Transterrestrial Musings

Here’s one for the utterly absurd file. A Manila man was shot to death for mocking another man’s karaoke rendition of “My Way.”

Newspapers have said Philippine karaoke parlors have been removing “My Way” from play lists because fights frequently broke out–for unfathomable reasons–when the song was sung.

The song seems to drive many drunken men to commit anything from slight physical injuries to homicide, reports said.

The “historical” space program happened primarily in the 1960s and early 1970s, ending when Gene Cernan stepped back into the LEM and became the last man to depart the Moon, for decades, with no clear prospects for any return of humanity to that currently-barren orb. Since then, in many ways (and in my opinion, of course), we have retrogressed, at least as far as government space activities are concerned.

So all through the nineties, we celebrated (if that’s the right word) thirtieth anniversaries (and we have the thirtieth anniversary of that most ignominious event mentioned above coming late this year, on December 19). Now, in the twenty-first century, we will be commemorating fortieth space anniversaries.

Forty years ago today, John Glenn was the first American to orbit the earth. He wasn’t the first man–that honor went to Yuri Gagarin, a Russian. Veteran space reporter Leonard David uses the anniversary to write a good, balanced piece on where we’ve been in space, and where we may be going.

The paradigm is shifting slowly, from space as Government Enterprise for those with the Right Stuff, to an inclusive industry that welcomes the public, not as vicarious bystanders and mere providers of the purse, but as active participants.

A personal view of [Derek] Webber [of Futron, a Bethesda-based consultancy] is that, before John Glenn is 90, ten years from now at the 50th anniversary of his Mercury capsule flight, two distinct kinds of space tourism will be happening…

First, the very rich will be following in the space boots of Glenn himself, as well as millionaire pay-per-view space travelers, Dennis Tito and soon-to-fly Mark Shuttleworth. A new kind of spaceflight will emerge too. Sub-orbital flights can provide once-in-a-lifetime experiences for public space travelers, Webber said…

…”Instead of cheering encouragement from the sands of Cocoa Beach, Florida, as they did when Friendship 7 had its flight, the American public will soon get their chance to share the experience of spaceflight. Simultaneously, they’ll create new business opportunities that will in themselves help to sustain the whole launch vehicle business for the foreseeable future,” Webber concluded.

There are some pessimists interviewed as well, but in my opinion, their pessimism is an outgrowth of their own failed experiences with government space programs.

I should add that I heard an interview with Senator Glenn on Fox this morning, in which he was asked about space tourism. It’s going to happen, he says, but not for a long time, and not as soon as some say. He continues to promulgate the myth that our space program is about science, and that his Shuttle flight a few years ago was of scientific value, and not (as it appeared to many, including me, even if it may not be reality–we’ll probably never know for sure) a political payoff for running interference for the Administration in Congressional hearings in Chinagate and other matters.

I think that his flight forty years ago was the high-water mark in his career, and his corrupt Senatorial activities (including being part of the Clinton spin team, and one of the Keating Five) a low.

Certainly, there is no sense that the Senator wants to see space tourism happen any time soon, and when it comes to making it happen, he’s not only not helped–he’s obstructed.

But that’s not necessarily surprising. After all, when just anyone can go, it takes the luster off of fellows like him.

You know, the ones with the “Right Stuff.”

This article in the Paperly Formerly Known As The Paper of Record was originally brought to my attention because it refers to General Pete Worden who, as one of the primary movers behind the DC-X program, I had hoped would continue to play a major role in reformulating military space activities.

Alas, it is not to be:

The Pentagon is developing plans to provide news items, possibly even false ones, to foreign media organizations as part of a new effort to influence public sentiment and policy makers in both friendly and unfriendly countries, military officials said.

…it recently created the Office of Strategic Influence, which is proposing to broaden that mission into allied nations in the Middle East, Asia and even Western Europe. The office would assume a role traditionally led by civilian agencies, mainly the State Department.

Headed by Brig. Gen. Simon P. Worden of the Air Force, the new office has begun circulating classified proposals calling for aggressive campaigns that use not only the foreign media and the Internet, but also covert operations.

This is a little unsettling, but I can understand why it might be necessary during wartime (I just continue to wish that there were some defined parameters that could be used to determine when “wartime” is over). I believe that it was Churchill who said something like, “truth is so precious that it must be accompanied by an escort of lies.” But it will greatly complicate reporting (no doubt overtaxing many of the mental midgets currently engaged in that profession, as well as the competent ones), and may undermine American’s confidence in its own government, if not done carefully.

I’m also afraid that it will play into the hands of those of reflexive anti-American sentiments, who are legion, both here and abroad.

The gun-control advocates seem to be losing the battle over arming airline pilots. I suspect the incident of a few days ago in which the co-pilot had to use an axe to subdue a cockpit assailant helped turn the tide.

Iain Murray has already briefly commented on this, but the British grocers who were accused of violating the EU laws on food labeling (they used imperial units instead of, or as well as, metric) lost a court appeal today. The judges ruled that EU law (made by unelected Continental bureaucrats) essentially supercedes Parliament.

It will be interesting to see the public reaction in Britain to this ruling, and whether or not the British (and particularly the English) people are transmogrifying into sheep.

For those who missed it when it first appeared in the paper formerly known as the Paper of Record, today’s Philly Daily News has a pithy editorial by Lady Thatcher.

We have harbored those who hated us, tolerated those who threatened us and indulged those who weakened us.

For anyone interested in supporting entrepreneurial space activities, you can do your small bit by purchasing signed posters from XCOR Aerospace. These may become collector’s items someday.

The Prowler informs us that the Big He is no longer worshipped in Tinseltown, and that Bono is warming up to Republicans.

According to an article over at today’s Spaceref, the Administration’s space transport policy is slowly starting to come into focus. What’s been going on in this area for the past year is mostly inertial activity from the Clinton/Goldin era, and it was pretty much business-as-usual, with the space industrial complex (NASA, Air Force, Congress and industry) going through the usual charade of faux requirements analysis and “convergence of interests” via “One Team” to determine what the “Next Space Transportation System” should look like. (i.e., a continued monopoly on launch system development. Can’t have any competition–it’s too inefficient. We commissars know what’s best…).

But a realization is starting to coalesce that the military, particularly in light of Secretary Rumsfeld’s forceful new doctrine of space control, truly has radically different space access requirements than NASA. And of equal (if not greater) interest is the fact that those requirements are much more congruent with commercial needs than NASA’s. That’s because NASA, as an agency, has very few ambitions in space (though there are no doubt many individuals within NASA who are very frustrated about this). They’ve been basically content to fly the Shuttle a few times a year, and this has resulted in the outrageously and unjustifiably high costs of manned space access, as I’ve discussed previously.

This was one of the many reasons that the X-33 program was such a massive failure. Although it had a veneer of commercial intent, the reality was that Lockheed Martin sized it as a Shuttle replacement, with a nod to the existing geosynchronous launch market as the commercial fig leaf, because they knew that was what the customer wanted, even if it wasn’t explicitly stated in the contract. This resulted in requirements that didn’t require a high flight rate (at least not a high enough flight rate to seriously reduce launch costs).

But the DoD, particularly the post-911 DoD, wants to be able to do routine sorties into orbit. This is going to require responsiveness and turnaround times orders of magnitude better than Shuttle can offer, and even better than anything NASA has seriously considered for their Space Launch Initiative. And of course, such a vehicle will be much lower cost (assuming that such a capability is utilized), for the reasons discussed previously. So ironically, unlike previous NASA activities, in which only the usual government-contractor suspects were willing to invest, the commercial markets may actually be interested in new vehicle concepts coming from the Department of Defense.

The best policy change to come out of this will be a reversal of the disastrous Clinton Administration decision, in the interest of state-socialist efficiency, to grant a monopoly to NASA in reusable launch systems, while putting the Pentagon in charge of expendables.

O’Keefe has said that the Clinton administration policy wherein reusable vehicle primacy was lead by NASA, and expendable vehicle development led by DoD was “in need of a complete review-a lot has changed since that policy was created.”

The new Administrator is being diplomatic. The policy was brainless at the time, and it makes absolutely no sense now.

One other comment worth noting:

Some industry skeptics suggest that the true cost of a fully reusable 2-stage launcher than would be capable of replacing the space shuttle in payload capability and onorbit operations is more in the range of $10-20 billion.

For “industry skeptics” read “usual suspects who have been bilking the taxpayer out of billions for years on programs like the National Aerospace Plane (NASP) and the X-33, while keeping launch costs unaffordably high.” Let’s ignore, for the moment, the disingenuousness of the false assumption that we need a single Shuttle replacement vehicle that does everything that Shuttle does. The real point is that the “industry skeptics” are doing quite well from the current modus operandi, and have no interest in seeing it change.

Do not look for innovation from people who are benefitting from the status quo. There are some refreshing signs that the Administration is starting to recognize the applicability of that ancient dictum to the problem of space access.

A TV documentary shows the third-world conditions in a British hospital.

Too bad. So much for the vaunted National Health Service. Also, like the prisoners in Afghanistan pleading for tickets to Cuba, it sounds like the patients would have been better off at Guantanamo…