[tgerhard]

I live in the Central Florida/Space Coast area, and there is a palpable fear that soon all these aerospace jobs will be gone with nothing to fall back on in a crappy economy. This speech was meant to be encouraging to a broad constituency of a state Obama and the Democrats need for future elections.

As far as science goes, the better-faster-cheaper ethos NASA had with the Mars Rovers should be revived. Robots are a terrific way to get actual science done. That said, the lessons learned from building and working on the ISS would be a good starting point for creating a vehicle to take people to Mars - a place we can eventually make habitable (http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~mfogg/zubrin.htm).

[tjic]

> I live in the Central Florida/Space Coast area, and there is a palpable fear that soon all these aerospace jobs will be gone

Those aren't jobs - they're welfare checks, taken from working Americans in return for very very very little of value.

I hope that the folks on the Space Coast are right. They can all go get real jobs (even if it's at Target), and the free market space industry can deliver for several orders of magnitude less.

[dackmilliken]

I would much rather hand a "welfare" check to an aerospace engineer than an average Joe.

Also, if the free market space industry does pan out in our lifetimes, I think they would love to have these aerospace guys working for them even if they have such "little of value."

[jbooth]

You know, I'm as hopeful about free market space flight as anyone, but as of now, there categorically isn't a free market space industry.

[lkijuhyghjm]

So you want faster-better-cheaper using COTS technologies but also want to keep the 1000s of pork-barrel in my state Nasa jobs ?

[jerf]

I don't see where tgerhard claimed that was a desirable outcome. I only see tgerhard reporting on the opinion others have from a position of knowledge.

I live in Michigan, half my family works for car companies one way or another, and I was and am still against the auto bailouts. Locally healthy for me, perhaps, but in my opinion still bad policy for the country. (My point not being that I want to debate that point, but that location does not have to dictate opinion.)

[lkijuhyghjm]

Sorry, wasn't meant personally - but you get the point. Q; How many states DON'T have a Nasa facility?

[rbanffy]

After 50+ years of pork barrel? I would bet on "none".