Obama At Kennedy Space Center Talking Space Policy

Obama is such a uniter that he has legendary astronauts taking sides.

He just thanked a shuttle astronaut for fixing the Hubble Telescope since he has a photo taken by it in his private White House office. It's all about him.

Also, he mentioned that Buzz Aldrin is 'in the house'. Let me just say, I'm sick and tired of the President of the United States treating events as if they are comedy shows. "In the house" is a juvenile expression and simply an unworthy way to refer to these types of events.

Now he's whining about previous administrations and their changing priorities. He inherited this NASA budget!

Upping NASA's budget by $6 billion over 5 years.

Focusing on robotic exploration of solar system and more focus on Earth challenges like...climate change!

Partner with private sector for access to low earth orbit.

So far, nothing that new.

Transforming the Orion capsule, which was supposed to be part of the lunar mission, into a rescue capsule for the ISS. Talk about a shrinking mission.

Nothing new here. This sounds more like a bid to hold down electoral losses in Florida this year. I wonder if this visit was scheduled before the health care bid or if it was a pay off for Suzanne Kosmas' flip on health care. She's pretty much considered a dead duck because of NASA cuts that hurt her district.

Now he says he wants to send astronauts to an asteroid then to Mars in the 2030's. Look for lots of comparisons to Kennedy's 'Land a man on the Moon by the end of the decade' speech from the Lapdog Media.

Says we don't have to go back to the Moon to get to Mars because we've been there. Not a lot of applause for that because they know it's stupid.

NASA has to come up with breakthrough propulsion technologies. Space bio-fuels!

Says the job cuts are result of decisions made 6 years ago, not 6 months to retire the shuttle. True but he cut the replacement program that people would have segued into. Nice try but the Blamer in Chief.

You can tell when Obama cares about stuff and when he doesn't. This is the latter. It's a check mark in a list of things he had to do today. Nothing new. People were hoping that he might announce an extension of the shuttle program but nope.

BTW- the network I'm watching this on is slobbering over how wonderful the speech was. MSNBC? Nah, Shep Smith on FNC.

Overall he made it sound nice but every President says nifty stuff about what they want to do with NASA and it never gets done.

Shep just said, "I don't see where the detractors of this President get off". Man, he'd be at home at MSNBC.

His guest, Homer Hickman is lambasting Obama and the NASA administration. Here's his blog.

Quite honestly, at this point, I don't much care what they announce and pronounce. I do not think any of them are capable of organizing a DAR scrap drive. This includes Senator Bill Nelson who is about a mile wide and a millimeter deep when it comes to almost any intellectual pursuit. Am I being unkind to all concerned? I don't care. They've made me lose sleep, worrying about their erratic drive toward spaceflight mediocrity.

With this crowd, all I can do is hope they won't screw things up so much it can't be fixed later. My guess is after they're done talking, we still won't know what's actually going to happen, mainly because they don't know, either. These are folks who, in more serious times, might be considered, well, loons. President Obama operates at about 110,000 feet (e.g., he still can't tell anyone what's in his health care plan after all these months of angst), Charlie Bolden would rather be home with his grandkids (great idea), John Holdren is a radical "global warmer" (which requires a suspension of intellectual curiosity), and Bill Nelson is a space who needs to be filled (with someone else). The rest make Lady Gaga look smart.

posted by DrewM. at 03:04 PM

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