But I can beat him, anyway. Agility is the key.
[Via Volokh]
OK, So I’m Not So Smart
But I can beat him, anyway. Agility is the key.
[Via Volokh]
OK, So I’m Not So Smart
But I can beat him, anyway. Agility is the key.
[Via Volokh]
Stuck In Cis-Lunar Space
Instapundit points to a WaPo article about asteroid hunters.
It’s a good article, and even points out that the popular notion of blowing them up with nukes doesn’t make much sense, but it doesn’t talk about it in the context of present space policy. In order to be able to control our fate with respect to extraterrestrial objects, we need to be a true spacefaring nation, with affordable reach not just beyond LEO to the moon, but to (in the president’s words over a year ago) “Mars and beyond,” with emphasis on the “beyond.”
That unfortunately implies a level of activity that isn’t allowed by the planned budgets for the VSE, at least if it’s done business-as-usual, using existing launchers, or derivatives of them. Conventional cost models indicate that there is budget for another Apollo-like program, sending a few astronauts to the moon once or twice a year, into the third decade of this century (and millenium). That might be enough for some (though I think that it’s not worth the money), but it surely isn’t a path to get us in a position to deal with these kinds of threats, which I think should be one of the major justifications for the program.
Not to sound like a broken record (you young whippersnappers can run to ask your folks what that phrase means), but we simply aren’t going to get the levels of activities necessary to drive down the costs to make things like this routine until we open up space to the market, whether the actual one, or an artificial one spurred by a recognition from NASA that they need to be getting a lot more for their money. If they go with the conventional aerospace wisdom, we’re very likely to end up with an expensive lunar base with insufficient activity to justify it for the next twenty years, instead of a space station like that. We’re also more likely to get clobbered, and be able to do nothing about it.
Physics And Economics Of Launch
The paper that Sam is presenting at ISU is now available on line.
Extending Dictators’ Lives
Ed Morrissey says that the Iraqi government may be working out a deal to spare Saddam’s life in exchange for an end to the “insurgency.”
That’s fine by me. I think that it’s a much worse punishment for Saddam to live for many years and watch the nation that he thought of as his personal fiefdom go on (much more) happily without him and his sadism. Well, actually, like Eugene Volokh, I’d like to see him go through all of the torture and death that he dealt to so many, but one can only do that once, and he wouldn’t be able to sample all the variety that he was so eager to dispense. Which raises two questions.
First, as Ed points out:
As long as Saddam never sees the light of day again, he can die like Rudolf Hess — crazy, broken, and of old age.
Just so. But what does Saddam’s future hold, assuming that he survives his current medical woes? One of the most powerful objections to effective immortality that may result from advanced medical technology is that, as long as men (and women) are mortal, then so are tyrannies. Even if it’s impossible to overthrow a dictator, there is always the knowledge that he won’t live forever. Once life-extension treatments become available, it’s a given that the first to have them will be dictators, thus cutting off hope of ending their reigns of terror via natural causes.
In this case, now that the dictator is in prison, what are the ethics of medical care for him? He is receiving treatment for his chronic prostate infection. But suppose that our medical capabilities were more advanced, and affordable to all? Suppose that in fact we could restore him to full health, and indefinite youth, and that contra Ed’s desires, he didn’t die broken, of old age?
Should we? And if not, in a world in which no one else any longer had to suffer such infirmities, and the eventual death from them, how would withholding such treatment differ, ethically speaking, from a prolonged and painful (in the context of a new era of eternal youth) execution?
Moreover, suppose that we were in fact able to restore a human body to full health from the most major physical trauma? For instance, we could feed him into a shredder feet first, perhaps up to his very viscera, and then pull him out still alive and regrow the body. Or electrocute him with electrodes attached to various parts of his body (use your imagination here), and then resuscitate him to do it again. Or lop off ears, gouge out eyes, cut off tongue, gas him, rape him with various interesting objects–all the things that he cheerfully, joyfully did or had done to others, and then fix him up for indefinite repeat performances?
At some point, it takes on the flavor of the revenge of Greek mythology, like the fate of Prometheus, doomed to have his liver eaten every day to be regrown by night, or Sisyphus, condemned to forever roll the stone almost to the top of the hill only to have it fall down again.
In a world of potentially infinite good health, the problems of dictators, and of crime and punishment, will surely take on a whole new cast. It may be, in fact, that the future holds means of punishment and agony that the Spanish Inquisition couldn’t dream of.
Extending Dictators’ Lives
Ed Morrissey says that the Iraqi government may be working out a deal to spare Saddam’s life in exchange for an end to the “insurgency.”
That’s fine by me. I think that it’s a much worse punishment for Saddam to live for many years and watch the nation that he thought of as his personal fiefdom go on (much more) happily without him and his sadism. Well, actually, like Eugene Volokh, I’d like to see him go through all of the torture and death that he dealt to so many, but one can only do that once, and he wouldn’t be able to sample all the variety that he was so eager to dispense. Which raises two questions.
First, as Ed points out:
As long as Saddam never sees the light of day again, he can die like Rudolf Hess — crazy, broken, and of old age.
Just so. But what does Saddam’s future hold, assuming that he survives his current medical woes? One of the most powerful objections to effective immortality that may result from advanced medical technology is that, as long as men (and women) are mortal, then so are tyrannies. Even if it’s impossible to overthrow a dictator, there is always the knowledge that he won’t live forever. Once life-extension treatments become available, it’s a given that the first to have them will be dictators, thus cutting off hope of ending their reigns of terror via natural causes.
In this case, now that the dictator is in prison, what are the ethics of medical care for him? He is receiving treatment for his chronic prostate infection. But suppose that our medical capabilities were more advanced, and affordable to all? Suppose that in fact we could restore him to full health, and indefinite youth, and that contra Ed’s desires, he didn’t die broken, of old age?
Should we? And if not, in a world in which no one else any longer had to suffer such infirmities, and the eventual death from them, how would withholding such treatment differ, ethically speaking, from a prolonged and painful (in the context of a new era of eternal youth) execution?
Moreover, suppose that we were in fact able to restore a human body to full health from the most major physical trauma? For instance, we could feed him into a shredder feet first, perhaps up to his very viscera, and then pull him out still alive and regrow the body. Or electrocute him with electrodes attached to various parts of his body (use your imagination here), and then resuscitate him to do it again. Or lop off ears, gouge out eyes, cut off tongue, gas him, rape him with various interesting objects–all the things that he cheerfully, joyfully did or had done to others, and then fix him up for indefinite repeat performances?
At some point, it takes on the flavor of the revenge of Greek mythology, like the fate of Prometheus, doomed to have his liver eaten every day to be regrown by night, or Sisyphus, condemned to forever roll the stone almost to the top of the hill only to have it fall down again.
In a world of potentially infinite good health, the problems of dictators, and of crime and punishment, will surely take on a whole new cast. It may be, in fact, that the future holds means of punishment and agony that the Spanish Inquisition couldn’t dream of.
Extending Dictators’ Lives
Ed Morrissey says that the Iraqi government may be working out a deal to spare Saddam’s life in exchange for an end to the “insurgency.”
That’s fine by me. I think that it’s a much worse punishment for Saddam to live for many years and watch the nation that he thought of as his personal fiefdom go on (much more) happily without him and his sadism. Well, actually, like Eugene Volokh, I’d like to see him go through all of the torture and death that he dealt to so many, but one can only do that once, and he wouldn’t be able to sample all the variety that he was so eager to dispense. Which raises two questions.
First, as Ed points out:
As long as Saddam never sees the light of day again, he can die like Rudolf Hess — crazy, broken, and of old age.
Just so. But what does Saddam’s future hold, assuming that he survives his current medical woes? One of the most powerful objections to effective immortality that may result from advanced medical technology is that, as long as men (and women) are mortal, then so are tyrannies. Even if it’s impossible to overthrow a dictator, there is always the knowledge that he won’t live forever. Once life-extension treatments become available, it’s a given that the first to have them will be dictators, thus cutting off hope of ending their reigns of terror via natural causes.
In this case, now that the dictator is in prison, what are the ethics of medical care for him? He is receiving treatment for his chronic prostate infection. But suppose that our medical capabilities were more advanced, and affordable to all? Suppose that in fact we could restore him to full health, and indefinite youth, and that contra Ed’s desires, he didn’t die broken, of old age?
Should we? And if not, in a world in which no one else any longer had to suffer such infirmities, and the eventual death from them, how would withholding such treatment differ, ethically speaking, from a prolonged and painful (in the context of a new era of eternal youth) execution?
Moreover, suppose that we were in fact able to restore a human body to full health from the most major physical trauma? For instance, we could feed him into a shredder feet first, perhaps up to his very viscera, and then pull him out still alive and regrow the body. Or electrocute him with electrodes attached to various parts of his body (use your imagination here), and then resuscitate him to do it again. Or lop off ears, gouge out eyes, cut off tongue, gas him, rape him with various interesting objects–all the things that he cheerfully, joyfully did or had done to others, and then fix him up for indefinite repeat performances?
At some point, it takes on the flavor of the revenge of Greek mythology, like the fate of Prometheus, doomed to have his liver eaten every day to be regrown by night, or Sisyphus, condemned to forever roll the stone almost to the top of the hill only to have it fall down again.
In a world of potentially infinite good health, the problems of dictators, and of crime and punishment, will surely take on a whole new cast. It may be, in fact, that the future holds means of punishment and agony that the Spanish Inquisition couldn’t dream of.
Moonbeams
Guest blogger Sam Dinkin has a couple pieces at The Space Review today–an interview with Dave Criswell, co-inventor of the Lunar Power System (Bob Waldron, who used to work for me at Rockwell, is the other co-inventor), and an assessment of the global implications for the development of such a system.
I have to confess to being an LPS skeptic, but DoE has wasted a lot more money on a lot less promising things. In any event, the key to making any of these things happen, whatever their technological feasibility level, remains the cost of access to space.
Going For The Idiot Vote
One of the most hilarious things that I found about the Florida voting fiasco in 2000 was the Democrats’ cheerful willingness to advance the proposition that uninformed morons, unable to read a ballot or punch a hole all the way through a flimsy piece of cardboard, were a key (in fact, apparently essential) part of their constituency (a notion that I mercilessly mocked a couple years ago). Shamelessly, and utterly innocent of how foolish it makes them look, they’re apparently still at it.