Are They Making the Trump/Pence Space Challenge a Reality?

Monday through Friday I deal with different subjects in this blog. I also post my blog to my Facebook page at RFrederickRiddlesWorld. Monday’s I try to focus on issues. This week I am taking a look at Are they making the Trump/Pence Space Challenge a Reality?

The following is a posting of a Newt Gingrich article.

On Tuesday, Vice President Mike Pence announced what may prove to be the boldest space challenge since President John F. Kennedy said America would go to the Moon in 1961.

In implementing President Donald Trump’s historic vision for America to go beyond the Moon and Mars, Vice President Pence sent a clear message that Americans were returning to the Moon by 2024 – and we are going there to stay.

The boldness of the Trump-Pence plan can be seen in the fact that this new target is four years sooner than NASA’s most recent estimate. It was a strong response against, NASA’s long history of budget overruns and project delays. Vice President Pence made it clear that “what we need now is urgency,” and that the competition for American leadership in space is “not just competition against our adversaries; we’re also racing against our worst enemy: complacency.”

The Vice President’s
challenge to NASA was remarkably bold and direct. In his words, “failure to
achieve our goal to return an American astronaut to the Moon in the next five
years is not an option.”

His words signaled a
profound move away from the traditional space bureaucracy:

“We’re not committed
to any one contractor. If our current contractors can’t meet this objective,
then we’ll find ones that will. If American industry can provide critical
commercial services without government development, then we’ll buy them. And if
commercial rockets are the only way to get American astronauts to the Moon in
the next five years, then commercial rockets it will be.”

In some ways, Vice
President Pence’s challenge is even greater than what was facing President
Kennedy. It’s true: Kennedy was inventing a new organization and radically
expanding the Washington bureaucracy. But that meant he was building something
young, fresh, excited, and innovative.

Trump and Pence are trying to reinvigorate, reorient, and redirect an existing, deeply entrenched bureaucracy with a long history of great achievements – that is deeply committed to doing things how they’ve always been done.

Furthermore, President
Kennedy was able to use the threat of the Soviet Union to get a massive
increase in space funding. At its peak in 1966, NASA was spending 4.4 percent
of the federal budget. At that percentage in President Trump’s 2020 budget, NASA would have
a budget of $208.8 billion instead of $21 billion. If NASA Administrator Jim
Bridenstine had almost ten times more money in his budget than he does now, he
could do amazing things — but he doesn’t.

Vice President Pence
recognizes that a new approach must compensate for the absence of new money. He
said on Tuesday, “we will call on NASA not just to adopt new policies but to
embrace a new mindset. That begins with setting bold goals and staying on
schedule … NASA must transform itself into a leaner, more accountable, and more
agile organization. If NASA is not currently capable of landing American
astronauts on the Moon in five years, we need to change the organization, not
the mission.”

The
Trump-Pence-Bridenstine team has two great advantages over the Kennedy era
efforts in space.

First, we have a half
century of developing new, better, more reliable, and more flexible technology.
The reusable rockets of SpaceX and Blue Origin are miraculous improvements on
the rockets of the 1960s. Radically smaller microelectronics, breakthroughs in
materials technology, the development of 3D printing, and the emergence of
artificial intelligence all combine to give us a chance to do more in space –
and do it better, faster, and cheaper. However, this is only true if the
bureaucracies can be overcome.

Second, there are now
competitive companies that can undertake dramatic challenges previously
unimagined for the private sector even ten years ago.

Since the bold,
exciting challenge of Vice President Pence’s speech, I have talked with key
people in the private sector space industry. They are prepared to enter a competition
to put astronauts on the Moon — and to stay there. Moreover, they say they can
do so ahead of schedule and under budget.

The Trump
Administration should propose an open competition. It should not be about
planning, engineering, paper pushing, or having meetings. It should be about
flying.

Boeing should be
challenged to fully take over the Space Launch System project — which it has
been paid billions to manage in a traditional cost-plus process. Boeing should
be liberated from NASA’s traditional pattern of management, over-planning, and
underperforming. If Boeing could liberate its designers and engineers to be
mission-oriented rather than process-dominated, the SLS could leap forward, and
its price would drop.

At the same time,
companies such as SpaceX and Blue Origin should be invited into the
competition. The central goal would be getting Americans back to the Moon and
keeping them there. Companies that meet the goals ahead of schedule should get
a bonus. The first company to meet the project goals should get an even bigger
bonus.

Furthermore, companies
that come in under budget should be allowed to keep 20 percent of the savings.
And there should be an opportunity for fully funded new entrants to come and
compete.

Importantly,
participants should be paid only for achievement – not for planning or process.
One suggestion I have heard from industry was for companies to be paid a price
per kilo of delivery on the surface of the Moon.

There would have to be
a lot of details worked out, but the excitement of a genuine American space
race – with each company going all out – would inspire a new generation of
Americans to go into space.

At the same time, each
company would acquire new capabilities that would be a resource for our
military, a building block for getting to Mars and beyond, and an enhancement
for low Earth orbit tourism and manufacturing.

This would be a bold
implementation strategy worthy of the bold Trump-Pence vision.

Your Friend,
Newt

In the above article I emphasized words and phrases I thought significant.

Note: This was such a well written article I felt that it should be seen by others. For transparency I had nothing to do with the writing of this article. Personally, I found this exciting news; something that should have happened a long time ago. But we needed a President with vision and the willingness to proceed. We’ve got him and he’s doing it!

VISIT MY AUTHOR’S PAGE TODAY: amazon.com/author/rfrederickriddle.

ARE YOU A
BOOK REVIEWER? I am always looking for book reviews. Whether it is Perished
The World That Was (Book One), World of Noah and the Ark (Book Two),
World of Shem (Book Three), World of Abraham (Book Four) or Death Ship (Book One), Pauline A
New Home (Book Two), Task Force Hunter (Book Three), or Black Death (Book
Four), I value your reviews.

If you would
like to review any of these books contact me at marketing@tr-indbkstore.com with
the subject line indicating that desire. An example of an appropriate subject
line would be: ‘Seek to review [book Title].’ In the email make sure to
indicate your email address, your name, and the choice of copy (PDF or ePub).

 – – –
– – – –

R Frederick Riddle is the Editor of TR Writing Services
providing help to struggling and/or new authors to write and publish their
books. In addition he is the author of several books and is best known for
Christian Historical and Speculative Fiction. For more information on him or
his books visit his Amazon Authors Page.
He is also co-founder and Vice President of T&R Independent Books where his books are featured. To reply to
any blog you have the option of commenting on a blog and/or sending an email to
marketing@tr-indbkstore.com. You may also be interested in his Facebook
page at RFrederickRiddlesWorld.