two top contenders: Ares I and Ares V, also coined the 1.5 launch architecture and “LV24/25”, which is similar to the SLS, two launch HLV launch architecture, although it keeps changing.
Constellation via Griffin and Ares I and Ares V resulted, and NASA needed 2-3 billion more/year to even try to implement the HLV architecture.
—-
Cash:
So even though the Constellation program was shuttle derived, KSC had the most layoffs.
All of the technology programs were gutted.
Years later, JSC realized that there was no money for hardware.
http://www.chron.com/opinio…
Yet today, NASA shall build 70 to 130 metric tonne LVs.
People are overlooking some key points
here.
First, Presidential campaign promises
don’t mean much in the face of the momentum of ongoing events.
The shuttle stand-down process was
already well underway before Obama was elected and the fact was well
known and much discussed. By the time Obama was inaugurated it would
have been prohibitively costly to resurrect the shuttle, even in a
good economy, which we did not have.
Equally, as shown by the Augustine
Commission Constellation was already ripe for cancellation, no matter
who won the White House; to paraphrase the report, it was simply not
affordable and would have broken the bank even without the recession.
Then there is the fact that while
Presidents propose, Congress disposes. Congress’s control of the
purse is the real decision maker, and that’s what’s given us the SLS
and Orion and which has shaved funding for commercial space three
years in a row.
When the time comes that SLS and Orion
are canceled, it will have been Congress who made the decisions and
wasted the money.
If you want a government program which
is serious about human space flight, you have to wise up and elect
Senators and Representatives who are serious and smarter than the
current bunch.
Until you do that, as a people, you can
whine all you want about this President or that candidate, and use
whoever is in the White House as a whipping boy. But the fault will
be the electorate’s for voting in Congressmen who know little and
care less about space, and everything about pleasing pressure
groups—some of which would rather burn spacecraft than fly them—and
raising campaign funds.
What the Obama administration has put forward with commercial space is a major progression from years past. NASA is in better shape for it. All of this talk about lies is nonsense. Congress makes the decisions that dictate NASA.
NASA’s budget is less than a percent of the over all budget. heck the department of agriculture dwarfs NASA’s budget. why in the world would Romney do anything on space policy that might have the possibility of moving a point or point in a half negative in the swing state of FL? what kind of jobs program is going to put shuttle workers back to work in droves other than shuttle?
As for Obama he campaigned on killing constellation in favor of school funding. he doesn’t care at all about space. reality check, his view of American success has nothing to do with space. it has to do with a “fair” distribution of resources. It’s actually kind of funny and yet telling, the things he thinks matter he wants to consolidate in government. the things he thinks don’t matter he’ll leave to the private sector. so long term your doctor visit will be a nasa like bureaucracy and space flight will move toward free enterprise.
bet on space if you stay healthy enough to avoid the doctors…
“As for Obama he campaigned on killing constellation in favor of school funding. “
A gross mischaracterization about that incident. He put out a position paper before the election that clearly was not campaigning on ending Constellation.
The way you make it sound … killing that pork train to no where that was sucking the life out of NASA was somehow a bad thing.
no the way i made it sound is that Obama wants to migrate grossly incompetent bureaucracy models to your doctor. since he doesn’t care about space he doesn’t care what the private sector does with it. and he truly does not care about space or any other American achievements that link back to the concept of American excellence. and no it was not a gross mis-characterization of the incident. he said it more than once. off handedly. like he was totally comfortable with such an obvious truth.
Some constructive questions:
What should Romney’s policy be?
What do you think Romney’s policy will be?
Do you Think Griffin is a good choice for Romney’s Adviser, and why(not)?
Who would YOU chose as adviser for Romney?