Here. Bottom line:
Waxman-Markey would impose costs at least 10 times as large as its benefits, would not reduce the deficit, and doesn’t even really cap emissions.
But other than that, it’s a great idea.
Not to mention that the bill is twelve hundred pages long. I wonder if they’ll be given an opportunity to read it?
[Afternoon update]
What this bill will and won’t do for the climate.
Of course, they have a lot more on the line. The question is, when will the American Jews get the memo?
…the poll results from Israel have got to be worrying to the Obama team. Liberal Jews are a critically important fundraising group and voter bloc for Democrats. With the economy remaining very weak and Obama’s national approval ratings sagging, the 2010 midterm elections and the presidential race in 2012 could be more competitive than were the Democratic sweeps in 2006 and 2008.
Will some liberal Jews step back, uncomfortable with the perception that Obama is hostile to Israel? Has Obama crossed a threshold among Jewish voters, much as Jimmy Carter did in 1979-1980, leading to a greatly diminished level of Jewish support in his run for re-election (Carter won but 45% of the Jewish vote in 1980).
To counter this perception, the lapdogs of the Jewish left — in particular, J-Street (a group whose real mission seems to be to reduce the power and influence of AIPAC) and the NJDC — are furiously spinning how Obama is still fond of Israel and the right choice for peace (which presumably is just around the corner if only Israel caved on the settlements issue).
I’ve got spinners like that right here in my comments section, even though the notion is certifiably insane.
There’s a long piece over at GQ by Sean Wilsey, about NASA.
This discussion with Jeff Hanley and Doug Cooke is sort of pathetic:
I began by saying, “The public at large has no idea what the Constellation program is or, really, that it even exists.” This brought on strong cringing, after which both men’s faces sank into resigned sadness. They nodded beleagueredly at each other.
Then I asked if the Ares rockets weren’t maybe a mistake.
Hanley, the midwesterner, cool and restrained, in an off-white suit jacket: “The Ares V’s the biggest rocket anybody will have ever built. This gets lost in discussions of performance. To redesign and human-rate”—i.e., make it safe for humans to fly into orbit on it—“an existing launch vehicle would cost a lot of time. There’s a lot of momentum behind Ares. It’ll improve crew safety by a factor of ten. Airlines have a one-in-10,000 fatality rate. The shuttle has a one-in-sixty…as safe as getting in your car.… We’re shooting for one in 1,000.”
Cooke, in a blazer, from behind his lunch: “Preliminary design review went very well.”
First of all, if he’d done a little research, instead of just taking the NASA employees’ word for it, he’d know that in fact the PDR was a disaster, and not even properly completed. And Hanley’s response as to whether or not Ares is the right thing isn’t responsive — it’s evasive. How does the fact that Ares V is the biggest rocket ever built justify that it’s the right thing to do? It doesn’t. What madness is it to think that “redesigning” and “human rating” an existing reliable vehicle will take longer than developing an entirely new one? He’s simply snowing the journalist, spouting the party line. Not to mention just pulling reliability numbers out of his nethers. He has no more idea of how much Ares will improve safety than people knew about Shuttle’s reliability in 1985.
He’s clearly become an uncritical fan boy:
…that evening I found myself walking around my hotel room saying, “It really does stupefy me how great this agency is and how little the country appreciates it.”
There is the usual assumption that NASA can do no wrong, and that it’s taking the best approach possible to get us to the stars, and that there’s nothing wrong with it that a little more public appreciation and bigger budgets wouldn’t help. It doesn’t even seem to occur to him that there might be other ways, that would not only cost less money, but give us a lot more results. It’s the typical binary world of “NASA is great” or “cancel the space program,” with no nuance or understanding of the underlying issues and pathologies of the space industrial complex. I hope that he’ll be a little less gullible, and take a broader view when he researches and writes his book.
As an aside, I worked with Clinton Dorris (Altair manager) for a couple weeks a few years ago in DC, when we were both working for the ARES Corporation. He’s a good guy.
And I find it irritating when people refer to the Zero G aircraft as the “Vomit Comet.” I would think that Zero G would be annoyed as well, because they work hard to avoid that, while the NASA KC-135 (which has had that nickname for decades) almost takes it as a perverse point of pride that they make people sick.
[Late evening update]
Jeez, Looeez. Jay Barbree makes Sean Wilsey (who has responded in comments) look like a cynical skeptic in comparison. He seems to have quaffed an entire barrel of the NASA koolaid. Check out this fantasy history:
President Bush gathered the best minds and experts of the day and told them to get started.
“It’ll be cheaper to modify an unmanned rocket like the Atlas 5 or Delta 4,” said one.
“Right,” agreed another, but they soon found the Atlas 5 and the Delta 4 didn’t have the power. They would have to be beefed up.
It was back to the drawing board, and the drawing board kept pointing them back to Apollo, to the kind of system the Russians had been flying successfully for five decades.
First they would need the safest hardware out there. They would need to build a rocket that would fly only astronauts. They had had it with the “one rocket fits all” boys, and they studied and tested, and studied and tested again. And they came up with a beauty. The first stage would be made from the space shuttle’s solid rocket boosters.
Then, they needed a second stage. Again, back to Apollo — the magnificent J-2 engine.
“Must have an astronaut escape system,” one insisted. “Can’t have another Challenger.”
“Got it,” assured another, pointing to the drawing of a rocket escape tower. “This baby’s computer will boost the living to safety in a microsecond — do it from the moment of ignition.”
“Must fly a low trajectory so the crew can survive anywhere along the way,” offered a third.
“Right. Low profile all the way out.”
“Delta 4 and Atlas 5 can’t do that. Right?”
“Right. Their flight profiles are too high.”
“This has got to be the safest rocket ever flown.”
“How about 1-in-3,000 odds?”
“Great. The space shuttle is about 1 in 75, right?
“Or less.”
“And Delta 4 and Atlas 5?”
“About a third, if that.”
It was obvious that the new rocket design, dubbed the Ares I, was the safe way to go for putting humans into orbit. The master planners realized they would also need a heavy-lift monster — a rocket bigger than Apollo’s Saturn V.
Again, they reached for proven hardware. This rocket, called the Ares V, would haul record-setting loads into Earth orbit. There, astronauts would pick them up for trips most anywhere in the solar system.
“It was obvious.”
Simple. Safe. Soon.
I’m embarrassed for him. He’s supposed to be a veteran space reporter. Maybe that’s why NASA is such a mess.
[Wednesday morning update]
More thoughts from Clark Lindsey. I hadn’t noted this, but he’s right — you’d never know from the Wilsey piece that Zero G is a completely private company, and has nothing to do with NASA, except for attempts to sell services to them:
I can appreciate the enthusiasm of someone like Mr. Wilsey for space exploration and for NASA’s Space Age accomplishments. On the other hand, such articles typically express the standard NASA is Space, Space is NASA attitude that became so dominant in the 1960s. Mr. Wilsey, for example, describes his experience of weightlessness on a ZERO G aircraft but he does not explain that ZERO-G is a private company independent of the agency. This could have led to a discussion of developments with commercial human spaceflight. Instead, a reader will most likely finish the article with the impression that the only thing going on today in space is NASA’s attempt to repeat Apollo.
Of course, the piece was supposed to be about NASA, so he couldn’t necessarily be expected to stray down that (more interesting) alleyway, but he should have made it more clear (particularly with the confusion over calling the Zero G aircraft NASA’s trademarked name).
Also, the more I think about it, the more simultaneously dismayed and astounded I am by the penultimate graf of the Jay Barbree piece:
The problem seems to be that Project Constellation was formed with a Republican in the White House — and because of this, some want a redo. But they have a problem: how to get around the fact that Constellation is sound. It’s the safest human spaceflight project ever put to paper. Opponents are groping for anything to tear it down.
This is truly wackadoodle stuff. “The problem seems to be…” Seems to be to whom? Jay Barbree? Because he can’t imagine any sane reason to oppose this (schedule slip slidin’ away, development costs up by a factor of two and a half, refusal to show the numbers on how “safe” it is, insane operational costs) it must be because we don’t like George Bush? This is like inverse BDS.
We don’t have to come up with some way to “get around the fact that Constellation is sound.” That’s not a fact. It’s an opinion (and a ludicrous one on the objective evidence), based on Jay spending too much time with his NASA buds, and too little independent investigation and critical thinking. As I said, I’m embarrassed for him.
[Update a couple minutes later]
I must have been too tired last night to pay proper attention — perhaps I was just too appalled at the rewriting of the history of Constellation, and got stuck on the first page. The more I read this piece, the more incoherent and rambling it becomes, wandering from the standard myth that the Apollo I fire was all North American’s fault (it wasn’t) to nutty paranoia about a “monopoly” of launch pads by “America’s largest military conglomerate,” Boeing-Lockheed Martin.
Jay. Please. There is no such “conglomerate” as “Boeing-Lockheed Martin.” ULA is a joint venture of the two of them, and the parent companies are largely hands off. ULA is not a “military” entity. It is a commercial launch company. And it has no plans, as far as I know, to utilize either pad 39, even if we end up launching on EELVs.
I can see why NASA gave him a public service medal, though. He apparently does them the “public” service of dutifully parroting whatever they tell him, when he’s not coming up with loopy tinfoil-hat conspiracy theories.
[Bumped]
[Thursday morning update]
Welcome Instapundit readers. Lots more around the blog, and if you’re just interested in space, and not the politics, just click on that category. “Rocket Man” over at Rockets’n’Such has another comment on the Barbree piece:
Wow. Let’s repeat that. “The safest human spaceflight project ever put to paper.”
And let’s hope it stays that way, right there, safe on the paper.
Indeed.
Rarely in human history has a gay man been that obsessed with a married woman’s vagina.
I’d say it goes far beyond “rare.” I think it’s unique in its pathology.
The problem with the Obamacare scam:
Faced with incontrovertible evidence that he and his allies have no intention or ability to fulfill their commitment to Americans regarding their current coverage, President Obama decided today at his press conference to try to redefine the promise. What he meant, he now says, is that the government wouldn’t force people out of their health-care plan. If tens of millions of people get pushed out of their current coverage, it would be because firms chose to drop their insurance plans — never mind the fact that they would do so based on the financial incentives the government put in place.
They must think we’re stupid. Of course, based on last November’s election results, they have some basis for it.
I’d like to see it, but I’m skeptical that the moral will exists among our corrupt bureaucrats and legislators to make it happen, especially in California, where a major factor running the state into the ground has been a powerful prison-guard union to which the legislature is in thrall.
Here’s the latest straw man:
A lot of people are confidently predicting the death of Ares 1 just becaus [sic] the Second Augustine Commission exists.
I’m not aware of anyone who predicts the death of Ares I on “just” that basis. Can Mark point to someone in particular, or is it one of the mysterious and always unnamed members of the “Internet Rocketeer Club”?
We (or at least I) predict the death of Ares I because its schedule continues to slip (expanding the dreaded “gap”), its technical problems continue to mount with no obvious solution, its budget has ballooned to two and a half times the initial estimate, with no signs of coming under control, and it turns out that NASA has been less than truthful about the competition, and put a thumb on the scale when it did its trade analyses to get the “right” answer. The existence of the Augustine Commission is simply a recognition of this reality by the administration. And Mark can take comfort from Rob Coppinger’s whistling past the Ares deathbed if he wishes — the ultimate disillusionment will simply be all the greater when the plug is pulled.
[Late afternoon update]
Imaginary friends, and imaginary behavior:
Rand Simberg screams and leaps again at my analysis…
Hilarious. One wonders how many moons orbit the planet on which he resides, from whatever alternate universe he posts this insanity. I neither “screamed” or “leaped,” as anyone can see, above.
And what “analysis”? He did no analysis. He never does an analysis. He’s simply incapable of it, not understanding the things he’s “analyzing.” He just pointed to a post by Rob Coppinger.
And then there’s this:
…repeating some of the standard conspiracy theories concerning Ares and its alternatives.
“Conspiracy theories”?
Mark, it is not a “conspiracy theory” that the schedule is slipping to the right. It is a fact, documented by the GAO.
It is not a “conspiracy theory” that Ares I development costs have gone from fourteen billion to thirty-five billion, by Steve Cook’s own admission. That is a fact.
Facts are stubborn things. Though not as stubborn, apparently, as Mark.
And this:
He seems to suggest (though likely, being Rand, he will deny it in retrospect) that Augustine could actually report that Ares is still the best alternative but it will ultimately fail anyway.
I only “seem to suggest” that to someone who has difficulty parsing out plain English.
Whew! What happened? Well, that, no doubt, is what the Obama team must be wondering. It is not merely the president’s poll numbers which are crumbling; it is the premises which formed his world view and domestic agenda which are disintegrating. The world is a dangerous place with despots immune to even “smart diplomacy.” Governments really can’t spend their way to prosperity. And even in an economic recession America remains a right-of-center country.
Obama, it seems, never confronted a critical media or a viable political opponent who could effectively quiz him on his assumptions and policy prescriptions. He waltzed through an election on essentially a “not Bush” campaign and a cloud of feel-good messages ungrounded in the real world. But once in office he finds the world — filled with rogue states, recalcitrant laws of economics, squirrely citizens, and cold, hard budget numbers — is not so easily charmed. Facts are stubborn things, after all.
I always find hilarious the lack of irony with which these people presume to call themselves the “reality based community.”
…and the health-spending gap. An analysis by Keith Hennessey:
Combining Kennedy-Dodd with all of the President’s proposed Medicare and Medicaid savings would make America’s long-term entitlement spending problem much worse than under current law.
Gee, ya think?
I’m…glad to see that Ezra Klein is explicit about his acceptance that climate change is expected to have extremely limited effects on the United States for at least the next hundred years. I figure that ought to be pretty important when debating the proper policies for the government of the United States. On the other hand, we continue to disagree about the financial efficiency of the foreign aid program defined by transforming the energy sector of the American economy in order to very slightly ameliorate a predicted problem that might affect people who might live in low-lying equatorial regions of the world decades from now.
As Bjorn Lomborg would say, it’s a lousy deal. But of course, it’s not about economic efficiency. It’s about forcing everyone into the secular religion of our moral betters.
[Early afternoon update]
Keep the lights on! Fight the bill.