…in order to find out what’s in it:
“It’s not top-notch coverage by any stretch, but it is better than no coverage,” said Neil Trautwein, a health care lobbyist at the National Retail Federation. “There’s slight irony, given the president’s repeated assertion that if you enjoy your coverage you can keep it, that this would take the coverage away from part-time employees until 2014.”
And these idiots think that health care is going to be a winning issue for them this fall?
…or Communist? Take the quiz. You know, when we spread the wealth around, it’s better for everybody…
Was this supposed to make any sense?
Robert T. Bigelow, of Bigelow Aerospace and the Budget motel chain, believes he can build the space stations, and others will be able to fly paying customers, including NASA astronauts, into orbit—all for less money than NASA and other government space agencies currently pay to transport and host spacemen and spacewomen.
Truthdig is not entirely convinced this is such a good idea. In a year of oil spills, runaway Toyotas and toxic happy meals, we’re not so sure about turning over exploration of the final frontier—and transportation of our astronauts—to private profiteers.
Apparently the word “profit” remains a dirty word to some. Which is why it continues to amaze that this new policy came out of the Obama administration.
And of course, we know how scrupulous that “non-profit,” NASA is about flight safety. Why, it’s only killed fourteen astronauts in the past quarter century.
[Update a few minutes later]
The other dumb thing about this is the notion that any space activity is “exploration.” This is one of the ignorant straw-man shibboleths of the bashers of the new plan (notably, by the moronic commenter “DCSCA” over at Space Politics) — that “exploration” is being turned over to private enterprise, which they claim won’t work, because it’s not profitable. But all that the plan actually calls for is to get NASA out of the business of transportation to LEO, so that they can finally focus on real exploration.
My opinion piece on the recent SpaceX success is up at AOL News.
…in California. Just as well, all those dang airplanes were killing the planet with their carbon footprints anyway.
The inmates continue to run the asylum in Sacramento. And little hope for improvement, absent districting reform.
The “stimulus” failed. Obviously, they didn’t wastespend enough money. Or pay off enough Democrat interest groups.
Clark Lindsey has a lot of links.
[Update a few minutes later]
I said yesterday that they had a chute failure. But what I’m hearing now is that the stage broke up on entry, rather than when it hit the ocean, so the failure to open chutes was an effect of the vehicle breakup, and not the cause. That’s too bad, because a failure of chutes to deploy would be a lot easier thing to fix. I wonder how much of a setback this is to the goal of first-stage reusability?
Clark has a great roundup of the tweets.
Clark Lindsey has a summary.
[Late afternoon update]
Apparently, the range has finally signed off on the Flight Termination System, so they’re good to go tomorrow.
Gordon Young is trying to fund some reporting of one of our premiere post-industrial cities (and my home town). It’s sad to see how far it’s fallen from my childhood days.