Is This A Preview of Hillary Clinton's Space Policy?
If elected, Hillary Clinton vows to ‘get to the bottom’ of the UFO mystery, Geekwire
“If we were visited someday I wouldn’t be surprised,” he said. “I just hope that it’s not like ‘Independence Day.'” When Hillary Clinton was asked about those comments and the prospects for getting a visit from extraterrestrials, she replied, “I think we may have been.[visited already]. We don’t know for sure.” Her campaign chairman, John Podesta, has long called for more disclosure about UFO cases, although he hasn’t said specifically what needs to be revealed. When he left his post as senior adviser to President Barack Obama, he tweeted that his “biggest failure of 2014” was his inability to secure the disclosure of UFO files. Today, Podesta noted Hillary Clinton’s reported comment that he made the candidate “personally pledge we are going to get the information out” about aliens and Area 51.”
Keith’s note: Great. The goofy UFO beliefs of long-time Clintonite John Podesta are apparently one of the cornerstones of Hillary Clinton’s new space policy.
If people start to misbehave in the comments for this Election 2016 post I will shut comments off for all election themed posts for the foreseeable future. I am not inclined to have to constantly police the comments section.
NASA is so much a political football (or ignored, on the other hand) that discussion is inevitable.
I’m not sure where your flinch point might be, Keith, so it would be good to have some guidelines first? Posters here are pretty well-behaved; regular posters have a good sense of the spots occupied on the political spectrum by other regulars.
Maybe discussions that compare candidates are OK, as well as back and forth discussing the facts and implications of a candidate’s positions?
On the other hand, ad hominem attacks, or name calling, or unfair characterizations, or unsupported claims, endless rants, or snarky tone surely not.
Hmm… snarky is my default state. Tough one.
Mine too. Something else we agree about it seems. The snark seems to be strong with Mr. Spencer as well.
These be snark-infested waters, mateys!
If she wants to boost funding for serious science related to exobiology and the search for extra-terrestrial life, including unmanned probes to potential abodes of such life in our solar system – i.e. Europa; if she wants to boost funding for SETI; if she wants to invest in R&D on new propulsion systems that could enable near-term (i.e. within 100 years) interstellar flight to find extraterrestrial life, then I think that’s a good thing. But… if she lets pseudo science and crackpot beliefs creep into her space policy, and starts talking UFOs and visiting aliens, that suggests she is just as much of a fruitcake as Trump. I think it is perfectly legitimate to seek to answer the big questions – ‘are we alone?’ ‘where is everyone?’ and serious and scientific investigation into ETIs is worth doing. But keep the conspiracy theorists and nutters out of it.
The truth is out there.
Other candidates have talked about wanting more information on “UFOs”, then clammed up when elected. My rough guess (based on no information) is that they discover when elected that there are solid national security reasons for not disclosing the information. What those reasons are, I have no idea.
It’s because Area 51 is full of classified aircraft programs. There’s nothing to disclose.
Any comments on an idea I once heard, to the effect that the Air Force loves the whole space alien thing? Any reports of a new and unusual aircraft they are testing could easily be dismissed as nutty UFO stories. That would enhance security.
John Pedesta is a hero among the ‘We Want Disclosure’ crowd; just google the likes of Steven Greer (and be prepared for a sunburn).
I want to believe.
So I guess you didn’t realize that there are clearances higher than the President’s, right? And you didn’t know that some secrets are too sensitive to allow transitory politicians any access at all?
Now you do. You’re welcome.
Sure, Majestic 12 really does exist! They did make a TV programme about it – ‘Dark Skies’. Come on, seriously! Do you expect that any President of the United States does not have complete access? I know there are compartments above Top Secret, but the President would have access to all of these, and he/she would know if there were aliens at Area 51 – which there are not. After all – if we did have crashed alien spacecraft from Roswell, do you think we’d still be building the SLS? No, we’d have starships by now.
All one has to do is look at the night sky to realize we’re not alone. Mathematical, it’s impossible for us to be the only life out there. I’m not saying we’ve been visited by little grey men, but we’re not alone.
There is no mathematical way to demonstrate that extraterrestrial life must exit. I would be astounded beyond words if in fact we were alone, but nothing as far as we know compels life to exist.
It’s called the Drake equation.
“one trillion galaxies in the known universe and some 50 billion planets estimated to exist in the Milky Way alone and some 500,000,000 predicted to exist in a habitable zone.”
Kepler has discovered 1300+ planets by itself in 1/400th of our galaxy already.
A rough guess, there are 100 billion galaxies, with over 50 quintillion plants that can support life alone. If only a FACTION of that proves true, it’s impossible we’re the only life.
Let me be clear. As I said: “I would be astounded beyond words if in fact we were alone”, however, there is nothing that makes life inevitable mathematically. Incredibly likely, yes, absolutely guaranteed?, no.
I am just a stickler for precision.
In the Drake equation (and its various updates), in any factor is less than infinity, then life is not an absolute.
Just being pedantic.
Yes, but the key is what fraction?
As we learn more about other star systems we see the Earth is pretty unique. No giant planets in the inner Solar System. Most of the small objects in the inner Solar System appear to have been cleaned out by Jupiter before Saturn pulled it to its current orbit where it is a great comet magnet. The Moon serving to stabilize the Earth’s rotation like a drag chute, so the pole stays near the north and doesn’t wander as on Mars. A planet large enough to have a hot interior that creates a magnetic field that protects its atmosphere from the solar wind. A nice stable Sun. And let’s now forget the GRB that make put most of the inner parts of the Milky Way and other galaxies off limits to advance life forms.
All in all it has created a very long period of environmental stability for the Earth allowing life to move beyond bacteria to complex surface life forms, a very recent event in the Earth’s history. And then you have the emergence of recent conditions, the rapid climate changes of the ice age, that favored the emergence of intelligence by giving it a competitive advantage. Add in the discovery of fire that enable more nutritious food to support more advanced brains, Add to it the teaming of humans with dogs, which allowed us to get rid of our near competitors, hunt bigger game and make large populations possible by enabling an increase in the size of hunting areas and efficiency. Larger populations increased social interactions that likely are drivers of intelligence and language.
Some anthropologists also theorize our partnership with dogs simulated language and social development.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nov…
“Greger Larson: Without dog domestication, civilization just would not have been possible. “
All in all a pretty rare serious of events. I think the SETI folks really need to starting spending more time with paleontologists and paleo-anthropologists to see how recent discoveries so just how rare advanced intelligence is likely to be even if the planet’s surface is ideal for complex life forms.
So basically I expect bacteria life is common through out the galaxy and will likely be found elsewhere in the Solar System. And I wouldn’t be surprised to find complex life in the oceans of Europa, Ganymede and Enceladus. They likely had stable conditions long enough. Who knows we might even be lucky enough to find the intellectual equivalent of octopi on those worlds. But their very stability would fail to give intelligence a competitive advantage.
But I expect surface dwelling complex life is rare, very rare, and intelligent forms even rarer. That is probably the answer to Fermi’s Paradox.
Generally speaking, conclusions from sampling requires N to be a reasonable approximation of the population being studied.
In this case we have some data from Kepler’s focus on around 150,000 stars, all in the same direction. It’s not only an extremely small sample but the data hasn’t been completely analyzed.
On the other hand, uniformity at the largest scales is a fundamental feature of modern thinking about the nature of the universe.
Is Kepler’s sample large enough to draw any conclusions? Who knows? In many ways Kepler is barely a preliminary study, in the sense of fine-tuning a more serious study by identifying the outliers and characterizing the population.
The answer to the question- is the sample large enough- probably depends on one’s personal partiality to the question. I don’t think Kepler’s data is sufficient.
Agree with you 100%. I’m not implying by my comments on UFOs and Area 51 that I don’t believe in alien life or extraterrestrial intelligence. I just don’t see any incontrovertible evidence that they have visited Earth. I personally believe that there are millions of worlds with intelligent life spread across the Universe. The challenge is how to find that life in a scientific and sensible manner.
It’s misleading to say that compartmentalisation is “above Top Secret”. It isn’t. TS is the highest level of classification, compartmentalisation just limits access. Compartmentalisation restrictions like Codeword, Channel, NOFORN, EYESONLY, Five Eyes, etc, can be applied to any level of classification. So material can be “Secret//{codeword1}//{codeword2}//EYESONLY//NOFORN.” Or even “Confidential//{channel}}//NOFORN”.
Maybe we do. $3b/yr for a 1970’s era technology rocket? $30-40b/yr for a small single-engined fighter program? C’mon…
Your last point… its not clear what you are meaning (unless you are being facetious). How does $30-$40bn per year for the JSF (I presume that’s the one you are referring to), imply aliens at Area 51?
Pretty obviously, he’s suggesting that all that overpriced gadgetry amounts to accounting sleight of hand — that not even the government could REALLY mismanage money on such a grandiose scale, and that the funds are being discretely redirected toward starships.
If only it were so…
Dude. It’s a joke.
….These are not the UFOs you are looking for…….. These are not the UFO’s I”m looking for….
If aliens come here it’s not all aliens, it’s just teenage aliens borrowing Dad’s saucer to go slumming.
Or grad students working on a sociology degree?
I wonder how long the aliens had to tweet #JourneyToEarth before they finally got here.
I think what we see is the deplorable lack of background in science and technology in most (not all) government and business leaders. One can see Reagan’s astrology and creationism, H. Clinton’s Area 51 nonsense, and numerous other examples.
We The People are willing (and seem to embrace) anti-intellectualism in science matters that we would consider disqualifying in other areas of knowledge.
And we pay the heavy price for that.
I thought it was Nancy Reagan that was into astrology, not Ronald Reagan.
WASHINGTON, May 3— President Reagan and his wife, Nancy, are both deeply interested in astrology, the White House spokesman, Marlin Fitzwater, said today
I was worried about her technical knowledge when H. Clinton claimed she would need multiple mobile devices to handle multiple email accounts.
Jimmy Carter was likely the most technically and scientifically astute president of the 20th century. Many presidents during the 18th and 19th century were quite capable scientists and engineers.
Woodrow Wilson got a PhD in Political Science, and he was a professor at Bryn Mawr College and Wesleyan University, teaching Politics, from 1885 to 1890.
Also he is the only US president with a PhD.
Things I didn’t know until I looked them up just now
There were also a couple of JDs.
Herbert Hoover was a civil engineer.
Very true. Plus outside of his failure as a president, he was a spectacular success in coordinating European relief after WW1, which aligned with his Quakerism. (Nixon was also a Quaker but it didn’t seem to run too deep.)
I think that is very close to something I worry about. I agree with another post: Clinton’s remark seems like a convenient was to dodge a question without offending potential supporters without calling them idiots. But that means people who believe in crashed spaceships and dead aliens in Area 51 are an important, or at least non-trivial, fraction of the voters. That worries me.
As someone pointed out a few years ago, the main question voters are asked seems to be, “What is your favorite color?” The permitted answers are red, blue, and (in a few states) green. That doesn’t say much for the current level of debate in America.
By the way, am I the only person who finds it ironic that the “Reds” are now our conservative party?
Some see the rising cost of college and the requirement that the costs are shifted to the student as further proof that there is a movement to ‘dumb down’ America.
It’s too close to conspiracy-land for me. But the effect is stunning. In the same way that childless couples (like my wife and me) gladly pay school taxes because we all benefit from smarter citizens, colleges that shift costs to the general public will do nothing but help all of us by eliminating the crazy. At least part of them. And would put a huge dent in the creationism nonsense.
If you teach intro astronomy in colleges, you inevitably will find the most interested topic is aliens. That kind of interest is the main reason astrobiology and planetary science gets public support and gets funding. SETI, a big fishing expedition which yields effectively nothing, is the “scientific” experiment we have to deflect students interests to.
In the ideal world, political leaders should be well versed in science as well as everything else. In reality we live in a country most people believe virgins can produce babies, believing in UFO visits is actually more scientifically sophisticated than that.
I think – and I’ve been saying for some time – that whoever gets elected President this time, their space policy does not matter, period. Hillary Clinton can have whatever plans she likes. Trump or Rubio or whoever can have their plans none of it matters.
None of it matters because ever since Obama pushed for the cancelling Constellation and tried to turn Orion into ISS escape vehicle, Congress has taken control of this country’s space policy completely out of the executive branches hands.
It’s been what… every year including and since 2011, where the Obama Administration has submitted one set of budget requests for space spending, and Congress pretty much laughs in their face, asks why they’re wasting their time with that budgetary work of fiction they annually push, and then rights their own budget which funds things very differently from the President’s request?
That’s how the SLS got more funding above it’s requests every year, despite years of opponents saying “not enough funding in the future!” (currently, they pin their hopes on a new President… well good luck to you on that wish). That’s how Orion got funded and flew. That’s how the Europa mission got funded. Next year’s “Everybody wins” NASA budget is a monument to five years of Congress telling the executive branch “we really don’t care what you want to do”.
Is there any reason to think this will? I think not. Nobody elected is going anywhere. Nobody is running on a cuts platform. Democrats will not retake the House until at least 2020 redistricting and even if they retake the senate, political action on NASA has been largely bipartisan, against the Administration’s agenda. In short, the likely hood of a dramtic shift in direction is near zero in my opinion.
I think this is fantastic news. A President is just in office for 4 to 6 years. But people can serve on Congressional comittees for much longer. That’ll give NASA enduring political support.
We don’t need a flashy orator inspiring us to take the next great leap or some showy nonsense like that. We’re good on the inspiration stagecraft. Space – whatever we do, be it commercial or government, manned or unmanned – needs political protection lasting years so these long lead programs don’t lead to dead ends when we have a change of Presidential leadership with a different Agenda.
I really think we finally have that. I think Obama’s disastrous post-Constellation plans (basically a stealth shut-down of manned spaceflight) that were rejected pushed Congress to that. Hopefully it stays that way, for a good long while.
So Hillary Clinton or whoever else can chase non-existent UFOs at Area 51 or whatever. All they are required to do is grudgingly sign the budget that Congress writes for them after rejecting their NASA priorities.
The President makes a budget request, then it’s then up to Congress to allocate funding. This has been the US budget process since 1921. Congressional allocation of funding is usually different from the President’s requests, this is not a new thing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wi…
Oh yes. That is the process. I am well aware.
The practical reality however is that when it comes to NASA specifically, Obama hasn’t signed budget his entire tenure that had his Administration DNA on it.
Every year the exactly same scene plays out. First the Administration submits a request. The Congressional committees rolls their collective eyes at how their request is completely out of sync with how money was appropriated and plans approved the prior year. In recent years they’ve begun making comments to the extent of “really? we’re doing this again?”. Congress, mostly ignoring the President’s request, writes it’s own budget that barely throws the request so much as a bone. The Administration – namely John P Holdren and Charlie Bolden say some political about Congress is standing in the way of a new era of spaceflight, making the US dependent on the Russians… something of that nature. Congress passes the budget. The Administration signs it, grumbling in the process. And everyone gets ready for the sequel the following year. Charlie Bolden spends the year executing policy forced on him by Congress, over the President’s wishes. Congress, not trusting the Administration to actually do the things that have been written into law, demands regular updates. This is how we got SLS. This is how we got Orion. This is how we’re getting the Europa mission. This is how we’re getting a WFIRST that makes use of the NRO satellite. This is apparently now how we’re getting a habitation module now.
So really, President Clinton or President Cruz or President whoever can have all the priorities they like. There is nothing to indicate Congress is going to let go of the reins. And that’s a good thing. We don’t need inspiring, visionary people. We need political protection. It wasn’t Kennedy who got us to the moon. And it wasn’t Johnson, believer though he was, bogged down by Vietnam, Civil Rights and Counterculture. It was Senators and Congressmen who protected NASA across three administrations.
If we want to go anywhere on public money, be it in a SLS or a Falcon Heavy, that’s what we need. Political allies who will arrange for the money to be put in through the normal appropriations process and do it for years on end across some administrations. What we don’t need is some kind of ridiculous and dramatic acronym named bill (“M.A.R.S.”), won after some big public debate lead by a crusading visionary President over going to Mars. It’s absurd. Most people don’t care. Most people will never care. Gradually and discretely. That’s the way to go to Mars (or anywhere else). Not some mega-program that has the eyes of the world on it, but stealthily, so come sometime in the summer of 2037 lets say the American people hear/read on CNN “oh by the way, the Mars crew is lifting off next week, on that orbiting transit vehicle “Falcon III Heavys” have been building in orbit module by module for the past four years. The late 21st documentary of it, ideally, between 2005 and just before launch day should be the most boring political procedural in American history.
Congress has always done what you describe. Sometimes more funding is allocated to NASA than requested, sometimes less.
As examples:
FY 1999 President’s request: $13.5 billion, Congress enacted: $13.636 billion
FY 2000 President’s request: $13.6 billion, Congress enacted: $13.428 billion
FY 2001 President’s request: $14.0 billion, Congress enacted: $14.095 billion
FY 2002 President’s request: $14.5 billion, Congress enacted: $14.405 billion
FY 2003 President’s request: $15.0 billion, Congress enacted: $14.610 billion
FY 2004 President’s request: $15.5 billion, Congress enacted: $15.152 billion
And so on.
Obviously Congress isn’t going to let go of the reins. They are the ones in charge of the budget, and always have been!
Now you say that’s a good thing? Just a moment ago you were complaining about it!
Those numbers are a little misleading, though, because while the bottom line is true, the devil is in the details- or line items, the programs that congress funds or not.
That’s true. The total numbers don’t show how the numbers that make it up are shifted around. Tracking those down would be even more tedious than just finding the totals was, I suspect. The archival sites I had to dig around in to find the numbers for the President’s requests sometimes only showed the total.
Precisely. Here is an image showing what I mean.
I mean just look at SLS/Orion. 2015 Obam aasked for $2.78B. The house said “no, how about $3B while the Senate said “let’s do $3.25B”. The funal result? $3.25B.
Planetaryy Science is the same story.
The also underfunded COmmercial Spaceflight, as NASAWatch has well documented.
Now I don’t want to get into a discussion about the wisdom of that versus SLS. My point is that this budget, which has been the norm for the past five years, represents Congress being in the driving seat, rather than the Executive Branch. That SLS/Orion in particular got funded $500m over the request doesn’t represent consensus between branches… it represents a wholesale ignoring of what the Administration wants.
I mean let’s pretend for a minute that Hillary decides to push for SLS cancellation (putting aside she probably wouldn’t bother spending the political capital on something so dubious in the big scheme of things). What’s the likelihood of the exact same people who in 2014 threw on $500M for 2015, in 2018 to say “ya know, let’s zero this since we got a new President.” A snowball’s chance in hell maybe?
All that really shows is that there’s significant congressional interest in getting the SLS built, and perhaps even more interest in funding getting to the states building it. That’s not surprising. You should also notice that there’s multiple items that got less money than requested.
In fact, that’s what the confusing part of your comments is. You’re acting like this is shocking, unexpected, never happened before, which isn’t true, as I’ve shown. You also seem to be of a split mind on whether it’s a good thing or not.
Congress is and always has been in the driver’s seat for the budget. Allocating funds in the budget is part of the duties of congress as assigned in the constitution. The executive branch has never been in charge of the federal budget.
Remember that it was Congress, not the President that decided to create the N.A.C.A. (NASA) in the first place.
By your logic, Constellation was cancelled by Congress not the president. The 2005 Congress created Constellation and cast aside depot centric by the flawed ESAS study: must be less than two launches so HLV required (120mT/ 1 or 2). Constellation had to be cancelled (by congress 😉 ) because Ares I could not loft the capsule+LAS mass, another flawed design and no gap closed to save ‘NASA’. (See my posts).
Garver stated that SLS should not be built as the billions can be spent better on space missions and assets. Every cost, performance, and schedule study not biased by political, predetermined outcome up front assumptions states the same.
A *false* hope is that it maintains the ‘same’ way of the past four decades: a design that took 28 flights/yr to edge out Titan III (yea, the one with solids!) to break even. Its so sad.
Will the USG ever release all the data to show that some or all UFO sigtings can be explained by something else? That buying votes by funding failed programs and policies is called ‘success’ or ‘in the national interests’?
The Specifics of Constellation’s problems or SLS or the benefits of Falcon are not at issue here. Rather, the President’s ability – ANY President in my view – to exert influence over the NASA budget.
I mean I thought that this website of all websites people would be attuned to how this has gone down since 2011. Do we need to put the Administrations requests side by side with what Congress appropriated every year, since then, to drive the point home? Because what you’ll see is continuity in the Administration’s requests, which are never squared away with what Congress appropriated and authorized the prior year… not even remotely close in fact. And then there is continuity between what congress passes every year.
It’s like the Administration insists on “A” every year, no matter what, and Congress keeps passing “B”, and “A” isn’t even taking seriously, but keeps showing up.
Point is, there is no reason to think this is about to change. I don’t want to turn this into yet another SLS thing, but the fact is – and these things have happened – every year it’s opponents, specifically here, go on out about next year is really the year Congress kills it, and every year the program gets more money, and that goal post has been sliding back and back from “never flying” to “just the first 2018 mission” to “maybe one or two manned trips around the moon” to “One mission every two years before its canceled sometime next decade”.
There’s been some kind of very blatantly lack of appreciation of the political landscape of the NASA budget. If the Administration, which is anti-SLS and always has been,w as going to have a victory on that front, it’s had years to achieve one, but it hasn’t happened. Canceling the SLS would require political victories for that side. When can we expect some?
But the SLS is ultimately besides the point. We could talk it or commercial, or probes to Mars versus other places, or a focus on climate versus space science… unlike other parts of government where administration requests and the funded reality are more in sync, NASA has almost none of the administrations finger prints on it. So we really shouldn’t care what the candidates 2016 Space Policy positions are. Interesting maybe. But irrelevant. They won’t expend political capital on it. It’s not important enough to them. So they’ll whine, as the Obama Administration does, when Congress ultimately ignores them, and that’ll be the end of it. There is no evidence they’ll even be allowed in the car, much less in the drivers seat.
LOL…the veto threat plays an important part unless you have all the votes. As for space, most if not all of the space community have much higher expectations..if not please move on. Unfortunately, one must also be patient as it just takes a long time to turn the ship, and the first turn was Constellation cancellation…and the surprising yet to fully develop E’E’LV twist…
This feels like it’s drifting over too far into the political discussion that Keith has specifically asked that be avoided here. The way these subjects are couched in this thread invites a politically acrimonious discussion that is not welcome here. I, for one, would like to maintain the ability to have substantive discussions about policy vis a vis space on this site during this election cycle.
A lot have tried to make it left/riight-dem/rep it has never really been about that. It is about the fight between congress and the executive branch. It Started with Nixon who was going to try and rein in congressional funding for big government space programs.
The first real crack came with President Reagan. He got the Commercial Space Launch Act of 1984 passed and had the Space Act of 1958 amended to include:
“”(c) The Congress declares that the general welfare of the United States requires that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (as established by title II of this Act) seek and
encourage, to the maximum extent possible, the fullest commercial use of space” “
This lead to the EELV program and true commercial launch services. You no longer had to go through the government. People forget sometimes that the first commercial sats had to ride on government rockets.
The next member of the Executive branch that added another chink in the armor was President Clinton and the Commercial Space Act of 1998. This Act allowed for the creation of commercial cargo and crew.
The next executive President Bush did the Amended Commercial Space Launch Act of 2004 but more importantly he put to use what Clinton put in place and in Jan 2004 announced the Vision for Space Exploration which called for creation of both commercial cargo and crew and no new rockets.
This was a non starter for Congress and we soon had the Constellation program and two new rockets. But congress did fund the Commercial cargo. With the COTS – Part D funding (commercial crew) moved over to Ares I program.
In comes the next member to the executive branch. Again more trade offs and commercial crew gets slow walked funding to drag out SLS funding as long as possible before the end.
The Next Executive will see the splashing of the ISS in 2024 and a commercial station and the cancellation of SLS/Orion .. just my opinion.
The President presents a NON BINDING budget PROPOSAL. The Congress refused to provide funding for Constellation, THAT is the appropriation bill that was sent to the President for signing.
For the President to end a program they have to veto the funding for it. The President never had to veto funding for Constellation because congress never appropriated any funds.
President Obama didn’t want heavy lift. The Congress voted and appropriated funds for SLS. In order to kill it the President would have had to veto the spending bill. He didn’t so we have SLS
Exactly. Last paragraph put it perfectly.
And every year we have the same sequel act, where the Administration Budget Request lowballs SLS, and Congress ignores it and appropriates ever more money to SLS. They both exchange some political sniping over an issue most Americans know and care nothing about, and then the President signs the budget anyway.
There is zero reason to think this will change with a new President.
Actually Jonathan I believe it will. In three sectors, transportation, communications, and energy there is always the current favorite. The pork star if you will. Then a new one comes along and things slowly start changing as members in congress form up on which one brings home the most bacon. The favorites get the pork right up until .. they don’t.
I believe we are fast approaching that tipping point and we will start seeing the sharks circling (non space state members in the house and senate) when suddenly they will start supporting the commercial space contractors in their states. I do not believe SLS / Orion is going to survive another TWO TERMS of nothing. The first manned flight is 2023 and still moving to the right. Commercial space will have been flying for 6 YEARS by then and The Falcon Heavy for 6 years..
I think SLS Orion is going to be a pretty damn hard sell to NON space state members as they see the costs for commercial.
Reminds me of when Jimmy Carter said that he’d seen a UFO.
If you don’t know what it is, it’s a UFO by definition. Just because you’ve seen a UFO doesn’t mean you’ve see a “UFO” with bug-eyed Hollywood space aliens waving out the windows.
(The ones I’ve seen all looked like Carl Reiner for some reason, but that’s another story…)
True, it is amazing how conventional things look unconventional to folks who don’t what they are.
I recall one guy who kept telling me about the UFO’s he would see every week or so. I happened to be visiting one time when they appeared. I recognized them at once as a KC-130 refueling a HH53 in the MOA on the other side of the river. It does look strange at night if you don’t know what it is, especially at the end of the refueling when they break off in different directions the and KC-130 accelerates. But I often saw them in the early morning just at dawn (I worked graveyard shifts) and because I had watched them through binoculars knew what it was.
Important to note that he never claimed it was an extraterrestrial device. It was simply a UFO – unidentified flying object. https://en.wikipedia.org/wi…
Bear in mind, also, that we survived eight years of Ronald Reagan, when astrology was taken seriously in the White House.
Given their respective track records perhaps Mr. Obama would be well-advised to begin consulting horoscopes.
But in fact, the Reagan in the White House who took astrology seriously was Nancy, not Ronald. As with many long-married couples, President Reagan was inclined to let his wife indulge her eccentricities when it was harmless to do so. Mrs. Reagan’s astrological influence seemed to extend only to minor adjustments to the late president’s schedule. A number of astrologers now claim to have influenced policy during the Reagan years, but then they would, the road to success being famously paved with relentless self-promotion.
The origin of Mrs. Reagan’s interest in astrology was pretty obviously not her Republican politics but her early career as a movie actress. Hollywood used to be a lot more diverse, politically, but astrology seems always to have been a bi-partisan enthusiasm there. As Hollywood grew ever more leftish, the tendency of those in showbiz to subscribe to astrology and other unconventional beliefs seems, if anything, to have increased.
During her husband’s administration, Hillary Clinton claimed to have conversations with the shade of Eleanor Roosevelt. Some people seemed to be bothered by this at the time. I never took it seriously figuring it was just another of Hillary’s famously clumsy attempts to try looking like “just folks.” Frankly, the lizard queen in ‘V’ was more convincing.
Then there was Franklin Roosevelt’s tendency to formulate his mercurial economic and regulatory policies based on “magic numbers” and other numerological claptrap. But that is another story…
“WASHINGTON, May 3— President Reagan and his wife, Nancy, are both deeply interested in astrology, the White House spokesman, Marlin Fitzwater, said today”
duheagle wrote:
“Given their respective track records perhaps Mr. Obama would be well-advised to begin consulting horoscopes.“
Considering the stupendous disaster the Reagan/Bush administrations were (in the REAL world versus the GOP rose-tinted fairy tale version), they obviously consulted the wrong astrologers…
Keith, I recognize my partisan tone here, but if duheagle’s comments are left intact, fairness requires a response.
Hey Yale!
Yer propensity to present…you know, actual facts… is really irritating!
Naw… I just make stuff up.
Yes, you sometimes do. Regrettably, that simply makes you a typical exemplar of your political worldview. Too bad, because you exhibit no such tendency toward fabulation when addressing space-related matters. On these, you and I seem to be mostly in agreement.
And, pace Mr. Spencer, simply repeating Democratic Party catechism – the stupendous disaster the Reagan/Bush administrations were (in the REAL world – does not constitute “actual facts.”
Nor does the Fitzwater quote. I’m familiar with that particular news conference. It is obvious – except, apparently, to the politically-motivated tone deaf amongst us, that Mr. Fitzwater was being humorous there, with maybe a few high notes of gentle mockery and sarcasm. He also noted, for example, that he had carefully started the press conference at “10:33 and a half.”
In the real world, the 80’s under Reagan were pretty good. After a year or so of cleaning up after the Carter stagflation “malaise” the U.S. economy roared ahead. The three best boom economies in the post-WW2 U.S. were in the 60’s, the 80’s and the 90’s. The first two were launched under explicitly supply-side presidents (Kennedy and Reagan). The third was a happy confluence of the Internet going commercial and a Republican Congress that restrained a Democratic president from pursuing his natural inclinations to destroy the private sector.
By the time Bush 43 took office, the Internet bubble had popped and then there was 9-11. Even so, times were, on average, a lot better than they’ve been since Obama took office. We’ve been living through Great Depression 2.0 for the last seven years and for much the same reason as our forbears lived through the first one in the 30’s – a President with no understanding of wealth creation directing an administration of arrogant Ivy League technocrats all frothingly anxious to try out their pet interventions on the national economy.
To return to the ostensible subject of Keith’s post here, what makes Hillary Clinton scary is not her opinions about either UFO’s or even about channeling the dead – assuming you take any of her comments about either subject seriously, which I do not – but her apparent belief that being a businessperson, unless you are one of her campaign contributors, should be considered an indictable offense.
“Yes, you sometimes do.“
Saying it don’t make it so.
Put up or can it.
I did “put up.” You opined, without offering any evidence beyond your own strong distaste, that the Reagan and Bush administrations were “stupendous disaster[s].” I pointed out that the Reagan and Bush 43 administrations coincided with two of the best sustained economic growth surges in U.S. history.
You should perhaps consider sticking to commenting on space-related matters where you are nearly always on solid ground. Doing that, you make genuine contributions.
The shrewd analysis and incisive logic you bring to bear on space issues, regrettably, is nowhere to be found when political matters are at issue, just stereotypically juvenile lefty bile and ad hominem. You are obviously capable of far better than that. Please try to give your intellect at least equal time with your ductless glands when the topic next edges into political territory.
No, I provided no specifics (which would be outside of the thread), and you said – with zero justification that I MAKE STUFF UP! While Michael understood my joke, you were serious. You accuse me of LYING. You made a totally inappropriate comment. If I had chosen to detail Reagan’s long painful list of disasters, such as humiliating the Marines and our national honor, or paying ransom to Iran, or doubling the national debt, I would have.
So can it with the offensive ad hominem insults.
Doesn’t anyone remember Betty & Barney Hill and The Interrupted Journey? This isn’t Clinton’s space policy its good old fashioned New Hampshire space pandering – the same reason Spaceport USA is in the state with Roswell alien crash.
Robert Goddard’s experiments in New Mexico go back to 1930 when the U.S.weather bureau advised him it was the ideal site for his research when he got kicked out of Massachusetts, while rockets were flying out of White Missile Range in 1945. WSMR was created because folks from JPL flying to consult with Dr. Goddard notice how it would make an ideal place to test the Corporal Rocket they were developing.
Spaceport America was located were it was because of the work at WSMR and NASA’s White Sands Test Facility on the DC-X creating interest in building a spaceport. So UFO’s had nothing to do with it.
True, but I have to admire the Roswell chamber of commerce. They have turned the whole UFO thing into a brilliant business plan to get tourist money. Also, Goddard’s work in New Mexico was done just outside Roswell. That town was also the site of the Air Force balloon experiment crash which greatly contributed to the whole UFO business.
Are you actually denying the crash was real? Heck, I saw the autopsy show on Fox!
Good point about WSMR & White Sands Thomas but you’ve got to admit the Space Port looks like a landed flying saucer!
I actually have a personal reason to believe it was an Air Force balloon, not a spaceship. My father was the on-site head of the project. Look up Project Mogul on Wikipedia.
Dr. Charlie Moore was one the faculty of NM Tech when I went there. I recall him joking about how they scared everyone with the balloon. I was fortunate to see a large balloon launched from NMSU in the 1990’s and it is easy to see how folks mistook them for flying saucers.
Yep. Lots of good stuff on Fox.
Mermaids, mermaids
The real key is will Lori Graver join Hillary Clinton’s campaign again, and if she is elected, become the NASA Administrator. Given that anything else would be just campaign noise.
It goes to show especially if you are a NASA person to never never talk about UFOs. It will always be a non-starter and will be caught up in endless diatribes on social media. It will also be a huge distraction from debating space policies and budgets (SLS and Orion, SpaceX demonstrated landing first stage, congress demands habitat module, etc.).
Any politician discussing space policy will be trashed on the forums (i.e. Obama canceling Constellation, Gingrich proposing lunar outpost on end of his second POTUS administration, Shelby with his rocket, etc. etc. etc…). Meanwhile much of general public cannot tell the difference between fact and fiction (really, I was talking with someone about Mars, “didn’t we land men on Mars years ago?”).
Speaking of Roswell, a friend who grew up in Roswell said nobody talked about space aliens or flying saucers until years after he left that town. At the time, 1960s, he said everyone was aware of Holloman AFB as they would see lots of “pyrotechnics” in the distant at night which everyone see it as testing conventional military stuff, not space alien activities.
However in all fairness it appears that elements of the government during the Cold War saw an advantage in encouraging the public’s belief in UFO’s. The problem is that once a belief system is created it is hard to reverse it as it starts to build on itself creating a separate subculture that sees the world differently and it is that legacy we are seeing today in reports like this.
http://venturebeat.com/2014…
CIA takes blame for more than half of UFO sightings in late 1950s and 60s
I expect the same is likely true for many foreign sightings. If you are the
Russian government it is better if the peasants believe that the light in the sky are aliens from space than a Yankee recon plane they are you not able to shoot down. You aren’t expected to be able to handle aliens, but admitting another nation is able to overfly you at will is another matter, one that would erode confidence in your leaders.
The fact that many ranking military personal were board members of one of the early UFO groups, the National Investigations Committee On Aerial Phenomena (NICAP) being the poster child example, makes you wonder just how involved the government was in misleading many in the public to believe in little green men in flying saucers versus secret military projects.
“Russian government it is better if the peasants believe that the light in the sky are aliens from space”
Something like that did happen. Few years ago a documentary about a “UFO research group” was allowed to gather and publish data of various lights in the sky off in the horizon. It was a part of a cover when Soviets were doing various missile tests so they allowed these UFO believers to meet and write reports of UFO sightings. Reason is such “research institutes” will be dismissed as a bunch of nut jobs discredited by respectable institutions (that’s why you want to keep your distance from “In Search of Roswell Aliens” types). But wait, all of sudden that group was banned by the government. Oops, it turns out those published data tables are nice tables of launch and entry profiles. I was thinking it must have been fun while it lasted, probably some were pursuing graduate studies of extraterrestrial space technology.
Ah .. she was the 1st lady her President husband could have told her, I would think, if she was interested.
We have the capability, but not the political will, to build mega space based telescopes that could define land masses, oceans, algae blooms, industriaization of atmospheres et cetera. A species that is equal to us except they didn’t go through the dark ages will be looking at us and would be well aware we are here.
It appears that the basic DNA tool kit can travel through space on rocks.. Life is everywhere, in my opinion .. just how smart it gets before die off is the question.
Ahem. We already are on your planet. Let me first point you to a few items on the blog I use as a human. The first one is Vulcan Ambassador Chuck E-Mails. The second is The Penguins. In that one I am trying to warn your species about the most dangerous species on your planet — The Penguins, especially The Mutant Zombie Penguins.
In 2007 Lori Garver actually invited me to a Hillary Clinton public policy breakfast. Perhaps that is why Hillary Clinton is now bringing up extraterrestrials and Area 51.
This could finally settle whether or not we were flying a spaceplane from that facility in the 1990s. There was the AvLeak article about worker lawsuits over boron poisoning and a shut down program. I don’t really care about ayliums but am really interested in what the Air Force might have shelved that can be repurposed for civilian space.