The case against it.
It’s really an appalling development.
All posts by Rand Simberg
State Of The Union Addresses
You get the distinct impression, from the very first sentence, that Kevin Williamson doesn’t like them.
Challenger Day
On the 28th anniversary of the event (and my birthday), Mollie Hemingway (to whom I gave a copy of the book at the Ricochet podcast Sunday night) has already read and reviewed it over at The Federalist. I would clarify this, though:
He suggests that NASA consider returning to an R&D function consistent with its original charter, otherwise getting out of the human spaceflight business entirely.
I don’t necessarily want them out of the human spaceflight business entirely, but I do want to get them out of now-mundane things like getting people (or anything) into orbit, and focus on the systems they need to go beyond. We have a commercial launch industry, and they should avail themselves of it instead of trying to compete with it.
[Afternoon update]
Molly has a post up at Ricochet, with a lot of discussion in comments.
[Bumped]
[Update a while later]
I was particularly gratified by this:
In any case, the book is just wonderful. I’m not someone who’s particularly interested in space exploration (though I have gone to many Space Shuttle launches and landings, so maybe I’m selling myself short). I’m definitely not someone with much knowledge of the space industry. And I wasn’t sure if this book would be so technical or wonkish as to be inaccessible. It’s not. It’s just a really engaging read with a compelling story about human nature, risk and reward.
That was what I was aiming for.
The Legacy Of Challenger
Here’s a piece I wrote four years ago, but it holds up pretty well today, I think.
The Other Sad Space Anniversary
Its not just Apollo 1. The Outer Space Treaty was opened for signing on the same day the astronauts died, forty-seven years ago yesterday. It was a major setback, in many ways, to opening up space. And for many, that was the idea.
The Apollo 1 Astronauts
Obama’s Assault On Science
…will he continue it tonight?
Yes. Next question?
In The Second Term
Get ready for a lawless president to double down on the tyranny.
Pete Seeger
I love this line in this NPR puff piece:
Seeger actually was a member of the Communist Party in those early days, though he later said he quit after coming to understand the evils of Josef Stalin.
Yeah. You know when he came to “understand the evils of Josef Stalin”? Not until the nineties. He was in his seventies before he figured out what I knew as a kid in the sixties.
[Update a while later]
Glossing over the dark side:
As an apology Seeger’s words are underwhelming. While “cruel misleader” is by no means a term of endearment, in light of Stalin’s monstrous record, it vastly understates the depth of his depravity and the true horror of Stalinism. There are many more apt nouns and adjectives in the English language to describe the man who gave us the purges of the Great Terror, the Gulag, and the Ukrainian Terror Famine. Lost in the obfuscations of Seeger’s moral equivalencies is the fact that contemporary Christians, White people, and Mongolians are not responsible for the acts, however heinous, of Christians, white people, or Mongolians of the past, because they had nothing to do with them. Whereas Seeger is all too culpable for the crimes of Stalin because he was an open apologist for “old cruel Joe” and other communist thugs at the very time they were slaughtering millions.
Yes.
[Late-morning update]
If only Leni Riefenstahl was a communist like Pete Seeger.
The 100+ Million lives lost under communism during Mr. #seeger's lifetime could not be reached for comment @PeggyBrava @AmPowerBlog @MsEBL
— Peter Ingemi (@DaTechGuyblog) January 28, 2014
Climate Change Versus Free Speech
Benjamin Weingarten weighs in at The Blaze.