Thanks to SpaceX and ULA, the US is set to outlaunch Russia this year, for the first time ever.
Meanwhile, in Huntsville, NASA is trying to figure out just how low a flight rate they can get to.
[Update a few minutes later]
Unsurprisingly, the Coalition for Deep Space Exploration’s “roadmap” includes the dead ends of SLS and Orion.
“No scientific evidence for their use.”
It’s not just nutrition that’s a scientific Charlie Foxtrot. I had a cardiologist in Florida try to put me on Lipitor a few years ago. I told her, “there’s no scientific evidence that it reduces heart risk in people like me,” I told her. “Where did you hear that?” she demanded. “The Pfizer web site,” I replied. She was flabbergasted.
Here‘s kind of a typically dumb piece, which reeks of Apolloism:
I am a big fan of space exploration and I think that Elon Musk’s SpaceX is a visionary company that is trying to conduct meaningful space exploration. Yet, Congress might want to take a hard look at the ticket price for Musk’s latest endeavor before spending $10 billion to populate Mars.
First, SpaceX is not “trying to conduct meaningful space exploration.” It is trying to establish human settlements on Mars. And if it could really be done for as little as $10B, that would be an incredible bargain to the taxpayer, compared to (say) spending that same amount on SLS/Orion in the next three years, as NASA currently proposes.
I am a limited government conservative, yet I fully support government funded space travel. But it must be smart and it can’t fund risky adventures. The one concern I have about SpaceX’s plan to travel to Mars is that, on its face, the plan seems more like a for-profit enterprise than true space exploration. I would support pure exploration of Mars and a project that has a stated goal of forwarding humanity. Musk’s idea seems like he is more in it for profit than science.
#ProTip: “Limited-government conservatives” do not spurn profit. And even if making a profit on “science” was really a bad thing, settling Mars has nothing to do with “science.”
According to the Los Angeles Times, Musk has received about $4.9 billion already in government subsidies for his three companies. Now he comes to the federal government wanting more. And he has been the beneficiary of many contracts to put satellites into space that run in the billions.
#ProTip: Tesla and Solar City get subsidies. SpaceX gets contracts. One is nothing like the other two, other than federal dollars are involved.
This is a laudable idea and Elon Musk should be celebrated as one of the great innovators of our time, yet the taxpayers should not be funding for profit space exploration and may want to find another contractor who wants to go to space for purely scientific space exploration.
This is a perfect example of the mental confusion that occurs when (as many ignorantly did with Apollo) we conflate “exploration” with “science” with space development and settlement. Mr. Woodson needs to go read my recent screed.
[Update a couple minutes later]
As usual, the comments over there are idiotic, including a couple appearances of the ignorant “NASA’s Muslim outreach.”
The GAO has issued a new report. I haven’t read it yet.
Venezuelans are fleeing the country in boats to escape the economic collapse. And as Stephen Green notes, the author of the piece at the NYT can’t be bothered to ascribe the disaster to its cause. Nope, it’s just “bad luck.”
Will Trump abolish it?
It would be nice. I can think of a large number of federal agencies that wouldn’t be much missed, except by the rent seekers they support.
No, the real problem is dumb news:
Media is a product. Firms that provide this product are servicing a need, and we’d only be kidding ourselves to claim news consumers desire only to be informed. This isn’t a matter of simple bias confirmation. News outlets have begun to cater not just to partisans but the minimally informed for whom fleeting and shareable controversies provide a sense of feeling informed. What media consumers reward outlets for are rarely deeply reported stories on matters related to consequential items of public policy. What takes off are emotionally stimulating stories that don’t require of their readers any background knowledge to fully understand them and to opine on them.
This kind of entry-level politics is not a new phenomenon, and its victims are bipartisan. Colin Kaepernick, the Black Lives Matter movement, college-age adults devolving into their childlike selves, or pretentious celebrities politicizing otherwise apolitical events; for the right, these and other similar stories masquerade as and suffice for intellectual stimulation and political engagement. The left is similarly plagued by mock controversies. The faces printed on American currency notes, minority representation in film adaptations of comic books, and astrophysicists insensitive enough to announce feats of human engineering while wearing shirts with cartoon depictions of scantily clad women on them. This isn’t politics but, for many, it’s close enough.
These are emotionally gratifying confirmations of tribal moiety. They provide readers a chance to affirm and demonstrate clannish loyalty. They are attractive to media organizations because they allow them to forgo the five sentences of exposition that are required to understand any subject of objective policy relevance—sentences that, in some cases, news outlets literally cannot afford.
This is a continuing product of our failed public-education system and academia. But then, perhaps it’s not a failure — it might be exactly what people running those institutions have been trying to achieve.
This is almost comical, or would be if it wasn’t such a tragic waste:
In an interview this summer, the engineer who oversees the development of SLS and Orion for NASA, Bill Hill, acknowledged that the vehicles were too costly now to be practical. “We’re just way too expensive today,” Hill told Ars. “It’s going to take some different thinking and maybe a little bit more risk taking than what we’re wanting to do today.”
Gee, if only someone had warned them about this. Or if only insane NASA boosters had realized that how much things cost really does matter.
No, amending it won’t work. They deliberately designed it to ensure that it wouldn’t.
Allowing people to buy insurance with pre-existing conditions remains as economically insane as when it was first proposed. There are better ways to deal with this than effing up the insurance market. And 26-year olds are supposed to be adults, though that’s just stupid, but not as economically harmful.
[Update a few minutes later]
And yes, live by reconciliation, die by reconciliation. Have it on his desk to sign on his first day.
A a look into the math and sociology of it.