Alan Boyle has more details on Blue Origin’s plans.
A hundred kilometers, once a week, with three or more passengers. That’s at least a hundred fifty new “astronauts” per year. How big will their fleet be?
Their choice of propellants is interesting–peroxide and kerosene. I wonder what the strength of their peroxide is, and where they’re getting it?
Glenn points to this article about battlefield use of high-storage-capacity videocameras.
I suspect that it won’t be long before people start having these installed in their cars to quickly resolve disputes in accidents. It would be particularly helpful against people who deliberately cause fender benders for insurance fraud. I’d think that the insurance industry would start offering discounts for people who have them, and that eventually they’d become factory equipment.
Thomas Lipscomb says that the Boston Globe appears to be helping Senator Kerry keep a lid on some of his military records:
Now that the Boston Globe has in its possession what it claims are Kerry
And it kills mosquitos. This could save the lives of millions.
Cool.
And it kills mosquitos. This could save the lives of millions.
Cool.
And it kills mosquitos. This could save the lives of millions.
Cool.
Ed Kyle has an overview of Mike Griffin’s plans for a Shuttle-derived launch architecture.
I think that it’s a mistake to maintain the expensive Shuttle infrastructure, and an even bigger one to make the president’s vision dependent on heavy lift vehicles, particularly when there’s only one type, with no resiliency. But as Ed points out, politically, there are a lot of influential congresscritters with Shuttle employees in their districts, so pork may rule the day once again.
They seem to be quite selective about what they find “offensive”:
…while ads for the anti-Clinton book — which featured images of the book’s cover and pictures of the former first couple — were deemed offensive, the company continues to run ads for overtly liberal advertisers with headlines such as “Hate Bush? So Do We,” and “George W. Bush f@rt doll.”
I’m sure it has nothing to do with this, though:
…98 percent of all political donations by Google employees went to support Democrats.
CEO Eric Schmidt gave the maximum legal limit of donations to Democratic presidential nominee Sen. John Kerry and to primary candidate Howard Dean.
Schmidt also contributed the maximum amount to Sen. Clinton, whose role in helping her husband intimidate his female accusers is addressed in the new book.
I think I may switch to Teoma.
I haven’t previously commented much about it, but it’s been clear for a while that after years of losing market share to them, Boeing now has Airbus on the ropes, and even Der Spiegel is admitting it now. I think that the 380 will turn out to be a disaster for them. Of course, Boeing has to watch their back, as some of the regional jet manufacturers, like Bombardier and Embraer start grabbing market share from their smaller planes for point to point. That’s a good thing, of course, since it will restore some competition to the market that was lost when Lockheed got out of the commercial business and Boeing bought McDonnell Douglas.
Jeff Foust asks, with regard to Griffin’s reorganization:
At what point does the standard reorganization of officials during a change of leadership become something more like a purge?
I’m not sure exactly where that point is, but it seems pretty clear to me from this WaPo article that, though they don’t use the word, we’re well beyond it.
As I’ve said before, Dr. Griffin is either going to be a spectacular success, or a spectacular failure, but either way, he’s going to do it his way. As the article points out, he’s been thinking about these issues for a long time. If I were in his position, I’d do a pretty thorough housecleaning as well, but I wouldn’t necessarily bring in all of the same people that he will.
[Update in the afternoon]
Via Keith Cowing, here’s a Slashdot discussion of this.
[Another update at 3 PM]
Thomas James says that Griffin is being Machiavellian. He means that in a good way, of course.