Monday

Charlie's amazing stew


Oh what an amazing stew NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden is making for himself as he rushes to to sell, at all costs, the new Obama NASA budget. Charlie will, it seems, do anything to serve lord Obama. No matter how toxic the paint, he will paint himself into a nice tight corner and then fall upon the brush as if it were a sword just to please the grand Obama.

Get out there Charlie and serve the American people a giant crap sandwich by telling everyone it is peanut butter. Charlie knows that the FY2011 Obama budget is a poison pill for NASA and that will lead to the slow death of something that has held America's greatest pride for 50 years. He knows too that this will spell the end of United States astronauts flying in space, let alone flying beyond low earth orbit- but what the hell, Charlie has already had his rides, so screw the rest of the Americans who may want to fly in space- let 'em ride Soyuz... right?
As I write this, Charlie, Lori and a hand full of other Obama idolizers are busy composing circle talk that they can spout in front of Congress that will make the Obama vacuum in United States human space flight seem like a new and exciting adventure. Charlie's good at circle talking too- he uses the term "there" as if it were a grand new place to which all of us can someday sail thanks to the great Obama. Never mind that he offers no actual definition as to where or what "there" is, or that, under the Obama budget to nowhere we will not have any hardware to get us to "there" for 15 years or longer- nope, just make it sound like a grand adventure Charlie and then Obama will be pleased.

And what of that Congress? Well to listen to and watch Charlie and Lori and their little demolition crew, you'd never know that the Congress has the final say- in fact, you'd think that the Congress has no say what-so-ever in the matter. Obama decreed that NASA's human spaceflight program is finished and Charlie says "Thy will be done." With any luck, Charlie will be in for a rude awakening.
What if... what if... the Congress elects to order the Space Shuttle program extended to cover the gap, the Constellation program reinstated and the Ares I developed in full. What will Charlie do then? You see one of the corners that Charlie has painted himself into is the Shuttle- which Charlie has said, in public, to KSC workers, flying it is like "playing Russian roulette." If the Congress, who actually DOES have the final say instead of Obama, and orders the Shuttle to continue flying, Charlie, who has compared that operation to playing a suicide game will have to oversee putting crews on additional shuttle missions. The word "squirm" comes to mind.

Of course if Charlie does not like his situation he could do the honorable thing and resign his post- but that would leave the amazingly ill-suited Lori Garver, how cannot think her way out of a spaceflight paperbag, in charge of NASA. That would really make Charlie's idol and leader, The Obama, look bad... and we can't have that, can we Charlie.

All in all Charlie has been given quite an amazing toxic stew to serve to the American people. He gets to lead the effort to dismantle a 50 year program of historic success to which hundreds of thousands of Americans have dedicated their lives to and more than a score have actually given their lives for. Demolishing American pride is Obama's on-going quest and right now his chief mechanic is Charlie Bolden. But what does Charlie care... as I said, he had his rides, so to hell with everyone else, Obama is all that matters to Charlie.

Tuesday

Obama trying to kill US human spaceflight




Way back in mid August of last year I wrote a piece called "A Big Ol' Plate Of NASA To Cancel" where I outlined the nightmare scenario of our leftwing radical in chief doing what all liberals since Mondale have been drooling to do- kill NASA. Guess what... as predicted- he just tried to do it- in his latest budget. In fact, from reading the budget, you'd think that Obama's people took it from my blog.

This budget takes 45 years of United States domination in the science and technology of human spaceflight and simply erases it with the stroke of a pen. Now, as Obama wants to see it, we'll have fun robots to go all over and see things. Plus we'll chase the myth of man-made Global Warming for several billion dollars a year- but wait! there's more. Now we will give shovels full of money- billions worth- to "commercial" operators so that NASA can rent seats from them to go up to the International Space Station- yes, boatloads of teachers and scientists and researchers all going to the ISS, there in low earth orbit... ya' know, where we went way back in 1962. You see, our fearfilled leader, Obama, believes that that's just high enough for people to go.

Of course there are no real details in the budget on all of this other than the order to "cancel the Constellation Program" our project for return to the moon. Those so-called "commercial" operators will not even have a fully functional and tested launch escape system ready for the next six or seven years, but we're going to turn our backs on the billions in sunk-costs invested alread in Constellation and shovel as much mone as we can to these "commercial" operators. Yeah...right.

Such courage it took for our fearfilled leader to just take four and half decades of human spaceflight and chuck it. Then go back out to his private basketball court for a bit of hoop.

You see, this is not about technology, or risk, or jobs or even budgets. This IS about United States national pride. The United States manned space efforts as conduced by NASA have been a beacon of national pride since May 5th, 1961 when Alan Shepard launched in a 15 minute sub-orbital hop. Less than 5 years later, the liberals began to peck at that icon. They were never able, however, to knock it down or get it deleted from the Federal budget. They came close in the early 1970s when shuttle funding passed by a single vote. They had high hopes between 1977 and 1980 while Jimmy Carter served as the liberal in chief -screwhead, but he just was not quite sociopathic enough to cancel the shuttle. But 2010 is different... as there are Democrat majorities in both houses of Congress and Obama has managed, with a leg up from W. Bush to spend the nation into near oblivion. Now was the time to strike at the biggest pillar of United States pride, and Obama did just that.

As people who actually can see the importance of manned spaceflight as conducted by NASA, we still have one shred of hope- the Congress. You see, our fearfilled leader and his gang of bootlickers who now reside in DC have actually gone a bit too far in their accelerated race toward national socialism and the American people are rising up. In congress there are now as many as 150 Democrat seats that could be at risk this fall and Obama's latest outlash at or national pride may not sit well in the Congress. We can only hope that the tallest icon of United States pride, our human spaceflight program, will not be dissected and tossed away by Obama. Stay tuned.