“My loyalty is to this nation, the space agency, and its world-changing mission."
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Isaacman: SLS and Orion are not a “long-term” solution for NASA
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There is another thing. To change what was said in The Right Stuff “No Buck Rogers no bucks”. The human program is the PR that gets people interested in space so we have NASA and a space program. IMHO
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Such a good person that full time employees at Walmart qualify for food stamps
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I think that he may be being measured against his heirs, in which case he comes out looking pretty good.
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From the article;
”Cruz wanted Isaacman to commit to not just flying human missions to the Moon, but also to a sustained presence on the surface or in cislunar space.
In response, Isaacman said he would see that NASA returns humans to the Moon as quickly as possible, beating China in the process…
Cruz, however, wanted Isaacman to say NASA would establish a sustained presence at the Moon.”
** The space race in the 1960s between the US and the USSR led to the spending of large amounts of money so the US could put astronauts on the Moon.
— The current space race between China and the US will lead the US to again get astronauts back to the Moon.
— Since it is expected that the Chinese will have a “sustained (human) presence” on the Moon, the US will do the same.
”Cruz wanted Isaacman to commit to not just flying human missions to the Moon, but also to a sustained presence on the surface or in cislunar space.
In response, Isaacman said he would see that NASA returns humans to the Moon as quickly as possible, beating China in the process…
Cruz, however, wanted Isaacman to say NASA would establish a sustained presence at the Moon.”
** The space race in the 1960s between the US and the USSR led to the spending of large amounts of money so the US could put astronauts on the Moon.
— The current space race between China and the US will lead the US to again get astronauts back to the Moon.
— Since it is expected that the Chinese will have a “sustained (human) presence” on the Moon, the US will do the same.
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IIRC, Jared's Polaris flights have raised a few hundred million dollars for St. Jude.
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FSTargetDrone
Ars Centurion
Fuck what he’s done. He’s part of biggest, most criminally self-dealing, massively-conflicted of interest Maladministration we have seen in generations.
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Ah yes the Helium 3, the fuel for the fusion reactor that someday might exist. Right now short of filling party balloons not a lot of use for He3... That's the problem with Mars and the Moon, they are extremely hostile places to go, with little commercial return and a huge logistical tail to keep those few souls alive. Yes, someday Starship will be all grown up and and can keep those folks alive (although right now we have no ability to build that habitat on either planet), am I excited about having a moonbase, absolutely, do I force any real use in it, no. OK there is some science we could do on the moon and if we want to land a robotic front loader and return like a tone of regolith/rocks for science, I'd vote for that. Spending tens of billions to keep 3 guys alive to look at that ton of rocks on the surface seems wasteful
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Yes, but is national glory really worth that much? It's petty, dumb, and stupid. Neil Armstrong didn't try to rename the moon the park of America. His quote was something entirely opposite from petty national tribalism.
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Not on stupid pills, but you have to consider that he was talking to Republican controlled Senate.
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“Jared Isaacman dodged most of their questions and would not be pinned down”
Which is suspiciously like the other Felon45 appointees when they were before the senate committee. People going to Mars is a complete red herring, they could not survive. Since Felon45 is shutting down all scientific research, who will be able to address living on Mars?
Which is suspiciously like the other Felon45 appointees when they were before the senate committee. People going to Mars is a complete red herring, they could not survive. Since Felon45 is shutting down all scientific research, who will be able to address living on Mars?
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Apollo and Skylab were great missions, showing the capabilities and limitations of humans in spaceflight. But at the end of Skylab, over 50 years ago, it was obvious that NASA Manned Spaceflight was a giant and capable bureaucracy in search of a mission to keep them funded. The Shuttle and ISS became the "payday" for this group. But what those horribly costly programs proved was that humans are very poorly suited to long endurance spaceflight and incredibly costly to maintain in space. Still.....NASA made one more grasp at "keeping the band together": Artemis/Orion/SLS. I asked this question some years ago:
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And, in 20 years we'll be able to turn that helium 3 into energy/s
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A successful CEO has to oversee all of the activities of a business, production, R&D, sakes, marketing, support, finance and administration, and work with outsiders like customers, suppliers, bankers, etc.
The NASA administrator has to do a lot of similar activities managing an enormous organization. They also have to work with Congress and lobby it to do the right things. But that’s just part of the job. The last two administrators came from Congress and the Senate and had zero experience and had managing large organizations.
Shift4 has 4,000 employees, the Military Aggressor Squadron leasing business certainly has hundreds. He already has experience running far larger organizations than most NASA administrators have had when before they were appointed.
Again lobbying Congress, isn’t it a definable skill. Just because you’re a former congressman or senator doesn’t mean you’re necessarily gonna be good at it though it does provide you with a lot of phone numbers to call on your existing Rolodex.. but congress people always take calls from the NASA administrator.
Perhaps you could provide counter examples of NASA administrators who were more accomplished than Jared?
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View: https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTjeC2KQb/
Fucking dickhead will not answer a very simple and direct question (he was asked repeatedly if musk was in the room when he was interviewing). Another shady billionaire. Fuck him.
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An Isaacson wrote a biography of Musk that came out late 2023. It was much talked about. I get them confused too.Welp, the details of the meeting technically fall under the umbrella of internal deliberations, covered by "executive privilege". Maybe Isaacman felt it wasn't his prerogative to divulge any such details: that denying or confirming the participation of various additional people like Musk should be strictly the purview and at the discretion of the President...
But more likely, Isaacman was just coached to evade any such obvious digs at his motivations. After all, the whole line of Musk-related questioning was aimed solely at insinuating corrupt influence and/or corrupt intent - and responding to such an attack by saying "I'm not actually corrupt: trust me" just doesn't make for good optics, either.
edit: fixed naming brain fart - I'm not sure why I keep calling him "Isaacson" instead of Isaacman. I don't actually know any Isaacsons...
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Another dickhead that doesn't know politics. But feels qualified to comment on them.
Sounds familiar ...
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There is no way that the SLS/Orion architecture can build or support a moonbase. Even if unmanned cargo vessels, such as Starship, BO's entry and others can deliver construction materials to the lunar surface, humans have to do the actual construction work. We are nowhere near having the capability to that using robotic equipment. So, since the only way we currently have to get astronauts from Earth to the Moon is SLS/Orion, which we can only do once per year, they will certainly not be able to build a base with such a slow pace. Assuming that I am being overly pessimistic, and they actually accomplish that miracle, we are still left with only being able to send a crew to the base once a year. They are not going to stay for a full year, so that means the base will be occupied for only a very short time. Until the US is able to launch cargo and crews more than once a year, the moonbase is a fantasy.
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I'm not fit for politics because I have integrity and a spine, and I actually work for a living.
But what's cool is that at least for now, I'm allowed to express my opinion on the corrupt, the evil, and/or the unworthy gaining power.
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The only opinions worth anything are the ones that are from people that know what they're talking about.
Otherwise you're just a couch quarterback that wonders why things are broken.
Hmm - sounds like a congresscritter to me.
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The only opinions that are listened to today are state-sanctioned ones, as determined by the Trump administration. Any others are, at the very least, decried as being "woke", or "threat to national security". The commander of the Space Force base in Greenland was fired yesterday because she had the temerity to disagree with Vance on his trip to Greenland. She was removed because she didn't toe the line, (and being a woman certainly didn't help).
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lol ok. Lmk when the billionaires you defend on the internet give you your pony or whatever.
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In fact, it's cold as hell! ...and there's no one there to raise them, if you did.*
*WTF? Why isn't it "if you're dead". Whatever, Bernie.
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I gotta say I'm generally pretty happy with the choice of Isaacman, but I agree with you @Frodo Douchebaggins that this sort of non-answer is fucking infuriating.
If I were a senator, that would immediately be a no-vote from me, and I'd tell him as much.
Yes, it's a setup question, but it is a legitimate concern what influence Musk has over the possible future administrator of NASA.
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Earths oceans are awash with Helium 3 available far cheaper, if it’s ever needed at all. It’s not the only fusion fuel, and true energy generation from fusion (in excess of all input/output losses) is decades away at best.
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Who cares? The question was made in hopes of merely making a political point, and there is no way Jared should answer it.
How the Whitehouse makes its appointment interviews is not the Senates business. It would be like freely answering police questions when pulled over, you have the right to remain silent to any fishing expedition questions and should always exercise it.
In this case Jared has no obligation to help senators on fishing expeditions. And there’d be nothing wrong with Elon Musk being in that meeting by the way.
If SpaceX is advantage in any way by Isaacman‘s appointment, the evidence will be in the contracts they get. Currently, SpaceX has received no cost plus contracts except for tiny research efforts. By contrast every contract that’s Boeing has ever gotten outside of COTS has been cost plus.
So I’m ready to lose my shit when there’s actual evidence of favoritism. And that evidence will be very clear if they get cost plus contracts. But until then I’m happy that Jared is one of the best qualified administrator candidates in many years and that SpaceX has done almost all work for NASA on performance based contracts that even outside auditors agree have saved NASA billions.
And that SpaceX pricing is a tiny fraction of what Boeing, Lockheed-Martin and ULA contracts have cost NASA, so any move to use more of its launch services at the expense of the others is clearly in this nation’s best interest.
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