The “Giggle Factor” Evaporates?

Alan Boyle has an email interview (something that I should have done long before now, if I hadn’t been buried in other issues recently) with John Carmack, in the wake of this past weekend’s vehicle loss (though not necessarily test failure). What was most interesting, though, was a little aside at the end of his column:

…Sunday’s explosive rocket mishap put Space Transport Corp. in the national limelight as an X Prize underdog with a can-do spirit.

The result: A slew of investors have e-mailed the cash-strapped company, saying they are interested in making an investment in the partners’ dream of developing space tourism.

“The national attention has been great. We’ve gotten a flood of e-mail, a lot from potential investors,” Space Transport vice president Eric Meier said Monday after he, company president Phillip Storm and volunteers cleaned up the wreckage and debris of Rubicon 1 on the beach near Queets.

“I’m trying to raise some money, and am responding to people who have expressed interest.”

Of course, it remains to be seen whether these were serious investors. We’ll find out in the next few weeks and months.

An Early Warning

No one who was paying attention should have been surprised by Senator Kerry’s current public-relations problems. Emailer Mike Daily points out one of the indicators from this past spring about the “Boston Strangler” (and if true, what does that choice of code name tell us about Senator Kerry?):

Working with call sign

Another Absurdity Put To Bed

From an interview at Hugh Hewitt’s site:

“Well, on any movement we would do, we are talking four or five boats going in on an engagement, we were always within 50 or 75 yards of each other. And to be perfectly honest about it, if you were to look at an overview, if your were looking for an overview of a situation, you were better off being on another boat and looking at the rest of the other boats.”

Read the whole thing.

[Update a few minutes later]

The first movie biography of John Kerry is about to come out.

Praise Allah.

[Via Roger Simon]

[Another update at 10 PM PDT]

Along the lines of my previous observation, Gary Aldridge has a warning for the Swift Boat Vets:

…the mainstream media does not like George Bush, and they will do nothing to help him win re-election. Did you think for a minute that they would rush to cover your press conferences and report the news that the majority of Veterans cannot stand John Kerry? Did you actually believe you would be invited on

The Other Piece Of The Puzzle

Al-Reuters has a story about Bigelow Aerospace:

The hotelier-cum-space entrepreneur cites his refusal to spend public money as the single most important factor in keeping his costs relatively low.

“It’s substantially important to use private money,” he said of space development. “You can’t do it on time or on budget on government money.”

It might be nice if, in addition to what he’s already doing, he or someone else would emulate another hotelier.

Updated Spaceflight Bill

The latest revision of what used to be H.R. 3752 has been released by Sen Inhofe. The new bill is S. 2772 (no static link: go to Thomas and search for “s2772”). Changes are to the definition of suborbital rocket:

`suborbital rocket’ means a vehicle, rocket-propelled in whole or in part, intended for flight on a suborbital trajectory whose thrust is greater than its lift for the majority of the rocket-powered portion of its flight.

I’d prefer “thrust greater than weight,” since lift is a bit harder to keep track of without extensive instrumentation, but that’s just a matter of preferring the easier quantity to measure. Still, it’s a good definition. This eliminates the problem that Rocketplane Limited (formerly Pioneer Rocketplane) had with the definition.

There are some other relatively minor changes, and then this:

The Secretary of Transportation shall not require any additional license, permit, certificate, or other legal instrument be obtained from the Department of Transportation for any activity, including flight and return, for which a license or experimental permit has been issued under this chapter.

This is a nice addition, since it further lowers the bar for flight testing of suborbital vehicles. The experimental permit referred to is similar to the experimental permit for flight testing of aircraft, with the same intent: to lower the regulatory bar to new vehicle development. The entire homebuilt aircraft industry is built on the existence of aviation experimental permits. Anyone contemplating building their own suborbital spacecraft should read the portion of S.2772 dealing with experimental permits (section 3(c)(8) of the bill, about halfway down the page). Read the whole thing 🙂

Hat tip to Randall Clague of XCOR for letting me know about this development.

A Setup For A Slander Suit?

One would like to think that there’s no lower form of life in the Democrat party than Lanny Davis. Unfortunately for hopes of a livable world, there are worse.

I watched the segment myself, and I hope that Mr. O’Neill (a lawyer himself) knows what kind of smear machine he’s up against, and has adequately prepared himself. Based on what happened this weekend, he may indeed have. I’d like nothing better than for Mr. Davis, at long last, to finally have to pay at least a financial penalty for his vicious calumnies.

What was particularly irritating about the Hannity & Colmes show (which is often the case) was how ineffective Hannity was in arguing with him.

Lanny consistently referred to the Swift Boat as a “ship” (a term that any Navy vet would find laughable). The intent is obviously to imply that Kerry was commander of a vessel in which the crew, and the crew alone, worked, ate, slept, laughed, shat, and most importantly, fought with him, and that no one else was in a position to know what happened on his “ship.”

That is nonsense. It wasn’t a ship. It was a boat (as implied by its name), and not one on which the men lived. They lived on shore with others who got up every day and patrolled by day, often in close proximity to each other.

If one accepts the Kerry defenders’ arbitrary definition of “served with,” no one served with George W. Bush except the people who flew in his (single-seat) F-102 with him (i.e., no one). One doesn’t have to be in the same squad, or platoon, to “serve with” someone. There are higher levels of the hierarchy in which people still interact, often on a daily basis. The Swift Boat Vets all served together, despite the mud you’ll see slung over the next days and weeks as this story continues to grow more legs than a mutant millipede.

The more this goes on, the more hysterical the defenders become (Colmes: “Isn’t this despicable–how can they impugn the honor of a medal winner?” Ignoring, of course, the fact that many of those testifying against Kerry have their own medals, but Alan has no problem with smearing them as liars).

As I said, this is right out of the Clinton playbook. Ad hominem, trash the accusers, obfuscate the facts, use misdirection, like any skilled magician. At least this time, the nuts aren’t sluts–they’re attacking veterans and medal winners, not women victimized by Bill Clinton…

I suspect that this time, the illusion won’t stand up.

[Update at 10 PM PDT]

I see that Snopes has already leapt to his defense, emphasizing the evidence in his favor, and ignoring any against. I hope that this will also blow up the myth about them being non-partisan.

Steam kills

An accident at a nuclear plant kills four workers. It was a steam leak, but that won’t stop the antinuclear hysteriacs from flipping out. Of course, nothing will stop the antinuclear hysteriacs from flipping out. OTOH, it’s worth pointing out that the failure of the steam system lead to an appropriate controlled shutdown of the core, just the way it should. In a sane world the headlines would read “Nuclear reactor safety system works as designed,” and the whole thing would lead to no more than a call to reemphasize the safety guidelines for working with high pressure steam that have developed over the last couple of centuries. My prediction is that the accident will turn out to have been preventable had those guidelines been followed. Steam is dangerous, but controllable, and it can be safely harnessed. Just like nuclear power.

Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!