A Trump Presidency

Tom Kalbfus · 2016-05-23 10:47:46

Any clue about what Trump would do? He hasn't talked much about space policy. I think a Moon landing is more likely than a Mars Mission. If we have an SLS/Orion mission to orbit the Moon, someone is going to ask, "why don't we have a Moon lander?" Trump will look at the cost of building a Moon lander and then at the cost of a Mars mission, and he may conclude that its time to land on the Moon.

GW Johnson · 2016-05-23 12:09:05

Odds are he will not care one whit about the space program. Not since LBJ have we had a president who really thought it important to do things in space. That's 8 since LBJ, and none of them cared enough to follow-through on anything.

GW

Tom Kalbfus · 2016-05-23 20:52:09

Its not a "Giant Leap" to go from orbiting the Moon to landing on it. Now we get into why Trump wants to be President, he puts his name on everything he builds, he is a billionaire and is 69 years old, I think he is closer to the end of his life than to its beginning, Trump can't take his billions with him when he dies, so we get into the subject of what does he want to be remembered for. Being President is his one big chance for fame. I don't really think he wants a career in politics, I don't think he wants to be President so he can live in the White House for four to eight years and enjoy its accoutrements. He is a billionaire, he has no need for fortune, so what does he want to do as President? What is his personal motivation to run for this office? I think he wants his place in the history books, being the President that resumed flights to the Moon is one way, and since he will have inherited the SLS, Orion spacecraft, all he has to do is build a lunar lander - a cheap enough task, there is no reason not to, if you already have the capability to send people into Lunar orbit.

GW Johnson · 2016-05-24 14:01:03

Well, if he does anything at all, it'll likely only be to reprise Apollo because that's the cheapest and easiest to do, but which will be the same dead end it was before.

GW

Tom Kalbfus · 2016-05-24 20:28:19

GW Johnson wrote:

Well, if he does anything at all, it'll likely only be to reprise Apollo because that's the cheapest and easiest to do, but which will be the same dead end it was before.
GW

Not quite, we can do Apollo cheaper than we could in the 1960s and 1970s, because it is cheaper, there will be fewer people asking what else we can spend the money on. I think if we restarted the Apollo Program with 21st century technology, the SLS being one of them, each mission would be cheaper than it was in the 1970s, it will cost us less to keep it going than it did then, and like the Shuttle program, we could just keep launching new missions over and over again, exploring new parts of the Moon each time. The Shuttle was expensive, but it was a small part of our national budget, and we used the same shuttles over and over again. I think with SpaceX reusing rocket stages, this will force Boeing to find a way to reuse SLS stages to compete, since we now know it is possible, there is no reason not to do it! I think future SLS rockets will be partially reusable in order to compete with the Falcon Heavy. Reusable Saturn V class rockets could keep the Moon program going on indefinitely and might even facilitate colonization. We could get Moon and asteroid mining off the ground as well. I think when we return to the Moon, we will go there to stay, if Congress pulls the plug, then their will be other commercial interests that will keep it going!

GW Johnson · 2016-05-25 10:19:59

Just for your information, a lot of other people see things differently.

I copied the text below from the Ad Astra on-line newsletter today. That's the NSS (National Space Society), which spends lots of resources lobbying for increased NASA spending, and has mostly fairly conservative aerospace industry folks as its membership.

In spite of that political slant, their reporters seem to think Clinton would be more beneficial to NASA. They did add some comments about Clinton winning UFO enthusiast votes by declassifying UFO files, although I did not include that in the text below. They did nothing like that in their evaluation of Trump.

NSS are the folks who want to build a space power satellite and large space habitats, and go back to the moon, in priority over Mars missions. To their credit, they are beginning to champion asteroid deflection.

GW

Copied from online Ad Astra newsletter of NSS (National Space Society) 5-25-2016:

Donald Trump: The economy trumps space

"NASA has been one of the most important agencies in the United States government for most of my lifetime," Trump said in a recent questionnaire for Aerospace America. "It should remain so."

His opinion about NASA's budget, however, doesn't make it sound like the agency will remain a priority.

"What we spend in NASA should be appropriate for what we are asking them to do," Trump said. "Our first priority is to restore a strong economic base to this country. Then, we can have a discussion about spending."

And as for NASA's plan to send astronauts to Mars in the 2030s, that might be off the table:

"If we are growing with all of our people employed and our military readiness back to acceptable levels, then we can take a look at the timeline for sending more people into space," Trump said.

Basically, economics will always trump space.

Hillary Clinton: "Really, really" a NASA supporter

Hillary Clinton really likes to tell the story of how she wrote to NASA when she was a teenager, asking what she needed to do to become an astronaut. NASA wrote back saying thanks, but no girls allowed. (Thank god that's changed.)

But it seems she harbors no ill will toward NASA. During her first campaign for president in 2008, Clinton said she wanted to reverse NASA's funding cuts.

At a town hall meeting broadcast on C-SPAN last year, it sounded like she hadn't changed her mind. "I really, really do support the space program," Clinton said, adding that the government needs to invest in space exploration, as well as other science and technology initiatives.

Clinton also supports the commercial sector of space, but has said the role of exploration and new discoveries still lies with NASA.

Tom Kalbfus · 2016-05-28 08:01:54

Clinton makes a lot of promises, and promises are easy to make, if you don't intent to later carry them out. Maybe we would have an excellent space program under Clinton, but we would also have a very corrupt government. Clinton has a habit of selling her government influence, that would seem to favor companies like Lockheed and Boeing, she will give them projects that are revenue generators for them, and those companies will contribute generously to the Clinton Foundation, to get those contracts, and the Clintons will get even more rich, maybe even to the point of becoming billionaires themselves, but through pedaling government influence, not through building resorts and casinos!

GW Johnson · 2016-05-28 15:39:32

"Clinton makes a lot of promises, and promises are easy to make, if you don't intent to later carry them out."

You say this as if Clinton were unique. She is not. Trump has a long history of exactly the same thing, just mostly prior to his entry into politics, and that behavior has not changed with his entry into politics. In point of fact, most politicians and a lot of other public figures (*) fit exactly that same description.

I think anybody would be very hard-pressed to name a politician at the national level that your description does not apply to. It's the same for most of the state-level, too.

GW

(*) footnote: most commonly but not limited to CEO's of giant corporations whose products kill people.

Tom Kalbfus · 2016-05-28 20:18:14

GW Johnson wrote:

"Clinton makes a lot of promises, and promises are easy to make, if you don't intent to later carry them out."
You say this as if Clinton were unique. She is not. Trump has a long history of exactly the same thing, just mostly prior to his entry into politics, and that behavior has not changed with his entry into politics. In point of fact, most politicians and a lot of other public figures (*) fit exactly that same description.

Since Trump is rather new to politics, I am giving him the benefit of the doubt, Hillary Clinton has been around a while, and she has a history of lying, and corruption, she made hundreds of millions of dollars while in office, selling government influence.

I'm not going to assume that everyone is as crooked as Hillary, it the election is between Hillary and someone else, I'm voting for someone else, because it has already been established what Hillary is. Trump just happens to be the "someone else" this time around. In the entire history of the US Presidency, there have only been two established political dynasties where more than one family member has been President of the United States, they were John Adams, John Quincy Adams, George H. W. Bush, and George W. Bush. If we send another Clinton to the White House, I think we may be setting a bad trend, where only a few political families dominate national politics, and that is a bad sign! I like to see a lot of unrelated names, and mostly that has been the case for the US Presidency, and I don't want that to change.

I think Trump is motivated by fame rather than by fortune, he already has a fortune, I don't think he's going into the White House to make money. The man has a big ego, he puts his name on everything he builds. I think he may want to be associated with a return to the Moon. You know the only president ever to make a phone call to the Moon was Richard M. Nixon? No other president has, not before and not since!

o-NIXON-SPEECH-570.jpg?1

I think anybody would be very hard-pressed to name a politician at the national level that your description does not apply to. It's the same for most of the state-level, too.
GW
(*) footnote: most commonly but not limited to CEO's of giant corporations whose products kill people.

Innocent till proven guilty, that is the standard of this country. If I'm going to compare a known with an unknown, and the known is a dishonest crook, then I think I give the unknown a chance to prove himself than return the known to office.

Terraformer · 2016-05-29 07:23:39

I think anybody would be very hard-pressed to name a politician at the national level that your description does not apply to. It's the same for most of the state-level, too.

Justin Amash?

GW Johnson · 2016-05-29 18:43:01

I do not know that name. Sorry.

GW

Tom Kalbfus · 2016-05-30 06:17:40

GW Johnson wrote:

I do not know that name. Sorry.
GW

How about Gary Johnson, he just won the Libertarian Primary? I think it would be wonderful if he came in second and Hillary came in third in the General election. I think if that happened we would get a bunch of Libertarian congressmen and senators in the next 2 years. I think we are due for a seismic shift in the political landscape in this country. Gary Johnson would be a more palatable candidate for the Anti-Trump people, he's not a crook like ole Hillary. Gary Johnson would make a perfect foil for Donald Trump. I expect that since Gary Johnson is socially liberal, and lot of Democrats who don't like Hillary may vote for him instead. As for a Space Program, I think SpaceX would do well in a Gary Johnson Administration, they just found a way to reuse rocket boosters, that would lower their costs, and a Libertarian Johnson Administration probably would cut the pork to Boeing and Lockheed, expect something similar to Calvin Coolidge in that case.

By the way, you don't happen to be Gary Johnson by any chance do you? Does the G in GW stand for Gary?

Last edited by Tom Kalbfus (2016-05-30 07:57:36)

GW Johnson · 2016-05-30 11:16:32

We share the names but little else. See also your other thread about him.

GW

Tom Kalbfus · 2016-05-31 07:55:07

GW Johnson wrote:

We share the names but little else. See also your other thread about him.
GW

Well unlike you, I don't think I'll ever live to see a President Kalbfus in the White House. You got two Presidents with your last name.

Is President Andrew Johnson a relative of yours?, he was the last Democratic President before the Civil War, meaning he preceded Lincoln. What a sour expression he has on his face too, he don't look too friendly judging by his picture, I wonder how he got elected.

Then there is this fellow Lyndon Johnson, so you got two presidents with your last name, and I got none, I checked, none of the 44 US Presidents are named Kalbfus, so I'm surprised you would support a third candidate with your last name.

Last edited by Tom Kalbfus (2016-05-31 07:56:29)

GW Johnson · 2016-05-31 09:06:53

I never said I supported former New Mexico governor Gary Johnson for president. I do not know enough about him to support him.

Where on Earth did you ever get the idea that I said that?

GW

Tom Kalbfus · 2016-05-31 13:07:43

GW Johnson wrote:

I never said I supported former New Mexico governor Gary Johnson for president. I do not know enough about him to support him.
Where on Earth did you ever get the idea that I said that?
GW

Well let me clarify, my fingers typed too fast, I meant to say, "I'm surprised you wouldn't support a third candidate with your last name." the "n't" got left out and I didn't catch that error before submitting it. It was kind of in jest also, I've never had the experience of having a President with my last name, but I guess a person who's last name is Bush, Kennedy, or Johnson would.

GW Johnson · 2016-06-01 14:01:44

Hi Tom:

To answer your question, no, I don't believe I'm related to either president Johnson, not within the last 6 centuries or so.

The more-sour expression on Andrew Johnson's face may be due both to the style of the time, and to the misery of being photographed with magnesium flash powder and very slow-exposure glass plates. Nearly everybody in all photographs from that time either look sour-faced and/or blurry.

LBJ did things with respect to Vietnam that I certainly did not approve of, but he did some other things that were very good for the American people. A mixed bag, like all people are. In spite of his deserved reputation for political meanness, there was great deal of simple fundamental humanity about him. All in all, I liked him, and for the most part, I thought he did a good job as president.

Andrew Johnson was simply way before my time. Some of what I read tells me he did a decent job. Other than that, I don't know.

GW

Last edited by GW Johnson (2016-06-01 14:03:26)

Tom Kalbfus · 2016-06-02 09:07:59

GW Johnson wrote:

Hi Tom:
To answer your question, no, I don't believe I'm related to either president Johnson, not within the last 6 centuries or so.
The more-sour expression on Andrew Johnson's face may be due both to the style of the time, and to the misery of being photographed with magnesium flash powder and very slow-exposure glass plates. Nearly everybody in all photographs from that time either look sour-faced and/or blurry.
LBJ did things with respect to Vietnam that I certainly did not approve of, but he did some other things that were very good for the American people. A mixed bag, like all people are. In spite of his deserved reputation for political meanness, there was great deal of simple fundamental humanity about him. All in all, I liked him, and for the most part, I thought he did a good job as president.
Andrew Johnson was simply way before my time. Some of what I read tells me he did a decent job. Other than that, I don't know.
GW

Seems that this man managed a smile, he was the next President, Johnson was the President who let the United States fall apart. When Lincoln won the election the South Rebelled and started building the Confederate Army, and good ole President Andrew Johnson let them!, because of that, instead of this rebellion being snipped in the bud, it cost the lives of 750,000 Americans, that is an order of magnitude higher than the Vietnam War of L.B. Johnson's years. The thing that gets me about Johnson is he drafted a lot of men, sent them to Vietnam to fight Communists, and then his party abandoned them, made them die for nothing! If it weren't for the Democrats getting elected in the first place, the Vietnam War might not have happened.

Last edited by Tom Kalbfus (2016-06-02 10:11:14)

GW Johnson · 2016-06-02 13:34:00

Vietnam started for us in 1945 with a bad diplomatic decision to help the French retake their colony after Japan was thrown out, by the Vietnamese themselves. Ho Chi Minh first came to the US for help toward independence. He went to Russia for help after we backed the French to re-oppress them. That bad diplomatic decision was on Democrat Truman's watch.

We helped the French all through the 1950's until, and after, their defeat at Dien Bien Phu. That was on Republican Eisenhower's watch, some 8 years long. He sent a few soldiers as advisors, about 1958 I think it was.

This got worse and worse through JFK and LBJ's watches, both Democrats. Especially LBJ, who turned it into a major war on a pretext since shown to be a false-flag event. All the fighting and bombing settled nothing. What it all showed was that conventional battle cannot win against an insurgency supported by the local people. I'm surprised we are still re-learning that lesson in the middle east today, multiple times. Stupid is as stupid does, I guess.

It still got worse yet under Republican Nixon, whose "secret plan to get us out" was nonsense, or a bald-faced lie, depending upon your point of view. Doesn't really matter which. Between Nixon's election and his taking the office is when the Dec 1968 Tet Offensive push by Viet Cong/NVA regulars nearly threw us out. This crap dragged on until Nixon resigned, and then some. It was actually under Republican Jerry Ford that we finally left, under fire, as they took Saigon in 1975.

I don't really think political party had anything at all to do with this sad, tragic history. So I think you are quite wrong to bring your anti-Democrat bias into the discussion. I think stupid diplomatic decisions and powerful people with too-large egos were the real problems. Robert McNamara has since repented and said so, now agreeing with me. He was one of the major contributors to that disaster.

GW

Last edited by GW Johnson (2016-06-02 13:42:47)

Tom Kalbfus · 2016-06-04 21:35:24

GW Johnson wrote:

Vietnam started for us in 1945 with a bad diplomatic decision to help the French retake their colony after Japan was thrown out, by the Vietnamese themselves. Ho Chi Minh first came to the US for help toward independence. He went to Russia for help after we backed the French to re-oppress them. That bad diplomatic decision was on Democrat Truman's watch.

Is Vietnam a democracy? Are the Vietnamese People free to vote for the government of their choice? If they are not, then how is that different from them being a French Colony! That they were vulnerable to Communism, suggests they weren't quite ready for independence, because they weren't quite ready for Democracy, so they have a choice of whether they are government by someone who is not accountable to the governed who is white or to have an unaccountable dictator that looks like most of them. I think a tyranny is a tyranny, whether the individual ruler is white or Asian, I don't think either did the Vietnamese any good. I have little sympathy for people fighting to have a different dictator ruling over them without their consent, they might as well have stuck with the French ruling them. France was an ally, Russia was not! At least when Americans fought the British during the Revolutionary War they were fighting for Freedom. The Vietnamese were fighting for Undemocratic Government B instead of Undemocratic Government A. If they are not up to the task of choosing their own government and holding it accountable to them, then they weren't ready for independence, sorry!

We helped the French all through the 1950's until, and after, their defeat at Dien Bien Phu. That was on Republican Eisenhower's watch, some 8 years long. He sent a few soldiers as advisors, about 1958 I think it was.

Well he liberated France during World War II, why wouldn't he want to help the French in this?

This got worse and worse through JFK and LBJ's watches, both Democrats. Especially LBJ, who turned it into a major war on a pretext since shown to be a false-flag event. All the fighting and bombing settled nothing. What it all showed was that conventional battle cannot win against an insurgency supported by the local people. I'm surprised we are still re-learning that lesson in the middle east today, multiple times. Stupid is as stupid does, I guess.

If it was supported by the People, why isn't it a Democracy? Are the people their afraid to choose their own government? Why did they import an ideology that comes from Europe? (Communism) Democracy also comes from Europe, but they chose Communism, and the only Communist Country in Europe today is Belarus! Communism was weak, it failed in Europe, and the Vietnamese still have a Communist Government, a failure if there ever was one! Maybe they ought to try what works in Europe, not what doesn't. Communism only oppresses, it doesn't do anything for the people.

It still got worse yet under Republican Nixon, whose "secret plan to get us out" was nonsense, or a bald-faced lie, depending upon your point of view. Doesn't really matter which. Between Nixon's election and his taking the office is when the Dec 1968 Tet Offensive push by Viet Cong/NVA regulars nearly threw us out. This crap dragged on until Nixon resigned, and then some. It was actually under Republican Jerry Ford that we finally left, under fire, as they took Saigon in 1975.

Actually it was the party of LBJ, the same one that drafted most of our young men that went their, which got us out, thereby wasting their lives, and making their sacrifices for nothing. Nixon didn't start this war, he inherited it from LBJ! What got in the way of him finishing off the Communists was Watergate, and what he did in Watergate, is much less than what Hillary Clinton did with her e-mails, and Benghazi, and she is running for President!

I don't really think political party had anything at all to do with this sad, tragic history. So I think you are quite wrong to bring your anti-Democrat bias into the discussion. I think stupid diplomatic decisions and powerful people with too-large egos were the real problems. Robert McNamara has since repented and said so, now agreeing with me. He was one of the major contributors to that disaster.
GW

Fact remains, most of the people who were drafted and sent to Vietnam were sent during the Johnson Administration. Nixon simply wanted to end the War honorably, and the Democratic Party wouldn't let him, they wanted a full blown retreat, and that's what they got, because of them the Communists took all, and no Vietnamese have democracy today. You can call it French colonialism if you want, but they were freer un the French than under themselves!

I quite agree that some people are not ready for Democracy, but does that mean they are ready for independence? If independence only means than another dictator rules over them that is one of them, rather than a "foreign colonial administrator." I just don't see the difference, no freedom is no freedom, better not to have a war of independence and get a bunch of people killed if it is for nothing! The French were probably the best people to run their country, since the French had Democracy and they did not! Iraq was not ready for Democracy either, does that mean we let them become our undemocratic enemy? I think not.

GW Johnson · 2016-06-05 12:33:59

Tom:

I said absolutely nothing about Vietnamese democracy or readiness for it. Once again you cannot see what is written for your own political blinders. Please learn to read objectively.

Meanwhile, I am done with this.

GW

Tom Kalbfus · 2016-06-06 08:10:31

GW Johnson wrote:

Tom:
I said absolutely nothing about Vietnamese democracy or readiness for it. Once again you cannot see what is written for your own political blinders. Please learn to read objectively.
Meanwhile, I am done with this.
GW

Well you act as if the Vietnamese Communists deserved to be awarded the entire Vietnamese peninsula and that it was wrong for us to support South Vietnam, even though that country's government was more representative of its people, it was a multi-party democracy and North Vietnam (Now Vietnam) is not.

GW Johnson · 2016-06-06 08:43:11

"Well you act as if the Vietnamese Communists deserved to be awarded the entire Vietnamese peninsula and that it was wrong for us to support South Vietnam, even though that country's government was more representative of its people, it was a multi-party democracy and North Vietnam (Now Vietnam) is not."

I never said any of those things, Tom, YOU did!

As I already told you, please learn to read with your politics turned off.

Read objectively what is written. All I did was list a bare-bones history of events, and point out roughly-equal numbers of Dem and GOP presidents making decisions about them.

GW

Tom Kalbfus · 2016-06-06 09:13:38

GW Johnson wrote:

"Well you act as if the Vietnamese Communists deserved to be awarded the entire Vietnamese peninsula and that it was wrong for us to support South Vietnam, even though that country's government was more representative of its people, it was a multi-party democracy and North Vietnam (Now Vietnam) is not."
I never said any of those things, Tom, YOU did!
As I already told you, please learn to read with your politics turned off.
Read objectively what is written. All I did was list a bare-bones history of events, and point out roughly-equal numbers of Dem and GOP presidents making decisions about them.
GW

Our purpose during the War was to defeat the Communists in the North, now who's side was the person who was "against" this war? In one respect, you could say that the people who were fighting it on our side were against the war, because they were trying to defeat the side that was causing the war in the first place, the Democratic Congress cut their funding and their support of the South Vietnamese, and because of that, their country ceased to exist, just as surely as if the communists took over the United States of America, my country would cease to exist. It just wouldn't be the same country with the Communists running it, no Democracy, no Freedom, no United States of America, Democracy and Freedom are basically the things that give the United States of America its identity.

Last edited by Tom Kalbfus (2016-06-06 09:14:51)

GW Johnson · 2016-06-06 13:31:47

Tom:

Your rantings have become insanely bizarre, or maybe bizarrely insane.

As a matter of fact, in 1969 I left college and joined the Navy, intending to become a fighter pilot, and go to Vietnam.

Don't you EVER question my patriotism again!

GW

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