It appears that the NASA budget deadlock will remain stalled, at least until lame duck session after the November 2nd election.
Three polls issued today make it very clear that the upcoming November elections are going to be a very different animal than any election anyone has seen in decades.
First, Public Policy Polling (PPP) finds that in the West Virginia race for the Senate seat formerly held by Robert Byrd, long shot Republican John Raese is leading shoe-in Democrat Joe Manchin by 3 points.
Second, Rasmussen finds that not only is Republican Joe Miller leading his opponents in the Alaska Senate race by 15%, the Democrat candidate, Scott McAdams, can only garner 25%. Meanwhile, Lisa Murkowski, who lost to Miller in a primary upset, is doing almost as bad as an independent write-in candidate, with 27%.
Third, a Quinnipiac poll shows Republican Tom Corbett destroying Democrat Dan Onorato by a 54-39 margin in the race for Pennsylvania governor.
Not only do these numbers show a willingness of the public to consider new and unknown candidates and reject incumbents, they also show a surprising hostility to Democrat candidates in regions that have always been considered Democrat strongholds. In West Virginia, the accepted wisdom was that the Democrat Manchin would be nominated and then annointed. Not so. In Alaska, not only did Miller upset the incumbent Murkowski in the Republican primary, voters apparently have little interest in seeing her return to office, or give her Democrat rival the job either. And in Pennsylvania, a swing state that has in recent years been swinging increasingly Democratic, the numbers show instead a complete reversal of that trend and a total rejection of the Democrat candidate.
Yes, November 2nd is going to be an interesting day indeed.
Update: Another poll released today from PPP and commissioned by the leftwing website, Daily Kos, continues these astonishing trends. In the Wisconsin Senate race, Democrat incumbent Russ Feingold now trails Republican Ron Johnson by 11% points. And in Wisconsin governor’s race, the same poll found the Republican leading by 9%.
Keith Cowing and Frank Sietzen at SpaceRef report that NASA administrator Charles Bolden will soon be heading to Saudia Arabia, ostentively to continue NASA outreach to the Muslim world, with other less obvious motives pertaining to Israeli/Palestine peace negotiations. Key quote:
According to one of several sources knowledgeable on the subject “expect to see a wave of mid-level Administration appointees embarking on a round of carrot-and-stick sweetener overtures” to Saudi officials to entice them to join the Obama effort. For their part, the Saudi government wants the U.S. to exert greater pressure on Israel to stop construction of settlements in occupied territories that might someday be a key in a peace accord. In the meantime the Obama administration is trying to give the Saudis every incentive to craft a stronger relationship with the U.S.
On Friday I drove up to Westfield, New Jersey, to give a public lecture to Amateur Astronomers, Inc. at Union County College in Cranford, New Jersey. On this, my second visit to this amateur astronomy club, my lecture topic was the story behind the Apollo 8 mission to the Moon, the subject of my first book, Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8.
I visit a lot of astronomy clubs, giving talks on space and its history, so it is not a light complement when I say that this particular club is one of the most active, organized, and enthusiastic astronomy clubs I have ever seen. This is not to say that other clubs are not active, organized, or enthusiastic, only that it seems to me that the members of Amateur Astronomers are particularly so.
This fact only makes the decision by Union County College to throw the club and its observatory off campus seem incredibly stupid. Fortunately, the club has managed to negotiate a two year postponement of their eviction. What will happen after that, however, remains unknown.
The Washington Post today includes an excellent article outlining quite succinctly the mess that’s resulted from the space war between the House, the Senate, and the administration over NASA’s manned program. Key quote:
In an effort to restore a NASA consensus and fund future human space travel, negotiators from the House and Senate have been meeting frequently in recent weeks. Participants say, however, that the sides are dug in and that stalemate is a real possibility.
As I have been saying for months, don’t expect anything good to come from Congress, even if they come up with a compromise. Obama and NASA under Bolden did a very bad job selling their ideas to Congress, and Congress returned the favor by rejecting those ideas and instead coming up with two different plans, both of which serve their own parochial interests rather than the nation’s. The result is a micromanaged mishmosh that won’t get anything done, while wasting huges sums of cash that the federal government does not have.
Congress cuts the budget on a proposed military weather satellite system.
Rather than address the many questions people have about climate research (questionable research, unclear data, corrupt scientists), the White House has come up with a much better approach: Change the name of “global warming” to “global climate disruption.” Now, doesn’t that explain everything?
The space war continues. Here is another article outlining the political state of war between the House, Senate, and administration over NASA’s future. Don’t expect anything good to come out of these political shenigans.
Bumped, with update below
This Christian Science Monitor article gives a nice summary of the present state of war between the President, the House, and the Senate over NASA’s future.
All in all, things do not look good. With so much disagreement, whatever Congress and the President eventually agree to is going to be a mess, accomplishing little while spending gobs of money that the federal government simply no longer has. The result will almost certainly be a failed NASA program, an inability of the United States government to get astronauts into orbit, and an enormous waste of resources.
The one shining light in all this is that we still have a unrelenting need to get into space, not merely to supply the International Space Station but to also compete with other nations. It is my belief that this need — and the potential profits to be made from it — is going to compel private companies to build their own rockets and capsules for getting humans and cargo into space. And I think they will do it whether or not the federal government can get its act together.
Thus, though the U.S. might find itself a bystander in the space race for the next decade or so, in the end we will have a vibrant, competing aerospace industry, capable of dominating the exploration of the solar system for generations to come.
So buck up, space cadets. The near term future might be grim, but the long term possibilities remain endless.
Update: This announcement today from Boeing and Space Adventures illustrates my above point perfectly. For decades Boeing has been a lazy company, living off the government dole while doing little to capture market share in the competitive market. Now that the dole of government is possibly going away, however, the company at last appears to be coming alive. Instead of waiting for a deal with NASA, Boeing has been going ahead with its CST-100 manned capsule, figuring it can make money anyway by selling this product to both private and government customers.
The federal government’s very expensive and probably unnecessary project to build a high speed railroad line between two cities in Wisconsin — using stimulus money — is having a significant influence on the elections there. Key quote:
With the U.S. economy in shambles and our national debt strangling the country, it doesn’t bode well for Feingold that he supported the wildly unpopular health-care bill, which [challenger] Johnson wants repealed, as well as last year’s big clunker, the stimulus bill. Feingold’s support for the unfunded and bottomless money pit of [high speed rail] doesn’t appear to be working for him either. If an entrenched insider like Feingold loses, it could have serious ramifications for the future of high-speed rail across the country. [emphasis mine]
Engineers are reviewing the life expectancy of the International Space Station, in light of the desire of politicians to keep it operating through the 2020s. Intriguing quote:
Airlines and airplane contractors commonly inspect aircraft for such fractures, but with the space station out of reach more than 200 miles up, engineers rely on complex models to predict their growth in orbit.
The space war over NASA continues. The Orlando Sentinel has an article today selling the merits of the Team Direct concept that would use most of the shuttle hardware to replace it.
There is a lobbying push among a lot of space activists to get the House NASA authorization bill changed so that more money is spent for commercial space. Unfortunately for these activists, reality is about to strike (almost certainly on November 2). Also see this story: Our debt is more than all the money in the world.
With a new Congress almost certainly dominated by individuals who want to shrink the size of government, I doubt anyone in the space industry is going to get much of what they want in the coming years.
The space war continues. Mike Griffin gave a speech today where he once again attacked the Obama administration’s proposals for NASA.
If you are a baby boomer who grew up in the 1960s, such as myself, there are some very safe assumptions that anyone can make about your history and political views, both during the 1960s and the decades that followed.
For example, in the 1960s you were almost certainly against the Vietnam War. You were also likely to oppose President Lyndon Johnson and his Vice-President Hubert Humphrey. You cheered Eugene McCarthy’s anti-war campaign for President, and you probably also despised President Nixon and passionately wished that George McGovern had won the 1972 Presidential campaign.
Almost certainly you participated in some anti-war protests somewhere during the 1960s. Some of you were in Chicago for the protests during the Democratic National Convention in 1968, while others were likely to have participated in the numerous university sit-ins that were rampant throughout the country in the late 1960s.
Sadly, many of you at that time would have probably considered the police “pigs” and the military “evil” (even if those insults seem totally unfair, disgusting, and almost unforgivable to you now).
On a personal level, you probably experimented with drugs, had fun with rock ‘n roll, and even more fun with sex. Many of you also probably participated in the hippie culture at events like Woodstock and places like San Francisco and the Lower Eastside of Manhattan.
Above all, you abhorred authority. You were raised to be very independent-minded and » Read more
New poll news from several normally liberal news sources (Washington Post, NBC, ABC) all show that the voters are really eager to fire Congress in 2010.
The space war continues: On Friday the chairman of the House committee of Science and Technology responded negatively to the letter by 30 Nobel laureates demanding the House revise its budget authorization for NASA and accept the Obama administration’s plans for the agency. Two key quotes from Gordon’s response:
The hard reality is that the Administration has sent an unexecutable budget request to Congress, and now we have to make tough choise to the nation can have a sustainable and balance [sic] NASA program.
Reluctantly, the Committee came to the conclusion that the president’s new human space flight program, much like the current Constellation program, was unexecutable under the current budget projections and other NASA priorities we all agree must be addressed.
Bill Harwood gives a good write-up of the uncertain status of the extra shuttle flight, approved by the Senate but not by the House.
UCLA has fired a scientist after 36 years because according to them, his “research is not aligned with the academic mission” of his department. In other words, his research uncovering flaws in the such politically correct subjects as secondhand smoke and diesel emissions is something the academic community at his campus cannot stomach. Key quote:
[The fired scientist] questions the science behind the new [California diesel] emissions standards, and he has raised concerns about the two key reports on which they were based – exposing the author of one study as having faked his credentials and the panel that issued the other study as having violated its term limits.
Meltdown of the climate ‘consensus’. Key quote:
What does the best evidence now tell us? That man-made global warming is a mere hypothesis that has been inflated by both exaggeration and downright malfeasance, fueled by the awarding of fat grants and salaries to any scientist who’ll produce the “right” results. The warming “scientific” community, the Climategate emails reveal, is a tight clique of like-minded scientists and bureaucrats who give each other jobs, publish each other’s papers — and conspire to shut out any point of view that threatens to derail their gravy train.
Here’s another Congressman who has a problem with free speech, and it appears he wants [pdf] to use campaign laws to silence his opponents.
Here is what one elected governor thinks of freedom of speech: “It’s a free country. I wish it weren’t.”
Still doubt the magnitude of the turnover expected in the November 2010 election? Then consider Gallup’s most recent generic poll, which has the Republicans now up by 10 points, the most in history. Key quote:
The Republican leads of 6, 7, and 10 points this month are all higher than any previous midterm Republican advantage in Gallup’s history of tracking the generic ballot, which dates to 1942. Prior to this year, the highest such gap was five points, measured in June 2002 and July 1994. Elections in both of these years resulted in significant Republican gains in House seats.
The last refuge of a liberal. Key quote:
The Democrats are going to get beaten badly in November. Not just because the economy is ailing. And not just because Obama over-read his mandate in governing too far left. But because a comeuppance is due the arrogant elites whose undisguised contempt for the great unwashed prevents them from conceding a modicum of serious thought to those who dare oppose them.
Why bother with research when all we need to do is ask our politicians? Scientist Hillary Clinton studies the floods in Pakistan and the forest fires in Russia and declares them both proof that global warming is happening!
Is the space war over NASA’s future ending? I wonder, reading this report in which NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver confidently announces that a compromise between Congress and the administration is pending. More importantly, she said the following:
Many things are still uncertain, but one thing is not uncertain. Marshall [Space Flight Center] will lead the heavy-lift launch program.
Considering Garver’s previously strong opposition to Constellation, this statement indicates that she and the administration have backed down, and are willing to accept the heavy-lift part of Constellation, once called Ares V, as long as no one uses those Bush-era names.
The charade in Los Angeles on Monday when President Obama arrived for a fundraiser and shut down traffic during rush hour — causing a storm of angry protest — is another very obvious illustration of the great disconnect between today’s ruling class and the general public.
It’s not just that Obama seemed oblivious to the traffic chaos he created. It is that he, as well as most politicians today (from both parties), truly expect large areas of a city to be closed down for their convenience, and don’t seem to give a damn that by doing so they make life miserable for everyone else.
To paraphrase what Glenn Reynolds likes to say, traffic jams are for “the little people.”
Obama’s actions here are far from new and have actually been deeply institutionalized since the 1960s, following Kennedy’s assassination. Originally designed to protect a president from attack, the shutting down of highways quickly became a tool to make the president’s life as easy as possible while demonstrating to all his lordly superiority.
For example, I personally experienced this kingly arrogance back in 1979. I needed to get from my house in Astoria, Queens, to LaGuardia Airport, normally a very short 10 minute drive. But as I pulled into the ramp for the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway I found myself being waved to a stop by a policeman. The expressway was being closed so that President Jimmy Carter could use it. I, along with hundreds of others, was forced to sit there for thirty minutes, waiting for his entourage of approximately thirty limousines finally go by. To say that this infuriated me is to put it mildly.
Nor do I think this behavior is reserved to Democrats. I am sure that my readers could easily cite similar events during past Republican administrations.
Nor is it limited to American political leaders. The ruling class of the defunct Soviet Union made it offical policy. There, those in power built many urban roadways with special lanes reserved exclusively for communist party officials. Moreover, when they used those lanes the street lights could be commandeered, turning them all green so that anyone on a cross street had to wait.
In the U.S. we have not yet come that far. Yet, that presidents feel it their right to shut down entire transportation systems for their mere convenience suggests that sadly we don’t have that far to travel.
Unless of course the public, which still has the vote, does something about it.
Willis Eschenbach at WattsUpWithThat has once again discovered serious questions about the climate temperature data produced by the Goddard Institute of Space Studies (GISS).
Freedom of speech alert. In this post, I noted that though it seemed as if the arrest of four protesters on the University of Texas campus during a visit by President Obama seemed a violation of their rights, there wasn’t enough information in the reports to know for sure. We now have more information. Read this report also. And watch this video of the arrest of one protester, while wearing a press badge, and tell me if this isn’t an abuse of power.
In reading my post, Both for and against the Obama plan, reader Trent Waddington emailed me to say that this “is so fatalistic that it seems you don’t think it is worthwhile even spending a few minutes explaining why the policy is good. It’s easy to dismiss something a politician says as the stopped clock that is right twice a day. It’s harder to set aside your skepticism and explain why something is good policy.”
Trent is absolutely correct. What I wrote was very depressing and fatalistic. However, I think it very important to be coldly honest about things, no matter how bad they look. Once you’ve done that, you then have the right information necessary for fixing the situation.
My problem with most of the debate about the future space policy of the United States, — as well as innumerable other modern issues faced by our government — is that people don’t seem to want to face up to the reality of the problem. In the case of space and Obama, I doubt any advice, gentle or otherwise, is going to move him into putting forth a plan for NASA that has any realistic chance of getting passed by Congress. As I noted in a different post, he doesn’t play the game. He acts like the worst sort of autocrat, convinced that if he simply says what he wants to do, everyone must agree.
The reason the good part of his plan (commercial space) is not passing Congress is not because people think it is a bad idea. It is being rejected because » Read more
