Category Archives: Business

Business, Economics, History, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Space, Space History, Technology and Society, War Commentary

The First Moon Landing

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What most people don’t know about it.

As I’ve noted for years, the reason that we haven’t been able to do Apollo again is that we just barely did it the first time, and it’s extremely unlikely that the stars will align to allow it to happen again. And that is as it should be, for America. There was a very powerful sense in which Apollo was not the right thing for a country based on entrepreneurialism and free enterprise to be doing.

I’m reading Roger Launius’s new book, in which he talks about four perspectives of Apollo. I noted to him privately that there was a fifth, that he didn’t address:

I felt a little left out. I think I represent a fifth perspective, in that I believe that Apollo was both necessary and not a waste of money for what it accomplished (a major non-military victory in the Cold War), but that it set us back in human spaceflight for decades (and continues to do so, as witness the current ongong Artemis fiasco).

He didn’t disagree.

Business, Economics, History, Political Commentary, Space, Technology and Society, War Commentary

The Coming Boeing Bail Out

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I thought at the time that it was a bad idea for the Pentagon to push for consolidation in the 90s, and in particular for the FTC to approve the sale of McDonnell Douglas to Boeing. History has proven me (and others) correct. The article doesn’t talk about space, but NASA’s procurement practices have been as bad as the Pentagon’s, in terms of encouraging and rewarding poor performance.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary, Technology and Society

The Big One

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Is Los Angeles ready for it? Probably not. There’s still a lot we don’t know about how structures will survive in such an event.

I found this interesting, from the perspective of my book:

Structural engineers point out that no building will ever be 100 percent safe.

We don’t know what’s going to happen to the ARCO Towers, or any of the other steel moment-frame buildings across Southern California. They could be OK when the Big One hits.

Or maybe the ground motion, soil composition and brittle welds will cause some of them to collapse or partially collapse.

How much of a risk, as a society, are we willing to take? And once we determine that a type of building could be dangerous in an earthquake, when do we act?

I posed this question to Bonowitz, the structural engineer who didn’t think a mandatory retrofit program for WSMF buildings is necessary.

“It’s a little bit crass, but suppose I told you that 99.9 percent of anyone in greater Los Angeles is going to survive the big earthquake. Is that acceptable to you?” he asked.

I told him I thought we should probably try to do everything that we can to save every life.

Bonowitz pushed back.

“I think to posit a large earthquake in an urban environment like Los Angeles and say it’s unacceptable if anybody dies in that earthquake, I think that’s unreasonable,” he said. “Especially if you have limited public money to put toward reducing the losses.”

Yes, we have to make a rational assessment. It’s the price of having a major metroplex in an earthquake zone.

Business, Education, History, Law, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

Reparations

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…and the racial republic:

In academia it is increasingly common, as Harvard College’s dean Rakesh Khurana told graduates recently, that individual achievement is seen as less important than the “dynastic” forces of race. This underpins the notion that students “of color” need to be treated differently than others. This follows from the notion that “group rights,” not individual rights, are what matters. As one liberal observer noted, the West is “now inculcating in a new generation ideas where the whole concept of an individual who exists apart from group identity is slipping from the discourse. The very Enlightenment principles that underlay the liberal ideal are being largely cast away.”

Once the party of racism, always the party of racism.

Business, General, Law, Social Commentary, Technology and Society, Weird

Am I “Able” to Open the Exit-Row Door?

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OK, this post reminds me of a conversation I had Friday night on the flight I managed to escape to (not “from,” despite the movie) LA last night.

I’d gotten the ticket with miles, because the last-minute prices to DC were nuts, the only way to do so was to (a) go out of IAD instead of DCA and (b) fly into SNA (John Wayne Airport in Orange County) instead of LAX. Thursday, I asked American if I could change it by going same-day standby, and they said, sure, if you want to burn more miles. So I was resigned to going to Dulles, and flying into Orange County, and Patricia picking me up there, with at least a 45-minute drive each way.

Fortunately, God (or whoever controls the weather) intervened, and my flight from IAD was delayed sufficiently that I missed my connection to SNA, and managed to get reassigned to a flight that went to LAX, with no penalty.

So I’m in an exit row on the flight, and the flight attendant comes by with the usual FAA-required question: “Are you willing and able to assist in opening the door in the case of an emergency?”

I’d been asked this question before in similar situations, but this time, I realized that I couldn’t say “yes” with any honesty. Because I had never actually opened an emergency door. Sure, I’d read the instructions, but had I ever done it? No.

So I said to the flight attendant (because I can occasionally be a pain in the ass from my pedantry, and it had been a long day), “Well, sure, I’m willing, but how can I know that I’m ‘able’? I’ve never done it before.”

There was an American captain sitting next to me, dead heading, and I said, “I’d bet no one in this row, except him, has ever opened an emergency door in an aircraft, so when you ask us if we’re able, there’s no way for us to know.”

The flight attendant is now flustered, and asks if I want to be moved.

“No, I’m sort of kidding, but it’s not a useful question, despite the FAA rules. What you should be asking is if I’m willing and have sufficient strength. I am and do. But none of us know if we are able, and we all hope that we don’t have to find out.”