Unfortunately, contemporary Washington is calibrated to defer to experts who defer to politicians, providing an intellectual Praetorian Guard for the constant growth of a leviathan. As Denver University professor David Ciepley noted, “Starting in the First World War, and much more so during the New Deal and World War II, American social scientists became part of the autonomous state themselves, helping staff the mushrooming government agencies.” The closer that intellectuals get to politicians, the more weaselly they usually become.
Playing off Mr. Gruber’s derision of average Americans, one wag suggested a new acronym — L.I.E. — for Low Information Experts. Mr. Gruber and many other professors have gotten rich by pretending that government is far more competent than it actually is. Economist Robert Skidelsky, writing about the history of modern socialism, observed that “the collectivist belief system existed independently of the facts of modern life.” The same is true of the academic cadre who profit by vindicating endless government interventions that breed chaos and dependency.
I’d like to think that people will take a lesson from this (particularly with regard to climate models), but history doesn’t make me hopeful.
Alan Boyle has an inside look at how VG employees are responding to the loss of Alsbury and the space ship. Note that the official schedule now is “ground testing” in the first half of next year. That’s a lot more realistic than past predictions, I think.
How’s that grab you, champions of the fourth estate? The White House teamed up with the Attorney General to take out a troublesome reporter and gin up some dirty coverage for congressional investigators. A patently bogus claim of executive privilege was used to keep politically-damaging documents under wraps until the President was safely beyond the reach of irate voters. You’d have been totally cool with Richard Nixon doing something like this, right?
Here’s the final report from the CAA, for those who have time and interest. There seems to be quite a bit of enthusiasm. Of course, the Brits have been out of the space game, in terms of launch, for decades.
In his attempt to troll the hard right, Obama has actually handed them a wonderful gift by killing comprehensive immigration reform dead. Legislative amnesty is finished, it’s done, it’s pining for the fjords. Conservative Republicans get to finally advance border and enforcement reforms without even dealing with those here illegally! It’s just what the Bob Goodlattes of the world have wanted to do all along: ditch the clunky amnesty tradeoffs and deal with citizenship issues last, only after securing the border. It’s the Republican establishment, consultant and donor classes, and the Chamber who are closest to the blast radius on this, turning anyone viewed as pro-amnesty toxic overnight. They will be viewed by the GOP base as supportive of the president’s overreach despite all denials (“I was in favor of what he did but not how he did it” is always a weak position), which will make for some very awkward defenses in the 2016 stakes.
Mojave, CA, November 20, 2014 – XCOR Aerospace today announced it has completed the latest test series for the liquid hydrogen engine it is developing for United Launch Alliance (ULA). This is an important milestone in the long-running LH2 (liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen) program. It is also a step toward running the engine in a fully closed cycle mode.
In its most recent milestone, XCOR successfully performed hot fire testing of the XR-5H25 engine’s regeneratively cooled thrust chamber,with both liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen propellants supplied inpump-fed mode, using XCOR’s proprietary piston pump technology.
“This test marks the first time liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen have been supplied to a rocket engine with a piston pump,” says XCOR Chief Executive Officer Jeff Greason. “It is also the first time an American LH2 engine of this size has successfully fired liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen together in pump-fed mode. We are happy to be making solid progress on the engines. This will also bring us to a new phase in our plans for orbital flight.
“ULA has an ongoing effort to develop rocket engines for our next generation upper stage, and we are thrilled to see that progress continuing with XCOR,” added ULA Vice President George Sowers.
Upcoming test series will fully integrate the nozzle with the engine and piston pumps. Fully closed cycle testing will follow soon afterwards and will complete the sub-scale demonstration engine program.
The XR-5H25 engines are being developed under contract to ULA as potential successors to the Delta and Atlas series upper stage engines currently used. These engines will also help power orbital launches.
I suspect they’ll find it useful for their own launchers as well.
