Saturday is the landing anniversary, but today is the anniversary of the launch.
Loren Grush has an article today on how Apollo set NASA back for decades, a subject I’ve written quite a bit about.
Category Archives: History
Bastille Day
Yes, it is nothing to celebrate. Might as well celebrate the October Revolution, or the ascent of Hitler.
The Norman Conquest
Anglo-Saxons (and other indigenous British peoples) deserve reparations.
Heh.
The Last Beetle
I disagree that the one that rolled off the line was the last one. I was a VW mechanic as my first job out of high school. As far as I’m concerned, VW hasn’t built a Beetle since 1978. If it doesn’t have a flat-four air-cooled engine with a number 3 cylinder that eats valves and rings due to having its airflow cut off by the oil cooler, it’s not a Beetle, regardless of a vague resemblance of body type.
Group Loyalty
Thoughts on identity politics versus reductionist politics.
As someone who is often called a racist because I disagree about a policy issue, I am enjoying the hell out of Nancy having the race card pulled on her.
Lunar Resources
Is there a conflict between science and sustainability?
Meanwhile, there is a symposium on space settlement in DC today. You can follow the livestream.
[Late-afternoon update]
I know this is what you’ve all been waiting for: The Slate article about this crap.
Though most of the symposium was actually useful and interesting, ignoring the nonsense about colonialism in North America.
The Epstein Case
It’s unlike anything Ken White has seen before (which is saying something).
I don’t know whether to be amused or appalled at the degree to which the Democrats and the media (but I repeat myself) are trying to simultaneously hide all of the Democrat/Clinton connections (including Wikipedia), while trying to pin it on Trump.
[Update a while later]
Was Epstein running honey traps to blackmail the power elite? It seems like the most-likely explanation.
The First Moon Landing
What most people don’t know about it.
As I’ve noted for years, the reason that we haven’t been able to do Apollo again is that we just barely did it the first time, and it’s extremely unlikely that the stars will align to allow it to happen again. And that is as it should be, for America. There was a very powerful sense in which Apollo was not the right thing for a country based on entrepreneurialism and free enterprise to be doing.
I’m reading Roger Launius’s new book, in which he talks about four perspectives of Apollo. I noted to him privately that there was a fifth, that he didn’t address:
I felt a little left out. I think I represent a fifth perspective, in that I believe that Apollo was both necessary and not a waste of money for what it accomplished (a major non-military victory in the Cold War), but that it set us back in human spaceflight for decades (and continues to do so, as witness the current ongong Artemis fiasco).
He didn’t disagree.
The Coming Boeing Bail Out
I thought at the time that it was a bad idea for the Pentagon to push for consolidation in the 90s, and in particular for the FTC to approve the sale of McDonnell Douglas to Boeing. History has proven me (and others) correct. The article doesn’t talk about space, but NASA’s procurement practices have been as bad as the Pentagon’s, in terms of encouraging and rewarding poor performance.
The American Revolution
No, it was not a mistake.