OnePercenter
Gold Member
- Apr 10, 2013
- 23,667
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Republicans reducing security funding?
Russia banned us access to the space station
- Thread starter novasteve
- Start date
Republicans reducing security funding?
JoeB131
Diamond Member
Yeah, Bush and Republican Congresses who didn't plan for a replacement for the Space Shuttle have no blame for this.
It's the way the Real World works.
Generally speaking, people are not real keen on Nations who (a) subvert another's unity and political machinery, then (b) swoop-in to take over the object of their subversion, and (c) annex the land for themselves.
If we (and others) take your advice, then Expansionists (such as Putin) will know that they can grab more and more and more and more, with nobody to stand up to them.
Your way will work just fine for 20 years or 30 years or 50 years, until the bottom drops out of the global political situation, and we face Barbarians at the gates.
It may greatly bother you (and most ofher folks of goodwill, including myself) that we, and our friends and allies, find ourselves obliged, from time to time, to play the hard-ass on the world stage, but, if we do not, then you, as an old person, or your children, or your grandchildren, or great-grandchildren, are going to have a situation on their hands that they cannot control or fix without triggering WWIII, or surrendering, and they will curse you and I for lacking the foresight and courage in our present age, to do what must be done, to prevent that.
I, for one, am not willing to tolerate that sort of legacy being left to my descendants, just because I got tired of periodically taking a stand against Global Expansionism, and decided to play the Isolationist, and have Uncle Sam put his hand under the sand like some kind of metaphorical ostrich, and either (a) hope that the bad guys (expansionists) go away or (b) settle for ineffective, sissy-caliber counter-responses that would not deter a house-fly.
It is Russia that is doing the antagonizing.
We (The West) are merely responding.
Taking a stand, like men, and warning that there will be accelerating consequences for accelerating Expansionism.
Russian Expansionism threatens Europe, Asia Minor, and Western and Central Asia, in a very real sense.
We have a great many friends and allies in those regions and we have considerable trade with those folks and others in those regions.
Russia gets like this every few decades... they've been at it since the time of Peter the Great and in each of those incarnations... Czarist Russia, the Soviet Union, and the Russian Federation.
In each of those incarnations, the Russians have demonstrated that Expansionist tendency... to undertake as many land-grabs as they can get away with, without destroying themselves... whatever the traffic will bear.
They can't stop themselves.
Most of their ports are locked-in by ice a good part of the year and they need as many warm-water ports as they can lay their hands on.
They also want as many ports as they can get their hands on, that do not require that their ships must pass through straits or regions controlled by other nations.
And, they're understandably (and, probably, permanently) paranoid, after both the Napoleonic Wars and WWII, and want as many Buffer States as they can lay their hands on, to absorb any First Shock of future invasion, putting an extra cushion between their Inner Core Nation and the outside world.
For these reasons and others, they oscillate between being Good Guys and being Bullies, with periods of respite and rest and rebuilding in-between, and that pattern of oscillation is at least 300 years old by now, long before we came on the scene as a Nation.
They are moving out of a Good Guy phase now, in which they've been busy-bees, scraping the rust off their military, and the pendulum appears to be swinging back to Bully mode.
Doing nothing in the face of Bullies is always a bad idea.
Ask the British, within Living Memory (I won't bother with the iconic Neville Chamberlain photograph).
It is always a good idea to be friends with Good Guys.
It is always a bad idea to kowtow to Bullies.
This wasn't our choice.
But it's the hand of poker-cards that we have been dealt.
Do we "call", or do we "fold"?
I did my bit during the Cold War, and I'm greatly saddened, even pissed, that we have have to go through this again, at least in a modified (and, hopefully, greatly shortened) form, but...
I vote for "call", rather than "fold".
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We'll probably begin rectifying that situation after January 20, 2017.
We can re-task some of the money that we would otherwise have been using on recently-concluded or winding-down wars in Central Asia, to re-energize our own Space Program and to set the stage to leave the Russians in the dust again.
Why should we settle for being a Lesser Nation in the 20-teens and beyond, in connection with space exploration, than we were willing to settle for beginning in the 1960s, all the way up to the point where we pulled the plug on the Shuttle program with nothing to replace it with (rather like quitting your job without another to go to) and 'relying upon the kindness of strangers' (the Russians!) to get us into orbit? Relying on the Ruskies was always a bad idea. A blind man could have seen this (Russians stiff-arming us over Argument A or B) coming a mile away. Short-sighted, gullible idiots. Mental defectives wearing bureaucratic ass-hats.
In truth, once we get underway again with a decent initiative of our own, leaving the Russians in the dust won't be very difficult, considering that the Russians are still using modern adaptations of 1960s and 1970s and 1980s capsule-technology, and that they never managed to get a single shuttle of their own into orbit.
Meanwhile, we can throw a few more dollars at Space-X and other private firms, and loan them a few old NASA folks, to help move them along faster as well, as a stop-gap measure. Perhaps that fusion of Gumint Cheese Space-Folk and Innovative Private Engineering Entrepreneurs will set the stage for a new and vastly superior model of how to operate and sustain and grow a National Space Program.
Perhaps this is a blessing in disguise - getting us off our asses and back to work in this area - making the cup half-full rather than half-empty?
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Rather like how we pulled several battleships out of mothballs or re-activated them after they'd been converted to museum ships...
I wonder if it's possible and safe to re-activate a couple of our shuttles and strengthen and upgrade them and put 'em back into service again for a while until we've got something Next-Gen that will do a better job?
Abandoning the Shuttle Program without a replacement was the height of shortsightedness and stupidity.
JoeB131
Diamond Member
I'm sorry, I know that there's this right wing "Greed is Good" mentality, but there's really not a good incentive for private space travel. Where are people going to go?
We should have had a second generation shuttle under development in the 1990's for deployment now. We didn't do that. We thought we could just keep slapping patches on the old shuttles, even as they proved to be incredibly dangerous.
Let us not forget, 40% of the Shuttles we built were destroyed in service. (Challenger in 1986 and Columbia in 2003).
Now, personally, I like space exploration, but if you want to have those kinds of things, you'd better be willing to pay the taxes to fund it.
Obviously, we are not.
So until the Rich figure out a way to get their dressage horsies into space, we might as well suck it up.
JoeB131
Diamond Member
Eliminating 30-year old vehicles that had a 40% chance of blowing up?
Here's the problem with the Shuttle Program. It was ill-conceived from the beginning.
They were supposed to be low-cost alternatives to the Saturn rockets that put men on the moon. They were going to be a cheap way to get into space and fix and launch satellites.
BUt then in 1986, Challenger blew up, and NASA became known as "Need Another Seven Astronauts". And they spent three years retrofitting the shuttles to make them "safer", but in the end, made them prohibitively expensive for their original purpose.
Meanwhile, the ESA and China figured out how to get satellites into orbit cheaply, and that's what the world ended up doing.
Now, NASA should have been working on the next stage in the Oughts. They didn't. And when it became obvious after the Columbia disaster that the shuttles were too dangerous to use, we finally shut that nonsense down.
Joe...
There may be more right than wrong with what you're saying here.
If true, and if we want to continue being a serious player in space exploration, then...
We obviously need a replacement for the Shuttle, and sooner rather than later...
Not just for getting shit into orbit...
But for creating and sustaining a human presence in near-space, for our own 'local' purposes, and, of course, as prelude to moving further away from home in our manned explorations...
If that, too, is true, and generally desirable, then...
If we also do not have a viable and cost-effective Shuttle Replacement on the drawing boards at the Federal level, then...
Perhaps we, as a nation, should look more closely at the fledgling Private Space Vehicle niche market industry, and consider growing it beyond niche-caliber...
What are the incentives?
Heck, I dunno, and I concede, in advance, that that is highly problematic.
But if it's truly in our best interests to take that path, even as a decade- or two-decade -long interim solution, then, I suspect we'll find a way to make it work...
Pumping government grant-money into those Private Space Vehicle companies?
Also arranging for government-backed loans for research and operations?
Loaning them Active and Retired NASA folk as consultants and advisers?
Ensuring that the Private Companies retain creative and operational control?
Giving those Private Companies exclusive rights to launches for some years?
Giving those Private Companies massive tax-breaks?
Loaning those companies Expansion Phase technologies and infrastructure and support?
Helping them to market their services to outsiders through diplomatic channels?
Giving them most of our civilian and military launch business?
Asking them to design and develop and manufacture new Shuttle and Launch vehicles?
Loaning those companies existing NASA and military launch and mission-control facilities that are presently under-utilized or actually lying fallow or in mothballs or just sealed-up?
I dunno... I sense a National Opportunity here to fix the situation more quickly than if we merely rely upon the Government to do it... and we may even end-up with a more vital and energetic and imaginative and creative and experimental Result than we would just relying on the Government sector... but, of course, that's all sheer speculation at this point.
We've been slavishly adhering to a single Government Sector model since the 1950s. It served us well enough in the 1950s and 1960s and 1970s and 1980s but the heart and soul and imagination and creativity went out of the thing by the 1990s and 2000s, and it may not only have passed its prime, but actually become an impediment now to forward progress.
Still, it would be foolish to throw the baby out with the bathwater, and to jettison all of the good things and all of the good experience that we've built-up over recent decades, and turn it all over to a handful of recent start-up companies, without a national-caliber strategic plan, and without preserving as much of the good of the past as may be practicable and useful for the future.
Personally, I'd like to see us try a Government-Private Sector partnership - a true partnership, if that can be made to work in our best interests - to take our next steps; finding a way to incentivize private-sector participation and yielding a Win-Win scenario that benefits the Nation and its strategic and long-term aspirations and goals in both Near-Space and in connection with first steps in Not-So-Near Space.
This seeming break in relations with the Russkies strikes me as a godsend, in the narrow context of revitalizing our National Space Program; getting us off our asses again.
That is, of course, assuming that The Nation WANTS to re-energize its Space Program.
There may be more right than wrong with what you're saying here.
If true, and if we want to continue being a serious player in space exploration, then...
We obviously need a replacement for the Shuttle, and sooner rather than later...
Not just for getting shit into orbit...
But for creating and sustaining a human presence in near-space, for our own 'local' purposes, and, of course, as prelude to moving further away from home in our manned explorations...
If that, too, is true, and generally desirable, then...
If we also do not have a viable and cost-effective Shuttle Replacement on the drawing boards at the Federal level, then...
Perhaps we, as a nation, should look more closely at the fledgling Private Space Vehicle niche market industry, and consider growing it beyond niche-caliber...
What are the incentives?
Heck, I dunno, and I concede, in advance, that that is highly problematic.
But if it's truly in our best interests to take that path, even as a decade- or two-decade -long interim solution, then, I suspect we'll find a way to make it work...
Pumping government grant-money into those Private Space Vehicle companies?
Also arranging for government-backed loans for research and operations?
Loaning them Active and Retired NASA folk as consultants and advisers?
Ensuring that the Private Companies retain creative and operational control?
Giving those Private Companies exclusive rights to launches for some years?
Giving those Private Companies massive tax-breaks?
Loaning those companies Expansion Phase technologies and infrastructure and support?
Helping them to market their services to outsiders through diplomatic channels?
Giving them most of our civilian and military launch business?
Asking them to design and develop and manufacture new Shuttle and Launch vehicles?
Loaning those companies existing NASA and military launch and mission-control facilities that are presently under-utilized or actually lying fallow or in mothballs or just sealed-up?
I dunno... I sense a National Opportunity here to fix the situation more quickly than if we merely rely upon the Government to do it... and we may even end-up with a more vital and energetic and imaginative and creative and experimental Result than we would just relying on the Government sector... but, of course, that's all sheer speculation at this point.
We've been slavishly adhering to a single Government Sector model since the 1950s. It served us well enough in the 1950s and 1960s and 1970s and 1980s but the heart and soul and imagination and creativity went out of the thing by the 1990s and 2000s, and it may not only have passed its prime, but actually become an impediment now to forward progress.
Still, it would be foolish to throw the baby out with the bathwater, and to jettison all of the good things and all of the good experience that we've built-up over recent decades, and turn it all over to a handful of recent start-up companies, without a national-caliber strategic plan, and without preserving as much of the good of the past as may be practicable and useful for the future.
Personally, I'd like to see us try a Government-Private Sector partnership - a true partnership, if that can be made to work in our best interests - to take our next steps; finding a way to incentivize private-sector participation and yielding a Win-Win scenario that benefits the Nation and its strategic and long-term aspirations and goals in both Near-Space and in connection with first steps in Not-So-Near Space.
This seeming break in relations with the Russkies strikes me as a godsend, in the narrow context of revitalizing our National Space Program; getting us off our asses again.
That is, of course, assuming that The Nation WANTS to re-energize its Space Program.
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shikaki
Active Member
- Apr 26, 2013
- 140
- 7
- 31
Name another country in the world that has even a 3rd as many military bases in other countries as we do. We definitely understand expansionism.
There is no doubt that we do, indeed, have a long and overarching global reach.
Given the vacuum left by a Receding Europe after WWII, somebody on the Good Guy side of the fence had to step-in and pick up the slack.
After WWII, as the last of the Good Guys still standing on their feet, we drew the short straw, and did what we believed at the time we needed to do, in projecting military power globally.
It is quite possible that we 'overdid it' on several fronts, and on several occasions, but we kept ourselves and Europe free of the Communist Expansionism threat, until the Soviet Union collapsed under its own weight; a long haul, damned expensive, and tiring, but we did it.
But, as to 'Expansionism', in either a classical or more loose metaphorical sense, the analogy between the Russians, in this latest incarnation, and ourselves, seems to break down in several key areas...
Not least of which is... one big difference being that we leave when asked.
We do not annex outright those regions where we maintain a military presence.
The self-deprecating analogy that you're attempting here is probably not going to stand up under any more serious scrutiny.
And, frankly, putting on the hair shirt and beating our breasts about how bad we are (which I belive to be a crock of shit) isn't going to be of much help, in assessing the latest Threat Vector to surface from the direction of Russia.
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We both know that's a lie.
The sequester illustrated that the White House decides where funding goes. They can always cut a little bit here and send it over there.
I figure they could have properly protected that compound with 1 million dollars a year or less.
Maybe if Michelle had had one less lavish party those people would be alive today.
They spent more money and put up more security keeping WWII vets out and closing parks than they did protecting our ambassador.
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It was a goodwill gesture to the Russians similar to the disarming of Ukraine's nuke program.
jon_berzerk
Platinum Member
- Mar 5, 2013
- 31,401
- 7,370
- 1,130
Bitter lessons learned, in dealing with post-Soviet Russia...
Assuming that we DO learn from our mistakes in this context...
boedicca
Uppity Water Nymph from the Land of Funk
- Feb 12, 2007
- 59,734
- 24,709
- 2,290
Oh Please! You have no legitimate evidence that Russia moved squat for Saddam, other than a couple of whacked out bloggers. No Link No Luck
KissMy
Free Breast Exam
Elon Musk owner of SpaceX is probably jumping for joy & praising Putin & Obama. He has the only rockets made all in the USA. His competitors all buy rocket engines from Russia. So now he is our only contractor who can launch into space. He is going to get filthy rich off this.
JoeB131
Diamond Member
@Kondor,
I was talking to a young engineer in my office today who is more into this stuff than I am, and he said they are talking about how they don't expect the next generation of shuttles to be ready until the lat 2020's.
I was talking to a young engineer in my office today who is more into this stuff than I am, and he said they are talking about how they don't expect the next generation of shuttles to be ready until the lat 2020's.
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