ISS - Beware the Bear

RobertDyck · 2006-08-26 09:28:19

Rather than getting into a point-by-point debate, I'll quote from Michael Griffin at his speach before the Mars Society conference this year.

And, more broadly, I believe that the most important aspect of the International Space Station is the tried and tested partnership that has been forged among the spacefaring nations of Canada, Europe, Japan, Russia, and the United States. This partnership has endured tremendous hardships, and stands by itself as a monumental international accomplishment. We can learn from this experience, and expand on its positive aspects as we move forward to the Moon and Mars.
At this stage in the development of our plans, it is important that NASA not prescribe roles and responsibilities for future international partnerships. Instead, we have defined a minimalist Exploration architecture with the CEV, the crew- and heavy-lift launch vehicles, and a lunar lander, as the first critical elements, with the hope that international and commercial partners will want to augment these capabilities with their own. We’re already collaborating with other nations on a series of satellite missions to map the resources of the Moon, and I hope that we’ll collaborate on even more missions to the Moon and Mars.

Tom Kalbfus · 2006-08-26 09:34:29

dude, governments fight. Last I checked, I had no personal beef with any Iranian or any Russian.
But perhaps Russians and Iranians are evil, i mean, after all, their governments are evil. So it only follows...
paranoid nut job.

Then I take it your not an American. Well I am, and the Iranians say, "Death to America!" the put American flags on their floors and they walk all over them, and now they say they want nuclear power for "peaceful purposes"? I am an American, if they say, "Death to America," they are effectively saying they want to put me to death, and so that makes it personal because they are threatening me, and Russia wants to help them build a nuclear bomb. I don't think that's paranoid. You blithely say they are lying when they say, "Death to America," and telling the truth when they say they want nuclear power for peaceful purposes, how do you know its not the other way around. I'm sorry, I just can't get along peacefully with someone who wants to kill me, and the Russians want to help them to kill me, so as long as we do that, I don't want my country involved with any collaborative projects with them so they can gain our technologies so they can pass them on the the Iranians and hence make their job of building bombs and long range missile easier. I don't believe in time outs and having tea with our enemies, and so long as the Russian government acts the way it is, it will be our enemy. They make competant engineers, I don't question them on that, but I don't trust their government.

I don't know if the Russians are evil, but they have not stepped up the the plate and seized control of their government. They overthrew communism, only to let another dictator seize control of their government and they did not fight it! This really disillusioned me with the whole detente cycle, I used to believe in it you know.

I wish their could be real peace between our countries, not peace as defined for them, where they have a chance to rearm or attack us in other ways all under the guize of peace and negotiation. Iran is our enemy, has been since its Islamic Revolution in 1979, anyone who is the friend of this Iranian government that wants us dead is not our friend. If the Russians want to change, then that is good, but so far I have not seen this. I think a space race will bring more progress anyway, it worked in the Apollo years. I think its always best to keep one's enemies at arms length rather than close at hand, where they can undermine and sabotage you.

Tom Kalbfus · 2006-08-26 09:49:52

And to top it off, Putin is a dictator and an enemy of freedom, "not wanting democracy" in government is perhaps the slogan of a facist.
Edit: Oh, and if national self-interest isn't valid when doing the helping eachother/holding hands/international cooperation thing, then where is your outrage over Russia charging the US for Soyuz seats?

Hear hear! I think we should cooperate with Democracies like Japan, strong democracies that can step up to the plate and pull their own weight. Japan has proven to be a good ally since the end of World War II, I think India is a potential partner too, Great Britian too, and maybe Israel. I think the world is still broken up into two camps, the Free World, the Unfree world and the fuzzy middle including such countries like France that think that all countries no matter how governed are of equal merit. If we are to do a proper job of colonizing Mars, we should make sure first that it will be democratic, a one world government there would leave no room for others to set up unfree tyrannies there. That way the residents would not have to fear their neighbors and terrorists would have nowhere to hide and regroup on the planet. I like a civilized planet under the lawful rule of a just government with democratic participation, something that the Earth is not. I know its a dream, but we have an opportunity here with a new planet untouched by human hands, because of nuclear weapons, the dictators are well entrenched on our own planet, but if the democracies were to get to Mars first, maybe they can preven the dictators from spreading their tentacles there.

Yang Liwei Rocket · 2006-08-26 10:36:10

Seems like we started working on this station with a democracy and ended up working on it with a dictatorship. One wonders if international collaboration projects like this are such a good idea. Should we go to Mars with Putin?
International projects sometimes work well like that Cassini-Huygens trip but thanks to politics they mostly become an international failure. Working with the Ruskies hasn't been the best for NASA, and Putin might us it as leverage to blackmail to US
into forking out more space dollars
but as much as some of us would like to
we can't blame everything on foreigners like the Chinese, French, Canadians, Russians...the USA's biggest problem is itself, bad policy from US Presidents that cut the heck out of the program or come up with grandoise plans ( Carter, Bush Snr, Clinton ) and years of neglect for NASA's manned space flight.
After the Saturn rocket got binned, the Ruskies were making a comeback launching various space station projects and clocking up record time in space while US had no real way of putting space labs into space even if it really wanted to. The USA's best years for space were with Apollo and the Voyager/Viking missions while STS program has been something of a disaster. The Space Shuttle labs were pathetic they cost billions to launch, could only do material/bio science studies for a few days and only watch the zero-g effects on chemicals or the human body for a very short period of time before making the expensive STS trip home. The beauty of the Russian designs is that they had dedicated launchers Soyuz for manned astronaut/cosmonaut flight and Proton launcher for labs and other payloads. After Challenger and the bad PR from the death of teacher Christa McAuliffe people started asking serious questions about Shuttle, cost a billion per launch, no longer seems to be a safe system and will cost the US tax payer almost $200 billion when the Shuttle finally retires. As for the USA's astronauts, it has been the Soyuz that has been keeping the USA's manned program alive.

Concept Of Russian Manned Space Navigation Development
http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Conce … t_999.html
At OAO Korolev RSC Energia a "Concept of the Manned Space Navigation Development Program in Russia for a period of 2006-2030 years" has been developed and offered for discussion. The concept is interesting not only to specialists, but also to the general public, since a solution of grandiose, qualitatively new tasks is proposed.

RobertDyck · 2006-08-26 11:15:23

You can buy the space pen today:
Fisher Space Pen

EuroLauncher · 2006-08-26 11:44:13

The Russians dominated LEO, but they've never got folks on the Moon or landed much robotic stuff on Mars that didn't fail after a few seconds
and now they've little money left

Still they have done some great stuff and a making a little comeback, I hope they get to fly the Phobos grunt mission

Tom Kalbfus · 2006-08-26 13:15:04

The Russians dominated LEO, but they've never got folks on the Moon or landed much robotic stuff on Mars that didn't fail after a few seconds
and now they've little money left
Still they have done some great stuff and a making a little comeback, I hope they get to fly the Phobos grunt mission

I wish the Russians well with their peaceful space endeavors too. I'm just wary of conducting joint missions with them. I have nothing against the Russian people, its just their habit of producing Anti-American governments that follow policies that are harmful to us that bothers me, as long as they do that, we shouldn't be going to Mars together, that is my only real objection the the whole scheme.

GCNRevenger · 2006-08-26 14:22:01

You can buy the space pen today:
Fisher Space Pen

Yes it exists, it just didn't cost millions of dollars to develop.

RobertDyck · 2006-08-26 16:11:48

"Internal politics of a partnered nation are not your concern."
Excuse me? Is that since Americans are stupid and too... unenlightend to be permitted concern?

Stop meddling in other countries' internal affairs. Many Americans understand this, I found it's a minority who don't. A loud-mouthed minority who get international attention and earn America as a whole the reputation for being overbearing and imperialistic. After having lived in America for a time, I found most Americans aren't. It's unfortunate that a few have earned America as a whole such a bad reputation. However, it appears Washington follows the hawkish minority. Unfortunate; very unfortunate.

The ability to complete what you commit yourself to is a major measure of character... the ability or inability to complete that project is a major measure of character
Blah blah, more nebulous emotional right-brain rhetorict.

Are you going to pay Europe, Japan, and Brazil for their requirement to replace American contributions that you don't provide? If you have to pay them to replace what you copped out of, how does that save any money? The bottom line is you made a commitment and that now affects others; once you recruit others to participate it's too late to pull out.

That would affect not only future projects, but military cooperation and trade.
Says you.

Says everyone outside America. Don't think you can get away without consequences for your actions. Multi-billion dollar projects are a very big part of the budget of any country; remember we aren't talking about America or the Soviet Union, we're talking about Canada or France or Brazil or Britain; the cost of a ISS participation is a huge part of their national budget and failure after spending the money would have grave consequences for any politician who let that happen without reprisal. For their own political career, they would be forced to punish America.

Many Americans wanted to blame Russia when they had trouble launching the Russian Service Module (also known as the Mir2 core module); that delay was a major set-back in ISS construction. But America's trouble with the Shuttle has caused as many delays.
You are being deceptive, but I suppose I shouldn't be surprised... Russia's delay with the ISS program was that the Russian government failed to live up to their end of the bargain because they didn't want to...

No, they had very little money; their economy collapsed after their first conversion to a free market, and after dismembering the Soviet Union. The reason for economic collapse that led to the Soviet Union collapse was spending too much money on military and not enough on consumer goods and domestic civilian economy. They couldn't afford to spend that much money on space, they had to rebuild their economy at a civilian level. So Russian failure bad but American failure somehow Ok? Hypocracy.

NASA had difficulty devising a recycling life support system... Now after seeing Russia's design, we can improve it to produce close to 100% recycling, but that's after the fact
I doubt that, I bet you just made that up, prove it.

Which part? That NASA didn't have a recycling life support system and Dan Goldin wanted access to Russia's core module to provide life support? Or do you want me to go through the chemistry of how the Russian system can be modified to provide near 100% recycling efficiency? It's a significant modification above what's flying right now; it was going to be launched as part of the US habitation module. (hint hint, bug bug)

Speaking of politics, I think its a pretty likely that Russia used the ISS and NASA's Shuttle troubles as a way to get leverage over America concerning Iran and the INA law (with its subsequent defacto repeal).

To quote you, "Blah blah". This has nothing to do with Iran, and space should never have had anything to do with Iran. I thought you were the one who said space has no impact on military alliances or trade; it appears the reverse is quite true.

Democracy works pretty well for governments, but not so well with engineering! There must ultimately be a final authority, since different engineers want to do things different ways.

I had personal experience with this recently. At the job I started in March, the boss said I'm now the department head for software. However, the technical writer/documentation clerk keeps attempting to dictate application functionality and window design. That's not his job, it's mine! But the boss points out any development project works best as a collaborative effort, not a hierarchical authority structure, so I can't pull rank. Damn him; after the first application I wrote he even when to sales reps, engineers, and technical support to ask if a feature was necessary and informed the manager that it wasn't. I got a note from the boss asking if I saw this, I hadn't and he claimed the feature had to be removed. But the feature was not only necessary, but exposed our company to responsibility for something that the user's suppliers could alter. I insisted the configuration be boldly displayed for the user to enter, not hidden away. If their supplier couldn't provide a value, then we weren't responsible. But the boss insisted we come to consensus. The technical writer attempted to overrule me, I felt his job is to write the user manual and help text, not tell me what to do. After all, I'm not only a computer programmer and systems analyst, I'm the software department head! The technical writer claims he doesn't have time to write help text, the help buttons now just open a pdf copy of the user manual. He's too busy kibitzing my job and not getting his own done. In the process of arguing this point, the sales people (salesman and tech support) informed me of problems users had with reports in other products, they wanted combined reports rather than separate ones. That got me to make changes to the reports to avoid similar problems. Although the technical writer is overbearing and condescending (all other programmers, engineers, and tech support guys have the same complaint) the review process spurred input from everyone and resulted in improvements to the product. I resented his talking to "everyone" about removing the control, there's a reason it's there and it's staying, but the argument raised other issues that my interviews had not. That's why the boss insists on a collaborative development environment rather than hierarchy.

GCNRevenger · 2006-08-29 12:10:15

Stop meddling in other countries' internal affairs. Many Americans understand this, I found it's a minority who don't... reputation for being overbearing and imperialistic... Says everyone outside America

If we are deeply involved with another country concerning an international project with very large sums of taxpayer money, it is our right to consider who we are helping. Also, in extreme cases (Nazi Germany, communist Russia, Saddam's Iraq, theocratic Iran, etc) internal politics of other states is very much our concern. The leftist profanity "imperialist" is just used to paint America as evil, a popular past time these days among the unhinged haters. This notion that you somehow speak for the entire rest of the world is also kind of, well, pathetically arogant too.

Are you going to pay Europe, Japan, and Brazil for their requirement to replace American contributions that you don't provide?... once you recruit others to participate it's too late to pull out.

Other countries are governed by self-interest, why not ours? Why should we be held to a different standard? The Russians are in the project for Russia, why does America have to be in it for Russia too? And the other partners, if they had nothing to gain and much to lose by involvement, would they stay on? Could we blame them if they didn't? I don't think so. Or how about Italy and Spain pulling their soldiers out of Iraq, didn't they make some measure of commitment to us? Where is your outrage over them? If we aren't furious and livid over them, they should be over the ISS parts?

Furthermore, although the several billions involved by the Europeans/Japan is large compared to their annual space budget, it is not that large compared to their budget since the project was started. Trade them for something else, like seats or cargo allotment to the Moon or Mars for free, and if that won't satisfy them then the point is reached where American interests should be looked after before theirs.

No, they had very little money; their economy collapsed after their first conversion to a free market... (what) led to the Soviet Union collapse was spending too much money on military and not enough on consumer goods and domestic civilian economy... So Russian failure bad but American failure somehow Ok? Hypocracy.

No, the Soviet economy failed because communism as a socio-economic system doesn't work. But anyway, the Russians joined on first, and then renigged on their part to supply Mir-II modules second. If they couldn't put up the money, then by your standard they should not have joined on should they? Again, the Russian failure was a failure of will if not downright deciet, while the American failure was purely technical. They are not the same.

That NASA didn't have a recycling life support system and Dan Goldin wanted access to Russia's core module to provide life support? Or do you want me to go through the chemistry of how the Russian system can be modified to provide near 100% recycling efficiency?

The part where you make up this story that NASA, under Dan Goldin, wanted to copy the Russian CLSS system. The chemistry involved is pretty trivial, the engineering is what is important.

This has nothing to do with Iran, and space should never have had anything to do with Iran. I thought you were the one who said space has no impact on military alliances or trade; it appears the reverse is quite true.

Whether it should have or not, I believe it did: the Russians insisted that we violate the INA for a fairly paltry amount of money or else lose ISS involvement. A cheap, even a gainful way to break a tool for pressuring them over WMD-applicable sales to Iran. What I said about abandoning the ISS project should have little effect applies to our allies, whom Russia is not one of them.

I had personal experience with this recently...

This is where I stopped reading, since your sad stories of personal wrongs generally aren't relevent nor by any measure authoritative.

RobertDyck · 2006-08-29 16:17:31

I had personal experience with this recently...
This is where I stopped reading, since your sad stories of personal wrongs generally aren't relevent nor by any measure authoritative.

Then see the video "In search of excellence." It has several case studies of well managed business. One was Stephen Job's leadership of Apple Computers when they developed the Mac. He was a cheerleader, not a naysayer.

Another case study was 3M; they encouraged employees to pursue "pirate" projects without corporate approval. The catch was any project is company property. One junior employee wanted a way for bookmarks in his bible to not fall out. He asked chemists to help him develop a glue strong enough to hold a scrap of paper, but weak enough that it'll let go before the paper rips apart. That way he could peal it off a bible page without damaging the page. A tricky balance; not too strong yet not too weak, and the glue had to bond to the scrap of paper without coming off. With the help of co-workers who were glue experts, he developed it. He used it for himself in church, but 3M now sells it under the name "Post-It Note".

Research and development has innumerable examples like that. It works best as a collaborative effort, not a rigidly controlled hierarchy. That's been the traditional argument why American developments are so much better than the Soviets. Freedom breeds innovation. Of course the Russians aren't as far behind as many would have you believe; their computers, um, suck but aerospace is pretty good. Yet, why would you argue for a Soviet style central authority?

GCNRevenger · 2006-08-30 08:30:06

Then see the video "In search of excellence." It has several case studies of well managed business. One was Stephen Job's leadership of Apple Computers when they developed the Mac. He was a cheerleader, not a naysayer.
Another case study was 3M; they encouraged employees to pursue "pirate" projects without corporate approval. The catch was any project is company property. One junior employee wanted a way for bookmarks in his bible to not fall out. He asked chemists to help him develop a glue strong enough to hold a scrap of paper, but weak enough that it'll let go before the paper rips apart. That way he could peal it off a bible page without damaging the page. A tricky balance; not too strong yet not too weak, and the glue had to bond to the scrap of paper without coming off. With the help of co-workers who were glue experts, he developed it. He used it for himself in church, but 3M now sells it under the name "Post-It Note".
Research and development has innumerable examples like that. It works best as a collaborative effort, not a rigidly controlled hierarchy. That's been the traditional argument why American developments are so much better than the Soviets. Freedom breeds innovation. Of course the Russians aren't as far behind as many would have you believe; their computers, um, suck but aerospace is pretty good. Yet, why would you argue for a Soviet style central authority?

sighs

Apparently in your little world where you are always right, chemical research is somehow the same as aerospace engineering. Somebody coming up with a good idea is nice, but making the development work smoothly and unified is more important. For this to happen, there needs to be a central plan, and a central authority. Not a collaboration where the plan is decided by consensus; getting engineers to work together can be like herding cats, and the problems associated with giving too many engineers equal authority outweighs the bennefits versus there being a final word.

Again, you invoke the stupid analogy with communist government with strict(er) management of an engineering project, even after this had come up before.

RobertDyck · 2006-08-30 08:59:01

The United States of America is one nation in a world of 194 nations. The US does not rule the world. Any nation that attempts to do so is the enemy of the entire planet. After NATO countries survived the cold war, we don't need the United States taking the place of the Soviet Union in an attempt to conquer. The ISS is an international project of equal partners. It can't work unless all participating nations respect each other. It's a shining example of cooperation. It's a lesson nations need to learn, how to work together without attempting to dominate. Freedom and liberty are incompatible with domination, no matter who is attempting to do the dominating. Stop trying to become the enemy that NATO spent half a century fighting against. Yes, many development projects work best with one leader, but that individual (not nation or group) must learn from everyone else, and incorporate brilliant ideas from many others. However, that only works if the leader pays the whole bill. Any joint venture or project with partners must treat all partners as equals. Once you enter into a joint venture, forget about a single leader running the show. But ISS is an international project, with many partnered nations. It's an exercise to learn how to work together instead of constantly competing. Considering competition between nations usually results in war, and that kills thousands of individuals, cooperation is a vital lesson that nations must learn. This learning experience is far more valuable to the international community and the human species as a whole than the technical achievement of the space station, or even space exploration has a whole. National governments have behaved like irresponsible brats, children with huge expensive toys constantly throwing temper tantrums. When nations throw a tantrum, thousands of people die. They need to grow up.

dicktice · 2006-08-30 10:21:32

RobertDyke, your noble pronouncements are so pre-Osama bin Laden! The Space Race was the result of competiion, Apollo vs Soyuz. The U.S. never would've licked the then-U.S.S.R. in the Race to the Moon, if hadn't been for the "mutually assured destruction" ICBM threat. I, too, was working at the time on test warhead instrumentation--we were really running scared then. Then Sputnik unexpectedly changed all that by making it the Space Race instead of the M.A.D. Race. Moving right along, the Space Shuttle Program neglected in-space inspection and repair of the Orbiter tiles capability. It was individules who came up with what is now the inspection system which could've saved Discovery--and now perhaps see the ISS through to completion.... Canada played a big part in this, but that wasn't the point of this post. I forget. Maybe it was just that the world lurches from one crisis of brinksmanship to another: That was then, and this is now. :?

GregM · 2006-08-30 20:40:32

Ya man, you’re absolutely correct. Deals with shady countries need to stop!

Why would anyone want to enter into a partnership with a country that has had glaringly suspicious presidential elections, has a standing policy of continually spying on it’s own citizens, where 1 in 6 of it’s citizens live in poverty despite immense domestic wealth, conducts bloody wars of occupation on countries knowingly using false pretenses – and knowingly at the expense of many tens of thousands of innocent civilian lives, regularly breaks trade agreements with other countries when they are no longer convenient, intentionally contravenes the Geneva convention on torture (as so ruled by its own supreme court), and knowingly continues to destroy the global ecosystem in order to continue to make it’s elite ruling class even more wealthy than it already is.

Globally, it is feared, loathed, or at least mistrusted by at least half of the world’s population.

I expect that a nation of this sort could certainly not be trusted in any joint space endeavor.

Why should anyone trust the U.S.A. anymore?

Tom Kalbfus · 2006-08-31 02:20:44

What's so suspicious about our elections? What is suspicious is when you have a President like Castro in Cuba, that has been continually reelected since the Cuban Revolution. All those stats you mention are just so much propaganda. You are looking and flaws and seeing flaws that aren't there of one particular country to the exclusion of all the rest. I'd say there are countries that are alot worse than the US of A, and that we should not partner with them because they abuse human rights. Your confusing a difference of degree with a difference of kind and pretending that differences of degree don't matter.

One can also say, "its unfair to criticise the Germans for murdering six million Jews for murders also occur in the United States and no one in the United States can criticise the Germans for the Holocaust because of that."

That nobody's perfect does not mean that everyone is the same, or that human rights violations don't deserve criticism. There are poor and rich people in this country because not everyone has the same qualifications to the same jobs, and not everyone can earn the same amount of money because people are different. What is so surprising about that?

I also don't give a squat about the World's opinion about my country, as it more influenced by propaganda than by reality.

idiom · 2006-08-31 06:36:46

I also don't give a squat about the World's opinion about my country

Heh. That's their principle objection.

I don't know that extremely long term collaborations with Russia are a good idea. The short term stuff is probably reliable enough. So collaboration on a new lunar base element might be good, but collaboration on long term supply of a certain resource is probably dodgier.

Short term projects that don't require expensive upkeep or time sensitive interdepencies should be fine. It keeps the Americans free and everybody else independent so they can go off at anytime and have a revolution for old times sake.

Martin_Tristar · 2006-08-31 06:48:15

Tom,

Every country has skeltons and the US of A has its share as well. I don't care what government or government agency wants to go to Mars or any other place outside the earth zone because they don't represent the world and shouldn't leave the earth zone without that mandate.

Each planet should have one governing authority, not individual country authorities running each small outpost or colony. I governing authority means one laws, one police / protection service, one immigration and customs service. I don't care if its the first six person tourist mission or 200 people setting up three settlements.

Only when the missions leaving the earth zone can have one governing authority representation for the human race.

Conclusion

I know it won't go down every well with people wanting their country getting to mars before the other one but I hope that private enterprise or non-profit organization get there first and tell all the governments to go back until they function as one governing body for humanity.

RobertDyck · 2006-08-31 06:55:14

Tom, you appear to be following the frequent American mistake of beating the patriotic drum "My country is the greatest!" Well, the rest of the world sees their respective countries at the greatest. A reasonable person would accept that; you can be proud of your own country without belittling others. But also accept that every country has problems. The United States has serious problems, and as long as you refuse to accept them they are far more serious.

I lived in Miami, Florida, from beginning of June 1999 through the end of March 2000. That means I was there during the lead-up to the year 2000 presidential election. The lady I was seeing at the time wanted me to get involved rather than paying attention to Canadian politics so I would stay with her. Unfortunately I had to tell her the only presidential candidate who I thought remotely reasonable just dropped out; he wasn't perfect but I thought all other candidates were horrible. George W. Bush campaigned on a platform of building coalitions between Democrat and Republican, bridging differences to go past partisan politics and get the government to work together for the benefit of all Americans. The result has been the greatest divide between Democrat and Republican since the Civil War.

During the election itself, Florida had ballots cast by thousands of voters who had been dead for years. Thousands of ballots were thrown out because the punch was in question. One polling station had the wrong party logo printed beside candidate's names. Voters were turned away at the ballot box, not permitted to vote; the excuse was an accusation of conviction of a felony when the real convict was a completely different person. During the 2004 election saw problems outside Florida; one electronic polling station in a traditional Democrat area was "accidentally" left in test mode so all votes were discarded. Another polling station recorded more votes for George W. Bush alone than the number of registered voters. The list of offences goes on, but the point is America has been claiming to be not only a major, democratic nation, but leader of the free world. However, the stunts pulled during the last two presidential elections are the sorts of things you see in a third world country. Canada sends observers to oversee elections in countries that pull these sorts of stunts; does the industrialized world need to send observers to oversee the next US presidential election?

In Canada, Brian Mulroney was elected Prime Minister in 1984 on a platform of eliminating the deficit, reducing the debt, and reducing taxes. During his 2 terms of office he had increased the deficit, doubled the debt, and increased taxes. That included creating the federal individual surtax and the GST. The GST was the most hated tax in Canadian history; voters got involved and actively lobbied their Member of Parliament to vote against it. Mulroney told MPs in his party to vote for it or they're kicked out of the party. Voters then lobbied the senate to actually do its job for once and reject the bill. They were going to, but Mulroney stuffed the senate by appointing new senators who were given that position to vote for the GST. That was seen as a gross abuse of authority. More important politically, Mulroney turned himself into an opponent of all voters in Canada. It's a very bad idea to make an enemy of the voters. In the 1993 election the voters not only defeated the Progressive Conservative party, but it went from having a majority of members in the House to only 2 members elected. According to Canadian parliamentary rules, a party needs a minimum of 12 members elected to the house to be recognized as a party. So they went from the government with a majority to no longer existing. In 1993 the Liberal party printed their election promises in a book, they asked voters to hold them accountable to fulfill their election promises. And they did; only one election promise wasn't fulfilled and the Liberal party took a lot of flack for that. It's now part of Canadian politics to hold politicians and parties accountable to fulfill their promises. We had to destroy one of the two major parties to do it. Perhaps it's time for America to learn from this lesson, destroy one of the parties in the US.

clark · 2006-08-31 08:27:31

Foreigners often misunderstand how it works in the States.

There is the Federal government, and then there is the State government. The State government breaks down to county, which breaks down to city, which can break down into municipality.

At each level, there is a modicum of independance.

the fiasco in Flordia was decidely the fault of Florida, and if you look more closely, the fault of the individual counties and cities that are tasked with actually running the election.

Blaming the US federal government (or all of the US) for the election failures in that back-water inbred dead-end area is a bit akin to blaming the post-master general for your personal mail being delivered late.

The federal government failed largely in oversight, but that is expected given the large geographic area it has to contend with and the logistical problems inherent anytiome you try to get 150 million people to do the same thing, in a similar way, on the same day.

Tom Kalbfus · 2006-08-31 09:22:03

Tom, you appear to be following the frequent American mistake of beating the patriotic drum "My country is the greatest!" Well, the rest of the world sees their respective countries at the greatest. A reasonable person would accept that; you can be proud of your own country without belittling others. But also accept that every country has problems. The United States has serious problems, and as long as you refuse to accept them they are far more serious.

Isn't that what I just said? But if only perfect nations are allowed to criticise other nations that grossly violate human rights, then no one gets to criticise them. If only perfect nations were allowed to fight Nazi Germany during World War II then Hitler wins. If you must be perfect in order to fight for what's right then no one gets to fight for whats right. I don't see myself belittling other peoples countries when I criticise their lack of democracy. Cuba is not a democratic country, and I'm not going to let some issue that the US elections of 2000 may have had a little funny business in them prevent me from critisicing Castro, I don't have to be a hyper-nationalist to do that.

SpaceNut · 2006-08-31 09:54:33

Back to topic ISS - Beware the Bear
What are the results of our collaboration with the Russians?

Here is an example:
Russians, NASA Agree to Avoid Space Traffic Jam at ISS

The Russians agreed that a launch as late as next Friday, Sept. 8, wouldn’t interfere with plans for a Soyuz flight to the space station.
But in negotiations, they determined NASA’s mission wouldn’t interfere as long as the shuttle left the station by Sept. 17.

RobertDyck · 2006-08-31 10:30:41

Isn't that what I just said? But if only perfect nations are allowed to criticise other nations that grossly violate human rights, then no one gets to criticise them. If only perfect nations were allowed to fight Nazi Germany during World War II then Hitler wins. If you must be perfect in order to fight for what's right then no one gets to fight for whats right. I don't see myself belittling other peoples countries when I criticise their lack of democracy. Cuba is not a democratic country, and I'm not going to let some issue that the US elections of 2000 may have had a little funny business in them prevent me from critisicing Castro, I don't have to be a hyper-nationalist to do that.

Ok. Reasonable. But Cuba isn't a democracy, it's a military dictatorship with a communist economy. That's not as bad as some would believe, there are advantages to a communist economy; not one I would want to live in but it's up to the people in Cuba to decide. I ignore any stories about Cuban elections. It is a dictatorship after all so elections are a farce. Cuba hasn't attacked the US so there is no reason to maintain trade sanctions. Internal politics is their business. You could argue about missiles in the 1960s but that was long since resolved. Normal relations are long overdue.

Ps. My last name is spelled "Dyck" and prounced "Dick", with a short "i". It's a Canadian thing. My name is not "Dyke". As a memory trick there are verious jokes you could come up with over the fact my name really is Mr. Dyck.

cIclops · 2006-08-31 11:22:30

The bear growls

Russia plans to conduct its first manned flight around the Moon in 2011-2012, the president of a leading spacecraft company said Thursday, RIA Novosti news agency reports.
...
He added that the first flight to Mars would be conducted after 2025. The expedition will use the Russian-made Clipper shuttle with a four-man crew and will last two-and-a-half years.

First flight to Mars after 2025? - there is almost no doubt about that.

RobertDyck · 2006-08-31 13:03:49

Check who the source is. RSC Energia is one of the major space contractors in Russia. They've been coming up with Moon and Mars plans since the space program began. They constantly come up with plans, most if not all could work, but what funding will the Russian government provide? I won't believe it until the Russia Space Agency announces it.

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