A bald supervillain threatens to destroy California.
Heh.
Pro tip to Jerry Brown: If something doesn’t make sense economically, it can’t possibly make sense morally or socially. It just destructive virtue signalling that wrecks lives (particularly those of young people).
An update from Eric Berger in the wake of the successful third flight of New Shepard. The long setback to reusability caused by the Shuttle is finally coming to an end.
[Update a few minutes later]
I wrote a piece a while ago with this theme, but I may have never published it:
Some people have also questioned whether it’s safe to reuse rockets, but Bezos thinks that perception will flip 180 degrees. “That is an argument that’s been made, but I have a different opinion,” he said. “I would much rather fly in a used 787 than on that 787’s first flight. Let somebody else take that first flight. Look, the fact that you just flew it yesterday means that it’s probably really good to fly right now. And that’s going to be true of rocket vehicles, too. In the future, because of reusability, nobody with a really expensive satellite is going to want to put it on an unused rocket. They’re going to decide that’s too risky. Now that will take a while, but that’s what’s going to happen.”
…”Our first orbital vehicle will not be our last, and it will be the smallest orbital vehicle we will ever build,” Bezos said. And to make it all affordable, says the man who has upended online retailing with Amazon.com, rockets must launch, land, and then fly again. When he’s asked about plans by government agencies and others to build large, expendable rockets, Bezos seems unable to understand that kind of business practice in the 21st century.
“What I know you cannot afford is throwing the hardware away,” he said. “Hardware is so expensive. Look around at the precision you see here. The turbopumps with beautifully machined propellers. It’s just a tragedy to throw all of that away. You can never make a step function change in cost if you’re throwing the hardware away.”
In a couple decades, people will marvel at the stubborn persistence some in throwing expensive hardware away.
The real victims (as usual) are the students.
It’s less than a week away:
Space Access ’16 – next week! – three days focused on the technology, business, and politics of radically cheaper space transportation.
Thursday afternoon April 7th through Saturday night April 9th in warm springtime Phoenix, in an intensive informal atmosphere, single-track throughout so you don’t have to miss anything.
Organizations like Agile Aero, DARPA, Lasermotive, Masten Space Systems, Nanoracks, Spaceport America, United Launch Alliance, XCOR Aerospace.
People like Mitchell Burnside Clapp, Jeff Greason, Gary Hudson, Jordin Kare, Dave Masten, Rand Simberg, and Henry Spencer in a variety of presentations and panels.
Progress reports ranging from major government & industry programs through university student & high-end amateur rocket hardware projects.
Plus this year, now that a thriving low-cost space transportation industry is near, a focus on What’s Needed for The Next Thirty Years? S
A’16 is just days away – make your plans NOW. Everything you need to know to be there.
I encourage all to come, despite my own presence.
Four reasons why not to.
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
The government is threatening to fine schools for not following Michelle’s child-abusive lunch program.
I wonder if someone could file a lawsuit demanding to see the science behind her recommendations? Because there is none.
The latest on the fiscal insanity, from the LA Times. This is driven by religion, not rationality.
A (relatively) new paper. If the space-settlement bill has hearings and is discussed on the floor, this will become a key issue.
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]