Jeff Foust’s take on the SpaceX success, over at The Space Review. I’d like to be surprised that people are surprised, but I’m not. Elon could have regular service operating between earth and Mars, with thousands living there, while NASA is still planning the first flight of SLS, and some people would complain that he’s not building starships.
Category Archives: Business
Science On The Hill
The hearing has started, with Judith Curry, Roger Pielke, John Christy, and Michael Mann.
[Update about 10:32 EDT]
Mann uses the BS 97% number, and complains that he’s the only one on the panel “in the mainstream.”
[Update early afternoon]
Here is Judith Curry’s written testimony.
[Update a couple minutes later]
Here is all the written testimony. I’ll refrain from comment.
[Update a while later]
Here’s the story from Seth Borenstein:
At first Mann said he didn’t call Curry a denier. But in his written not oral testimony he called Curry “a climate science denier.” Mann said there’s a difference between denying climate change and “denying established science” on how much humans cause climate change, which he said Curry did.
But there’s this:
Former Georgia Tech climate scientist Judith Curry, who often clashes with mainstream science…
I don’t think she ever clashes with science, but I’m not sure what the hell “mainstream” is in this context.
[Monday-afternoon update]
The warm mongers’ five worst moments of that hearing.
[Bumped]
[Update a few minutes later]
Another point of view from an eyewitness:
The big obstacle: managing bodies of the NAS, formerly respected academic societies, and foreign national academies adopted statements that either outright support or do not contradict climatist pseudo-science. This is an important fact. Of course, there are two causes for that: internal corruption that has been happening over decades and pressure from the Obama administration and its counterparts in other Western countries. Democrat Congresspersons might congratulate themselves for their contribution to shutting up opposition views. But it is hard to convince Republicans that this happened in front of their eyes and under the watch of many of them.
The problem with the academia extends beyond the climate debate. My thoughts are that sometimes things are too broken for repair, and can be only replaced. A replacement should be built before the old thing is discarded.
Lawmakers should be aware that they might need to rebuild American scientific enterprise and academia almost from scratch: create new universities and national labs, extricate competent departments, teams, and individuals from the corrupt institutions, and let them to grow organically in the atmosphere free from the interference from the Leftist and hostile foreign bodies. This is where the federal research and education budgets should go, rather than on continuing support of morally, intellectually, and soon financially bankrupt institutions.
The small obstacle, limited to this panel, was a problematic panel of witnesses. From the outside, it seemed to consist of three skeptics and one “consensus scientist.” In fact, it consisted of Michael Mann, two lukewarmers, and respected Dr. John Christy who, nevertheless, shook hands with Michael Mann in front of my eyes. Thus, the climate alarmism was represented by its most extreme representative, while opposition to climate alarmism was hardly represented at all.
It’s long, but read the whole thing.
[Tuesday-morning update]
The Dawn Of Commercial Spaceflight
I’m still trying to put what happened yesterday into historical perspective, but I think it will be one of the top five events of the first sixty years of space history. I wish we’d done it decades ago.
Saving Climate Science From Itself
This was a useful recommendation to come out of Wednesday’s hearing. We use red teams for proposals; why not for science, especially considering that fewer than one percent of published papers actually follow the scientific method?
The Harsh Reality Of The Senate Launch System
Bob Zimmmerman has a piece at The National Interest:
So, what should President Trump do? Does he continue to fund Ares/SLS/Orion, which is taking almost TWO DECADES and more than forty billion dollars to design, build, and fly a SINGLE manned capsule, or does he instead shut it down and have NASA buy the products it needs to explore the solar system from multiple competing private companies?
I know what I would do.
So do I.
..continues its slow self destruction:
Why does Twitter hate us? Why does Twitter hate America? Why does Twitter hate itself?
Good questions.
[Update a few minutes later]
Ockham's razor suggests that the problem being solved by the new @-reply "feature" is that there are too many people using twitter
— Lew (@LewSOS) March 30, 2017
Trump’s Climate EO
Ths hysteria on this from the Left has been some combination of frightening and hilarious.
"Trump’s Executive Order Threatens to Wreck Earth as a Livable Planet for Humans" https://t.co/0NrN1CDdMo
— hockey schtick (@hockeyschtick1) March 29, 2017
But in fact, as Roy Spencer points out, the (illegal) “Clean Power Plan” was literally going to increase poverty and kill people, while almost certainly having no discernible effect on climate.
Space Weather
New data that could provide warning of catastrophic solar storms. We need this both in space and on earth. I worry much more about the sun acting up than I do CO2.
The Static Fire Of The First Core Stage To Be Reflown
…is complete. This will be a big week for SpaceX if they get the launch off successfully on Thursday.
[Update a few minutes later]
Meanwhile, while SpaceX is driving down launch costs, a new report is out on the insane program costs of SLS/Orion.
[Update on Wednesday afternoon]
Bob Zimmerman responds to media criticism of his report.
SLS isn't just programmatically insane, it's fractally so. It's completely nuts at whatever scale you look at it. https://t.co/PVYpsG3Tj7
— Rand Simberg (@Rand_Simberg) March 29, 2017
[Bumped]
Round Runways
OK, this is weird. I guess it would work, but it would take up a lot of room, and it would be restricted to aircraft of a certain takeoff and landing speed, due to the fixed bank of it. Unless the bank angle could be varied for different aircraft.