REM@MIT-ML@sri-unix (07/06/82)
REM@MIT-ML 07/04/82 14:53:00 Re: Shuttle landing and Reagan's speech To: SPACE at MIT-MC Reagan spoke of an increased presence in space, thus adopting the terminology we've been using to advocate a space station, but didn't specifically mention a space station or platform. My guess is he's leaning towards a space station but doesn't think it has enough public support for him to be willing to stick his neck out and advocate it. Reagan also spoke of encouraging private investment in space. I don't have any idea whether he's entertaining the idea of letting a private company (or consortium) purchase their own shuttle, or building more government-owned orbiters to satisfy commercial demand, or what. Otherwise I didn't hear anything new, just the old stuff about opening space to everyone, manufacturing chemicals and biological materials, etc. The timing was good, with the 747+Challanger taking off (at the President's command) at the beginning of his speech and then it doing a flyby at the end of his speech during the singing. His speech was also technically much better than his speeches and news conferences usually are. For example, he referred to space as having nearly zero gravity and a nearly perfect vacuum (thus avoiding the slight mistruth about zero gravity but avoiding the current jargon of "micro-gravity" that most of the listeners wouldn't understand), and he referred to our space program as having the technological lead in the world (thus avoiding saying we are the leader in use of space which would be false since the USSR has a space station already that has been occupied 50% of the time in recent years and thus leads us in actual use of space and in training for permanent habitation). Thus I applaud his slick speech in which he expressed no reservations about a continued space program, but I'm disappointed that he proposed none of the programs we need (LEO station, SEPS, exploring for Hydrogen&Carbon, a 5th and 6th orbiter). I'm also disappointed that no network had good coverage of the landing&speech. NBC had no coverage at all. ABC and CBS covered the landing but ABC had technical trouble, putting on video for a comercial ad on top of shuttle audio. Only ABC covered the President's speech live at all.