I have a piece up at Popular Mechanics about the AIAA conference this week, and ULA’s non-heavy-lift architecture. Hell hath no fury like a rocket company scorned.
Meanwhile, it looks like there may be a battle in Congress to preserve the Ares pork. At some point, though, they’re going to have to confront budgetary and programmatic reality.
I don’t know why the White House would want this off the record. Seems like a great “Sister Souljah” opportunity. Of course, I’ve always thought that Kanye West was a jackass. Glad to see the president has finally come around.
Five years ago the idea that the private sector might have been capable of transporting cargo and people reliably into low Earth orbit was viewed as crazy. Much has happened since, and two things in particular. One was that Virgin Galactic, an upstart British firm, said it would develop a space-tourism business based around a craft that had cost only $25m to build. The other was that an equally upstart American entrepreneur called Elon Musk, flush from his sale of PayPal, created a company called SpaceX (whose Falcon rocket is pictured above, dropping its first stage on its way into orbit). He said he wanted to make it cheaper to launch people into space and wanted, ultimately, to send a mission to Mars—but that he would start by launching satellites.
It would be an understatement to say that both ventures were treated with scepticism. But they have now come far enough to be able to thumb their noses at the cynics. On September 3rd SpaceX signed a contract worth $50m with ORBCOMM, a satellite-communications firm. The deal is to launch 18 satellites for ORBCOMM’s network. Meanwhile, at the end of July, Aabar Investments, a sovereign-wealth fund based in Abu Dhabi, bought a 32% stake in Virgin Galactic for $280m. Aabar was not just interested in space tourism. It was also keen on a proposal to use Virgin’s White Knight launch system to put satellites into low Earth orbit. Will Whitehorn, Virgin Galactic’s president, said that one of the things which attracted Aabar was the fact that White Knight (an aircraft which lifts to high altitude a rocket that can then take either passengers or satellites onwards into space) could be flown from Abu Dhabi.
…from Matt Welch, who wandered out to the mall to see it..
[Late evening update]
Per the discussion in comments, a graphical tale of “left” versus “right” events on the mall.
[Late Sunday night update, with a bump]
Henry Vanderbilt (who should start a blog on space transportation and other topics) sends an analysis of the crowd size via email. He says it’s clearly six figures — hundreds of thousands: Continue reading An Impression Of The Protest→
I’m waiting for the first leftist and ACORN defender to accuse the people who did the secret video of the prostitution counseling of being racist.
I’m also sure that ACORN defenders will assure us that these people (who were fired tonight) are just a couple bad apples and, despite the old aphorism, didn’t spoil the whole bunch. That the two young (true) journalists were just lucky, and hit the jackpot, finding the only rotten non-golden delicious in the organization in their first and only attempt.
Right.
[Friday evening update, about 22 hours later]
Can I call them, or can I call them? It only took a day or so.
The question of which scenario is more plausible is neither academic nor trivial. This summer, a host of columnists, commentators, and activists, seemingly taking their cues from a White House and DNC public-relations offensive, declared that the rise of the “birthers” was a fatal indictment of modern conservatism and the Republican party. The refusal of the birthers to give up their cockamamie theory was proof that the GOP had succumbed to the “paranoid style.” Indeed, according to some liberal commentators, the birthers were the potential wellspring for a nascent Nazi movement in America. Never mind that the vast majority of leading Republicans and conservatives — from Newt Gingrich to Ann Coulter — rejected the birthers categorically.
Fast-forward to the last week or so. Van Jones, an avowed “Communist” and passionate supporter of convicted cop killer Mumia Abu-Jamal, was a truther par excellence. Contrary to many reports, he didn’t merely sign 911truth.org’s petition in 2004, he helped organize one of the first truther groups as early as 2002.
When these and other revelations came to light, Jones resigned his post as White House “green jobs czar.”
The reaction from much of the liberal establishment has been fascinating, hypocritical, and deeply creepy.