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Story so far: (correct me if I'm wrong) NASA has plan to get into the Moon by 2028. Pence blindsights NASA and contractors by moving timeline arbitrarily forw

Story so far: (correct me if I'm wrong) NASA has plan to get into the Moon by 2028. Pence blindsights NASA and contractors by moving timeline arbitrarily forward without a plan in a grandstanding speech. "At the direction of the President of the United States, it is the stated policy of this administration and the United States of America to return American astronauts to the moon within the next five years”. It's not a Tweet so NASA must scramble to make a plan. Funding for a new timetable is not there. Gerstenmaier is removed without explanation as a head of HEO almost immediately after he testifies to congress. Gerstenmaier quits NASA to consult SpaceX. Loverro comes in, is very bullish about the timetable. Now Loverro quits suddenly. I think it's time for Jared to come in. If he can handle Middle-East peace and Covid-19, why not a Moon landing as well.

pm90 6y ago
> I think it's time for Jared to come in. If he can handle Middle-East peace and Covid-19, why not a Moon landing as well. People say he's unqualified for anything. But he is uniquely qualified in that he is immune to being fired for fucking up everything.
- coliveira 6y ago
  Jared's talent (if he has any) is to screw up and then convincingly claim he did a great job. Trump sees this as the apex of ability.
  - kevin_thibedeau 6y ago
    It's only the deep staters holding him back. A true superman patriot.
  - jfengel 6y ago
    And so do his supporters. It makes an extremely effective political combination: all the enthusiasm of winning without actually doing anything. And it works as long as you can have goodwill and assets to burn.
    - pm90 6y ago
      Except when something happens that defies spin, like a pandemic that takes away jobs and lives. I'm not sure how this is going to turn out, but even if the US elects a different president, the current one has provided a nice handbook to a potential autocratic future president to gain unlimited power.
      - jfengel 6y ago
        I suspect that even a pandemic may not suffice. The only thing that gets through is a direct personal loss, and the death rate seems too low for that. You'd need deaths in the millions for everyone to know someone who died. Even then it's easy to blame it on someone else. There's a reason they are calling it the Wuhan Virus.
- Nokinside 6y ago
  Jared has only two positions: 1. Senior Advisor to the President 2. Director of the Office of American Innovation within the White House Office (position created specially for him). The office exists only to make recommendations the President. When he meddles with the CDC or the US foreign policy, he is not bearing any legal responsibility. He is grey eminence operating in unofficial capacity. He can't legally make anyone to do anything, but everyone knows that he is just phone call away from the real power.
  - musicale 6y ago
    Amazingly I actually remember the Logan Act from US History, and even thought of it before I heard it mentioned in the news.
    - Nokinside 6y ago
      Logan Act applies to Flynn when he was working as transition team member for Trump when Obama was president. It applies to Jared when he was transition team member and talked to Saudis and Israel. President-elect is not the president. Logan act does not apply to Kushner when he is acting on behalf of the president as he is doing today. Kushner has authorization to do what he does. He even has senior position in the WH. What he does not have is executive power or position on his own.
tracer4201 6y ago
> I think it's time for Jared to come in. If he can handle Middle-East peace and Covid-19, why not a Moon landing as well. You’re being sarcastic but this is horrifying. In the country my parents immigrated from, government officials appointing their family members to important positions is very normal. It also did get bad enough that my parents had to leave that country behind.
- groby_b 6y ago
  You'll be delighted to know that there's an increasing number of people leaving the US behind as well, or at least making substantial plans on what to do if they need to leave in a hurry. Official numbers from 2019: https://news.gallup.com/poll/245789/record-numbers-americans-leave.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/245789/record-numbers-americans... Anecdata suggest this has significantly increased in the last year, and especially in 2020. We live in what amounts to a failed state. There's still some hope it's repairable, but it's rapidly dwindling, and Jared's crown prince role is a large contributor to that dwindling.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - nxc18 6y ago
    Something I find fascinating in this discussion is how November affects things. If Trump is re-elected, any hope of repairing institutions is realistically lost. If he isn’t, there’s a real possibility of funny business, either contesting the result or refusing to leave office. I know it sounds preposterous that a president would refuse to leave office, but it also seems preposterous that an impeached president wouldn’t step down, and he’s become accustomed to degrading norms and breaking the law with impunity. US lifestyle is still very good, but for those of us looking at the trend it’s really concerning. I know I’m personally making decisions with the possibility of needing to leave in the future.
    - PopePompus 6y ago
      >>> but it also seems preposterous that an impeached president wouldn’t step down Like Clinton? Like Andrew Johnson? No impeached US president has ever stepped down. Nixon resigned before he was impeached.
kayfox 6y ago
I think the bissgest issue the Trump administration has with space is they don't have any idea how the Kennedy and Johnson administrations dealt with it. They think that Kennedy just decided one day that we would send men to the moon by the end of the 60's, but in reality it was years of discussions with NASA, largely championed by Johnson, before Johnson recommended to Kennedy that they establish this policy to put the US ahead of the Soviet Union. Instead of this, we have the usual situation modern space exploration has settled into, some president boasts that we will do some thing and then after they left office some other president quietly kills it because its way to expensive. What we should be doing is building coalitions with other countries to do join missions to the moon and all that, thats why the ISS has been so successful, its not just the US or Russia contributing, but dozens of countries. Not to say it could happen without the US or Russia, but the large number of countries working on it helps quite a bit.
- ceejayoz 6y ago
  It's also questionable if we'd have made it to the moon had Kennedy not gotten shot. The "do it for the murdered President" motivation likely helped keep the schedule pushing forwards, at least to some extent. https://www.fastcompany.com/90376962/if-president-kennedy-hadnt-been-killed-would-we-have-landed-on-the-moon-on-july-20-1969-it-seems-unlikely https://www.fastcompany.com/90376962/if-president-kennedy-ha...
- nickff 6y ago
  Having read some of the histories of NASA and spaceflight, I think you're dramatically mistaken. Kennedy committed to the lunar landing shortly after Shepherd's suborbital flight, and the idea from NASA was that they'd orbit the moon. Kennedy thought a landing would be more spectacular, but it took NASA quite a while to settle on lunar orbit rendezvous, let alone the Saturn V architecture. Kennedy was on the verge of cancelling Apollo when he died, and Johnston was anything but a space expert. Johnson was definitely responsible for ensuring no American woman went to space until after he was out of office, the evidence is clear on that one. The single person most responsible for getting America to the moon was probably John Houbolt (or perhaps Konstantin Tsiolkovsky). There is also a lot of debate as to whether the ISS has been successful; this really depends on what your objectives were/are. [1] John Logsdon's Bibligraphy [2] https://www.nasa.gov/centers/langley/news/factsheets/Rendezvous.html https://www.nasa.gov/centers/langley/news/factsheets/Rendezv...
nickik 6y ago
There was at least part of NASA, including the Administrator that welcomed the 2024 target.
- Nokinside 6y ago
  It's hard to imagine counterfactual where NASA administrators says something else and wants to keep his job. It's like how fighter pilots are always saying good things about new plane they are flying. It's the only option. Government contractors were genuinely ecstatic. There is no downside for them.

pm90 6y ago

> I think it's time for Jared to come in. If he can handle Middle-East peace and Covid-19, why not a Moon landing as well. People say he's unqualified for anything. But he is uniquely qualified in that he is immune to being fired for fucking up everything.

coliveira 6y ago
Jared's talent (if he has any) is to screw up and then convincingly claim he did a great job. Trump sees this as the apex of ability.
- kevin_thibedeau 6y ago
  It's only the deep staters holding him back. A true superman patriot.
- jfengel 6y ago
  And so do his supporters. It makes an extremely effective political combination: all the enthusiasm of winning without actually doing anything. And it works as long as you can have goodwill and assets to burn.
  - pm90 6y ago
    Except when something happens that defies spin, like a pandemic that takes away jobs and lives. I'm not sure how this is going to turn out, but even if the US elects a different president, the current one has provided a nice handbook to a potential autocratic future president to gain unlimited power.
    - jfengel 6y ago
      I suspect that even a pandemic may not suffice. The only thing that gets through is a direct personal loss, and the death rate seems too low for that. You'd need deaths in the millions for everyone to know someone who died. Even then it's easy to blame it on someone else. There's a reason they are calling it the Wuhan Virus.
Nokinside 6y ago
Jared has only two positions: 1. Senior Advisor to the President 2. Director of the Office of American Innovation within the White House Office (position created specially for him). The office exists only to make recommendations the President. When he meddles with the CDC or the US foreign policy, he is not bearing any legal responsibility. He is grey eminence operating in unofficial capacity. He can't legally make anyone to do anything, but everyone knows that he is just phone call away from the real power.
- musicale 6y ago
  Amazingly I actually remember the Logan Act from US History, and even thought of it before I heard it mentioned in the news.
  - Nokinside 6y ago
    Logan Act applies to Flynn when he was working as transition team member for Trump when Obama was president. It applies to Jared when he was transition team member and talked to Saudis and Israel. President-elect is not the president. Logan act does not apply to Kushner when he is acting on behalf of the president as he is doing today. Kushner has authorization to do what he does. He even has senior position in the WH. What he does not have is executive power or position on his own.

tracer4201 6y ago

> I think it's time for Jared to come in. If he can handle Middle-East peace and Covid-19, why not a Moon landing as well. You’re being sarcastic but this is horrifying. In the country my parents immigrated from, government officials appointing their family members to important positions is very normal. It also did get bad enough that my parents had to leave that country behind.

groby_b 6y ago
You'll be delighted to know that there's an increasing number of people leaving the US behind as well, or at least making substantial plans on what to do if they need to leave in a hurry. Official numbers from 2019: https://news.gallup.com/poll/245789/record-numbers-americans-leave.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/245789/record-numbers-americans... Anecdata suggest this has significantly increased in the last year, and especially in 2020. We live in what amounts to a failed state. There's still some hope it's repairable, but it's rapidly dwindling, and Jared's crown prince role is a large contributor to that dwindling.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- nxc18 6y ago
  Something I find fascinating in this discussion is how November affects things. If Trump is re-elected, any hope of repairing institutions is realistically lost. If he isn’t, there’s a real possibility of funny business, either contesting the result or refusing to leave office. I know it sounds preposterous that a president would refuse to leave office, but it also seems preposterous that an impeached president wouldn’t step down, and he’s become accustomed to degrading norms and breaking the law with impunity. US lifestyle is still very good, but for those of us looking at the trend it’s really concerning. I know I’m personally making decisions with the possibility of needing to leave in the future.
  - PopePompus 6y ago
    >>> but it also seems preposterous that an impeached president wouldn’t step down Like Clinton? Like Andrew Johnson? No impeached US president has ever stepped down. Nixon resigned before he was impeached.

kayfox 6y ago

I think the bissgest issue the Trump administration has with space is they don't have any idea how the Kennedy and Johnson administrations dealt with it. They think that Kennedy just decided one day that we would send men to the moon by the end of the 60's, but in reality it was years of discussions with NASA, largely championed by Johnson, before Johnson recommended to Kennedy that they establish this policy to put the US ahead of the Soviet Union. Instead of this, we have the usual situation modern space exploration has settled into, some president boasts that we will do some thing and then after they left office some other president quietly kills it because its way to expensive. What we should be doing is building coalitions with other countries to do join missions to the moon and all that, thats why the ISS has been so successful, its not just the US or Russia contributing, but dozens of countries. Not to say it could happen without the US or Russia, but the large number of countries working on it helps quite a bit.

ceejayoz 6y ago
It's also questionable if we'd have made it to the moon had Kennedy not gotten shot. The "do it for the murdered President" motivation likely helped keep the schedule pushing forwards, at least to some extent. https://www.fastcompany.com/90376962/if-president-kennedy-hadnt-been-killed-would-we-have-landed-on-the-moon-on-july-20-1969-it-seems-unlikely https://www.fastcompany.com/90376962/if-president-kennedy-ha...
nickff 6y ago
Having read some of the histories of NASA and spaceflight, I think you're dramatically mistaken. Kennedy committed to the lunar landing shortly after Shepherd's suborbital flight, and the idea from NASA was that they'd orbit the moon. Kennedy thought a landing would be more spectacular, but it took NASA quite a while to settle on lunar orbit rendezvous, let alone the Saturn V architecture. Kennedy was on the verge of cancelling Apollo when he died, and Johnston was anything but a space expert. Johnson was definitely responsible for ensuring no American woman went to space until after he was out of office, the evidence is clear on that one. The single person most responsible for getting America to the moon was probably John Houbolt (or perhaps Konstantin Tsiolkovsky). There is also a lot of debate as to whether the ISS has been successful; this really depends on what your objectives were/are. [1] John Logsdon's Bibligraphy [2] https://www.nasa.gov/centers/langley/news/factsheets/Rendezvous.html https://www.nasa.gov/centers/langley/news/factsheets/Rendezv...

nickik 6y ago

There was at least part of NASA, including the Administrator that welcomed the 2024 target.

Nokinside 6y ago
It's hard to imagine counterfactual where NASA administrators says something else and wants to keep his job. It's like how fighter pilots are always saying good things about new plane they are flying. It's the only option. Government contractors were genuinely ecstatic. There is no downside for them.