The DC swamp proposes beating China in space by creating another bureaucracy here on Earth
Gotta feed those DC pigs!
My heart be still: A bi-partisan group of senators, led by Senator John Cornyn (R-Texas), yesterday introduced legislation they claim will help the U.S. beat China in space by creating a new government agency called the “National Institute for Space Research,” designed to encourage research in space tied to the proposed commercial space stations.
Reports indicate that China is launching new modules to its Tiangong space station to meet growing demands for science and to boost international cooperation and is developing a new-generation crew spacecraft with two variants: one for low Earth orbit (LEO) and one for crewed lunar missions. China has been actively promoting international cooperation through Tiangong, offering countries like Oman, Egypt, Pakistan, and others opportunities to participate in space research largely for free or at an extremely low cost. China has also offered to train foreign astronauts, garnering interest from countries like Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and the UAE to train engineers, scientists, and mission operators for satellite development, and to launch services in which Egypt, Algeria, and Argentina are actively involved. This is a part of China’s broader Belt and Road Initiative, where space cooperation is bundled with tech transfer, loans, development projects, and the like.
This underscores strategic and accelerating investment by foreign adversaries in space-based infrastructure, research, and exploration. China’s ability to offer space-based partnerships to other nations allows it to build soft power and potentially shift international norms in space governance and tech standards.
In response, the Space RACE Act would create a National Institute for Space Research, a federally controlled but independently operated entity designed to coordinate and advance U.S. microgravity research in LEO using next-generation space platforms after the retirement of the ISS.
The last thing this bill will achieve is a stronger American space industry. Rather than funding real research or development in space, this legislation simply creates another Washington government agency supposedly functioning independent of presidential or even congressional oversight (a legal structure the courts have increasingly declared unconstitutional).
This is just more pork. It is also symbolic of the stupidity of our elected officials, who still do not really understand the real reasons beyond the on-going renaissance in America’s space effort. It hasn’t been the government that made it happen. It has been the private dreams of competing companies and individuals, figuring out ways they could make money launching rockets, often with the government acting as a major obstacle. Rather than streamline our bloated government to get it out of the way of this new private sector, these senators want to create more government to dictate how that sector functions.
Ugh. There are times I wish I didn’t have to read the news from DC. It almost always depresses me.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Gotta feed those DC pigs!
My heart be still: A bi-partisan group of senators, led by Senator John Cornyn (R-Texas), yesterday introduced legislation they claim will help the U.S. beat China in space by creating a new government agency called the “National Institute for Space Research,” designed to encourage research in space tied to the proposed commercial space stations.
Reports indicate that China is launching new modules to its Tiangong space station to meet growing demands for science and to boost international cooperation and is developing a new-generation crew spacecraft with two variants: one for low Earth orbit (LEO) and one for crewed lunar missions. China has been actively promoting international cooperation through Tiangong, offering countries like Oman, Egypt, Pakistan, and others opportunities to participate in space research largely for free or at an extremely low cost. China has also offered to train foreign astronauts, garnering interest from countries like Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and the UAE to train engineers, scientists, and mission operators for satellite development, and to launch services in which Egypt, Algeria, and Argentina are actively involved. This is a part of China’s broader Belt and Road Initiative, where space cooperation is bundled with tech transfer, loans, development projects, and the like.
This underscores strategic and accelerating investment by foreign adversaries in space-based infrastructure, research, and exploration. China’s ability to offer space-based partnerships to other nations allows it to build soft power and potentially shift international norms in space governance and tech standards.
In response, the Space RACE Act would create a National Institute for Space Research, a federally controlled but independently operated entity designed to coordinate and advance U.S. microgravity research in LEO using next-generation space platforms after the retirement of the ISS.
The last thing this bill will achieve is a stronger American space industry. Rather than funding real research or development in space, this legislation simply creates another Washington government agency supposedly functioning independent of presidential or even congressional oversight (a legal structure the courts have increasingly declared unconstitutional).
This is just more pork. It is also symbolic of the stupidity of our elected officials, who still do not really understand the real reasons beyond the on-going renaissance in America’s space effort. It hasn’t been the government that made it happen. It has been the private dreams of competing companies and individuals, figuring out ways they could make money launching rockets, often with the government acting as a major obstacle. Rather than streamline our bloated government to get it out of the way of this new private sector, these senators want to create more government to dictate how that sector functions.
Ugh. There are times I wish I didn’t have to read the news from DC. It almost always depresses me.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
And how many new elements did Ayn Rand discover?
zero
If passed by Congress, I suspect Trump’s initial instinct would be to veto that bill. Problem is: Democrats in Congress would reflexively vote to override, and there are enough RINOs in both chambers to get it to a 2/3rds majority. Would the RINOs really vote to override a veto from the nominal leader of their party?
If Trump really does have a 4D chessboard, he’d better have it ready if that bill comes to his desk.
More ways for those in congress to get kickbacks (bribes). IMHO
Genuinely curious where the origin of this idea comes from. Marginal possibility that Mark Kelly may have thought it up himself, but…otherwise, I find it a little hard to believe these senators came up with it.
Some Senators are brilliant! I remember one who invented the Internet.
As a duly appointed taxpayer, I approve of the National Institute for Space Research under the following condition: When it fails, every one who is responsible for it is held accountable under pain of tar and feather.
Richard M,
The “usual suspects” list in this case includes John Cornyn (R-TX), John Hickenlooper (D-CO), Roger Wicker (R-MS), Mark Kelly (D-AZ), and Ben Ray Lujan (D-NM). All but Kelly come from states with significant government and private-sector space-related installations. Kelly, of course, is an ex-astronaut and a veteran of multiple ISS tours.
Even if none of them originated the idea, all have constituents who are recently out of a job due to NASA downsizing. I don’t think one has to look beyond constituent service for motivation here.
Jeff Wright,
How many toe-crushingly-heavy works of rape-fantasy political romance have government physicists ever written? Zero.
Seriously, nearly all of the useful, non-ephemeral elements were discovered by people working without governmental imprimatur or funding. No new elements have, in any case, been discovered via work done in space even during the post-WW2 era of government-funded Big Physics. So your rhetorical query is doubly a non sequitur.
Robert,
You wrote: “It is also symbolic of the stupidity of our elected officials, who still do not really understand the real reasons beyond the on-going renaissance in America’s space effort. It hasn’t been the government that made it happen. It has been the private dreams of competing companies and individuals, figuring out ways they could make money launching rockets, often with the government acting a major obstacle.”
The mindset of people in government is that they are problem solvers. They see a problem or a member of the public informs them of a problem, and government must solve it. That is what they think their job is.
They fail to realize the laws of unintended consequences. When they solve a problem for one of their constituents, the solution necessarily must create problems for one or more others. Either there is a new law, regulation, or rule for some of all to follow, or there is an additional tax (or fee or debt or some form of financial cost). It is the major problem with having a full-time legislature and too many bureaucrats. All would be idle if they were not mucking around in the civilians’ lives, and idle hands are the way to get fired.
When too few of these people, the elected officials and the bureaucrats, have not had real jobs — or better, run real companies — then they have no idea of what the real problems are and especially no idea what any solution is.
The professional government employee (or elected-for-life politician) is worse than useless. He is dangerous to the rest of us.
From Cronyn’s press release:
The next space race is space stations? Wasn’t there already a space station race, which the U.S. won by inviting the adversary to join with the ISS?
Don’t we already have four companies building commercial space stations, giving us four stations to China’s one and Russia’s zero?
Government officials have talent? NASA’s scientists, engineers, and technicians have talent. They also have skills and knowledge of space matters. Government’s “officials” designed the SLS, and that turned out to be an expensive, untimely, incompetent disaster, unable to accomplish any of the tasks assigned to it or tasks proposed for the future.
Something seems to happen to smart people when they get elected to national office. Kelly knows that we already have four different commercial space stations under construction, and that a Starship could be quickly turned into yet another commercial space station. Commerce funds space far, far better than government does, as we have seen over the past decade or so. How does a smart astronaut miss this obvious lesson, and why is he incapable of applying it to our national culture?
Our modern bottom-up method of space utilization is working so much better than NASA’s and every other of the world’s top-down national space agencies did in the past half two-thirds of a century. The U.S. commercial space industry is doing far more than the Chinese government is doing in space. Instead of keeping government simple (stupid), they propose to complicate everything. This is what happened with Biden’s FAA’s Part 450. The intention was to simplify getting into and using space, but the unintended (I think unintended) consequence was to complify everything. We must always remember, too, what the British BCC did to Virgin Orbit during that government’s attempt to streamline orbital launches.
Robert, you are right. These elected officials are stupid. Even the formerly intelligent ones.
__________
Jeff Wright,
Funny you should mention that. Zero is exactly how many new elements Congress has discovered. Or all of Marshall Space Flight Center, for that matter. We should apply your point to MSFC, too.
Four legs good, two legs bad. The troth beats the truth.
Irish Curmudgeon: As I just told a different commenter, I do not like it if people change their nickname randomly. You previously posted here using your name, Dennis Keating. Why have you changed it?
I thought we already had several National Institute(s) for Space Research. As in, every private company looking to make money on the Final Frontier. Did someone look at China, and think “There’s a good idea.”?
Ronaldus Magnus: Right on time.
I think a number of people here need to recheck their concepts of stupid as applied to government personnel. The various elected ones have JOB #! of getting elected. JOB #2 is getting reelected. A majority of the stupid things done are done in their own self interest of getting reelected. Spelled pork. As in, No Pork, No Job since they will often be beaten at the election box by those that will promise Pork. A large number of smart people doing stupid things as a job requirement.
I’m reasonably certain most of the people here have done work that was actually stupid and unnecessary because the paychecks were coming from people insisting on those stupid procedures. Not stupidity, Incentives. The difference in the private sector is that the inefficiencies have consequences eventually. In the “True” private sector, people vote with their dollars. Toys-R-Us, Sears, and Kmart got voted out for not being as good as the competition. SLS is voted in because the people voting for it want your money and it doesn’t have competition in that area.
What we have in the country is a pervasive corruption in the sense of a corrupted code. Sometimes in the actual criminal sense, but mostly in the sense of a corrupted code of operations. We are not for the most part dealing with stupid people, just people that have different incentives. Until the incentives are changed, the results will not either.
It should be remembered as well that corruption at the national level has destroyed countries. Militaristic Japan of the early 20th century. Nationalist China in the mid 20th. Italy under Mussolini. French military mid 20th century. It can happen here though we are far from the brink of actual destruction. One of the course corrections should be to quit thinking of adversaries as evil and stupid and realize that they are mostly responding to different incentives, and then start addressing those incentives.
Left and Right. Liberal and Conservative. Democrat and Republican. All pale in comparison to Statist and Freedom.
I was under the impression that we already HAD a bureaucratic money-sink for that. NASSAU? NASTY? NOSEY?
No, wait, it’ll come to me…
I have been reading your postings for some time now and finally had to comment about the gray background on every post. It is annoying and hard to read. The content is good but I do not enjoy reading it.
“National Institute for Space Research” rolls off the tongue kinda like “Academy of Tobacco Research”. What movie is DC living in this week? We haven’t got to the endpoint of Idiocracy yet…well some places have…,cough…NYC, Chicago, MN, and now our politicians are switching the channel? Time to smoke a cigar & sip some mint julep I guess.
This would be a 100% redundant layer of bureaucracy and science. It would cause confusion and infighting from the start.
Already extant is the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, which, via the Decadal Survey, provides steering and guidance. If that steering and guidance is good, bad or other is not my point, but the fact is that they exist and they are noticeably absent from the announcement.
Will they be part of NASEM, as a subsidiary member, or over them to review, add to or take away from their guidance, or completely independent?
The first defeats the purpose (not something that will stop Congress), the second will not be accepted by NASEM as they lose influence, and the last will create a competing set of goals, so NASA must serve not just two masters, but three (Congress).
Adding bureaucracy is never the right answer, but in this case, I do not see any painless choices or lesser evil.
It will add confusion and pain, suck up tax money and produce nothing of value (to include new elements of the periodic table).
Space Force did manage to increase the amount of tax dollars going to the industry–and NewSpacers have more stable funding from them than from venture vultures.
Strange how NewSpacers are silent about that….but “pork” is always defined as any tax dollars spent on the other guys’ projects, so…
Anything to have tax dollars go to space–as opposed to anything else besides the border and paving roads.
Jeff Wright,
Pork is useless spending on the other guy’s project. You always leave the useless part out. I wonder why that is? Actually, no, I don’t.
Some military spending is, indeed, pork. But a lot of it isn’t. NewSpace seems far more likely than OldSpace to be providing most of Golden Dome, for example. Extremely useful. Decades overdue. Not pork.
If you have any specific examples of government spending going mostly or entirely to NewSpace that you regard as useless – and, thus, pork – feel free to provide us all with a list.
The Space Force is not a redundant service at this point, unlike the proposed organization.
I read that the primary reason for the split from USAF was because money allocated for space was being redirected to other USAF projects. As long as fighter and bomber generals had control of the funds, they would shift things around when needed and USAF Space would come up short every year.
Now they get their own budget line.
While still part of the Department of the AF, the money is theirs, as I understand it.
Change the name to “National Institute for Space Settlement” and the direction of research to the be descriptive of the new title and that might be an idea?
Bill Dale: We don’t need another bureaucracy, with any name. All it will do is gum up the works and waste taxpayer money.
Considering the repeated utter failure of our federal government in getting anything done reasonably and at proper predicted cost and on time and actually able to do the job promised, why is that people still bow to this fake idol?
Bill Dale: Let me add: You mean we should create an agency comparable to one that existed in the 1800s, called the “National Institute for Western Settlement?” I mean, isn’t that how all the wagon trains were run, arranged and financed by administrators in Washington?
I don’t remember reading about that in my history books, but maybe you could elucidate.
Robert asked: “Considering the repeated utter failure of our federal government in getting anything done reasonably and at proper predicted cost and on time and actually able to do the job promised, why is that people still bow to this fake idol?”
I may have almost answered that in my last post. It isn’t just government that thinks it is the problem solver, many people also believe or feel that government should solve all our problems. After all, why else would we pay all those taxes if government didn’t solve all our problems — otherwise those taxes have been a complete waste of money.
Edward: Ah, but my whole point is that those taxes have been a complete waste of money.
But then, knowing you, you were being quite sarcastic in your comment. :)
Robert asked: “We don’t need another bureaucracy, with any name. All it will do is gum up the works and waste taxpayer money. Considering the repeated utter failure of our federal government in getting anything done reasonably and at proper predicted cost and on time and actually able to do the job promised, why is that people still bow to this fake idol?”
This morning I heard on the radio an explanation. It was a simple explanation, but it referred to school lunches — many of which are being thrown away, because these days schools make breakfast, lunch, and dinner for every student, yet many students bring bag lunches and eat breakfast and dinner at home. All that wasted food could have fed people in real need, and all that wasted money could have done some real good. The people on the radio also pointed out the waste in homeless spending, where much of that money goes to graft, to the friends of politicians and bureaucrats. The explanation can easily be applied to spaceflight or virtually anything that government does.
“The spending is the point.”
Modern U.S. government is less concerned about the results and more concerned with assuring that money is spent. The more money spent, the better. Whether that money is well spent is not the concern, because the point is just to keep the money flowing. Government is no longer concerned with problem solving (was it ever?) but it only wants to spread around the taxpayer’s money. The spending is the point.
Creating another bureaucracy does the same thing. It looks like government is doing something good, that it is making sure that spaceflight is properly expedited, or regulated, or funded, or whatever the perceived problem may be, but the new bureaucracy employs a bunch more people and must purchase or lease property and equipment and supplies, so the spending increases. Which is the point.
No one in government currently cares whether the problem is solved, but they get to claim that they are working on the solution while spreading taxpayer money around to friends or people that they owe favors to. The spending is the point.
And sometimes the money flows to those in government. After all, Hunter Biden pointed out that The Big Guy had to get his ten percent. From the taxpayer’s point of view, that is a waste of money, but from the point of view of those in government, that is money used well. I’m sure that Joe and Hunter would agree. The spending is the point.
I wonder who Senator Cornyn owes a favor to.