Really.

I’m not making this up.

 

Orbital Sciences Antares Rocket mission to resupply the “International Space Station” 28 October 2014.

The rocket motors used a couple days ago were originally built by the Soviets in the 1960’s.  

WHY?

Why is the Federal Government purchasing 50 year old Communist rockets?

Progressive Success!  Woodrow Wilson’s 1887 Administration Science (link here) fully implemented.

In July of 2011, the New York Times explained what happens when America abandons excellence and emphasizes “administration”.

As NASA prepares to launch its last space shuttle — ending 30 years in which large teams of creative scientists and engineers sent winged spaceships into orbit — it is facing what may be a bigger challenge: a brain drain that threatens to undermine safety as well as the agency’s plans.

“The downsizing has been well managed and has achieved an acceptable level of risk,” said Joseph W. Dyer, a retired Navy vice admiral and the chairman of NASA’s Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel.
Space experts say the best and brightest often head for the doors when rocket lines get marked for extinction, dampening morale and creating hidden threats. They call it the “Team B” effect.

“The good guys see the end coming and leave,” said Albert D. Wheelon, a former aerospace executive and Central Intelligence Agency official. “You’re left with the B students.”

…

At the direction of the Obama administration and (Democratic Party controlled) Congress, . . .

 

Obama and the Democrats downsized NASA and high technology jobs.  Their Administrative “experts” running our nation then used American dollars to purchase Communist technology that wasn’t good enough for the communists.  The Washington Post explains :

. . . all four launches of the mighty N1 Soviet rocket, which used an earlier iteration of the first-stage engines used in Thursday’s launch, failed between 1969 and 1972. And as the Soviet Union abandoned the idea of putting cosmonauts on the moon, those engines languished in Russia “without a purpose,” reported Space Lift Now.

. . .

“When you look at it there are not many other options around the world in terms of using power plants of this size,” said Frank Culbertson, the company’s executive vice president. “Certainly not in this country, unfortunately.” The first issues with the rocket appeared to arise, he said, during the rocket’s first stage, when it was powered by Soviet engines. “The ascent stopped [and] there was some, let’s say, disassembly of the first stage, after which it fell to Earth,” he said.

. . .

Elon Musk, the chief executive of Orbital’s competitor SpaceX, has long warned against using such decades-old technology. Calling it one of the “pretty silly things going on in the market,” he told Wired last year some aerospace firms rely on parts “developed in the 1960s” rather than “better technology.” He called out Orbital Sciences in particular. It “has a contract to resupply the International Space Station, and their rocket honestly sounds like the punch line to a joke,” he said. “It uses Russian rocket engines that were made in the ’60s. I don’t mean their design is from the ’60s — I mean they start with engines that were literally made in the ’60s and, like, packed away in Siberia somewhere.”

That synopsis isn’t far from the truth. After the N1 rocket failed in the early 1970s, the Soviet Union pulled back on its space ambitions, and its engines went into hibernation, Space Flight Now reported. “After the engines were built, Soviet space dreams were adjusted to focus on Earth-orbiting space stations, leaving the engineering marvels in storage without a purpose.”

During the Cold War Russian Communists designed and constructed rockets.  The communists store the rockets when they don’t meet expectations.  Today’s 21st century American Administrators (Woodrow Wilson’s experts) downsize NASA.  America’s Administrators purposely create an environment where it “makes sense” to purchase Russian/Soviet rockets that were built 50 years ago with American dollars by downsizing NASA and American high tech jobs.

The federal leviathan then uses American tax dollars to purchase a defeated enemies’ technology;

50 year old Russian Communist “seconds” are perfect for 21st century American space flight.  Really?

The offspring of Woodrow Wilson’s Administrators indoctrinated in ideology fail.  Again.

(Last May the Russians stopped selling their rockets to America in retaliation for the Ukraine sanctions.)