All posts by Rand Simberg

Questions Not Asked

The latest Field Poll from California implies that McClintock will be the spoiler who will give the race to Bustamante. It will be used, of course, as ammunition for the Schwarzenegger camp to pressure him to drop out. Frustratingly (at least to me), the poll does a Schwarzenegger matchup against Bustamante without McClintock, but it doesn’t do a McClintock-Bustamante matchup sans Schwarzenegger.

If I were McClintock, I’d take some of the little money he’s spending on ads to do my own poll that did exactly that. It would do two things. First, it might provide a reality check to see if he really has a chance, and second, if it shows that he does, then it would provide counterleverage, allowing him to actually pressure Schwarzenegger to drop out.

[Update on Tuesday afternoon]

Dan Weintraub has some relevant data:

The poll is a bit dated, but there’s lots of other stuff to chew on, including these head-to-head match-ups:

Schwarzenegger 49
Bustamante 42

and

McClintock 41
Bustamante 47

That looks like the same forty percent that voted for Simon last fall. It still doesn’t answer the question of who would get Arnold’s vote if he dropped out, though. Bustamante would probably get some of it, but he’s not likely to get that full forty seven percent–there are too many donkey-like alternatives (Green Party, Arianna). But it’s more likely that McClintock would pick up the full forty one percent without Arnold in the race–with Ueberroth out, he’s really the only serious Republican left. So it’s got to look tantalizing to him, and it weakens the case for him dropping out.

Losing Meaning

Virginia Postrel has a good post on the real-life consequences of allowing the verbal currency to be debased (e.g., the hijacking of the word “liberal” by the left).

Bush’s rhetoric continues to have two major problems, neither of which is likely to disappear. The first, and most obvious, is that he says the enemy is terrorism rather than Islamicism using terrorism as a weapon (including against Muslims). The second, less obvious, is that he says we are fighting to defend democracy, when in fact we are fighting to defend liberalism (or liberal democracy). Iran is a democracy, in the normal sense of holding real elections, but it is not liberal.

The fundamental conflict is over whether the systems of limited, non-theocratic, individual-rights-bsed governments that developed over centuries in the West are good or bad. Outside of the academy and other intellectual circles, however, American political discourse has literaly lost the words to describe what the “civilized world” has in common. We think “liberal” means Hillary Clinton, when it also means George Bush.

Dang

Don’t you just hate it when your multi-million-dollar satellite falls over and breaks?

Way to go, Lockmart…

Keith Cowing over at NASA Watch provides the following reader comment:

“It turns out that the POES group at GSFC had a training session for an ISO 9000 audit in July, 2003. Here’s the link to the briefing slides.

The accident appears to be LockMart’s fault, but once again we see the benefits of an ISO 9000 program…”

I’m Calling You Out, Gregg

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?

I’m Calling You Out, Gregg

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?

I’m Calling You Out, Gregg

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?

Limiting Markets

Laughing Wolf has a couple good posts–one a general tutorial on writing a business plan, and another on specific issues associated with space business plans.

On the latter, though, I think he spent a little too much time at NASA. I don’t understand what he means about space tourism being a “limited” market. From my perspective, it’s the only one that’s not limited, at least in the sense that there are millions of existing payloads, and millions more are continually being manfactured by (as the old joke goes) unskilled labor. In my opinion, he has far far too much faith in space manufacturing, particularly given its dismal payoff so far, relative to the hype for the last thirty years.

I believe that there may be money to be made from this field, but it’s not going to be a major driver for reducing launch costs, because the lucrative applications (if there are any) will be those for which great value can be extracted from small amounts of mass (just as currently the most money made in space consists of delivering a few thousand pounds into orbit which then returns millions of dollars of revenue in the form of (rest) massless photons). Only tourism requires the huge amount of up and down mass that will force up launch activity, and force down costs.

“…A Cranky Letter Writer To The Local Paper…”

Dan Weintraub’s review of a recent Bustamante speech is withering:

With just a few words tucked in the middle of his speech, Bustamante demonstrated that despite the image, despite the build-up, despite the resume, his knowledge of state government and its problems is woefully thin.

Sounding no more informed than a cranky letter writer to the local paper, Bustamante badly mischaracterized the roots of California?s budget crisis, falsely claiming that the electricity purchases the state made on behalf of the utilities in 2001 erased the budget surplus and forced the state to cut vital programs. While that’s a widely held perception among the general public, it is completely untrue, and any second-year staffer in the Legislature could tell you so.

“…A Cranky Letter Writer To The Local Paper…”

Dan Weintraub’s review of a recent Bustamante speech is withering:

With just a few words tucked in the middle of his speech, Bustamante demonstrated that despite the image, despite the build-up, despite the resume, his knowledge of state government and its problems is woefully thin.

Sounding no more informed than a cranky letter writer to the local paper, Bustamante badly mischaracterized the roots of California?s budget crisis, falsely claiming that the electricity purchases the state made on behalf of the utilities in 2001 erased the budget surplus and forced the state to cut vital programs. While that’s a widely held perception among the general public, it is completely untrue, and any second-year staffer in the Legislature could tell you so.