Deciphering The Core Space Message From Mike Pence
Remarks by the Vice President at Kennedy Space Center (with video), White House
“And I bring greetings from the man who is going to make that happen, his admiration for all of you gathered here and for America’s storied history in space is boundless; and he is committed each and every day to American leadership at home, around the world, and in the boundless expanse of space, the 45th President of the United States of America, President Donald Trump. (Applause.)”
Keith’s note: Just doing a simple word count shows that “America” appears 68 times. “Will” = 54. “Lead” = 33. “Space” = 73. “President” = 40 “(applause)” = 23. And so on. The speech was clearly designed to say that America will lead in space due to the President leading (applause).
And I thought NASA NPR 7120.5E was devoid of specifics and useful content.
Too bad the most common words are not ones that provide guidance, motivation, inspiration, proof of financial support, result orientation or identifiable goals or plans. Thus, SNAFU. Nothing is going to change. Their egos are being bolstered as usual.
How many times did the phrase “unfunded mandate” appear?
I was thinking the same thing. “Oh good, another unfunded mandate with vague goals and a lot of rhetoric.” Just increasing the always-large ratio of space-promotion to actual missions and funding.
Looks like the space advocates will have to wait until the NSC is organized and has their first meetings to see what the future is.
I just looked up the membership of the reestablished National Space Council. They are all very senior officials (e.g. Secretaries of State, Defense, etc.) who probably have lots of other things to worry about. As far as I know, and with the arguable exception of the NASA Administrator, none of them have any real space policy qualifications.
That’s not uncommon and it isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It just means they all have some deputy or another who will do the real space policy and NSC work. But it does mean the real opinions which matter are those deputies working in the background. I wonder who they are.
More useless gibberish from Team 45
“We won the race a half-century ago, and now we will get back to wining in the 21st century and beyond.”
I assume he meant winning rather than wining. Nevertheless this speech is devoid of any commitment, either by the government or the nation, of the resources that would actually be needed. In contrast JFK insisted that Congress approve tax dollars that peaked at 4% of the federal budget. Pence’s speech is also devoid of any defined goals, other than putting “American boots on Mars.” I suggest a simple way to accomplish this. When Mars 2020 lands, a door will open, and two American boots will be ejected onto the surface.
“JFK insisted that Congress approve tax dollars”
there was other stuff going on in JFK admininstration but that’s another story. US had much stronger industrial base plus the most smartest rocket engineers from Germany, lots of talented Canadian engineers laid off from Avro, zillions of engineers educated from the GI Bill, and space was the new thing.
These days it’s all about cutting budgets except military and cutting taxes so everyone argues over scraps (what we do on NASAwatch). But we still dream about reliving those JFK years when NASA had endless supplies of money and rockets were being produced faster than SpaceX (think of Atlas assembly lines at Convair). Actually I was surprised by an article from Dennis Wingo of what was spent on launch vehicles or ICBMs in the days. i.e. Titan costs about $40B in 1960 dollars. But also there were lots more people employed including those that make things like washers and resistors and office furniture for the paper pushers.
“When Mars 2020 lands, a door will open, and two American boots will be ejected onto the surface”
Be careful, someone might actually specify this for next Mars rover!
JKF’s speech was devoid of any goals except “landing a man on the moon”.
The subsequent funding and support didn’t come from his Grand Vision, because landing on the moon in itself was not the real goal. The actual underlying goal was to show up the Russians; to build a booster larger than the Russians were capable of, and to achieve a goal (any goal) in space that was beyond their ability. Hence ending the space race by showing that if Russia tried to use space achievements to embarrass the US, the US could and would utterly humiliate them. Once that goal was achieved, the Russians immediately backed off from any further chest-thumping in space, and the US lost any reason for HSF (except the sheer political inertia of NASA’s existence.)
Today, when we have politicians (or space advocates) trying to recapture the imaginary enthusiasm of the JFK era, the two Bushes “returning to the Moon”, or Pence putting “American boots on the face of Mars”, they think they need to replicate the Grand Vision of Kennedy’s moon challenge in order to replicate the result.
But unlike Kennedy’s era, there’s no underlying need for HSF; none of those politicians know why America has to go to the moon, or to Mars. And hence every Grand Vision fizzles into yet another expensive waste.
Definite emphasis on the word “imaginary” in “imaginary enthusiasm of the JFK Era”. Even aside from JFK’s more strategic, narrow focus, it was a little sad to find out that public support for the space race was always pretty tepid when polled.
They’d probably have more success if they’d approached it the way NASA and its supporters did in the 1960s. Keep the program alive with strategically located centers, contracts, and spending so it has a congressional power base. Same thing keeps SLS alive today – maybe it could be turned towards something more useful.
I think he is talking about human space flight. Russia is #1 in HSF. We do not have anything flying. We can be #1 again if the money keeps flowing and he can take credit for that. H e should keep pointing out our HSF failures. It is the politicians fault. They could have provided funds for a HSF system 10 years ago. Instead they let the Russians do it. SpaceX at that time said Dragon would carry crew. The politicians could have passed a law and sent NASA funds to hire SpaceX to do the work needed. Nothing we could do about it except complain. No reason to get upset with Pence when Pence points out we are a failure ,now, in HSF. Since we are.
Does anybody know why VP Pence came to KSC?
Along with two US Senators and various hangers-on? Was it to announce the Space Council, or what? Still scratching my head.
To make America great again, and to take credit for whatever Musk and Bezos were going to do anyway.
You Sir are a cynic 🙂
And you are correct.