While I think that we could do a lunar return for far less than NASA estimates, if allowed to do so without having to use SLS/Orion, or the Gateway, I certainly agree with the second point that Wayne Hale (new head of the NASA Advisory Council) makes, as he takes more than one page from my book.
Category Archives: History
Brexit, And The UK’s Future
More Conservatives voted Leave than Labourites, but Labour represents the most passionately pro-Remain constituencies in the country and the most passionately pro-Leave ones. This means both parties have taken to destroying themselves internally rather than dealing with the vote’s implications.
The Tories are more culpable because they formed government during this period. They stuck with Theresa May, a leader who lacks every leadership quality apart from perseverance and who managed to lose a 20 per cent poll lead against an antediluvian Marxist after calling a completely unnecessary general election. This election produced a hung parliament and forced May’s Tories into a confidence and supply arrangement with the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), a Northern Irish outfit that is, to put it mildly, full of strange characters.
…In days gone by, superannuated elites refusing to accept defeat on existential questions of this type finished up with their heads on pikes. Democracy put a stop to that by doing what democracy does best: facilitating the peaceful and orderly transfer of power. But democracy means you elect a new parliament, not a new people. That, in truth, is the only deal that matters.
Link via Iain Murray, with whom I had lunch last week in DC, and who personally knows Boris Johnson, and most of the other candidates. When I noted that Theresa May has probably been the worst PM since Neville Chamberlain, he replied, “Since Lord North.”
Bet On Bill Barr
An anonymous, but wise, Wyoming rancher recently summarized special counsel Robert Mueller’s report in clear middle-America language: “We know that old boy didn’t actually steal any horses, but he’s obviously guilty of trying to avoid being hanged for it.”
Yep.
Federal Agencies
Yes, let’s move them out of Washington.
And as Glenn suggests, it would be smart to move them into hinterlands of deep-blue states, so they don’t affect swing states.
The Iranians
During the past week I’ve spoken to a number of skilled and experienced observers of the region, and every one them is hard put to make sense of Iranian motives. In the absence of a rational explanation, let me offer this one: The mullahs are nuts. I don’t mean that they are nuts in the way that a power-mad tinpot dictator is nuts, but rather that they are world-historically, existentially, and metaphysically nuts. Their character and circumstances, that is to say, impel them toward actions that would be irrational for another character under other circumstances.
The treatment of Iran by the Obama administration was probably the biggest (among many) of its foreign-policy disasters.
Democrats
A party run by children.
Spoiled, ignorant children.
Biden Claims There “wasn’t A Hint Of Scandal” In The Obama Administration
Sin Will Find A Way
How pre-prohibition drinking laws in New York created the world’s worst sandwich.
D-Day
Moon Books
There are a bunch of new ones out as part of the fiftieth anniversary. Here’s a list (including some old classics as well).