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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: D. Long who wrote (23719)	1/12/2004 3:43:54 PM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793755

"Rocketman" lays out the moon/mars proposal, Derek. I think he is way under on cost. But even with his numbers, it doesn't figure out. Putting The Cart Before The Horse It has been widely reported that President Bush will announce a new space policy initiative later this week that will include sending humans back to the moon and eventually on to Mars. The visionary new space plan would be the most ambitious project entrusted to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration since the Apollo moon landings of three decades ago. It commits the United States to an aggressive and far-reaching mission that holds interplanetary space as the human race's new frontier. Regular readers of my blog know that I am a strong advocate for manned Mars missions, but that I am also deeply suspicious of NASA’s ability to effectively administer a large scale program of this type. This is no longer the 1960’s, the cold war is long over, and a large portion of American public will not tolerate the level of spending it took to accomplish the Apollo program, especially if, as with most modern-day NASA programs, it ends up being significantly over budget and behind schedule. Of course nobody has heard the actual proposal yet, and I am waiting to hear exactly what will be proposed before I pass final judgment on it. But in my opinion there is one item that absolutely must be included as part of the proposal, and that is a new launch vehicle that will drastically reduce the cost of space access. The most conservative scheme for the amount of mass that must be launched into low Earth orbit for a manned Mars mission is probably the Mars Direct plan. Mars direct assumes that all the fuel required for the return trip will be manufactured on Mars, but even with this weight savings the plan still requires launching 200,000 lbs into LEO. With current launch costs being around $8,000/lb, just the launch costs for this plan would add up to $1.6 billion. Mars direct also assumes that it would only take two launches to accomplish the mission, but the problem is that no current launcher has the capability to launch that much mass at one time. The Saturn V had that capability, but they are of course no longer being produced. Recreating the Saturn V would be no easy feat, but it could be done. However, recreating a vehicle designed and built over 35 years ago is not a step forward, it is a step backward. If the Bush proposal ends up being similar to what has been reported, it will require even more mass to be launched. For one, NASA is unlikely to undertake a mission as ambitious as Mars direct, but also because sending humans back to the moon as part of the plan will require even more launches. I don’t know how much total mass will need to be launched to fully realize the goals Bush will propose, but it will be significant. But what if we could reduce launch costs down to $1,000/lb? Let’s assume that by the time humans land on Mars, a total of 400,000 lbs has been launched into LEO. At current rates, launching this much mass would cost around $3.2 billion. But at $1,000/lb the cost would only be $0.4 billion, for a savings of around $2.8 billion. And that is where the title of this post comes in. We shouldn’t put the cart before the horse and undertake missions using existing high cost expendable launch vehicles. Instead we should spend some money up front to significantly reduce launch costs. $2.8 billion is an enormous amount of money, and if we can design and build a fully reusable space transport that can reduce launch costs to $1,000/lb for that price, the overall cost of the mission would be exactly the same as if we used existing launchers. None of the three main components used in the Apollo program (the Saturn V, the command module and the lunar lander) saw any significant use after the program ended, and it would be a tremendous waste to end up in the same situation after spending the kind of money it will take to land humans on the surface of Mars. Hopefully, the ultimate legacy of Bush’s proposal will be to truly open the solar system by dramatically reducing the cost of space access. rocketmanblog.com

To: D. Long who wrote (23719)	1/13/2004 4:09:29 AM
From: LindyBill	Respond to of 793755

A Nation Divided? A Clinton strategist portrays the country as a collection of voting blocs. BY DANIEL CASSE WSJ.com Tuesday, January 13, 2004 12:01 a.m. Someone once wrote that there are only two things needed to win the American presidency: character and guts. Stanley Greenberg might add one more: a clever strategist obsessed by opinion polls. Someone, that is, like Mr. Greenberg himself. He was a key player in Bill Clinton's 1992 presidential campaign and continues to advise politicians here and abroad. "The Two Americas" is his grand theory about the past and future of the struggle between Republicans and Democrats. Using a towering amount of survey data, he attempts to point a way out of America's polarized politics. While most voters see politics as a contest among personalities and ideas, Mr. Greenberg views elections as epic tugs-of-war over disparate voting blocs. To him, voters are not Republicans or Democrats, New Yorkers or Texans. They are rather members of varied cluster groups, each with its own habits and preferences and each christened with its own label: Golden Gals (Republican-leaning senior women now tilting Democrat), Country Folk (rural whites) or the F-You Old Men (self-explanatory). If one can put up with the irritating taxonomy, "The Two Americas" is an engaging book--and a serious attempt to explain what has moved Americans to vote for one candidate or another over the past half-century. Mr. Greenberg's thesis is that the political deadlock between the two parties in America is a product not of the bitter 2000 election but of 50 years of political struggle, with both parties trying to maximize their natural voting base and cobble together a slim majority. The result, according to Mr. Greenberg, is that many voting blocs don't fit in either camp. The press has lumped together the members of these blocs as "independents" or "moderate swing voters." But as Mr. Greenberg explains, they are in fact unattached citizens spread across the spectrum, susceptible to the charms of either party in a given election. To show how Republicans might now be thinking, Mr. Greenberg concocts a White House scene in which a fictional Karl Rove is briefing an impatient president. Here the Rove doppelgänger gleefully explains that the GOP can appeal to college-educated women and Hispanic voters with occasional feints toward education funding, AIDS research or immigration reform. Still, these are mere compassion-issues, meant for stray voters. The larger design of GOP strategists, Mr. Greenberg believes, is to present George W. Bush as "Reagan's Son," the champion of a politics based on faith, tax cuts and small government. But this reading seems out of touch. Right or wrong, the conservative base of the Republican Party sees the Bush presidency not as a continuation of Reaganism but as a deviation from it--indeed, as a betrayal of Mr. Reagan's legacy. Conservative talk shows are filled with fury at Mr. Bush over Medicare, deficits and now immigration. Rather than adore him as Mr. Reagan's son, the movement treats Mr. Bush like the black-sheep nephew who should be cut from the inheritance. Mr. Greenberg's most intense interest, though, is reserved for the Democrats, who he believes can break the country's political stalemate by offering a set of ideas that reach beyond their base. The key is to address the concerns of what Mr. Greenberg calls "JFK Democrats." The program he proposes would emphasize opportunity and family security through scholarships, universal health care and a commitment not to mess with Social Security. It would attack corporate tax loopholes and support publicly funded election campaigns. It would also cut U.S. oil consumption by a third. This fanciful and tired agenda of "solutions" sounds like something you would hear on television's "West Wing," not in a real Oval Office. That is because the JFK-Democrat vision emerges from the distilled sentiments of shopping-mall focus groups rather than from hard-ball politics, with its array of compromises, conflicts and unmet expectations. Yet it is exactly the rough-hewn side of politics that makes candidates worth watching. There is no room in Mr. Greenberg's cosmology for maverick politicians like John McCain, Jerry Brown, Pat Moynihan or even Howard Dean. They don't immediately appeal to any of Mr. Greenberg's synthetic cluster groups, which is why they are more interesting than his JFK Democrats and their pseudo-passion for "energy security." Certainly "The Two Americas" contains many insights, but for all its attempts to understand voters, the book remains deeply cynical about politics. To Mr. Greenberg, all political ideas are a form of pandering to one group or the other. They do not establish a direction for the country or express the deep conviction of a candidate. Indeed, policies have merit only to the degree that they appeal to "Tampa Blue," "Heartland Iowa" or some other survey-generated cross-section of voters. It is exactly this philosophy of the focus group that so often robs our political campaigns of their spirit and life. Mr. Casse is senior director of the White House Writers Group. Copyright © 2004 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.