Bringing Beauty And Glamour Back To NASA For Centuries To Come
Remarks by President Trump Commemorating the 50th Anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon Landing
“THE PRESIDENT: And we opened up our fields. When we took it over, they were all covered with grass, and they were broken and they were in bad shape. And NASA — if you look at Kennedy, if you look down in Florida, you look — wherever you want to look, it was not a pretty picture. They were almost, you could say, abandoned, and now they’re in tip-top shape.”
“THE PRESIDENT: And, you know, one of the things: We’re bringing the glamour back to it because it lost the glamour. It lost everything. If you would have seen these fields when we took over — really, you started about a year, year and a half ago. When we took over, it was unbelievable. It looked like an abandoned town. And now there’s beauty. There’s beauty, and there’s a lot of things happening. A lot of really great things are happening. So we’re very proud of that.”
Presidential Message on Space Exploration Day, 2019
“To honor those who have come before us and for the future betterment of all humankind, we pledge to launch a new era of exploration, extending our pioneering spirit into the farthest reaches of the cosmos. My Administration is committed to reestablishing our Nation’s dominance and leadership in space for centuries to come.”
“We’re bringing the glamour back to it…” Glamour. Wonderful. So much for Mr. Hickam’s point about needing blue collar workers in space rather than astronauts.
I’ve clearly not done a good job of enunciating and explaining my “blue collars in space” views to Washington, DC and the powers that be that reside there. I shall increase my efforts.
I appreciate your efforts and wish you the best of luck. But I’m afraid politicians like superstars and heros. They generate more attention and votes than people doing more useful work. How often do ordinary highway workers get invited to the White House? Even though we need people who keep bridges from falling down at least as much as a soccer striker who helps win the World Cup.
Glamour is not necessarily about people, it could also be about hardware. For example SpaceX paid a lot of attention to their Crew Dragon interior and spacesuit aesthetics, their remodeling of 39A FSS and Crew Access Arm is a thing of beauty, straight out of 2001 Space Odyssey.
Basically, let’s make space cool again.
You can make space cool by actually doing something in space. Glamour isn’t required. Personally, I think the engineering space on the _Nostromo_ is what a spaceship should look like.
Even on historic days like these, trump needs to lie about his accomplishments. KSC was not abandoned or anything like that – there was no abandoned town. A number of the historic launch pads are and have been in use – SpaceX is using them and we will soon launch Boeing Starliner on an Atlas. We are getting ready for SLS.
It’s terrible that Americans will spend even a minute pointing out the falsehoods in these statements, they distract us from the work at hand.
This diminishes my opinion of Buzz Aldrin and Mike Collins – that they would stand and smile and give some credence to falsehoods like this. They know better but said nothing.
“This diminishes my opinion of Buzz Aldrin and Mike Collins…” Me too.
I do admire the original astronauts for being astronauts, but where in the hell were these guys since 1972? As far as I can see they were basking in their glory while space flight beyond low earth orbit was completely shut off to my generation.
Now when we finally try to go beyond imaginary power point demonstrations for the distant future that will never be funded (same path we have been on since early 70s thanks to democrats, republicans, cowardly NASA administrators, and
silent astronauts) suddenly there is a problem.
To be a hero requires more than being brave for a short period of time. We could have used some heroes to say NASA was going in the wrong direction, but Keith did that better than the original astronauts.
Although Neil Armstrong and Michael Collins may have stayed out of space policy Buzz Aldrin has been very active as a space advocate since his retirement from the USAF. In that time he developed the concept of the Cycler, had a rocket company called Starbooster that push aggressively for funding for reusable launch vehicles, advocated for space tourism (it was Buzz Aldrin who inspired Sir Richard Branson to create Virgin Galactic) and has repeatedly hammered Administration after Administration to go beyond LEO. He was an early adviser to the National Space Society and help found the first Master’s of Space Studies at the University of North Dakota. He also was a frequent speaker at the International Space University. Dr. Aldrin has also served on Presidential Space Commissions and testified before Congressional Committees. And let’s not forget the many books, including two science fiction novels, and space books for kids, he has published.
Where have you been the last forty years?
When interviewed and honored by big media outlets and presidents, Aldrin kept quiet. This does not qualify for “repeatedly hammered Administration after Administration.” His efforts might qualify for gently dropping some hints, but much more was required. We landed on the moon shortly after I graduated from 10th grade. I am now 66 years old. Humans have not been out of low earth orbit since 1973 because a lot of people acted as Lucy with the football which Keith Cowing just illustrated.
I don’t recall Dr. Aldrin keeping quiet. Actually, that’s hard for me to imagine. He was, for example, pushing the Mars cycler idea quite vigorously. But except for people like the Mars Underground or the National Space Society, he didn’t get much attention. What I did not see where big media outlets or presidents interviewing him about it. From the beginning, he’s always been treated as a bit of an outsider and his advice hasn’t been frequently solicited.
Even during the Gemini program, many astronauts from the first two groups didn’t like someone who was not a test pilot and with a doctorate telling them how to fly spacecraft (even if his thesis was on spacecraft rendezvous techniques.) Since Apollo, NASA hasn’t exactly been open to advice from outsiders, when it comes to major programs. Worse, he does have a habit of jumping in, telling people they’re wrong, hijacking meetings with his own agenda, and rubbing people the wrong way.
As an engineer he does like to get to the heart of the problem. Folks forget that as a early scuba diver he also introduced the idea of training underwater for space walks. That is why his space walk on Gemini that the first one that accomplished all tasks without getting very fatigued as astronauts did on early flights. But space has been his passion since he was a kid.
Maybe you need to read Buzz Aldrin’s testimony from Congressional Hearings, review the work he did on President Commissions and find some YouTube recordings of his talks at space conferences. He has been anything but silent. He didn’t speak up during photo ops with other Presidents because quite honestly they weren’t interested in anything but photos.
The lack of imagination has been mainly on the part of NASA in terms of HSF. First twenty years trying to figure out what to do with a Space Shuttle before using it to build the ISS, then 20 years trying to figure out what to do with the ISS. NASA bureaucrats stubbornly hanging to outdated ideas just like they are doing now to the Gateway are a key element of the problem. Bureaucratic inertia is the term for it. Folks blame Congress, but all the Congress Critters want is jobs in their Districts, they don’t really care what those workers are doing as long as their employment is secured. But NASA bureaucrats are too scared to rock the boat to offer any radical new directions which is why it’s firms like SpaceX that are not only rocking the boat but getting ready to tip it over.
If you dig into the old Congressional testimony on the Space Shuttle from the 1970’s you will find it was only suppose to fly until the late 1980’s when an improved second generation Shuttle would replace it. Same with the ISS which was supposed to have been scrapped in 2015. NASA wouldn’t let go of the Shuttle until it was clear it was too dangerous to keep flying it. It will be the same with the ISS.
In a certain, myopic sense, I can see Mr. Trump’s point. When they stopped flying the Shuttles, the tourist industry along the Space Coast took a big hit. I don’t think it’s recovered, although a local should correct me if I’m mistaken. For someone whose career has largely been about real estate and hotel development, what do you expect Mr. Trump to notice? Empty hotels or busy machine shops? And it’s not as if he’s the only politician who exaggerates to an almost surreal extent.
I went back in 2013 on Holiday to Titusville , I don’t drive and people we where with did not want to drive in the USA so we only went to KSC via taxi and the astronaut hall of fame . we got a VIP tour of the space centre thanks to my late friend Dick Gordon.
whilst in the VAB talking to people they were very worried about the future Obama had canceled constellation , the visitor centre had lots of constellation things on display but 1000s of space workers where lousing there jobs .
We went back in 2016 this time we had a car so we could go to lots of places this was the first time I had been to Titusville since 1998 and it was full of for sale signs and thrift shops and worce the shoping mall was a pile of rubble. we went back in 2018 and again this year and what a difference in the place new shops opening up commercial space companies and SLS on the Horizon and a President and VP and a NASA administrator all pushing to return to the moon by 2024.
You have to work a lot harder than that – it is very clear from reading the transcript what trump meant. He meant that KSC and CC AFS were essentially abandoned – this is a lie. He mentioned that SpaceX was launching from there so he knows that it was not abandoned, that they had projects and work and great people trying their best. People that try hard to twist facts to make trump’s statements less odious are dishonest.
And the Artemis program is a prescription for wasting money and putting lives at risk for no reason at all. NASA had Apollo 7, 8, 9, and 10 before Apollo 11 and unmanned tests as well. Artemis is supposed to have three flights – only two with people – and that third one will land on the Moon. So we are being asked to pony up many billions so we can land very minimally tested hardware on the Lunar surface.
Why do we only have time for three flights? Because the schedule was moved up from 2028 to 2024 – for some phony “race”. Really they want to risk lives and spend billions to hold a Pence campaign rally on the Moon.
Dragon 2 and CST-100 Starliner will be carrying people on their second orbital flight. And I don’t think the 2024 date for landing on the Moon significantly reduced the planned number of SLS/Orion launches. That was already being reduced by plans to send Gateway elements on commercial launch vehicles rather than SLS. The 2024 date compressed the schedule, but I don’t believe it dropped test flights. In the case of Apollo, they were virtually starting from scratch and needed all those test flights to learn things we now take for granted.
We need a forum that would allow us all to meet face-to-face, show our bonafides, and lay this all out.
Dragon 2 and Starliner will be staying close to the surface and conducting very modest flight tests. We also have considerable experience with the Dragon capsules now. If there were problems ISS could provide a refuge while solutions were considered if need be.
And the Orion plans show just how rushed NASA is now – there were quite a few plans for flights to various destinations, none of which apply to the current plan. So NASA is really inventing the Artemis program from scratch. EFT-1 was sort of the first Orion test, it had a partial capsule and flew two orbits – no where near the Moon – and not with SLS. It is generous to consider that a half of a test.
NASA had some plans – four SLS/Orion flights but those probably would have finally gone only to Gateway. That would have greatly reduced complication, training time, use of still undesigned elements like landers, etc etc. These would have provided more time between flights to look at data, fix things, retest.
Now Art 1 would go around the Moon in mid-2021 but without people. Art 2 would probably stay in low Earth orbit with people – hopefully they could test Lunar landers on that as well. Art 3 would very quickly follow with a landing on the Moon. So each mission with people would have lots and lots of new things that had to work the first time, would have little time to implement fixes, would have many many tasks to train and simulate.
Artemis would be under tight schedule pressure every day (how has that worked out for us?) and if we had anything that caused concern NASA would be under pressure to prove that it was a problem. Sort of like the way that loss of foam was treated.
You are unfamiliar not only with Trump’s real actions -or lack of – but also of those of NASA since 1973. All presidents since then of both parties have spread the lie that we are about to get serious about human space exploration, but we have not had humans out of LEO for almost half a century now.
Believe it if you want to.
All you can do is shake your head.