Partisan Food Fight Erupts Over NASA, Commercial Space 164
RocketAcademy writes "Until recently, space policy has been a non-partisan issue. Even when politicians disagreed on space-policy issues, that disagreement rarely aligned with party lines. That has changed in the last few years. Now, one organization is throwing fuel on the political fire. The Space Frontier Foundation has called Republicans the Party of Big Government Space. SFF is upset about the GOP platform, which lacks specifics about space policy. According to the SFF, the GOP 'has nothing but hackneyed praise for NASA, and doesn't even mention the increasing role of the private sector.' The Obama campaign quickly echoed the statement. But NASA Watch points out that the Democratic platform is even less specific than the GOP's. Others express concerns that partisanship harms space policy."
DNC Versus Obama (Score:2, Informative)
But NASA Watch points out that the Democratic platform is even less specific than the GOP's.
Yeah, that blogger appears to be right about the DNC. But Obama's got specifics with a track record [barackobama.com]. What scares me is that Romney says he'll privatize as much as possible. He's quoted as saying [cnn.com]:
“I think fundamentally there are some people—and most of them are Democrats, but not all—who really believe that the government knows how to do things better than the private sector And they happen to be wrong.”
He promises to cut non-defense spending and NASA is a non-defense expense that politicians are pushing hard to privatize.
Re:Partisanship hurts everything. (Score:1, Informative)
Apparently you didn't even read your own fucking source fucktard. It is because of the party of "No" as to why congress isn't doing anything. Typical retardican piece of shit.
Government Space Policy is meaningless... (Score:4, Informative)
until someone both
(a) invents a new and *highly* efficient engine that's both high-thrust and high specific impulse and
(b) and small, high-wattage, long-lasting energy source that doesn't need tons of shielding.
Until then, humans are going no further than the Moon, and even then just for short term National Pride visits.
Re:Partisanship hurts everything. (Score:0, Informative)
Apparently you didn't even read your own fucking source fucktard. It is because of the party of "No" as to why congress isn't doing anything. Typical retardican piece of shit.
This isn't partisan at all.
Re:Partisanship is GREAT for space policy (Score:5, Informative)
The previous administration (aka NASA under Mike Griffin in the Bush Administration) proposed a program so horrible that an independent and non-partisan group of industry experts [wikipedia.org] recommended strongly that those programs be immediately terminated. On top of that, they proposed realistic alternatives and laid out the possible directions for future spaceflight initiatives that NASA could consider.
The amazing thing here was that Obama actually listened to that independent commission. If you haven't read that report and still perpetuate the notion that shutting down those programs was a bad thing, at least try to intelligently refute these people who have presented some pretty strong arguments for the current direction of spaceflight in America.
I don't agree with almost any other program that Obama has done and I think he is incompetent as President along with a general dislike of the guy's policies or even governing philosophies. Still, of all of the things he has accomplished, one of the best was to appoint Charles Bolden as head of NASA and to support the adoption of many recommendations from this commission.
My largest gripe against Obama and space policy is that I see his commitment to that policy to be dead last in the USA. Charles Bolden was nearly the last (or may have even been the very last one) of the major departments or agencies to have a director/administrator appointed as its head. I haven't seen Obama really care much about space policy, but he also isn't hurting in this area of expertise either.