10 thoughts on “Free Enterprise In Space”

  1. With a list of credentials as long as your arm, I thought she would have something resembling an arguement. I didn’t read just this one, I clicked links and read a half dozen of your articles on this. She seems to use phrases like “I think” this is bad. Also “Let “the market” run our lives? I don’t like it, one bit” she says what SHE doesn’t like.

    I wonder how many private sector non governmental jobs she as every held? I wonder how many jobs she has created with a business that is NOT generating profits. She seems to think profits are a bad thing also.

    1. Her argument seems to be one long argument from incredulity. There were quite a few “I don’t buy it”s in the piece, as if she is the final arbiter of what is true and what is false. Beyond that, no she had no real argument to make.

    2. Billings’ credentials consist of three degrees, all in fields that lack any real substance. To get an A in “Social Science,” all you need to do is agree with the professor’s opinions. Naturally, she expects her readers to react the same way.

      The sad thing is that NASA actually pays her for her worthless opinions.

  2. Well, I’m tempted to wade in there and embarassingly explain that a two-edged sword doesn’t have a bright-shiny edge and a dull-jagged edge, and that both edges are used interchangeably, and often alternately, to very effectively attack a target from the right and left in a series of rapid blows, which is where the “double-edged sword” phrase comes from, originally meaning to attack a problem from both sides.

    When old texts talk of a true edge and a false edge, the true edge is the one that happens to be aligned away from your arms and the false edge is opposite. During combat they can get interchanged from move to move, and in some texts most of the killing blows are delivered with the false edge using some biomechanical ingenuity and letting the sword’s grip rotate 90 degrees from the way you usually hold an axe or hammer, so that it swings forehand and backhand in the same way as a tennis racquet.

    Some time fairly recently (by historical standards) someone misinterpreted the “double-edged sword” phrase to imply that you’re doing as much damage to yourself as the person you’re attacking, which is as non-sensical as thinking that a hand grenade is held in the hand as it blows up, thus earning the name “hand grenade”, like it was used as an “explosive belt” or “bomb vest”

    But I figure such a commment would discombobulate her.

  3. This article shocked me.

    It blathered on about how bad the notion of commercial asteroid mining is, without giving an actual reason. It didn’t even bother with alternatives, at all. It’s all empty rhetoric.

    Then I read Edward Wright’s the comment above; she does work for NASA. That, sadly, explains much, about her, and NASA.

  4. Let “the market” run our lives? I don’t like it, one bit.

    She doesn’t say what she would prefer to “run her life”.

    I’m afraid to ask.

  5. If the folks who do communication research for NASA feel this way its no wonder NASA is unable to communicate its value to the American taxpayers…

  6. “Let “the market” run our lives? I don’t like it, one bit”
    Sounds like someone who doesn’t understand the premise of “the market” operating by voluntary exchange between participants.

    1. She is too dumb to realize that the market is the only way others do not run her life. It’s Orwellian.

  7. American exceptionalism simply means citizens are not subjects. This is the test all of our ‘leaders’ must continuously pass. They are not.

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