LBJ and space travel
mh...@ohiohills.com
the USA could get to work on domestic problems. The clear
implication appeared to be that space travel wasn't necessary or
desired.
The question is: did I imagine that? If I did not, can someone point
me to where I can find the exact context and quote?
Thanks.
M
wrote:
I read in a book once that he commented to a space official at
Huntsville or Michoud after seeing all of the Apollo Saturn
infrastructure that
"it was too bad that all of this will be pissed away" after the Apollo
Program ended.
Pat Flannery
mh...@ohiohills.com wrote:
>
> The question is: did I imagine that? If I did not, can someone point
> me to where I can find the exact context and quote?
>
This is also the guy who also said he "didn't want to go to sleep by the
light of a communist Moon".
Perfect politician.
Or, as someone once said: "A politician is someone who will lie to
you...even when he doesn't have to."
(was that Mark Twain?)
Pat
Pat Flannery
M wrote:
> I read in a book once that he commented to a space official at
> Huntsville or Michoud after seeing all of the Apollo Saturn
> infrastructure that
> "it was too bad that all of this will be pissed away" after the Apollo
> Program ended.
>
What else could you do with it?
You could build a giant space station (pretty pointless, as we found out
with the ISS).
Build a base on the Moon, (again, what for? Need more rocks?).
Or set off on a manned expedition to Mars (we haven't figured out the
details of how to do that yet, much less in 1970).
Pat
mh...@ohiohills.com
> M wrote:
> > I read in a book once that he commented to a space official at
> > Huntsville or Michoud after seeing all of the Apollo Saturn
> > infrastructure that
> > "it was too bad that all of this will be pissed away" after the Apollo
> > Program ended.
>
> What else could you do with it?
That's not the point, here, and that changes the subject.
My direction is straightforward: what did LBJ (and his administration)
say that indicated a lack of interest in space travel?
Rand Simberg
Flannery <fla...@daktel.com> made the phosphor on my monitor glow in
such a way as to indicate that:
>
>
>M wrote:
>> I read in a book once that he commented to a space official at
>> Huntsville or Michoud after seeing all of the Apollo Saturn
>> infrastructure that
>> "it was too bad that all of this will be pissed away" after the Apollo
>> Program ended.
>>
>
>What else could you do with it?
>You could build a giant space station (pretty pointless, as we found out
>with the ISS).
It's only pointless if you can't afford to get to it. Which in fact
would have been the case if we were constrained to Saturn.
Jorge R. Frank
Haven't found that quote yet (know he said something like that), but I
did find the source and context for the "other" quote:
/Schirra's Space/
Chapter 9 "Apollo: Tragedy, then Triumph", p. 180.
"It was President Johnson, oddly enough, who put the problem in
perspective for me. While preparing for an Apollo flight, I went
with my crew - Walt Cunningham and Donn Eisele - to Michoud,
Mississippi, where the Saturn boosters were assembled. We met Mr.
Johnson, who was visiting the facility, and chatted with him. He
was certainly candid. 'It's too bad,' said LBJ. 'We have this
great capability, but instead of taking advantage of it, we'll
probably just piss it away.'"
Jorge R. Frank
Found something similar; it was in a 1966 State Department memo:
“If we can de-emphasize or stretch out additional costly programs aimed
at the moon and beyond, resources may to some extent be released for
other objectives which might serve more immediate, higher priority
interests.”
OM
...On a side note, the LBJ Library will be hosting a special exhibit
on LBJ and the Space Race starting in mid-August. Since it's just up
the road, I plan to see it, hopefully on opening day.
OM
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]=====================================[
] OMBlog - http://www.io.com/~o_m/omworld [
] Let's face it: Sometimes you *need* [
] an obnoxious opinion in your day! [
]=====================================[
Andre Lieven
Yeah, because the much greater cost in money, not to mention lives
in Vietnam was so much more worth it... not.
Don't expect consistency in the utterances of politicians. As its only
sometimes, when they fail to be careful, that they say what they
really believe...
Andre
Monte Davis
>'...'It's too bad,' said LBJ. 'We have this
>great capability, but instead of taking advantage of it, we'll
>probably just piss it away.'"
Unfortunately, being President -- even a President who'd been riding
the politics/policy of space hard since 1957 -- didn't help him
appreciate the difference between a forced-growth, ultra-specialized
"capability" [to get astronauts to the Moon for a few days at ~$2
billion 1960s dollars per head] and a capability that would matter
(i.e., have the potential to grow on its own) once the space-race
fever wore off.
But hey, I'm not going to judge him too harshly for that. Far as I can
tell, many space fans are still unclear on that distinction.
Monte Davis
http://montedavis.livejournal.com/
Eric Chomko
It is not what he said but what he did. JFK made the commitment to the
moon and LBJ made the commitment to Vietnam. Clearly as Apollo peaked
and then subsided Vietnam was just still peaking before going away. We
have Nixon to thank for the latter.
Eric Chomko
wrote:
> On Mon, 12 May 2008 01:40:47 -0500, in a place far, far away, Pat
> such a way as to indicate that:
>
>
>
> >M wrote:
> >> I read in a book once that he commented to a space official at
> >> Huntsville or Michoud after seeing all of the Apollo Saturn
> >> infrastructure that
> >> "it was too bad that all of this will be pissed away" after the Apollo
> >> Program ended.
>
> >What else could you do with it?
> >You could build a giant space station (pretty pointless, as we found out
> >with the ISS).
>
> It's only pointless if you can't afford to get to it. Which in fact
> would have been the case if we were constrained to Saturn.
You're speaking in riddles again. Do you mean to say that we would not
be able to afford Saturns today or that Saturns lack the means to get
to ISS?
And a simple answer of "yes" only adds to your inherent vagueness.
Eric Chomko
> mh...@ohiohills.com wrote:
>
> > The question is: did I imagine that? If I did not, can someone point
> > me to where I can find the exact context and quote?
>
> This is also the guy who also said he "didn't want to go to sleep by the
> light of a communist Moon".
> Perfect politician.
Yep, how LBJ got Earl Warren to head the commission to look into the
death of JFK after Warren told him many times we would not do it and
then eventually caved and did lead the commission proves your point
about LBJ and his political prowess.
> Or, as someone once said: "A politician is someone who will lie to
> you...even when he doesn't have to."
> (was that Mark Twain?)
I couldn't find it here:
http://www.quotationspage.com/quotes/Mark_Twain/
Eric
Eric Chomko
> "Jorge R. Frank" <jrfr...@ibm-pc.borg> quoted:
I can't help to compare the aspect of running the Colorado River
through the Grand Canyon and that of spaceflight.
When John Wesley Powell ran the Colorado for the first time it was on
the govt. dime, specifically the USGS. Did anyone at that time bitch
about how Powell's trip could have or should have spawned the
commercial river running that started a good 50 years later and is
boom business these days??!?? Hell no!
Well, if NASA is the USGS of yesteryear and Neil Armstrong or maybe
more approriately Alan Sheppard, is the John Wesley Powell equivalent,
then I wonder if anyone said a thing about Powell's trip and how it
should have been commerical or that it had ANY influence on the
commercialization of river running which we actually have today but
took a good long time?
The point is that NASA and spaceflight has nothing to do with when and
how the commercial spaceflight industry will start. If anything look
at the space alliance and see how it charges its customers.
Eric
Pat Flannery
mh...@ohiohills.com wrote:
> That's not the point, here, and that changes the subject.
>
> My direction is straightforward: what did LBJ (and his administration)
> say that indicated a lack of interest in space travel?
>
Not much in the early days. LBJ, not Kennedy, was the driving force
behind the early manned space program.
As the Vietnam War ate up more of the budget, the "Guns and Moonrocks"
agenda looked awfully expensive to continue.
Besides which, LBJ wanted to spend more federal money on things
stateside that showed tangible results that the voters could see, under
his "Great Society" program.
The amount of money being spent on Apollo looked fairly wasteful by
around 1967, and there were calls to cancel it outright back then.
Along with the Vietnam War it sort of hung around LBJ's neck as a
political albatross, hurting his chances of getting reelected. But like
Vietnam, he had inherited it from JFK...and there was no easy way to get
out of it without seeming to be betraying JFK's memory.
Pat
Rand Simberg
Eric Chomko <pne.c...@comcast.net> made the phosphor on my monitor
glow in such a way as to indicate that:
>On May 12, 9:25 am, simberg.interglo...@org.trash (Rand Simberg)
>wrote:
>> On Mon, 12 May 2008 01:40:47 -0500, in a place far, far away, Pat
>> Flannery <flan...@daktel.com> made the phosphor on my monitor glow in
>> such a way as to indicate that:
>>
>>
>>
>> >M wrote:
>> >> I read in a book once that he commented to a space official at
>> >> Huntsville or Michoud after seeing all of the Apollo Saturn
>> >> infrastructure that
>> >> "it was too bad that all of this will be pissed away" after the Apollo
>> >> Program ended.
>>
>> >What else could you do with it?
>> >You could build a giant space station (pretty pointless, as we found out
>> >with the ISS).
>>
>> It's only pointless if you can't afford to get to it. Which in fact
>> would have been the case if we were constrained to Saturn.
>
>You're speaking in riddles again. Do you mean to say that we would not
>be able to afford Saturns today or that Saturns lack the means to get
>to ISS?
We decided in 1967 that we couldn't afford Saturns. That's why the
Shuttle program was initiated.
Dave Michelson
>
> It is not what he said but what he did. JFK made the commitment to the
> moon and LBJ made the commitment to Vietnam. Clearly as Apollo peaked
> and then subsided Vietnam was just still peaking before going away. We
> have Nixon to thank for the latter.
If you really want to understand how the political leadership that
supported the space program flourished then faded in that era, read "To
the End of the Solar System" by James Dewar. See the review at
http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1107/1
As Dewar pointed out, had Sen. Anderson and his colleagues been younger
and in better health, things might have turned out differently as the
early 1970's evolved.
--
Dave Michelson
da...@ece.ubc.ca
Ian Parker
> On Tue, 13 May 2008 11:41:16 -0700 (PDT), in a place far, far away,
And which cost a lot more.
- Ian Parker
Eric Chomko
wrote:
> On Tue, 13 May 2008 11:41:16 -0700 (PDT), in a place far, far away,
But as you and others have pointed out the shuttle being a RLV and the
Saturns being ELVs, have the former really saved us anything,
especially in terms of $$$? Had we continued with Saturns and not
necessarily Vs, could we have improved on the design to the point that
the ELVs, though seemingly more wasteful and certainly less enviro-
friendly, at least in theory, could they have been cheaper in the long
run?
Eric