Suppose that, a week before the Congress voted on whether or not to authorize military force, a document had been generated that showed there were no WMD in Iraq. Suppose further that it was reported that the Pentagon had sat on it, and not released it until weeks after the vote. And when asked why, the explanation was “we didn’t want to influence the vote.” Then, a Pentagon official comes out and denies that it was deliberately withheld, though the record clearly shows that the information was known by the defense secretary prior to the vote.
Imagine the howls from the Democrats and the press, and calls for firings and impeachment, and demands for a new vote.
Substitute health care reform for Iraq, HHS for Pentagon, and “will cost much more than advertised” for “no WMD,” and that’s exactly what has happened.
Orbital Sciences Corp. is warning subcontractors supporting development of a launch abort system for NASA’s Orion crew capsule that funding for the effort will cease April 30, according to industry sources and documents.
No more money down that rat hole. This is good, not just because it doesn’t waste any more money on it, but because it makes it harder for Orion to compete with Dragon or Orion Lite for crew delivery if Lockheed Martin tried to use their subsidized system to get into that market. Boeing couldn’t have been happy to have heard that Orion had been resurrected, when they were making a decision about whether not to put their own money into a crew capsule (with the help of their CCDev contract). I don’t know if this will be enough to assuage their fears, though.
Yesterday, I took a tour of the new (well, new to me — I hadn’t seen it because they moved while I was in Florida) SpaceX facilities in Hawthorne. They are quite impressive, as are all the rocket parts being manufactured there. No cameras were allowed, unfortunately. It’s even more impressive considering how little (relative to other similar projects) money has been spent. I would say that this is the current state of the art in expendable launch systems, with plenty of room for future cost reduction (including at least partial reusability). It makes me curious to visit Decatur now, to compare it to the Delta/Atlas production process.
I’ve been trying to understand the Tea Party Movement. Sounds like a lot of angry people who want to get the government out of their lives and cut both taxes and the deficit. Nothing wrong with that — although one does wonder where they were in the Bush years.
They were there all along, and few of them were very happy about the spending, but they weren’t idiotic enough to think that the Democrats would be better. And sometimes quantity has a quality all its own.
Anyway, I think that what Beijing Tom really wants is a watermelon tea party.