Comments on: Presidential Space Speeches

By: Brian Dunbar

Brian Dunbar — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 18:27:27 +0000

As a communist of course Iâ€™m compelled to point out that as long as one single child on this Earth goes hungry spending even a single dime on space exploration is shameful.

Ah, the moral high ground. Do keep in mind that hungry children are best fed by a wealthy society; poor people don’t have time or energy to spend on charity.

And what is the best way to create wealth, then?

By: Tom B

Tom B — Mon, 19 Feb 2007 22:08:28 +0000

Some statements are an expression of policy and an attempt to marshall resources in support of coordinated efforts. Others are ‘hot air’ designed to improve one’s image or to win a few votes…. Bush’s fall into category two. — Those wanting to buy tickets to Mars might be better advised to wait on Trent Lott’s front porch and watch the rebuilding of the Gulf Coast (Those interested in reading Bush’s words including his pledge that “we will not just rebuild, we will build higher and better” might read the entire speech here: http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/09/15/bush.transcript .)

By: rc21

rc21 — Sun, 18 Feb 2007 12:31:30 +0000

Maybe with increased development in space travel we may one day find a place that is condusive to farming and the mass production of food.

If this happens we may be able to feed the hungry. By the way last time I checked people in N. Korea and various other communist style govts in Africa are starving. If your concerned about the hungry I have no idea why you would embrace communism.

By: peggysue

peggysue — Sun, 18 Feb 2007 00:35:03 +0000

I was as thrilled as anyone watching the first astronauts land on the moon. More recently I was awed by those incredible photographs of the rings of Saturn. It’s not that I’m against space exploration but today it does seem, not only like an extravagance we can ill afford, but a distraction from more critical issues at hand. Like, maybe we should make sure that our space travelers have a habital planet to come back to? With the issue of global warming looming large spending money on going into space seems kind of like deciding to go camping because you just don’t want to deal with the fact that your house is on fire.

As a communist of course I’m compelled to point out that as long as one single child on this Earth goes hungry spending even a single dime on space exploration is shameful.

By: Brian Dunbar

Brian Dunbar — Sat, 17 Feb 2007 19:36:58 +0000

Kennedy framed the space race as a matter of choosing an ambitious goal to prove

our worth as a nation, (and not as a matter of competition). Nixon wanted to

make space travel something routine, with clear practical benefits. Reagan saw

space both as an avenue for international cooperation and as another front in

the Cold War; and Clinton didnâ€™t talk much about space until a chunk of Mars

fell out of the sky. Where do you think President Bushâ€™s latest address fits

into this lineage?

Bush 43′s speech hearkens back to Kennedy’s ambitious goals meme. Actually I can’t say it better than SF writer Ken MacLeod did at the time Bush announced VSE

“I’ve just been interviewed for Wired News about George W. Bush’s speech at

NASA, which I’d watched an hour or so earlier. I was flattered to be asked,

and I hope Charlie Stross gave a better impression of an SF writer who is

clued up on all this space rockets stuff. Seriously, I don’t follow space

policy in any depth. I don’t, for example, know if Bush’s way of finding

the money by shifting $11 billion worth of existing NASA priorities and

giving the agency an extra $1 billion over five years is open-handed,

tight-fisted, or cack-handed.

I do know this. Watching it felt like science fiction coming true, and in a

good way. Complete the space station. Replace the Shuttle. Build a Moon

base. Learn more stuff. Go to Mars. And then what? Worlds beyond. A human

presence across the Solar System. And then what? ‘Humanity is going out

into the cosmos.’

A feasible beginning, a reasonable progression, and no prospect of an end.

This what the Space Age was supposed to be like.”

Some context is in order – MacLeod is a Communist, and not just any Communist but (as near as I can tell) a Trot, and not just any Trot but a genuine 1970s style Scot Leftist. He is – in other words – far to the left of your average American Progressive. It would belabor the point if I pointed out that he holds no love for President Bush.

Yet he doesn’t let politics get in the way of what matters. Astounding.

By: MonteDavis

MonteDavis — Sat, 17 Feb 2007 16:58:06 +0000

Samqr, I like your choice of “framed” for JFK on the space race… because there was certainly a gap between that rhetoric and his Oval Office stance. In a 1962 tape released in 2001, he said to NASA administrator James Webb:

“This is, whether we like it or not, a race. Everything we do [in space] ought to be tied into getting to the moon ahead of the Russians…. [that] is the top priority of the agency and … except for defense, the top priority of the United States government. …Otherwise, we shouldn’t be spending this kind of money, because I’m not that interested in space…. I think it’s good [to explore space], I think we ought to know about it, we’re ready to spend reasonable amounts of money. But we’re talking about *fantastic* expenditures. We’ve wrecked our budget, and all the other domestic programs. And the only justification for it, in my opinion to do it [on this schedule] is because we hope to beat them, to demonstrate that starting behind, and we did, by a couple of years, by God, we passed them.”

This isn’t new news; space historians such as John Logsdon, Howard McCurdy, and Roger Launius have spent decades unraveling some of the JFK-Apollo mythology. It goes too far to say Apollo was “nothing but” Cold War competition — all sorts of other motives were pulled in along the way — but it’s certainly true to say manned spaceflight wouldn’t have jumped ahead at anything like that pace *without* the competition.