This afternoon, trump decided to bask in the glory of the Apollo mission by inviting former astronauts Michael Collins and Buzz Aldrin and their families, along with NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine for a photo-op session at the white house. While he and Melania were at it, the ignoramus in-chief decided to impress everyone with his deep knowledge of things spacey, even pitting Bridenstine against Collins and Aldrin on the route to Mars. Take a look -
During the back-and-forth, Bridenstine was patiently explaining why we need to go to the moon and use it as a stepping stone to get to Mars. Collins and Aldrin are both in favor of going directly to Mars, perhaps using Gateways and space stations in orbit around Earth, not the Moon. trump wants whatever will make him look good.
Some zingers from the meeting —
NASA’s back. We’re having rich guys use it and pay us rent.
Private guys, wealthy guys, are spending a lot of money with you right now. A lot. I assume they are using the facilities, they’re leasing the facilities, they’re paying money to set off their rockets. You can charge them a lot. They have so much, they don’t know what to do with it. And they like rockets. Thank God I don’t like rockets that much.
We’re bringing the glamour back to it because it lost the glamour. It lost everything. And we opened up our fields. When we took it over, they were all covered with grass, and they were broken and they were in bad shape. And NASA — if you look at Kennedy, if you look down in Florida, you look — wherever you want to look, it was not a pretty picture. They were almost, you could say, abandoned, and now they’re in tip-top shape.
And rockets are going up all the time. And we would actually lease rockets from Russia and other countries — but from Russia — to send people up.
And space, to me, is important for defense — and offense, I guess you could say.
So you feel that really landing on the Moon first and figuring it out and getting ready to launch — and you would like to, you really feel launching, you’re essentially launching from the Moon to Mars?
Who knows better than these people (Aldrin and Collins)? They’ve been doing this stuff for a long time. What about the concept of Mars direct?
But Jim, isn’t it correct that we haven't landed that close to that part of the moon?
We'll I'd like to have you also listen to the other side. Because some people would like to do it a different way. So you'll listen to Buzz and some of the other people. I know this has been going on for a little while, and we're so advanced, but I would like to listen to other side, OK?
Answering a few question, he took the opportunity to trash the four Congresswomen, Pelosi, Schumer, Obama and lavished his praise on “Those incredible people. Those incredible patriots.” in NC.
Politico has a good transcript of a few sections of the gathering.
In case you are wondering how they found so many women to attend an event at the WH, many of the attendees are relatives of the three astronauts.
Also, Buzz Aldrin this time did make any of the faces he made during an event in 2017. Watch and definitely put that coffee mug down.
In case, you are wondering how a real President honors Apollo astronauts — here is how.
And how a real President talks to astronauts in space -
I was going to go deeper into the discussion of whether humans should go the moon or Mars or whether we should use a Gateway at the moon or around Earth. Perhaps, in another diary. Meanwhile, here are a couple of good articles to whet your appetite -