A new documentary in the works, from Ron Howard and Tom Hanks.
[Update a while later]
I should note, of course, the date.
Category Archives: Business
Rethinking SLS
In the course of working on my Kickstarter project over the past several months, I’ve been examining the arguments in favor of the SLS program. In the course of doing so, I’ve finally come to realize that they aren’t just compelling, but irrefutable, really.
Dumbacher, Griffin, Cooke, Cook and King are right. It does take a lot of mass in orbit to get to Mars, and bigger rockets are clearly better. Sure, each flight will cost billions, but how can we put a price on national pride, and jobs in Huntsville, Promontory, Michoud and Titusville? The more I think about the hazards and complications of launching a lot of dinky rockets, and all that orbital assembly, the more I realize how risky it is, not just for our precious astronauts’ lives, but for the mission itself. And really, NASA just wouldn’t be NASA if it’s not building and launching its own giant rocket.
So I want to go formally on record as being fully supportive of this program, and I can’t wait for President Trump to come in next January to make space great again, with a yuuuuuuuge rocket, not those little dummy loser rockets that are always exploding on barges. #MakeSpaceGreatAgain
XCOR
…has a new board. Greason, Fleming (whose name they misspelled) are out. They say “as the Lynx nears completion,” but I wonder about that.
The California Crazy Train
The latest on the fiscal insanity, from the LA Times. This is driven by religion, not rationality.
The Atlas V
…dodged a bullet on the Cygnus launch last week. If it had been a mission failure, it would have been its first.
Mojave
The Economist pays a visit.
Space Property Rights
A (relatively) new paper. If the space-settlement bill has hearings and is discussed on the floor, this will become a key issue.
TSA Pre-Check
I’ve been getting randomly assigned it on my boarding passes for years, but I’d never understood why. For instance, I got it on my flight back from IAD this week, but not on my flight out from LAX. So here’s the story, sort of.
Anyway, they say it’s going to end, so if I want to get it, I have to actually sign up and pay the 85 bucks. So I decided to finally do it. I have to go to LAX with my passport and fingers on Monday morning to complete the process.
Lipidophobia
Nina Teicholz, author of The Big Fat Surprise
Is Barack Obama A Socialist, Or A Fascist?
Yes:
One of the reasons why both pro-Obama and anti-Obama observers may be reluctant to see him as fascist is that both tend to accept the prevailing notion that fascism is on the political right, while it is obvious that Obama is on the political left.
Back in the 1920s, however, when fascism was a new political development, it was widely — and correctly — regarded as being on the political left. Jonah Goldberg’s great book “Liberal Fascism” cites overwhelming evidence of the fascists’ consistent pursuit of the goals of the left, and of the left’s embrace of the fascists as one of their own during the 1920s.
Mussolini, the originator of fascism, was lionized by the left, both in Europe and in America, during the 1920s. Even Hitler, who adopted fascist ideas in the 1920s, was seen by some, including W.E.B. Du Bois, as a man of the left.It was in the 1930s, when ugly internal and international actions by Hitler and Mussolini repelled the world, that the left distanced themselves from fascism and its Nazi offshoot — and verbally transferred these totalitarian dictatorships to the right, saddling their opponents with these pariahs.
The real act that broke the Left from Hitler was when he betrayed Stalin.
[Update a while later]
Obama: “No difference between communism and capitalism.” Well, if you ignore the tens millions of citizens murdered by their governments, sure.
[Sunday-morning update]