Boy, that one’s going to piss off the TSA…
It shows a woman TSAer faking a wanding at the security line to steal a passenger’s soft drink.
All posts by Rand Simberg
Horrific
Clark Lindsey has some more perspective on what a waste of money the Shuttle program is currently, given that we aren’t even flying it (and perhaps even if we were):
* Elon Musk has spent about $100M so far on developing the line of SpaceX Falcon launchers. The first Falcon 9 launch is scheduled for 2007. He hasn’t said how much more money it will take to reach that launch but I doubt it could be more than another $100M.
* Kistler says it needs a few hundred million dollars to finish its fully reusable two stage K-1 vehicle.
* T/Space said it can build a CEV system capable of taking crews and cargo to the ISS for around $500M.
* LockMart once promised to build the VentureStar for $6B. If they had a 100% overrun that would still be less than $13B.
Back In FL
I came home on a red eye last night, slept in, and awoke to a lovely thunderstorm about noon.
More later.
Joining The Buggy Whips
Western Union sent its last telegram last week.
Surreality
All this lunacy is understood only in a larger surreal landscape. Tibet is swallowed by China. Much of Greek Cyprus is gobbled up by Turkish forces. Germany is 10-percent smaller today than in 1945. Yet only in the Middle East is there even a term “occupied land,” one that derived from the military defeat of an aggressive power.
Over a half-million Jews were forcibly cleansed from Baghdad, Damascus, Cairo, and other Arab cities after the 1967 war; but only on the West Bank are there still refugees who lost their homes. Over a million people were butchered in Rwanda; thousands die each month in Darfur. The world snoozes. Yet less than 60 are killed in a running battle in Jenin, and suddenly the 1.5 million lost in Stalingrad and Leningrad are evoked as the moral objects of comparison, as the globe is lectured about “Jeningrad.”
Now the Islamic world is organizing boycotts of Denmark because one of its newspapers chose to run a cartoon supposedly lampooning the prophet Mohammed. We are supposed to forget that it is de rigueur in raucous Scandinavian popular culture to attack Christianity with impunity. Much less are we to remember that Hamas terrorists occupied and desecrated the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem in a globally televised charade.
Instead, Danish officials are threatened, boycotts organized, ambassadors recalled
Alt-Space On The Radio
On NPR, coming up at noon Pacific.
Blimps
Joe Katzman say they’re part of the Air Force’s future. With civilian applications. I’d love to see dirigibles come back, with modern materials, as aerial cruiseships. I think there’d be a big market for them.
Keeping Fingers Crossed
Clark Lindsey writes that next week’s inaugural launch of the Falcon 1 is still on, and that this time it will be webcast. So there was some benefit (to those interested) in the delay.
On Track?
I’m still swamped at work, but Clark Lindsey has updated his commercial space timeline. I personally continue to find it quite encouraging, though 2005 wasn’t nearly as groundbreaking and eventful as 2004 was.
How Do You Enforce It?
I agree with Ron Bailey’s column on Bush’s health-care proposals, until I get to his proposed solution:
My advice to President Bush on how really to jumpstart consumer-driven health care: mandatory private health insurance. Poor Americans would be offered a voucher with which they would buy private health coverage. Such vouchers could be paid for by abolishing Medicaid and the State Children’s Health Insurance Programs….Mandatory private health insurance would avoid the problem of adverse selection, provide insurance for the currently uninsured and make consumer-driven health care work for every American.
While this would be (in theory) a vast improvement over the current employer-driven mess, there’s one problem, which is why I say “in theory”: How is it enforced? What happens to people who don’t do it? With mandatory auto insurance, one in theory revokes the privilege of driving if one doesn’t obey the law, but what’s the equivalent for health insurance?
I suppose the libertarian response is, “their tough luck.” It’s mine, too, but it doesn’t seem very politically correct, or from a policy standpoint, politically palatable.