Jeff Foust reports on Mark Albrecht’s diagnosis of NASA’s ills. And in comments over there, Mark Whittington once again demonstrates himself to be a tinkerbell.
[Update late evening]
Hilarious. Tinkerbell has showed up in comments here, whining about being aptly named, and cluelessly clapping her little hands to keep the useless SLS/Orion alive.
[Monday morning update]
Jeez, Mark is so bereft of the ability to understand Albrecht’s metaphor that he imagines I’m actually calling him a fairy.
And here’s Elon’s response: “Thanks Dan, you are a good sportsman. I will still donate to DWB as though I’d lost.”
This really is a big problem for people who are trying to eat paleo or reduced carb. Unfortunately, the food that’s the worst for us tastes damn good.
Did the nation invest a hundred billion dollars in Colorado Springs? What will the effect be on foreign policy if it burns? Shouldn’t safety be the highest priority for our firefighters? Don’t their lives have infinite value? Why are we risking their lives in fighting this fire?
Finally, which would you rather do, and feel it more worth the fight in terms of your risk of life? Fight this fire, or ride a Dragon to the space station without a launch abort system?
Just asking.
MDA has purchased Space Systems Loral.
I think this means that the next generation of high-power comsats will be serviceable.
[Update a few minutes later]
Here’s the press release from Loral.
[Update a while later]
Related thoughts from Clark Lindsey.
[Update a few minutes later]
Here’s more from Space News, who also thinks it’s about servicing satellites.
Obama doesn’t know what it means:
Because the Obama campaign knows that one of its most important constituencies is economically illiterate yokels — a demographic to which the president himself apparently belongs — it is on the airwaves claiming “Romney’s never stood up to China — all he’s ever done is send them our jobs.’’ (Whose?) The Obama campaign cites a Washington Post story on the subject, and the Romney campaign has noted that the folks over at WaPo did not distinguish between outsourcing and offshoring (and, indeed, the story is not a very smart one — do read it and see). Obama responded thus: “Yesterday, his advisers tried to clear this up by telling us that there was a difference between ‘outsourcing’ and ‘offshoring.’ Seriously. You can’t make that up.” And indeed you wouldn’t have to make it up, because it is a real thing: different words with different meanings. (Seriously, can we get this guy a library card?)
To be fair, he’s ignorant about business and economics in general. And it shows in his policies.
…is nowhere in sight.
…is a mass-murdering bureaucracy. It’s not just drugs and medical devices — the food pyramid is a public-health disaster as well, and that’s just advisory.
That’s what I’m playing for people who can’t successfully prosecute idiotic and immoral anti-prostitution laws. Glenn has the right idea:
…why not just legalize prostitution. Legal prostitution is safer and healthier, and it’ll provide employment opportunities for some of those unemployed college grads.
It’s not like it goes away if you make it illegal.
Yeah, I know. I’m just being a crazy “right winger,” as usual.
Check out the group of people determining it at the National Academies.
There are two problems, and they’re old ones. First is the lack of commercial industry participation. They’ve added former astronaut Bob Crippen who’s now at ATK, but that hardly counts. But the more fundamental issue (and reason for the first problem) is the assumption that NASA’s strategic direction should be established by the National Academies, with its own inherent assumption that it is about science and technology development, and not opening a frontier. This in turn may be another remnant of the agency’s beginning in the depth of the Cold War and the Space Act. But somehow, we can never have a serious national discussion about why we spend billions of dollars on human spaceflight, which will be necessary to get a new direction. And part of that discussion should be NASA’s role in the twenty-first century, and what other entities may be required as well.