Now that Easterbrook has a blog, I hereby challenge him to a debate on space policy. We can start with this post as well as this one, in which I went after his post-Columbia commentary in February.

I hope he's up to the challenge, but fair warning--don't bring a soda rocket to a hypergolic fight...

[Update on Tuesday afternoon]

OK, it's been pointed out in comments that soda rockets are hypergolic. So how about...don't bring a hypergolic to a pyraforic fight?

Hypergolic?

Obscure space-tech phrase?

Yup.

If Gregg wants to be a player, he'd better know what it means.

Well, at least we'll know whether or not you and Easterbrook are hypergolic. ;-)

Geeze, I've known "hypergolic" since I was a wee pup. But what's a "Soda Rocket"?

Combining baking soda and reactant (e.g., vinegar, soda pop, etc.)

twenty bucks says it's Rand by a knockout in the first round :-)

Baking soda and vinegar aren't as nasty as nitrogen tetroxide or pure H2O2, but they do react on contact and are technically hypergolic.

But then again, "Don't bring one of those toy rockets you pump full of water and compressed air to a hypergolic fight" doesn't have the same economy of space.

OK, you got me on a technicality. Still, you have to shake the soda rocket to really get it going...

I loved those compressed air and water rockets. Do they still make them?

Still make compressed air and water rockets? Why, yes, I've seen them in stores.

By the time DHS gets done, that's the only kind of rockets ordinary people will be able to buy.

I'm sure that the Department of Justice will concoct up some fantasy about how they can be converted to anti-aircraft weapons.

"Hypergolic propellants are fuels and oxidizers which ignite on contact with each other and need no ignition source."

-- The first entry on a Google search