I had a chance to talk to Rand at SA'04 and he said I should just post whatever was on my mind and not worry about consistency with the previous course of TTM, which had been a concern for me since I'm 99% aligned with Rand on space policy and much less so on terrestrial politics. Since my Dad's death I've found myself less willing to keep my mouth shut about these things (for reasons which I'm not going to go into right now), so I wanted to check things out with Rand before diving back in. Now that I've cleared down some of my to do list I'll resume posting, and we can see how things work out. I suspect that the upcoming election fight will have us all longing for the solemn dignity of monkeys throwing poo, but hopefully TTM will stay far enough above the fray to avoid the splatter.

hmm... monkey poo as a hybrid fuel grain?

Even better! A politician as a hybrid fuel grain!

Andrew, I'm sorry to hear of your father's passing.

1. Welcome back.
2. Sorry about your father.
3. "Above the fray" is generally a good monkey poo-flinging vantage point. It is always good to hold the high ground.

Welcome back. I wouldn't mind seeing different viewpoints on political issues here. I hope you'll mention a bit about the fusion research too - it used to be energy research was a fairly big news item, but these days it is almost ignored. And, I think one of the biggest mistakes of both parties is the low priority they give to energy research.