I always take news stories about space (or anything, really) in China with more than one grain of salt, but if this turns out to be true, I’ll start to take them more seriously. No serious space power is going to do much in space as long as they continue to throw all the hardware away.
Category Archives: Business
Obama’s Lasting Domestic Legacy
…will be the ObamaCare disaster.
Not really news, though.
The Anti-Trump Vote
Naturally the Trump campaign is bellowing its disapproval of the Cruz-Kasich deal. But there’s nothing unfair about enabling the anti-Trump majority, if it exists, from stopping the nomination of a candidate it believes would be disastrous for the party and dangerous for the nation.
Finally. I hope it’s not too late. Of course, “bellowing” is what the Trump campaign does best.
[Update a few minutes later]
Present
I Regret Voting For Donald Trump https://t.co/j7ukfhAi2U pic.twitter.com/BMoZUAXYpc — Jim Treacher (@jtLOL) April 26, 2016 nt-at-the-destruction/” target=”_blank”>at the destruction
As a result of this profound success, whatever the differences between the two major parties may have been on other issues, these two fundamental bedrock principles underlying the creation and continuation of the post-1945 world order have remained uncontroversial among serious political leaders for the seven decades ever since.
Unfortunately, this has now changed. In both major parties, powerful figures have arisen who are challenging this long-held consensus. Among the Democrats, the chief usurper is the Marxian socialist Bernie Sanders. Among the Republicans, it is the national socialist Donald Trump. Both would gut the Western alliance. Both would wreck the system of global free trade. Both would cause a global depression. Both would unleash the dogs of war. While their rhetoric is quite different, on the central issue of defending or betraying the Pax Americana, the program of both is the same.
It is to be expected that a rabid left-wing socialist like Bernie Sanders would support such a program, and one must be thankful that the remaining Atlanticist forces within the Democratic Party appear to have him and his faction in check – at least for this election year. But what can one say of the Republicans and allegedly “right wing” radical Donald Trump? National Review founder William F. Buckley used to say that conservatives should support the most conservative electable candidate. Hillary Clinton would continue the Obama administration’s deleterious liberal policies for four more years. So she is certainly no conservative. But Donald Trump would destroy the Western alliance and the world economy. On the basis of that comparison, if the two were to face off in November, as incredible as it may seem, William F. Buckley would have no choice but to vote for Clinton. Surely we can do better.
Unfortunately, the problem with Clinton goes far beyond per prospective policies. She would be the most corrupt president since, well…the last time we had a President Clinton. Though Obama’s been no slouch in that regard, either.
[Tuesday-morning update]
Why I regret my vote for Trump.
I Regret Voting For Donald Trump https://t.co/j7ukfhAi2U pic.twitter.com/BMoZUAXYpc
— Jim Treacher (@jtLOL) April 26, 2016
Brexit
…and beyond: What could come next.
I was struck by the irony of the president threatening the nation against which we won a war for independence, and who used to be our strongest ally, to prevent them from declaring independence.
[Update a while later]
Why does Obama’s White House hate the UK?
I think there’s a lot to Dinesh D’Souza’s theory that it’s about Obama senior’s anti-colonialism.
Reusing Falcons
SpaceX has just announced that they’re going to attempt to add another vehicle to their reusable fleet, with another landing attempt at sea early next Wednesday morning from the Cape.
Meanwhile, here’s the most comprehensive analysis I’ve seen so far of how much they can reduce cost and prices, but it’s based on a lot of assumptions.I found this curious:
Musk said the fuel used on a Falcon 9 is between $200,000 and $300,000. Reserving fuel in the first stage for landing adds mass to the vehicle and deprives it of performance, effectively carrying fuel instead of extra payload — a penalty that expendable rockets do not need to pay. Musk was addressing not the performance penalty, but the issue of fuel cost, which is a non-issue in the overall economics of reusability.
Actually, much of the point of reusability is to get to the point at which one cares about propellant costs. It’s expendables in which they are a non-issue.
“A Dark Future”
In which we may not be able to predict natural variability.
Gee, just like now. This is profoundly ignorant of history. Does he imagine anyone predicted the Medieval Warm Period? Or the Little Ice Age? Has he ever heard of the Dust Bowl?
Silencing Dissent On Science
George Will describes the latest attempts at censorship of those who deign to disagree with our intellectual and moral superiors (just ask them!) on the Left:
“The debate is settled,” says Obama. “Climate change is a fact.” Indeed. The epithet “climate change deniers,” obviously coined to stigmatize skeptics as akin to Holocaust deniers, is designed to obscure something obvious: Of course the climate is changing; it never is not changing — neither before nor after the Medieval Warm Period (end of the 9th century to the 13th century) and the Little Ice Age (1640s to 1690s), neither of which was caused by fossil fuels.
Today, debatable questions include: To what extent is human activity contributing to climate change? Are climate change models, many of which have generated projections refuted by events, suddenly reliable enough to predict the trajectory of change? Is change necessarily ominous because today’s climate is necessarily optimum? Are the costs, in money expended and freedom curtailed, of combating climate change less than the cost of adapting to it?
But these questions may not forever be debatable. The initial target of Democratic “scientific” silencers is ExxonMobil, which they hope to demonstrate misled investors and the public about climate change. There is, however, no limiting principle to restrain unprincipled people from punishing research entities, advocacy groups and individuals.
That’s the problem with leftist opponents to limited government; there are never any limiting principles on anything.
Site Problems
I know it’s been down since last night. My provider apparently had a major SNAFU, and the whole farm was down. Just came back on line a few minutes ago.
My “Ending Apolloism” Talk At Space Access
I’ve uploaded the Powerpoint to the site.
It’s an outgrowth of my “SLS Roadblock” project, which I’m figuring out how to either wrap up or extend.
[Update a while later]
Erratum: At the time I originally created these charts, for the FISO telecon at the end of January, Dana had proposed the Space Settlement bill. He has since actually introduced it.
Vivaldi
Five reasons to switch to the new browser.
I’m going to try it, but not sure there’s an rpm for it, so may have to build.