Eric Berger has this week’s round up.
I will say that I’ve never been very concerned about competition from China, but now that they’ve allowed commercial companies to engage, we may start to see a lot of innovation there.
Category Archives: Business
Lunar Water Ice
An interview with Phil Metzger, including the most recent findings, on how to utilize it.
From Reality TV To Reality Politics
Thoughts from Matthew Continetti on Trump’s media skills, and his vulnerability to others who share them.
As I noted on twitter, it’s stupid to think that the hush money was a campaign contribution, because for many Trump supporters, the notion that he was shtooping porn stars and playmates was part of the appeal.
Pence’s Space Speech At JSC
Bob Zimmerman says that the swamp is winning, big league.
#ProTip To “Democratic Socialists”
Want power to the people? Then you want capitalism.
The Pre-Trump World
Was it normal, or abnormal?
One off the polling practices I find annoying is the “right track, wrong track” question, because it can be very misleading in its implications. It doesn’t provide any information as to what the respondent thinks what “track” we should be on. I have never in my adult life felt that the country was on the “right track,” and if polled I would always say it was wrong. And of course, if I said that whenn Republicans were in power, Democrats would infer that it meant that I wanted them to win, which would be stupid, because what I wanted continually was a more libertarian, constitutional government.
Anyway, I have to confess that, despite my dislike of Trump, I do feel, for the first time, that with all the regulatory rollback, and constitutionalist judicial appointees, we’re at least, finally, on the right track. But we still have along way to go down the rails. My fear is that if the Democrats get back in power, we’ll be off the rails entirely.
Stratolaunch
A history, as it approaches first air under the gear. As I noted in an email to the person who sent me the link:
“Stratolaunch has never made any sense to me as a business. Gary [Hudson]’s theory is that it’s the Glomar Explorer of space: a civilian cover for a black operation (in this case, perhaps as an X-37 launcher capable of single-orbit rendezvous). But it seems nutty to me to make your business dependent on a single carrier aircraft. Orbital got away with it with the Tri-Star but at least there they could have gone to the boneyard for another one if they’d lost it. Look how much time it’s taken to even do taxi tests with a single vehicle. And they only this week announced (again) their plans for the orbital launcher, now not to fly until 2022, over a decade after that press conference.”
I also think that Allen placed entirely too much faith in Burt, who is an aviation genius, but not necessarily a space guy.
Rogozin
He’s whining about SpaceX’s prices. Maybe he should get a trampoline.
And this is amusing:
Due to its geography, Russia is largely unable to make Falcon-style reusable boosters that would make vertical powered descent to a movable platform at sea, and so it has to follow an alternate path sticking to horizontal landings or relying on parachutes, he said.
Yes, because they couldn’t possibly land vertically down range, where they currently dump their expended first stages.
Pulling Clearances
…is only a start:
If we had a real media and not the world’s most pompous Democrat transcription service, the CIA’s blown Chinese spy ring disaster would be front page news but hey, Omarosa! In any case, the only consulting anyone should do with the members of this class of unmitigated failures whose incompetence brought us 9/11, Iraq, Libya, ISIS, and a future where we would all be wise to learn Mandarin, is to ask their opinion and then do the opposite – Costanza style.
Let’s look at our elite’s track record of success. Don’t worry – it won’t take long. We’re still chasing bandits in Afghanistan after nearly 17 years, the Navy can’t stop running into other people’s boats, and our best and brightest in the FBI are texting each other like teens while they try to undo the election. They can’t be bothered with things like, I don’t know, following up on warnings about psychotic freaks who get online and announce their plan to shoot up schools. Oh, and remember the 2008 economic collapse? I’m thinking you weren’t the one making bad bets with billions of dollars that brought it all tumbling down. By the way, guess how many people the feds tossed in the pokey for the 2008 meltdown that cost you and me a trillion bucks? One. Uno. A single dude.
The First Amendment
…and the lesson of Robespierre:
Once we stop treating the Internet as just a medium like newsprint and start treating Internet hosting companies as publishers, we make them vulnerable to oppressors and we can be sure that some of them will not have what we see as the “public good” in mind.
This is the lesson of Robespierre: once you establish that something may be done for you, you establish that it can be done to you.
Similarly, as Barry Goldwater and others have said, a government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take it all away.