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Another Trump Tweet Dips Big Aerospace Stocks

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
December 12, 2016
Filed under ,

Keith’s note: I wonder what will happen if/when Trump notices the cost overruns and delays for the SLS program and the contractors who build it?

NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.

30 responses to “Another Trump Tweet Dips Big Aerospace Stocks”

  1. Tom Mazowiesky says:
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    I don’t think it’s wrong to draw some attention to this issue. I think the oversight of many of these programs has been poor. I understand the need for an F-35, and as an engineer and software developer, I also understand that sometimes projects take more time than originally thought. However at some point the developer has to take responsibility and that shouldn’t be “we need X $billions” more to finish what we started.

    Tom Mazowiesky

    • Vladislaw says:
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      True, but, a President, governing by twitter, where a statement can cause a market to drop and start a cascade effect is .. insanity on a bun.

      • Tom Mazowiesky says:
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        But then we are back to where no one says anything about anything for fear of causing a problem. I think open discussion is helpful, shouldn’t our leaders say what they think?

        • fcrary says:
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          I’m all for open discussion, and I wish more elected officials would say what they thing. But, for me, “think” is the key word. Not instantly send out a initially reaction. Maybe if there was a one day delay between writing a tweet and posting it, or a waiting period on posting a response, I’d be in favor of a president using it. But that’s contrary to the whole point of Twitter.

          • Bill Housley says:
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            He was elected partly for his candor…saying things in public that too many people say in private. After he’s inaugurated though he will be the mouth piece of the nation and will need to either muzzle it or get used to the taste of his own foot.

            We know he has an agenda, and it’s starting to look like SLS is on his list of swamp things. Let’s watch and see how he is able to succeed where Obama failed. He has a Republican Congress, but maybe it won’t be”friendly”.

      • Bill Housley says:
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        Ronald Reagan did a lot of work by going to the people, so did Bill Clinton. They didn’t have Twitter though, and I’m pretty sure they usually tried to know what they were talking about too before shooting off their mouth.

        • fcrary says:
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          Except for the joke about the bombing starting in five minutes, when Reagan mistakenly thought the microphone was off. I respect people who can make quick, decisive decisions. But off the cuff remark at the wrong time are a different matter. I think Twitter encourages that.

          • Bill Housley says:
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            🙂 I’d forgotten about that. The difference is that one is a funny guy saying something unfunny unknowingly into an open mic…while the other is an unknowing, unfunny guy hitting send on purpose and thinking he’s funny.

            We will have fun watching him try and reign in Congressional pork like SLS using Twitter. It might even work…and wouldn’t that be a hoot.

      • ThomasLMatula says:
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        It’s really no different that making a comment to reporters, except with Twitter folks get it direct and instantaneous.

        But the real problem is not the statement, but oversensitive day traders and HFT programs looking for any advantage that have made markets so volatile. A quick and simple way for the exchanges to solve the problem would be to require stock must be held a minimum of 30 days. But since they make their money on the volume of trade its not going to happen.

        • Vladislaw says:
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          “But the real problem is not the statement, but oversensitive day traders and HFT programs looking for any advantage that have made markets so volatile.”

          So KNOWING this .. Presidents do not make the casual remarks because of this fact.

        • fcrary says:
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          When a president speaks to reporters, he isn’t limited to 140 characters per interview. Twitter is a medium which requires extreme brevity and encourages abbreviations and poor grammar. All that makes tweets ambiguous and subject to misunderstanding. The press tendency towards sound bites was bad enough, but national policy really shouldn’t be limited to ideas which and be expressed in 140 characters.

          The quickness of the medium is also a concern. The ability to reply instantly means people often _will_ reply instantly. On impulse and without thinking things through. That’s a very bad way to run a nation.

          • Michael Spencer says:
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            I’ve been wondering about that. Is it really a bad way to run the country, or simply irresponsibility?

            It’s not the medium. It’s the message, as they used to say. I wonder if our Founding Fathers wouldn’t heartily approve of technologies allowing us to communicate more directly.

          • Paul451 says:
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            Oh god, Hamilton with twitter…

          • Michael Spencer says:
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            Would have been entertaining as hell.

        • Michael Spencer says:
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          “It’s really no different that making a comment to reporters, except with Twitter folks get it direct and instantaneous.”

          Seriously? Perhaps you can equate Twitter and comments to reporters, perhaps not. I find it useful to ask what Mr. Obama or indeed Mr. Bush or especially HW Bush would have done in a similar situation.

          Neither would pull a six-gun and start shooting, no matter them media. It’s called responsible behavior by actual grownups, and the fact that accountability is out the window is a direct result of five decades’ deprecation of respect for the government.

  2. Bill Housley says:
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    Obama doesn’t like SLS either…yet there it sits. If he could kill it he would have. Trump can Tweet all he wants. All it’ll do is give some folks some buy opportunities because those companies aren’t going away, and neither will those contracts any time soon.

    I’m wondering if he’s giving some of his friends prior…no, he wouldn’t do that.

    • ThomasLMatula says:
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      Yes, that is the curse of NASA, it’s faith is in the hands of Congress Critters seeking to maximize pork to their districts, and the top management of NASA and its traditional contractors know this and uses it to their benefit. This is the nastiest part of the Washington swamp that will have to be drained…

    • Ben Russell-Gough says:
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      IMO, what makes SLS bulletproof is the lack of an answer to ‘if not this, what?’ Most space advocates will tell you that this is a false dilemma and that, technically, there doesn’t need to be a government heavy lifter. However, politically, things are different and there needs (for needs of perception if nothing else) a ‘flagship’ NASA spacecraft and launch vehicle.

      Once again, IMO, SLS is too far along to replace it in this flag-waving role without tremendous schedule slip, so it might as well just be left running. The only justification for cancellation will be if the Transition Team reports that it is too far behind, too bogged down in technical problems and is not executable in real terms. In that scenario, I’d call ULA, SpaceX and Blue Origin’s people into the Oval Office, tell them that one of them is going to have the new NASA flagship launcher built in their factories and they have one presidential term to have it ready to go into production. No slips, no excuses. If they can’t make it fly without blowing up or build it at a reasonable cost, they can retool to make toaster ovens.

      • Bill Housley says:
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        Yes. Also, that flagship development project is a test program for Commercial Crew. I’ve said that in here before and folks have doubted, but the Spin-off 2017 list that came out last week has a couple of items which start to confirm this.
        Commercial Crew has been viewed by Congress, space advocates, SpaceX employees and even the President as in competition with SLS/Orion. Trump said something that sounds like he thinks SLS is redundant. However, NASA does not behave toward those contractors like a competitor, but a partner. This because every step that program takes feeds the database that CCDev engineering teams get to see. When Congresspersons mention their little pipe-dream of Orion servicing the ISS, Bolten gives that condescending little chuckle of his and says that’s not what it’s for.
        If/when someone (SpaceX?) seems to beat NASA at putting boots on Mars, it’ll have plenty of SLS/Orion tech on board.

        • Daniel Woodard says:
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          It’s not clear to me what that tech would be. Most of the SLS and Orion is very specific to the individual vehicles.

          • Bill Housley says:
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            One example…

            https://spinoff.nasa.gov/Sp

          • Paul451 says:
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            “This was an innovation Sandia National Laboratories came up with in 2001 while working with NASA on prototypes for the X-38 crew return vehicle”

            Spinning it as if the Orion work fed in to Dragon is purely PR guff. The 2014 Orion drop test can hardly be said to have contributed to the Dragon capsule which was flying by 2010 and operating commercially by 2012.

          • Bill Housley says:
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            Supersonic retro-propulsion is being developed and tested by SpaceX. It’s of value to NASA for use with their different vehicle designs. Design differences can be mostly modeled out once the tech is understood.

          • Paul451 says:
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            developed and tested by SpaceX. It’s of value to NASA

            And that’s the opposite of what you said.

          • Bill Housley says:
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            My point was that technologies are design unspecific and still of value even if they are tested with a different vehicle. It works both ways.

  3. Daniel Woodard says:
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    Like NASA, the F-35 program is largely under congressional control. Trump did not say he would cancel it, and it is not clear he can unless Congress decides to oppose it, which seems unlikely given the lobbying capabilities of the contractors.

    Within the DOD there is a range of opinion, some believe that the program is of critical importance while others believe it is a failure and not worth the cost. As in the space program people hold to their views and there is little or no opportunity for meaningful discussion and rational decision-making.

    My opinion (FWIW) is that the era of manned combat aircraft is rapidly coming to an end. The F-35 is for all practical purposes a drone that (at great cost) carries its operator along with it.

    • Bill Housley says:
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      Un-manned is coming up slower than you think. There has to be a step in between. Our allies and others in the world have advanced their fighter tech now to the point where we will loose lives if there is a conflict tomarrow. We still can achieve air-superiority, but air-supremacy is in doubt. Every new generation of fighter is more expensive than the one before, that just happens. I don’t know much about the F-35 program specifically, I’ve been busy, but from what I have seen it seems to be needed, and in greater quantities than current orders, to replace designs that have been upgraded as far as they can go.

      • Daniel Woodard says:
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        Air superiority is not an end in itself. The purpose of air superiority is to intercept enemy attack missions and ensure our own attack missions can hit their targets and return. However USAF is retiring what is arguably its most effective attack platform, the A-10, partly to pay for the F-35.

        Moreover with both interception and attack shifting toward unmanned systems, the role and cost effectiveness of piloted fighter aircraft is no longer clear. The Predator, Reaper and Global Hawk all have flight endurance of 24 hours or more, far beyond the capability of manned systems. Unmanned attack platforms like the MQ-9 essentially never face manned interceptors and therefore there is limited need for air superiority.

        Ironically it is the infantry that has the really complex tasks that cannot be accomplished by robots.

        • Bill Housley says:
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          At the risk of going too far off topic…

          I agree with you about the A10. They are also trying to shoe-horn the F-35 into the A10’s mission envelope as part of what you just said. I don’t understand the logic there.
          On the other hand, modern tactical fighters and ground-based AA missiles have become so deadly that our tactical fighters need to secure the airspace over the theater before the A10 can function.

  4. Ben Russell-Gough says:
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    Donald Trump, having a background in commerce rather than government, has the instinct that, if a vendor cannot deliver on time, on budget and at a reasonable assurance of quality, he will find someone else. At one time this was essentially the way public contracting went too but it hasn’t for decades. It will be interesting to see if Big Aerospace can adapt to returning to that discipline.